Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2007

Mailer reported that he'd never met Bankhead. His take on the affair, as per
wiki, is:

"The publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Mailer to use the
euphemism "fug" in lieu of "f.ck" in his novel. Mailer's version of a
subsequent incident follows:

"...The word has been a source of great embarrassment to me over the years
because, you know, Tallulah Bankhead's press agent, many years ago, got a
story in the papers which went...'Oh, hello, you're Norman Mailer,' said
Tallulah Bankhead allegedly, 'You're the young man that doesn't know how to
spell...' You know, the four-letter word was indicated with all sorts of
asterisks... I thought she [Bankhead] should have hired a publicity man who
had a better sense of fair play." (1968 Panel Discussion, CBLT-TV, Toronto,
moderated by Robert Fulford) From "Conversations with Norman Mailer", 1988.
Edited by J. Michael Lennon."

Or there's George Plimpton's book on Truman Capote:

http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1297/plimpton/excerpt.html

(Mailer is speaking of a ball Capote [1] held in 1966. No, not THAT kind of
ball.)
"For example, there was Talullah Bankhead! For twenty years she'd been
enjoying the coup her public relations man had given her when as the legend
had it, she said to me, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to
spell 'f.ck.'" For those who are too young to know, it was because I had
used "fug" in The Naked and the Dead. Of course we had never met. For me it
was like a burr under a saddle. Of course I blew the opportunity to tell her
off. She looked too attractive and, big surprise, too vulnerable."

[1] Reminds me of that old joke about the 'capote noire' which ends "Ah!
Quelle finesse!"