January 31, 1902

Tallulah Bankhead, (January 31, 1902 to December 12, 1968) like many beautiful women, took some comfort in her later years by remembering the applause she received decades earlier.  In her memoir, Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952) we find an example.  Bankhead quotes a British reviewer who spoke of her performance, on a Glasgow stage, in  "Her Cardboard Lover," this way:

As a vivid, irrational...Frenchwoman, she carries the vein of unrestrained farce without a moment's departure for subtlety. Beautiful? Oh quite! Feline? Yes, with the broad languorous movements of a blue Persian kitten whose claws are never far concealed.  She can scream too, not unlike the wail of a cat in the night.

I would say that reviewer had her claws out.