Theda Bara
Theda Bara (/ˈθiːdə ˈbærə/ THEE-də BARR-ə;[1] born Theodosia Burr Goodman; July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955) was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire, here meaning a seductive woman),[a] later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.[5]
Theda Bara
Born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Bara was the biggest star of Fox Studios, who prompted a fictitious persona for her as an Egyptian-born woman interested in the occult. She made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, most of which are now lost, having been destroyed in the 1937 Fox vault fire. She left Fox in 1919 and was unable to recapture her previous success. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more films and then retired from acting in 1926; she never appeared in a sound film.
Early life[edit]
Bara was born Theodosia Burr Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Cincinnati, Ohio.[6] She was named after the daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr.[7] Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936),[8] a prosperous Jewish tailor from Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise Françoise (née de Coppett; 1861–1957), was born in Switzerland.[9] Bernard and Pauline married in 1882. Theda had two younger siblings: Marque (1888–1954) and Esther (1897–1965), who went by the nickname "Lori".[10][b]
In 1890 the family moved to Avondale, a Cincinnati suburb with a substantial Jewish community.[13] Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903.[14] After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she worked mainly in local theater productions, but did explore other projects. After moving to New York City in 1908, she made her Broadway debut the same year in The Devil.[15]
Persona[edit]
Bara was known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. It was popular at that time to promote an actress as mysterious, with an exotic background. The studios promoted Bara with a massive publicity campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara desert under the shadow of the Sphinx, then moved to France to become a stage actress. (In fact, Bara never had been to Egypt, and her time in France amounted to just a few months.)
A 2016 book by Joan Craig and Beverly F. Stout chronicles many personal, first-hand accounts of the lives of Bara and her husband Charles Brabin.[21]
Death[edit]
On April 7, 1955, after a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, Bara died of stomach cancer.[28] She was survived by her husband, her mother, and her younger sister, Lori.[28] She was interred as Theda Bara Brabin at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[29] Bara bequeathed $100,000 to her sister, $8000 to her husband, and $1000 to her sister-in-law.[30]
Legacy[edit]
Bara often is cited as the first sex symbol of the film era.[31][32]
For her contributions to the film industry, Bara received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Her star is located at 6307 Hollywood Boulevard.[33]
Bara never appeared in a sound film, lost or otherwise. A 1937 fire at Fox's nitrate film storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed most of that studio's silent films. Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but complete prints of only six still exist: The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), East Lynne (1916), The Unchastened Woman (1925), and two short comedies for Hal Roach.
In addition to these, a few of her films remain in fragments, including Cleopatra (less than a minute of footage), a clip thought to be from The Soul of Buddha, and a few other unidentified clips featured in the documentary Theda Bara et William Fox (2001). Most of the clips can be seen in the documentary The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (2006). As to vamping, critics stated that her portrayal of calculating, cold-hearted women was morally instructive to men. Bara responded by saying "I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin."[34] Additional footage has been found which shows her behind the scenes on a picture.[35] While the hairstyle has led some to theorize that this may be from The Lure of Ambition, this has not been confirmed. Small fragments from Salomé were discovered in 2021 by an intern at Filmoteca Española.[36]
In 1994, she was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.[37] The Fort Lee Film Commission dedicated Main Street and Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as "Theda Bara Way" in May 2006 to honor Bara, who made many of her films at the Fox Studio on Linwood and Main.[38]
Over a period of several years, filmmaker and film historian Phillip Dye reconstructed Cleopatra on video. Titled Lost Cleopatra, the full-length feature was created by editing together production-still picture montages combined with the surviving film clip. The script was based on the original scenario, with modifications derived from research into censorship reports, reviews of the film, and synopses from period magazines.[39] Dye screened the film at the Hollywood Heritage Museum on February 8, 2017.[40]
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