Theda Bara

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Theda Bara (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell;<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> 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),Template:Efn later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bara was the biggest star of Fox Studios, which concocted a fictitious persona for her as an Egyptian-born woman interested in the occult. She made 43 films between 1914 and 1926. 3 of her films were for Pathe, 1 was for Chadwick Pictures and 39 were for Fox but most of which were lost 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 three more films and then retired from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in any sound films.

Early life

Bara was born Theodosia Burr Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Cincinnati, Ohio.Template:Sfn She was named after the daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr.Template:Sfn Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936),<ref name="NYT">Template:Cite news Alt URL</ref> a prosperous Jewish tailor from Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise Françoise (Template:Nee de Coppett; 1861–1957), was born in Switzerland.Template:Sfn Bernard and Pauline married in 1882. Theda had two younger siblings: Marque (1888–1954) and Esther (1897–1965), who went by the nickname "Lori".Template:SfnTemplate:Efn

In 1890 the family moved to Avondale, a Cincinnati suburb with a substantial Jewish community.Template:Sfn Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903.Template:Sfn 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

Most of Bara's early films were shot along the East Coast, where the film industry was based, primarily at Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She lived with her family in New York City. The rise of Hollywood as the center of the American film industry forced her to move to Los Angeles to film the epic Cleopatra (1917), which became one of her biggest hits. Only a 1 minute fragment of Cleopatra is known to exist today, but numerous photographs of her in costume as Cleopatra have survived.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>

Bara in A Fool There Was (1915)

Bara was the Fox studio's biggest star between 1915 and 1919, but tired of being typecast as a vamp, she allowed her five-year contract with the company to expire. Her final Fox film was The Lure of Ambition (1919). In 1920, she turned briefly to the stage, appearing on Broadway in The Blue Flame. Bara's fame drew large crowds to the theater, but her acting was savaged by critics.Template:Sfn

Advertisement for Destruction, December 24, 1915

Her career suffered without Fox Studios' support, and she did not make another film until The Unchastened Woman (1925) for Chadwick Pictures. She retired after making only two more films, the short comedys Madame Mystery (1926), and 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926) directed by Stan Laurel for Hal Roach; in this, Bara parodied her vamp image.Template:Citation needed

Bara in The She-Devil (1918)

At the height of her fame, Bara earned $4,000 per week (Template:Inflation). Her better-known roles were as the "vamp", although she attempted to avoid typecasting by playing wholesome heroines in films such as Under Two Flags and Her Double Life. She appeared as Juliet in a version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Although Bara took her craft seriously, she was too successful playing exotic wanton women to develop a more versatile career.Template:Citation needed

Image and name

Manuel Rosenberg autographed sketch of fellow Cincinnatian, Theda Bara, 1921 Cincinnati post

The origin of Bara's stage name is disputed. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats says it came from director Frank Powell, who learned Theda had a relative named Baranger, and that Theda was a childhood nickname. In promoting the 1917 film Cleopatra, Fox Studio publicists noted that the name was an anagram of Arab death, and her press agents, to enhance her exotic appeal to moviegoers, falsely promoted the young Ohio native as "the daughter of an Arab sheik and a French woman, born in the Sahara".<ref>Template:Cite news Film review.</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1917, the Goodman family legally changed its surname to Bara.<ref name="NYT"/>

Personal

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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Marriage and retirement

Bara with Charles Brabin, 1922

Bara married British-born American film director Charles Brabin in 1921. They honeymooned at The Pines Hotel in Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada, and later purchased a Template:Convert property down the coast from Digby at Harbourville, Nova Scotia, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, eventually building a summer home they called Baranook.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> They had no children. Bara also owned and often enjoyed extended stays in a villa-style home in Cincinnati. The villa was later bought by Xavier University, which used the house as a residence for nuns, and then the "honors villa" for students. The house was demolished in July 2011.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1936, she appeared on Lux Radio Theatre during a broadcast version of The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy. She did not appear in the play but instead announced her plans to make a movie comeback,<ref>Template:Cite web Skip to 50m:50s.</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> which never materialized. She appeared on radio again in 1939 as a guest on Texaco Star Theatre.

In 1949, producer Buddy DeSylva and Columbia Pictures expressed interest in making a movie of Bara's life, to star Betty Hutton, but the project never materialized.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Death

On April 7, 1955, after a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, Bara died of stomach cancer.<ref name=obit>Template:Cite news</ref> She was survived by her husband, her mother, and her younger sister, Lori.<ref name=obit/> She was cremated at Chapel of the Pines Crematory (disputed), and her remains were inurned under the name Theda Bara Brabin in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California).Template:Sfn Bara bequeathed $100,000 to her sister, $8,000 to her husband, and $1,000 to her sister-in-law.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Legacy

Bara often is cited as the first sex symbol of the film era.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and is shown in the film MaXXXine.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 the studio's silent films made before 1932. Bara made 43 films in total between 1914 and 1926, but complete prints of only six still exist. Two are partially lost and 35 are completely lost. The six films that survive are The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), East Lynne (1916), The Unchastened Woman (1925), Madame Mystery (1926), and 45 minutes from Hollywood (1926). The two films that survive in fragments are Cleopatra (1917) (1 minute worth of fragments), and Salome (1918) (2 minutes worth of fragments). There is a rumored clip running 23 seconds thought to be from The Soul of Buddha (1918) that is featured in the documentary Theda Bara et William Fox (2001) though this hasn't been confirmed yet. Most of the clips can be seen in the documentary The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (2006). Additional footage has been found which shows her behind the scenes on a picture.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> A rumored fragment of The Lure of Ambition (1919) running 82 seconds is known to survive though this has not been confirmed yet. Some of her films and fragments of her films were rediscovered. The Stain (1914) Bara's first and only feature for Pathe was rediscovered in the 1990s. A complete print of East Lynne (1916) was found in 1971. Two minutes of surviving footage from Salome was discovered in 2021 by an intern at Filmoteca Española.<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref> In 2023, 40 seconds of additional footage from Cleopatra was found in a toy projector purchased on ebay by a film researcher named James Fennell.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

As to vamping, critics stated that her portrayal of calculating, cold-hearted women was morally instructive to men. Bara responded, "I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1994, she was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> <ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Dye screened the film at the Hollywood Heritage Museum on February 8, 2017.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Filmography

Romeo and Juliet (1916) with actors (from left): Helen Tracy, Alice Gale, Bara, and Edward Holt
Bara with Alan Roscoe in Camille (1917)
Bara in Cleopatra (1917)

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Year Film Role Notes
1914 The Stain Gang moll Extant

Credited as Theodosia Goodman. Presumed lost until a copy was found in the 1990s.

1915 A Fool There Was The Vampire Extant
1915 The Kreutzer Sonata Celia Friedlander Lost film
1915 The Clemenceau Case Iza Lost film
1915 The Devil's Daughter Gioconda Dianti Lost film
1915 Lady Audley's Secret Helen Talboys Lost film
1915 The Two Orphans Henriette Lost film
1915 Sin Rosa Lost film
1915 Carmen Carmen Lost film
1915 The Galley Slave Francesca Brabaut Lost film
1915 Destruction Fernade Lost film
1916 The Serpent Vania Lazar Lost film
1916 Gold and the Woman Theresa Decordova Lost film
1916 The Eternal Sapho Laura Bruffins Lost film
1916 East Lynne Lady Isabel Carlisle Extant

Presumed lost until a copy was discovered in 1971.

1916 Under Two Flags Cigarette Lost film
1916 Her Double Life Mary Doone Lost film
1916 Romeo and Juliet Juliet Lost film
1916 The Vixen Elsie Drummond Lost film
1917 The Darling of Paris Esmeralda Lost film
1917 The Tiger Woman Princess Petrovitch Lost film
1917 Her Greatest Love Hazel Lost film
1917 Heart and Soul Jess Lost film
1917 Camille Marguerite Gauthier<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Lost film. A reel was rumored to be found in a Russian archive but was actually mislabeled.
1917 Cleopatra Cleopatra 1 minute survives
1917 The Rose of Blood Lisza Tapenka Lost film
1917 Madame Du Barry Jeanne Vaubernier Lost film
1918 The Forbidden Path Mary Lynde Lost film
1918 The Soul of Buddha Priestess Story, Lost film. A rumored clip of the film running 23 seconds is in the documentary Theda Bara et William Fox though this isn't confirmed yet.
1918 Under the Yoke Maria Valverda Lost film
1918 Salomé Salome 2 minutes survive
1918 When a Woman Sins Lilian Marchard / Poppea Lost film
1918 The She-Devil Lorette Lost film
1919 The Light Blanchette Dumond, aka Madame Lefresne Lost film
1919 When Men Desire Marie Lohr Lost film
1919 The Siren's Song Marie Bernais Lost film
1919 A Woman There Was Princess Zara Lost film
1919 Kathleen Mavourneen Kathleen Cavanagh Lost film
1919 La Belle Russe Fleurett Sackton/La Belle Russe Lost film
1919 The Lure of Ambition Olga Dolan Lost film; a rumored fragment running 82 seconds is known to survive though this hasn't been confirmed yet.<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: Template:Cite webTemplate:Cbignore</ref>
1925 The Unchastened Woman Caroline Knollys Extant
1926 Madame Mystery Madame Mysterieux Extant

Short film

1926 45 Minutes from Hollywood Herself Extant

Short film

Cultural references


  • In an episode of the television comedy series ‘The Munsters’ (Season 1, Episode 33, “Lily Munster, Girl Model,” first aired on May 6, 1965), the character Lily Munster (portrayed by Yvonne De Carlo) is interviewing for a job as a fashion model with a fashion designer character named Laszlo Brastoff (portrayed by Roger C. Carmel), and Brastoff remarks that with the exotic and mysterious appeal of his new line of dresses he is trying to recreate the kind of allure that was reflected by women like Theda Bara, whom he notes was called ‘…”The Vamp.” That’s short for “vampire.”’

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