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Theda Bara

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Theda Bara (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell;<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template: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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, 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 more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, 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 two more films and then retired from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in any sound films.

Early lifeEdit

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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

CareerEdit

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. No complete prints of Cleopatra are known to exist today, but numerous photographs of her in costume as Cleopatra have survived.<ref>Template:Cite press release</ref>

File:Theda Bara, A Fool There Was (1915) Publicity Still.jpg
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

File:Theda Bara in Destruction - advertisement (1915).png
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 one more film, the short comedy Madame Mystery (1926), directed by Stan Laurel for Hal Roach; in this, Bara parodied her vamp image.Template:Citation needed

File:The She Devil 1918.jpg
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 nameEdit

File:Manuel Rosenberg portrait of Theda Bara.jpg
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"/>

PersonalEdit

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 retirementEdit

File:Theda Bara & Charles Brabin 1922.jpg
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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Skip to 50m:50s.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>

DeathEdit

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 (disputed), her remains was inurned as Theda Bara Brabin in the Great Mausoleum. (Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, 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>

LegacyEdit

Bara often is cited as the first sex symbol of the film era.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and is shown in the film MaXXXine.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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 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.Template:Citation needed 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). Additional footage has been found which shows her behind the scenes on a picture.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> 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.<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> In 2023, additional footage from Cleopatra was found in a toy projector purchased on ebay. <ref>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwPZuyF2Th0</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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=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>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Dye screened the film at the Hollywood Heritage Museum on February 8, 2017.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

FilmographyEdit

File:Romeo and juliet1916.jpg
Romeo and Juliet (1916) with actors (from left): Helen Tracy, Alice Gale, Bara, and Edward Holt
File:Alan Roscoe-Theda Bara in Camille.jpg
Bara with Alan Roscoe in Camille (1917)
File:ThedaBara-Cleopatra.jpg
Bara in Cleopatra (1917)

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Year Film Role Notes
1914 The Stain Gang moll Credited as Theodosia Goodman. Presumed lost until a copy was found in the 1990s.
1915 A Fool There Was The Vampire
The Kreutzer Sonata Celia Friedlander Lost film
The Clemenceau Case Iza
The Devil's Daughter Gioconda Dianti
Lady Audley's Secret Helen Talboys
The Two Orphans Henriette
Sin Rosa
Carmen Carmen
The Galley Slave Francesca Brabaut
Destruction Fernade
1916 The Serpent Vania Lazar
Gold and the Woman Theresa Decordova
The Eternal Sapho Laura Bruffins
East Lynne Lady Isabel Carlisle Presumed lost until a copy was discovered in 1971
Under Two Flags Cigarette Lost film
Her Double Life Mary Doone
Romeo and Juliet Juliet
The Vixen Elsie Drummond
1917 The Darling of Paris Esmeralda
The Tiger Woman Princess Petrovitch
Her Greatest Love Hazel
Heart and Soul Jess
Camille Marguerite Gauthier<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Cleopatra Cleopatra Approximately 1 minute exists
The Rose of Blood Lisza Tapenka Lost film
Madame Du Barry Jeanne Vaubernier
1918 The Forbidden Path Mary Lynde
The Soul of Buddha Priestess Story, Lost film
Under the Yoke Maria Valverda Lost film
Salomé Salome About 2 minutes survive; Lost
When a Woman Sins Lilian Marchard / Poppea Lost film
The She-Devil Lorette
1919 The Light Blanchette Dumond, aka Madame Lefresne
When Men Desire Marie Lohr
The Siren's Song Marie Bernais
A Woman There Was Princess Zara
Kathleen Mavourneen Kathleen Cavanagh
La Belle Russe Fleurett Sackton/La Belle Russe
The Lure of Ambition Olga Dolan Lost film; 82-second outtake does exist<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation CitationClass=web

}}Template:Cbignore</ref>

1925 The Unchastened Woman Caroline Knollys
1926 Madame Mystery Madame Mysterieux Short film
45 Minutes from Hollywood Herself

Cultural referencesEdit

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> as well as their 1922 "Sheik From Avenue B", sung by Fanny Brice.<ref name="FuriaFuria2006">Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Bara was one of three actresses (Pola Negri and Mae Murray were the others) whose eyes were combined to form the Chicago International Film Festival's logo, a stark, black and white close up of the composite eyes set as repeated frames in a strip of film.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • The International TimesTemplate:' logo is a black-and-white image of Theda Bara. The founders' intention had been to use an image of actress Clara Bow, 1920s "It girl", but a picture of Theda Bara was used by accident, and once deployed, not changed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • During a scene from 2004 film The Aviator when Howard Hughes and Glenn Odekirk are trying to create the H-1 Racer, Odekirk remarks, "Yeah, well, I want a date with Theda Bara, but that ain't gonna happen either."
  • Bara, as well as the lost film Cleopatra, are referenced extensively in the romance novel Nevaeh Smiled by SPW Mitchell as the muse for costume designer Rainier.
  • There are multiple references to Bara in the X film series. In the 2022 film Pearl, the titular character, portrayed by Mia Goth, feeds an alligator that she has named Theda. In the 2024 film MaXXXine, the titular character, also portrayed by Goth, is seen putting out her cigarette on the Theda Bara Hollywood Walk of Fame star.
  • Bara is a central figure in the play On Set with Theda Bara, written by Joey Merlo, directed by Jack Serio, and performed by David Greenspan at the Brick Theater in New York in 2024.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • Bara is featured as the main cover of the Lumineers album Cleopatra, as she was photographed as Cleopatra.

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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Works citedEdit

Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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Photos

Magazines

Biography

Metadata

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