Theda Bara

Theda Bara
Bara in 1921
Born	Theodosia Burr Goodman (1885-07-29)July 29, 1885 Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Died	April 7, 1955(1955-04-07) (aged 69) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery
Alma mater	University of Cincinnati
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1908–1926
Spouse	Charles Brabin ​ (m. 1921)​
Relatives	Lori Bara (sister)

Theda Bara (/ˈθiːdə ˈbærə/ THEE-də BARR-ə; 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), later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination.

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 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 life

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

In 1890 the family moved to Avondale, a Cincinnati suburb with a substantial Jewish community. Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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.

Bara in The She-Devil (1918)

At the height of her fame, Bara earned $4,000 per week (equivalent to $70,300 in 2023). 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.

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". In 1917, the Goodman family legally changed its surname to Bara.

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.

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 400-hectare (990-acre) property down the coast from Digby at Harbourville, Nova Scotia, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, eventually building a summer home they called Baranook. They had no children. Bara resided in a villa-style home in Cincinnati, which served as the "honors villa" at Xavier University. Demolition of the home began in July 2011.

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, 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.

Death

On April 7, 1955, after a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, Bara died of stomach cancer. She was survived by her husband, her mother, and her younger sister, Lori. She was interred as Theda Bara Brabin at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Bara bequeathed $100,000 to her sister, $8,000 to her husband, and $1,000 to her sister-in-law.

Legacy

Bara often is cited as the first sex symbol of the film era.

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, and is shown in the film MaXXXine.

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." Additional footage has been found which shows her behind the scenes on a picture. 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.

In 1994, she was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. 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.

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. Dye screened the film at the Hollywood Heritage Museum on February 8, 2017.

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)

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1914	The Stain	Gang moll	Credited as Theodosia Goodman
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
	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
	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
1925	The Unchastened Woman	Caroline Knollys
1926	Madame Mystery	Madame Mysterieux	Short film
	45 Minutes from Hollywood	Herself

Cultural references

• The short piano suite Silhouettes from the Screen, Op. 55 (1919) by Mortimer Wilson includes a miniature musical portrait of Theda Bara, who is portrayed in an atonal, expressionistic style.
• Bara is referenced in the 1921 Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby song "Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" as well as their 1922 "Sheik From Avenue B," sung by Fanny Brice.
• 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.
• The International Times' 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.
• During a scene from The Aviator (2004 film) 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 Cleopatra (1917 film), 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.

References

Works cited

• Liebman, Roy (2023). Theda Bara: Her Career, Life and Legend (Kindle ed.). McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-1-4766-5002-9.
• Genini, Ronald (1996). Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography (Kindle ed.). McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6918-5.
• Golden, Eve (1996). Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. Vestal Press. ISBN 978-1-887322-00-3.

Further reading

• Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse by Judith Buchanan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Chapter 6. ISBN 0-521-87199-9.
• Famous Juliets by Jerome Hart, in Motion Picture Classic, March 1923.
• A Million and One Nights by Terry Ramsaye. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926.
• Fox, Susan (2006). William Fox: A Story of Early Hollywood 1915–1930. Midnight Marquee Press Inc. ISBN 1-887664-62-9.
• DiGrazia, Christopher (2011). The Director's Cut: A Theda Bara Mystery. 1921 PVG Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9827709-4-8.
• Johnston, Bob (2002). Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi. Dramatist's Play Service. ISBN 0-8222-1837-2.
• Altman, Diana (2010). In Theda Bara's Tent. Tapley Cove Press. ISBN 978-0-615-34327-3.

External links

Photos

• Theda Bara photo gallery NY Public Library collection
• movie theater marquee in Jacksonville, FL: She Loved too Late, starring Theda Bara

Magazines

• The 1917 review of Tiger Woman starring Theda Bara from The Atlanta Georgian
• The Ex-Vampire by Theda Bara Vanity Fair Magazine, October, 1919

Biography

• "Theda Bara", entry in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia
• Excerpt from Golden's biography Vamp
• "Theda Bara" Biography at monash.edu.au

Metadata

• Theda Bara at the Internet Broadway Database
• Theda Bara at the TCM Movie Database
• ‹The template AllMovie name is being considered for deletion.› Theda Bara at AllMovie
• Theda Bara at IMDb