Theda Bara - talented actress or sexually provocative vamp?

Theodosia Goodman aka Theda Bara (1885-1950s) was born in Ohio, one of three children of a Cincinnati tailor. As a teenager Theda was interested in the theatrical arts and once she (perhaps) graduated from Cincinnati University, she dyed her blond hair black and left to become an actress.

By 1908 she was in New York. That year she app­ear­ed in The Devil, a Broadway stage play, using the name Theodosia de Coppett (her moth­er’s maiden name). In 1911 she joined a touring company. After returning to New York in 1914, she began having interviews at casting offices and was eventually hired to appear in The Stain (1914) as an extra.

In 1914 she met Frank Powell who cast her as the vampire in A Fool There Was (1915). Theda she quickly took Bara as her surname, short for her maternal grandfather’s name Baranger and prepared to be famous. It was from this role that that the world learned the word vamp, a woman who saps the sexual energ­ies from respectable men. In some of her publicity photos, her devoured victims were the skeleton at her feet. Just as well A Fool There Was did well; Theda was already 30 years old.

 

Theda Bara

Cleopatra, 1917

Theda became the screen's first well promoted and purpose-designed actress. Press releases noted she was the daughter of an "Italian artist and an Arab­ian princess". Or the daughter of a "French artist and his Egyptian concubine". In truth Theda had never been to Egypt or to France, but the studios called her the Serpent of the Nile anyhow. The public became fascinated with her haunting kohl-covered eyes, exotic clothes, snakes and skulls.

Theda's second film, made for the newly formed Fox Studios, was as Celia Friedlander in Sonata (1915). Theda was hot property by that time and went on to make six more impressive films in 1915, including Carmen (1915). The next year was another productive one, with theatre patrons delighting in eight Theda Bara films, all of which made a fortune for Fox Films. Publicity was crucial. America's most popular men's magazine, The National Police Gazette, gave the entire front cover of a 1916 issue to Ms Bara and her Russian wolfhound. 

Then in 1917 Fox headed west to California and took Theda with them. That year she starred in a mega-hit, Cleopatra (1917). This was quickly followed by The Rose of Blood (1917). In 1918 Theda wrote the story and starred as the priestess in The Soul of Buddha (1918). And she bought herself an amazing Tudor party mansion in  Beverly Hills.

With all the panic about wanton female behaviour, in an era still dominated by strong codes of moral behav­iour, this actress was an object more of fascination than fear. But after seven films in 1919, ending with The Lure of Ambition (1919), her contract was suddenly term­inated by Fox, and her career  never recovered. “Irresistible” had turned into “intolerable”.

The income stream dried up and her Beverly Hills mansion went on the market, to be bought by none other than the (later) infamous actor Fatty Arbuckle.

Theda Bara and wolfhound
The National Police Gazette, 17^th June 1916

In 1921 Theda Bara married Charles Brabin (1882-1957), the Englishman who moved to the USA to become a full time film writer and director. From their wedding day in 1921, they remained married for the rest of their lives. In 1926 she made her last film, Madame Mystery directed by Stan Laurel, then went back into permanent re­tirement at 41.

Film prints were difficult to store and were made of silver nitrate, so film companies often kept only one copy of every film they made. If a studio’s single stored copy of a film caught fire, it was most likely gone for good. Unfortunately Bara’s Fox films were totally destroyed in a notorious New Jersey film archive fire in 1937. She had her own personal archive but did not realise that they too had disintegrated until she took some films out in the 1940s. Thus only 3 of her many films were known to have survived completely intact.

In 1955, Theda Bara died of cancer at 69 in Los Angeles. It was only a few years after her death that she was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6307 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood (1960).

**

Now two new questions.  1] Of the 42 films she made in her 4-year career at Fox, Bara was typecast as a heartless man-wrecking vamp in most of them. So did Bara model herself on the problematic Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in the world in the 1890s? After all Bernhardt was French, was born Jewish, and her greatest roles, Cleopatra, Phèdre and Theodora the Empress of Byzantium, evoked uncontrolled sexuality and a fascination with the Orient. Anne Helen Petersen wrote Bara is often cited as the first sex symbol and the first vamp. But really her image combined and defined vampish sexuality on the big screen a la Sarah Bernhardt, the actress who had been mesmer­ising Western stage audiences for decades.

For moviegoers of the late 1910s, Bara’s vampy screen performances in those now-lost films apparently served as the celluloid embodiment of the dangers and pleasures of sex; it is still possible to grasp some of her primal appeal and unwholesomeness. Imagine a nearly naked raven-haired starlet doing unseemly poses while lounging alongside a man’s skeleton. In the publicity shots from Cleopatra, Bara let herself be photographed in a skimpy coiled-snake bra.

Like Sarah Bernhardt, Bara’s charms were not subtle. And critical opinion about both these actresses during their own careers was polarised. It’s hard not to think that it was the morality of the characters they played that was being judged, rather than their acting skills.

2] Rachel Paige King analysed a second issue. Bara was the first star promoted with an elaborate PR strategy, possibly designed to cover up what was a liability in early C20th America — her Jewish family. According to her publicity, Theda Bara was the child of exotic French/Egyptian parents who had met in the Sahara Desert. She was in fact from a rock solid, boring Jewish immigrant family in Cincinnati, Ohio.

When vampish roles were becoming passe, Bara asked to be cast in a popular story about an Irish peasant heroine. The making of Kathleen Mavourneen was a happy exp­er­ience for Bara. She could leave the vamp pigeon hole she had accepted four years earlier. And she fell in love with her director, Charles Brabin. By the time Kathleen Mavourneen was distributed, Bara was as creatively satisfied as she had ever been. The early reviews of the film were positive.

But incr­eas­ingly many in the Irish-American community found the casting of a Jewish actress as an Irish heroine off­ensive. Riots broke out at theat­res showing the film. Bara received anti-Semitic death threats. Even though the film was silent and accents were irrevelant, many moviegoers were put off and the film failed. After four years Bara’s career ended, at least partially because of anti-Semitism.

Just as well The Motion Picture Production Code, under the control of Will Hays' man Joseph Breen, did not enforce the set of industry moral guidelines and censorship laws until 1930. Breen was virulently anti-Semitic, anti-communist and anti female sexuality.