LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Theda Bara: Vamp
built 626 days ago
The woman who was the epitomé of the "vamp" persona in cinema history, Theda Bara, was born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 29th, 1890. She was given her new name by Hollywood, and billed as the daughter of an Eastern potentate (though her father was actually a simple tailor). Theda had a conventional upbringing and schooling. She went to New York to do a play after graduating from high school, and then she traveled to Hollywood to pursue a screen career.
Source:
Theda Bara was a film actress of the silent era, nicknamed "The Vamp." She was one of the first movie stars and inspired many imitators in the early years of cinema. Theda Bara is one of the only movie stars never to have appeared in a sound film, and unfortunately, she has the highest percentage of lost films of anyone with a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.
Source:
Hollywood's first and most notorious Vixen, Theda Bara became synonymous with exoticism. She was alluring and unusual, a wide-eyed siren, a gold digger...and eternal Vamp. In fours years (1915 - 1919), Theda vamped her way through 39 films and millions of dollars for Fox Studios. The studio built her up with such a tremendous publicity
Source:
Theda Bara gave the world the Vamp, but precious few people seem to remember. She was one of cinema's earliest stars and most of her work has perished; only two of her films remain, along with a collection of impressive stills. If her reputation as Hollywood's first sex pot still lingers, it is ... partly thanks to the formidable press department of the nascent Fox studio, which dreamed up her back story.
Source:
After her contract with Fox expired in 1919, Theda Bara waned in popularity and only appeared in three more films, shot in 1925 and 1926. In 1921, she married director Charles Brabin, who preferred that she end her career. Theda Bara retired after a 1926 Broadway performance in The Blue Flame. She died of stomach cancer in Los Angeles, California on 17 April 1955. Though her film career was brief and only a small percentage of her work remains, Theda Bara and her vamp persona helped define the femme fatale as a staple character in Hollywood.
Source:
Theda Bara was an instant hit; her exoticism played up in the days before the moguls decided that blonde, corn-fed shiksas would be the object of the theatergoer's desire, instead of moody, dangerous and dark women of unclear ethnic origins. Bara and Fox mined the success of the vamp with around forty feature films, almost of all of which would tragically perish when a Fox archive burned down in the '30s. When she wanted to try different roles, other dark-looking actresses like Pola Negri stepped in to take her place.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Vamp