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Theda Bara
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Theda Bara was the stage name of Theodosia Burr Goodman (July 29, 1885 - 7 April 1955), a silent film actress. As her stage name is an anagram for "Arab Death" an urban legend claims that it was coined for that reason, but instead Theda is short for Theodosia, and Bara was the middle name of her maternal grandmother. Bara was one of the most popular screen actresses of the time, and the cinema's first sex symbol. She was nicknamed "The Vamp", short for vampire, slang for a sexy predatory woman at the time. Bara, along with the French film actress Musidora, popularized the vamp persona in the early years of silent film and was soon imitated by rival actresses such as Nita Naldi and Pola Negri.
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Theda Bara was born Theodesia Burr Goodman on 29 July 1885 in Cincinnati, Ohio to European Jewish parents. The oldest of three children, she attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati before turning her attention to the stage. In 1908, Theda Bara moved to New York City and began her acting career. Her first Broadway role was in The Devil (1908). Six years later, she made her film debut in The Stain, one of her few remaining films.
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Born Theodosia Goodman on July 22, 1890, Theda Bara had a brief but notable career as the star of dozens of silent films. Raised in Cincinnati, Bara moved to New York City at age 18 to pursue an acting career. Only marginally successful on the stage, she became an overnight sensation when director Frank Powell cast her as the star of A Fool There Was in 1915. In the film, which was based on a stage melodrama that was in turn based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, Bara played a temptress who squeezed money, dignity, and finally life out of men. As the sensuous, cruel seductress, Bara created the original "vamp."
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Timeline’s documentary on the life and times of Theda Bara had a successful East Coast premiere at The Museum of Modern Art in New York on May 20 & 22, 2006. The film features
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Although publicized as an Egyptian of royal lineage, silent film actress Theda Bara was actually born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her exotic good looks brought her to the attention of Fox studios in 1914; reasoning that there were too many sweet little ingenues in films of that period, Fox decided to create a worldly "vamp" character, a woman who could destroy men with little more than a sexy glance. The studio changed Theodosia's name to Theda Bara (which coincidentally was an anagram for "Arab Death"), casting her in a liberal adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's A Fool There Was(1914). She became Fox's biggest star, appearing in as many as ten feature films per year, including Salome (1918) and Cleopatra (1918). Her somewhat overripe histrionics became out of fashion by 1920, so she retired from acting to married life; Bara resurfaced in a "so bad it's good" Broadway play The Blue Flame, then made an unsuccessful film comeback attempt in 1925. Her last screen work was in a two-reel lampoon of her vamp character, Madame Mystery (1926), directed by, of all people, Stan Laurel.
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Briefly known professionally as Theodosia de Coppett, Theda Bara made more than 40 feature films between 1914 and 1926 of which complete prints of only three still exist. Most of these were made for William Fox, starting with "A Fool There Was" in 1914 and ending with "The Lure of Ambition" in 1919. Her films made Fox a successful studio. She made her Broadway debut in "The Devil" (1908), and her film debut was a bit part in "The Stain" (1914), directed by Frank Powell for Pathé Frères. A large portion of her films are now lost, to the regret of later generations of fans.
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Theda Bara