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. Movie executives made promotional claims that her stage name is an anagram for "Arab Death;" however, 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 her era, and was perhaps cinema's first sex symbol. She was nicknamed "The Vamp" (short for vampire) which was slang for a sexually 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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[edit] Biography
[edit] Birth
Theodosia Burr Goodman was born in 1885 in the Avondale section of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853-?) a Polish born Jewish merchant. Her mother, Pauline DeCoppett (1861-1957), was born in Switzerland and was also Jewish. Her parents had married in 1882. Theda's brother and sister were Mark Goodman (1888-?) and Lori [originally Estie] Goodman (1897-?). In 1917 all of them changed their names to "Bara".
[edit] Education
She attended Walnut Hills High School in 1899-1903 and lived at 823 Hutchins Avenue. After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she worked in theatre productions mainly but did explore other projects, moving to New York City in 1908.
[edit] Hollywood
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 six 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.
She regularly attended parties at the home of powerful actress Alla Nazimova, and was rumored to have been involved with Nazimova romantically, but that has not been confirmed beyond a doubt. She also mingled with other powerful personalities of the day, such as Eva Le Gallienne, Anne Morgan, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. [1]
At her height, Bara was making $4,000.00 per week for her film roles. Between 1915 and 1919, she was promoted so heavily that when the studios dropped off their support, her career was never able to fully recover. She struggled with several notable roles until 1926, when she retired from film all together. [2]
[edit] Sex symbol
Bara was the first sex symbol of that era, and in a number of her films appeared in risqué transparent costumes that left little to the imagination. [7] Such outfits were banned from Hollywood films after the Hays Code went into effect a few years later, which may have been a factor in declining interest in her films, which could no longer be commercially shown in the United States.
Bara was photographed in several sittings in scant, sexually provocative clothing. [3] It was popular at that time to promote an actress as mysterious and elusive, with an exotic background. The studios promoted Bara with a massive campaign, billing her an Italian/Arabian princess. They claimed she had been born in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the sphinx, and that her name spelled backwards meant "Death" in Arabic. They called her the "Serpent of the Nile". [4]
At the height of her fame, her vamp image was notorious enough to be referred to in various popular songs of the day. A line in "Red-Hot Hannah" said "I know things that Theda Bara's just startin' to learn - make my dresses from asbestos, I'm liable to burn...." "Rebecca Came Back From Mecca" contains the lyrics "She's as bold as Theda Bara; Theda's bare but Becky's bare-er".
[edit] Marriage and Retirement
She married British-born American film director Charles Brabin (1883-1957), in 1921, and her career ground to a virtual standstill, finally ending in 1926 with the Hal Roach comedy Madame Mystery. A successful but much maligned appearance on Broadway in The Blue Flame came in the following year.
Though she subsequently expressed interest in returning to the stage or screen, her husband did not consider it proper for his wife to have a career, and so she spent the remainder of her life as a hostess in Hollywood and New York, in comfort and relative wealth. [5]
[edit] Death
She died of stomach cancer in 1955 in Los Angeles, California and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. She died under the name "Theda Bara Brabin" and her death certificate incorrectly listed her birthday as "July 22, 1892".
[edit] Legacy
Theda Bara has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1994, she was honored with her image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. In June 1996 two biographies appeared, Ron Genini's Theda Bara: A Biography (McFarland) and Eve Golden's Vamp (Emprise). In October 2005 TimeLine Films of Culver City premiered a film biography, Theda Bara: The Woman With the Hungry Eyes.
The British video artist Georgina Starr has made a new work based around the lost films of Theda Bara. It will be premiered in London in November 2006.
The Fort Lee Film Commission dedicated Main Street and Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as "Theda Bara Way" in May of 2006 to honor Ms. Bara who made many films and shot to stardom at the Fox Studio on Linwood and Main.
Theda Bara's image has been the symbol of the Chicago International Film Festival. A stark, black and white close up of her eyes set as repeated frames in a strip of film serves as the logo for the non profit festival.
[edit] Filmography
Extant films are in turquoise.
| Year | No. | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1914 | 1 | The Stain | Gang moll |
| 1915 | 2 | A Fool There Was | The Vamp |
| 3 | The Kreutzer Sonata | Celia Friedlander | |
| 4 | The Clemenceau Case | Iza | |
| 5 | The Devil's Daughter | La Gioconda | |
| 6 | The Two Orphans | Henriette | |
| 7 | Lady Audley's Secret | Helen Talboys | |
| 8 | Sin | Rosa | |
| 9 | Carmen | Carmen | |
| 10 | The Galley Slave | Francesca Brabaut | |
| 11 | Destruction | Fernade | |
| 1916 | 12 | The Serpent | Vania Lazar |
| 13 | Gold and the Woman | Theresa Decordova | |
| 14 | The Eternal Sappho | Laura Bruffins | |
| 15 | East Lynne | Lady Isabel Carlisle | |
| 16 | Under Two Flags | Cigarette | |
| 17 | Her Double Life | Mary Doone | |
| 18 | Romeo and Juliet | Juliet | |
| 19 | The Vixen | Elsie Drummond | |
| 1917 | 20 | The Rose of Blood | Lisza Tapenka |
| 21 | The Darling of Paris[6] | Esmaralda | |
| 22 | The Tiger Woman | Princess Petrovitch | |
| 23 | Her Greatest Love | Hazel | |
| 24 | Heart and Soul | Jess | |
| 25 | Camille | Marguerite Gauthier | |
| 26 | Cleopatra[7] | Cleopatra | |
| 27 | Madame Du Barry | Jeanne Vaubernier | |
| 1918 | 28 | When a Woman Sins | Lilian Marchard/Poppea |
| 29 | Under the Yoke | Maria Valverda | |
| 30 | The She Devil | Lorette | |
| 31 | The Forbidden Path | Mary Lynde | |
| 32 | The Soul of Buddha | Priestess | |
| 33 | Salome | Salome | |
| 1919 | 34 | The Siren's Song | Marie Bernais |
| 35 | The Lure of Ambition | Olga Dolan | |
| 36 | The Light | Blanchette Dumond, aka Madame Lefresne | |
| 37 | When Men Desire | Marie Lohr | |
| 38 | A Woman There Was | Princess Zara | |
| 39 | Kathleen Mavourneen | Kathleen Cavanagh | |
| 40 | La Belle Russe | Fleurett Sackton | |
| La Belle Russe | |||
| 1925 | 41 | The Unchastened Woman | Caroline Knollys |
| 1926 | 42 | Madame Mystery | Madame Mysterieux |
| 43 | 45 Minutes from Hollywood | Herself |
In Disney's Country Bear Jamboree, one of the bear's names is Teddy Barra
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3] [4]
- ^ [5]
- ^ [6]
- ^ A very loose adaptation of the novel Notre Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo
- ^ A very short fragment of this film survives
[edit] Timeline
- 1885 Birth
- 1900 US Census in Ohio
- 1921 Marriage
- 1926 Retirement
- 1955 Death
[edit] External links
![[4]](http://www.etcetera.com.mx/ne56/f44.jpg){kind=link}