Silent Film Star: Theda Bara Pictures.

Theda Bara, made movies at a time when audiences thought that the character that the actor played, really was the way the they were real life and found herself a outcast.

She told stories of being refused service in, restaurants and when a nurse would not admit her husband into the hospital after an accident, because.. the nurse thought that she had caused it.

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Silent Film Star: "The Vamp", Theda Bara.

Theda Bara ( July 29, 1885 – April 13, 1955), was a very popular silent film actress of her era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp". The term "vamp" soon became a popular slang term for a sexually predatory woman.

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Theda Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, complete prints of only six still exists: A Fool There Was (1915) and ending with The Lure of Ambition (1919). The phenomenal success of A Fool There Was gave William Fox the money to found Fox Film Corporation, while the ensuing films ensured the studio's success.

At the height of her fame she was one of the most popular movie stars, ranking behind only Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Bara's best-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 also performed as Juliet in a version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Although Bara took her craft seriously, she was too successful as an exotic "wanton woman" to develop a more versatile career.

Most of Bara's early films were shot on the East Coast, at the Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The rise of Hollywood as the center of the American film industry forced her to relocate to Los Angeles to film the epic, Cleopatra (1917), which became one of Bara's biggest hits. No known prints of Cleopatra exist today, but numerous photographs of Bara in costume as the Queen of the Nile have survived.

Between 1915 and 1919, Bara was Fox studio's biggest star but, tired of being typecast as a vamp, she allowed her five-year contract with Fox to expire. Her final Fox film was The Lure of Ambition (1919). Her career suffered without Fox studio's support, and she did not make another film until, The Unchastened Woman (1925) for Chadwick Pictures Corporation. Bara retired after making only one more film, the short comedy, Madame Mystery (1926).

Out of her 40 films, only a few that are completely intact: 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 (just a few seconds of footage).

A clip thought to be from The Soul of Buddha, and a few other unidentified clips featured in a French documentary, Theda Bara et William Fox (2001). Most of the clips can be seen in the documentary The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (2006).

She was well known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films, which could still be considered risque by today's standards, more than 90 years later. Such outfits were banned from Hollywood films after the Production Code started in 1930, and then was more strongly enforced in 1934.

A Fool There Was” (1915)

A Fool There Was (1915). Is a silent film, directed by Frank Powell. Cast: Theda Bara, one of the first sex symbols of the early 20th century. Bara plays a vamp who uses her charms to seduce and corrupt a moral Wall Street lawyer, John Schuyler (Edward Jose). A Fool There Was was considered controversial for title cards such as: "Kiss me, my fool!"

“A Fool There Was” (1915) Theda Bara

“A Fool There Was” (1915) is a silent drama starring Theda Bara, Edward Jose, Mabel Frenyear, and May Allison. Directed by Frank Powell, this film was inspired by both the Rudyard Kipling poem, “A Fool There Was” and the Sir Philip Burne-Jones painting, “The Vampire.”













In this film, an exotic vamp, played by Theda Bara, learns happily married John Schuyler, played by Edward Jose, will be sailing for Europe on a business trip. When Schuyler’s sister-in-law, played by May Allison, falls with an illness, his wife, Kate, played by Mabel Frenyear, decides to stay home with their daughter, played by Runa Hodges. While onboard, the vamp spends some time with Schuyler. Just a glimpse of the vamp’s bare ankles fills Schuyler with desire, and he succumbs to her. The month long trip lasts two months. Schuyler is now addicted to the sex and drugs provided by the vamp. Will the vamp destroy Schuyler’s life?










Born Theodosia Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Theda Bara was not the first screen vamp but the foremost. Theda Bara’s reign as the queen vampire of American films began in 1915. Her first film took its title directly from the first line of Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “A Fool There Was.” The word “vamp” is certainly a movie-inspired word, and although the raven-haired Theda Bara with her smouldering dark eyes, became the embodiment of the wicked, scheming woman, she was not the screen’s first by several years. In fact, the key film of the vamp genre was “The Vampire” (1913) starring Alice Hollister as the seductress. From “A Fool There Was” (1915) on, Theda took screen sex seriously and aggressively. Even though she made historical spectacles and non-vamp films, too, it was the vamp films that were the most successful. Unfortunately, most of Theda’s films were lost to a fire at Fox Studios in 1937. As a result, far too little footage has survived to allow us to make reliable observations on the merits of her work. In fact, of all the major Hollywood stars from any period, she is the most poorly represented in terms of surviving films. However, from what does survive, one can draw the conclusion that her films were exaggerated only for dramatic effect. Bara was a dynamic personality, and even in “A Fool There Was” (1915), one of her earliest and more primitive films, one has no urge to laugh at its lack of restrain. If “A Fool There Was” gave a clear-cut definition of Theda Bara as a death-dealing, smouldering-eyed vampire, William Fox of Fox Pictures poured out to the press a portrait of Theda that was easily as exaggerated and outlandish as her screen portrayals. I found the historical details in “A Fool There Was” fascinating, especially in the scene where the Ford Model T’s intermingle with horse-drawn vehicles. Even though it’s primitive by silent standards, “A Fool There Was” (1915) is worth watching just for the screen magnetism of Theda Bara in one of her few surviving films.