Eve Golden - Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara

VAMP

THE RISE AND FALL OF THEDA BARA

BY EVE GOLDEN

INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT S. BIRCHARD

To My Sister, Debbi Golden

A Bit of a Vamp in Her Own Right

Eve Golden, 1996. All rights reserved

Front cover illustration: Publicity still originally taken by Mishkin
for Sin (1915). Photo: The Everett Collection.

Illustration facing title page: Photo: Jerry Ohlinger.

Cover design: Don Bell

ISBN 1-887322-00-0 cloth binding
ISBN 1-879511-32-0 trade paperback
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 95-83363

First Printing January 1996, cloth
Second Printing April 1998, trade paper
Printed in the USA.

A Vestal Press Book
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200,
Lanham, Maryland 20706

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Distributed by National Book Network

by Robert S. Birchard

by Rudyard Kipling

Photo: Gene Andrewski.

Id like to thank the following people and institutions for assisting in the research for this book and helping to make the writing move along smoothly:

David Blazak; Robert S. Birchard; Raymond Brabin; Christian Brandan; the late Alan Brock; Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, and Patrick Stanbury (Photoplay Productions); Margaret Byrne (American Film Institute); Catherine Childs; The Cincinnati Historical Society; the late Randye Cohen; Ned Comstock (University of Southern California); Olivia de Havilland; Victoria Demchick; Glen Distefano; Allen Ellenberger; The Fort Lee Public Library; the late Lillian Gish; Larry Givens; Lester Gottlieb; Keith Greene; Jack Hardy (Grapevine Video); Bob King (Classic Images); Manuel Lado; Dana Lauren; Dr. John F. Ledlie; Srs. Mary Magdalene, Margaret Mary and Kathleen Duffy (Marycrest Manor); Ronald Magliozzi (Museum of Modern Art, NY); Randal Malone; Grange McKinney; Arleen Moss (New York Public Library, Paper Prints Division); Anita Page; Michael Powazinik; Debbie Ruggles; Mark Sachleblen; Joyce Serkin (Walnut Hills High School); Charles Weissburd (Los Angeles County Clerk).

A biography without photos is like a cake without icing. Thanks to the following people and institutions for the photos in this book:

Gene Andrewski, Michael Ankerich, Arbe Bareis (Safka and Bareis), Robert S. Birchard, Lisa Bulger, Chester Clarke, Joseph P. Eckhardt, Kevin Grace, Ron Harvey and Mikko Macchione (The Everett Collection), Bruce Hershenson, Paula Klaw (Movie Star News), Ronald Magliozzi (Museum of Modern Art, NY), Albert Manski, Joe Martinez (The Motion Picture and Television Photo Archive), The New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, Eric Rachlis (Archive Photos), David J. Skal, Mary Anne Styburski, Diva Velez (Jerry Ohlingers Movie Material Store), The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

What is one to make of Theda Bara?

Today, the actress is known largely as an image in still photographs slightly ridiculous to our jaded eyes, and yet strangely compelling. She made forty-two films, but barring some unlikely miracle we will never experience what it was that made her one of the movies first great stars. Baras surviving films are not representative of what audiences and critics considered her best work.

Her life story is no more accessible. Theda Bara was a star in an age when fact and fancy about theatrical people were blended and blurred by publicist and press as a matter of course. By the time historians took an interest, the trail was cold. Theda Bara and her most frequent collaborators were no longer here to separate incident from invention.

For these reasons, I think, no one has attempted before now to write a book-length examination of her career. Yet this pop icon of a bygone day created a persona so potent that it still reverberates in our collective consciousness. Eve Golden is to be commended for taking on the challenge of evoking Theda Baras life and work.

Superficially at least, the most interesting fact about Theda Bara is that she was not Theda Bara at all. Her off-screen personality was invented by imaginative flacks to suit her screen reflection. However, Bara was not alone in living a fabricated public role. Theatre and movies transformed Iowa-born William Grant Blandin into the fiery Corsican Romaine Fielding. Serial star Grace Cunard was touted as a child of Paris, but in reality she was Harriet Mildred Jeffries from Columbus, Ohio. Mae Smith cultivated some distant Spanish ancestors and took Marin Sais as her professional name. Princess Mona Darkfeather was promoted as a full-blooded Seminole Indian even though her family knew her as Josephine M. Workman. The faux Russian tragdienne Olga Petrova sometimes dropped her heavily accented speech and reverted to the Kings English she learned as Muriel Harding. Even Mary Pickford was born plain Gladys Smith. It was more than an exotic pseudo biography that made Theda Bara unique. The forgotten news that author Golden has uncovered offers surprising revelations about the legend and erases many previously held notions about Theda Bara and the people in the dark who idolized her.

On and off camera Theda Bara was more than the rag, a bone, and a hank of hair that personified the female predator imagined by Rudyard Kipling in his poem, The Vampire. She transcended the Kiss me, My Fool dialogue titles that helped popularize the evil villainess of Porter Emerson Browns A Fool There Was as the Vamp a desired fantasy role-model for women, and a fantasy woman to be desired by men. As Golden points out, Baras range was far wider than the stereotyped image that remains in our minds eye.

That she became trapped in her screen image is a matter of record. When the vogue of the vamp evaporated shortly after the finish of the war to end all wars, for all intents and purposes Theda Bara vanished from the screen. But even here there is more to the story than has been told previously.

After reading Goldens account, it seems to me that Theda Bara performed a remarkable balancing act by being true to herself and yet never playing false with her popular image. While she laughed at her reputation as the wickedest woman on the screen, she ultimately had no desire to break the spell she had cast.

Oh, how I wish I could see Theda Bara in Cleopatra! But I wonder if the film itself could ever match my expectations? As Golden recreates the opening scene of Cleopatra in words, the intense black-rimmed eyes of Theda Bara rivet me to my imaginary theatre chair, and again work their magic and I think that it would indeed!