Theda Bara

She made 43 films between 1914 and 1926. Three of her films were for Pathe, one was for Chadwick Pictures, and 39 were for Fox; most of these were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire. After leaving Fox in 1919, Bara was unable to recapture her previous success. Following a marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made three more films before retiring from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in any sound films.

• Name — Theda Bara • Birth Name — Theodosia Burr Goodman • Born — 29 July 1885 • Birthplace — Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. • Died — 7 April 1955 • Place of death — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Resting Place — Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery • Education — University of Cincinnati • Occupation — Actress • Years Active — 1908–1926 • Relatives — Lori Bara (sister)

Bara was born Theodosia Burr Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was named after Theodosia Burr Alston, the daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr. Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936), a prosperous Jewish tailor from Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise Françoise (de Coppett; 1861–1957), was born in Switzerland. Bernard and Pauline married in 1882. Theda had two younger siblings: Marque (1888–1954) and Esther (1897–1965), who worked as an actress and writer as Lori Bara. In 1890, the family moved to Avondale, a Cincinnati suburb with a substantial Jewish community. Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903. After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she worked mainly in local theater productions, but did explore other projects. After moving to New York City in 1908, she made her Broadway debut the same year in The Devil.

Most of Bara's early films were shot along the East Coast, where the film industry was then based, primarily at Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. She lived with her family in New York City. The rise of Hollywood as the center of the American film industry forced her to move to Los Angeles to film the epic Cleopatra (1917), which became one of her biggest hits. Only a one-minute fragment of Cleopatra is known to exist today, but numerous photographs of her in costume as Cleopatra have survived. • Illustration — Bara in A Fool There Was (1915) Bara was Fox's biggest star between 1915 and 1919, but she allowed her five-year contract with the company to expire upon tiring of being typecast. Her final Fox film was The Lure of Ambition (1919). In 1920, she turned briefly to the stage, appearing on Broadway in The Blue Flame. Her fame drew large crowds to the theater, but her acting was savaged by critics. • Illustration — Advertisement for Destruction, December 24, 1915 Her career suffered after leaving Fox, and she did not make another film until The Unchastened Woman (1925) for Chadwick Pictures. She retired after making only two more films, the short comedies Madame Mystery (1926) and 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926) directed by Stan Laurel for Hal Roach; in the latter, Bara parodied her "vamp" image. • Illustration — Bara in The She-Devil (1918) At the height of her fame, Bara earned $4,000 per week. Her better-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 appeared as Juliet in a version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Although Bara took her craft seriously, she was too successful playing exotic, wanton women to develop a more versatile career.

• Illustration — Manuel Rosenberg autographed sketch of fellow Cincinnatian, Theda Bara, 1921 The Cincinnati Post The origin of Bara's stage name is disputed. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats says it came from director Frank Powell, who learned Theda had a relative named Baranger, and that Theda was a childhood nickname. In promoting the 1917 film Cleopatra, Fox Studio publicists noted that the name was an anagram of Arab death, and her press agents, to enhance her exotic appeal to moviegoers, falsely promoted the young Ohio native as "the daughter of an Arab sheik and a French woman, born in the Sahara". In 1917, the Goodman family legally changed its surname to Bara.

Bara was known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. Promoting an actress as mysterious, with an exotic background, was popular at that time. The studios promoted Bara with a massive publicity campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara under the shadow of the Great Sphinx of Giza and moved to France to become a stage actress. In fact, Bara never had been to Egypt, and her time in France amounted to just a few months. A 2016 book by Joan Craig and Beverly F. Stout chronicles many personal, first-hand accounts of the lives of Bara and her husband Charles Brabin.

• Illustration — Bara with Charles Brabin, 1922 Bara married British-born American film director Charles Brabin in 1921. They honeymooned at The Pines Hotel in Digby, Nova Scotia, and later purchased a 400 ha property in Harbourville, Nova Scotia, overlooking the Bay of Fundy, where they built a summer home they called Baranook. They had no children. Bara also owned and often enjoyed extended stays in a villa-style home in Cincinnati. The villa was later acquired by Xavier University, which used the house as a residence for nuns and then as the "honors villa" for students. The house was demolished in July 2011. In 1936, she appeared on Lux Radio Theatre during a broadcast version of The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy. She did not appear in the play, but instead announced her plans to make a movie comeback, which never materialized. She appeared on radio again in 1939 as a guest on Texaco Star Theatre. In 1949, producer Buddy DeSylva and Columbia Pictures expressed interest in making a movie of Bara's life, to star Betty Hutton, but the project never materialized.

On April 7, 1955, after a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, Bara died of stomach cancer. She was survived by her husband, her mother, and her younger sister, Lori. She was cremated at Chapel of the Pines Crematory (disputed), and her remains were inurned under the name Theda Bara Brabin in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Bara bequeathed $100,000 to her sister, $8,000 to her husband, and $1,000 to her sister-in-law.

• Illustration — Romeo and Juliet (1916) with actors (from left): Helen Tracy, Alice Gale, Bara, and Edward Holt • Illustration — Bara with Alan Roscoe in Camille (1917) • Illustration — Bara in Cleopatra (1917) • Year — Film — Role — Notes • 1914 — The Stain — Gang moll — Extant Credited as Theodosia Goodman, presumed lost until a copy was found in the 1990s • 1915 — A Fool There Was — The Vampire — Extant • 1915 — The Kreutzer Sonata — Celia Friedlander — Lost film • 1915 — The Clemenceau Case — Iza — Lost film • 1915 — The Devil's Daughter — Gioconda Dianti — Lost film • 1915 — Lady Audley's Secret — Helen Talboys — Lost film • 1915 — The Two Orphans — Henriette — Lost film • 1915 — Sin — Rosa — Lost film • 1915 — Carmen — Carmen — Lost film • 1915 — The Galley Slave — Francesca Brabaut — Lost film • 1915 — Destruction — Fernade — Lost film • 1916 — The Serpent — Vania Lazar — Lost film • 1916 — Gold and the Woman — Theresa Decordova — Lost film • 1916 — The Eternal Sapho — Laura Bruffins — Lost film • 1916 — East Lynne — Lady Isabel Carlisle — Extant Presumed lost until a copy was discovered in 1971. • 1916 — Under Two Flags — Cigarette — Lost film • 1916 — Her Double Life — Mary Doone — Lost film • 1916 — Romeo and Juliet — Juliet — Lost film • 1916 — The Vixen — Elsie Drummond — Lost film • 1917 — The Darling of Paris — Esmeralda — Lost film • 1917 — The Tiger Woman — Princess Petrovitch — Lost film • 1917 — Her Greatest Love — Hazel — Lost film • 1917 — Heart and Soul — Jess — Lost film • 1917 — Camille — Marguerite Gauthier — Lost film • 1917 — Cleopatra — Cleopatra — 1 minute survives • 1917 — The Rose of Blood — Lisza Tapenka — Lost film • 1917 — Madame Du Barry — Jeanne Vaubernier — Lost film • 1918 — The Forbidden Path — Mary Lynde — Lost film • 1918 — The Soul of Buddha — Priestess — A 23-second clip survives from the documentary Theda Bara et William Fox (2001). • 1918 — Under the Yoke — Maria Valverda — Lost film • 1918 — Salomé — Salome — 2 minutes survive • 1918 — When a Woman Sins — Lilian Marchard / Poppea — 23 seconds survive • 1918 — The She-Devil — Lolette — Lost film • 1919 — The Light — Blanchette Dumond, aka Madame Lefresne — Lost film • 1919 — When Men Desire — Marie Lohr — Lost film • 1919 — The Siren's Song — Marie Bernais — Lost film • 1919 — A Woman There Was — Princess Zara — Lost film • 1919 — Kathleen Mavourneen — Kathleen Cavanagh — Lost film • 1919 — La Belle Russe — Fleurett Sackton/La Belle Russe — Lost film • 1919 — The Lure of Ambition — Olga Dolan — 43 seconds survive • 1925 — The Unchastened Woman — Caroline Knollys — Extant • 1926 — Madame Mystery — Madame Mysterieux — Extant Short film • 1926 — 45 Minutes from Hollywood — Herself — Extant Short film

Theda Bara is recorded as having received star on Hollywood Walk of Fame. Recorded at birth as Theodosia Burr Goodman. Identity and origins. Her recorded language was English. She married Charles Brabin.

• The short piano suite Silhouettes from the Screen, Op. 55 (1919) by Mortimer Wilson includes a miniature musical portrait of Theda Bara, who is portrayed in an atonal, expressionistic style. • Bara is referenced in the 1921 Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby song "Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" as well as their 1922 "Sheik From Avenue B", sung by Fanny Brice. • Bara was one of three actresses (Pola Negri and Mae Murray were the others) whose eyes were combined to form the Chicago International Film Festival's logo, a stark, black-and-white close-up of the composite eyes set as repeated frames in a strip of film. • The International Times logo is a black-and-white image of Theda Bara. The founders' intention had been to use an image of actress Clara Bow, 1920s "It girl", but a picture of Theda Bara was used by accident, and once deployed, not changed. • During a scene from 2004 film The Aviator when Howard Hughes and Glenn Odekirk are trying to create the H-1 Racer, Odekirk remarks, "Yeah, well, I want a date with Theda Bara, but that ain't gonna happen either." • Multiple references to Bara are in the X film series. In the 2022 film Pearl, the titular character, portrayed by Mia Goth, feeds an alligator that she has named Theda; the movie theater she visits also has a poster for Bara's movie Cleopatra. In the 2024 film MaXXXine, the titular character, also portrayed by Goth, is seen putting out her cigarette on the Theda Bara Hollywood Walk of Fame star. • Bara is a central figure in the play On Set with Theda Bara, written by Joey Merlo, directed by Jack Serio, and performed by David Greenspan at the Brick Theater in New York City in 2024. • A photograph of Bara as Cleopatra was used as the cover of the Lumineers' 2016 album Cleopatra. • In an episode of The Munsters (season one, episode 33, "Lily Munster, Girl Model", first aired on May 6, 1965), the character Lily Munster (portrayed by Yvonne De Carlo) is interviewing for a job as a fashion model with a fashion designer character named Laszlo Brastoff (portrayed by Roger C. Carmel), and Brastoff remarks that with the exotic and mysterious appeal of his new line of dresses, he is trying to recreate the kind of allure that was reflected by women like Theda Bara, whom he notes was called "'the Vamp'. That's short for 'vampire'."