April 19, 2025 • 38 mins
This 2022 episode covers Theda Bara, often referenced as the first sex symbol. Photos of her are synonymous with the word vamp, and 100 years later, still have a certain mysterious appeal. But what was she really like?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. On Unearthed.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This week we talked about some graffiti that might be
a depiction of Theta Barra if you thought while listening
to Unearthed, who's that and what does the word vamp
have to do with it? Today's Saturday Classic, we'll solve
that mystery. This originally came out May fourth, twenty twenty two.
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
(00:28):
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fryne and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Today we are going to talk about someone I love
in history, which is Theda Bara, who is often referenced
as the first sex symbol or the first celebrity to
have an entire persona crafted by a PR team. Photos
of her are pretty synonymous with the word vamp. I know.
Tracy mentioned to me that she didn't have any name recognition,
(01:01):
but the second she saw a picture, she's like, oh that's.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Oh that person yep.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And one hundred years later, pictures of her still have
a certain mysterious appeal. But she was a very different person,
I think than most people might know. And it always
cracks me up a little when people kind of model
their look after her, and I'm like, yeah, but you know,
she was actually pretty tame. So today I thought it
(01:27):
would be interesting to look at how this early film
celebrity was basically created through careful planning by a PR team,
and how the real woman was a whole lot different
from that faux persona that they made up. Yeah, to
start with totally different name. She was born Theodosia Goodman
in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July twenty ninth, eighteen eighty five.
(01:49):
Her parents were Bernard Goodman and Pauline Louis friends was
Dick Cope. Bernard was originally from Jorsela, Poland and worked
as a tailor. Pauline's father was French. Her mother was German,
although she had been born and grew up in Switzerland
and worked as a wig maker. Bernard and Pauline got
married in eighteen eighty two, and Theodosia was their first child.
(02:13):
Then in eighteen eighty eight they had a son named Mark,
and then in eighteen ninety seven, Bernard and Pauline had
another daughter named Esther, who would eventually go by Laurie.
Theodosia was named after Aaron Burr's daughter, who we have
an episode on. Yeah, she's some versions of her name.
You'll see Burr as a middle name, and I never
(02:33):
was able to verify whether that was true or maybe
a little confused when people noted that she was named
for Theodosia, br Auto completed that middle name right. Her childhood, though,
was a pretty comfortable one. The good Men's lived in
an affluent neighborhood, and Theodosia, Mark, and Laurie were all
quite close. They had two women who worked for them
(02:55):
as house staff named Anna Tusenig and Ida day Birth
and Theodosia loved to read, and she would often opt
to do that over any other activity. But she was
not a quiet, bookish child, because she could also be
a handful. She frequently pilfered her mother's closet to create
elaborate dress up ensembles, and she was prone to getting
(03:15):
all dressed up in those and then running away from home.
She was so likely to run off when she was
still quite small that her parents had to have a
new tall fence specially installed around their yard. As she
grew up, Theodosia's love for dress up evolved into a
desire to stage tableau and that was a popular parlor
entertainment at the time. She would recreate scene after scene
(03:39):
and perform recitations to go with these scenes there with
no surprise. This led her to want to get involved
in acting. Soon she was staging her own productions in
a neighbor's barn. She continued to act as she grew
into her teenage years. She read everything she could about
the actors of the day. She was really focused on this.
(04:01):
I find this very charming as somebody who put on
plays in the basement of the family home. Oh yeah,
oh icnned teachers into letting me do full blown, like
multi act puppet shows in elementary school. So it's interesting
because she was obsessed with the idea of actors and
acting at a time when, like stage actors were really
(04:23):
the thing, but there was some transition going on to film,
and she apparently read like every article she could about
everything they did in their day to day lives. Like
she was that kid that was like could tell you
everything that like any given actor of the day, like
to eat, like to wear.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh wow, Yeah, she was that kid.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Theodosia, who was known to her friends largely as Theo,
attended Walnut Hills high school. Starting in eighteen ninety nine,
she worked on the school paper, and she joined the
drama club, and she was known always for her ambition
to go into acting as a career. After graduating high
school in nineteen oh three, she attended University of Cincinnati
for two years, but at that point she was starting
(05:07):
to feel frustrated glee club, which she was a part of,
did not offer her the theatrical outlet that she really
longed for. She frankly wanted more than she felt like
Cincinnati had to offer, So in nineteen oh five, the
age of twenty, Theo decided to pursue a career on
the stage. In that effort, she moved to New York City,
and her father was reportedly not pleased with any of this.
(05:31):
Once she got to New York, Theodosa changed her last
name from Goodman to her mother's maiden name of de Coppet.
She would later riff off of this name. She would
change out the vowels, try out different variations. We know
that she lived in Greenwich Village in an apartment just
off Washington Square, but beyond that we don't know a
whole lot in terms of the specifics of her first
(05:54):
couple of years of New York. The first play she's
documented as having been cast in was the nineteen oh
eight summer production of The Devil. She was a minor
character in that one. After that, There's another Gap, and
then she was part of the second string touring company
for a musical called The Quaker Girl. She was paid
twenty five dollars a week initially, although after some pretty
(06:17):
bad reviews her salary was reduced to eighteen dollars a week,
and then she left the troop. Those reviews were quite scathing,
things about how really abysmal her French accent was, and
how even like a five year old wouldn't be confused
or convinced they were mean. Theo continued to pursue acting,
and she kept taking parts in touring companies, but that
(06:38):
was not at all to her liking life on the road.
The tight quarters shared with other performers and the decidedly
non luxurious accommodations were things that she would later describe
as quote unpleasant associations. This was just not the acting
career she had envisioned. She left a touring company that
was running a farce called Us Like John in nineteen
(07:01):
twelve and At that point, she went back to New York.
Her mother, Pauline, and her teenage sister Laurie soon joined
her there. And just as she was feeling her most
frustrated and dejected over what seemed like a career that
would never happen, another bad thing happened, which is at
the apartment she shared with her mother and sister had
a fire and it basically was unlivable. It burned out.
(07:25):
They were able to get by thanks to insurance money,
but there was this very real concern kind of looming
over the whole thing that Theodosia's dreams were just not
going to work out. In late nineteen fourteen, Theo was
approached by a man who asked her if she might
want to try being in movies. The man who approached
her was Frank Powell. Powell hailed from Ontario, Canada, and
(07:47):
had become an actor himself before transitioning into the director's chair.
He had worked for Pathay Pictures before Fox lured him
away from them, and it was just before he started
at Fox that he saw Theo and saw something in
her that he thought might be great for film. There's
no record of the specific place where the two of
them had this first conversation. This was, of course a
(08:11):
time when the movie industry was in its infancy, but
it already had some established stars like Mary Pickford. A
career in film was not really something Theodosia had been pursuing.
According to her later accounts of being discovered, she saw
herself as a stage actress. She wanted Broadway, and she
was not particularly interested in jumping into the still fairly
(08:33):
new medium of moving pictures. But at the same time
she had to acknowledge that her theater career was not
exactly going gangbusters. She was also thirty, so she was
starting to hit the point where she was seen as
too old for most of the lead roles that she wanted. Initially,
she was curvy, and that figure had fallen out of favor.
(08:54):
People were looking more for longer, leaner physique. So she gambled,
and she took Fred Powell at his word on this. Yes,
I want to talk about her as a curvy person
in our behind the scenes. Yeah, because I really think
she looks quite thin in most of her pictures.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
The first project that Frank Powell put Theo in was
actually a film called The Stain, which he made while
he was still finishing up his contract at Patha. Theodosha
was cast in just a tiny role. This was really
her screen test. Powell made sure that she was positioned
near the camera so that he could see how she
played on screen, and he was very pleased after that.
(09:36):
William Fox, the head of the studio, also reviewed the
footage and liked it, and so sat down with THEO
for an interview. Both men thought that she was right
for a very unusual and difficult to cast role they
were working on, and they offered her a five year
contract at the studio at a rate of one hundred
dollars per week. THEO negotiated that up to one hundred
(09:58):
and fifty dollars per week before she signed, and that
is how an unknown landed a leading role in the
upcoming project called A Fool There Was for Fox Film Company.
The studio, though also knew this was a gamble. Theodosia's
co star in the picture was Edward Jose who was
a famous Broadway actor at the time, so casting this
(10:20):
complete newcomer to film was something that William Fox, who
was the head of Fox Films, was concerned about. So
the solution was to construct this really alluring persona for her,
and her name had been the first to go. She
was going by Theodosia de cape or to cop It
or as we said, many other variations she tried out.
(10:42):
None of them were really zinging, So after considering her
nicknames of Theo and Teddy, which her family members also
sometimes called her, they landed another nickname, Theta, and decided
that was the one. And then for the last name,
they wanted something far easier than any of the on
Dakopit or Decape, and her maternal grandfather had been named
(11:04):
Francois Berngais, and that last name was shortened to Bearra.
As a quick aside, you'll see different versions of how
this played out, how much of it was her idea
versus the studios, which studio executives kept credit for which pieces,
But I'm calling it a group effort because there are
so many different versions. So once her name was figured
(11:25):
out and rendered on that Fox contract, it was time
to get to work, and we will talk about that.
After a quick sponsor break in the autumn of nineteen fourteen,
with the contract for Theta Bea in place, filming for
(11:45):
a fool, there was could finally get under way. The
picture was shot in part on location on the Florida
coast at Saint Augustine, and right out of the gate
there were some interesting problems. The cast and crew for
the film were sent down to the location along the
Atlantic coast on a steamer that was a German steamer.
It was called the Essen, and because World War One
(12:08):
was freshly underway, this raised some concern. They also were
not flying a US flag, which apparently was part of
the problem. The British Navy stopped them, and things got
more tricky because Theda's co star, Edward jose answered questions
that had been posed to him in German by also
speaking German. He was fluent and that was just the
(12:29):
natural way to do it. But this made the British
utterly convinced that they had trapped a boatful, perhaps of
spies or other operatives, and it took a lot of
frantic explaining and finally a cable from the studio to
get things smoothed over just so they could get to
the shooting location. Even once they were on location and
filming started, none of this project was the glamorous scenario
(12:52):
that Theda had envisioned. There was a huge crowd of
onlookers that had come to see a movie being made
the pier where she shot her first scene. The early
makeup for film was not something that looked good in
real life, so she felt like she was being gawked
at while also not feeling pretty at all. The whole
thing was harrowing. Barra later said of the moment, quote,
(13:16):
the whole world seemed to have turned into human eyes.
I trembled, I shook, I all but died right there
on the dock. She also had to wear a bathing
suit in the film, and she was so mortified by
that that she almost quit.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
She didn't need to be worried, though.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Even though she wore this bathing suit for the shot,
there were objections from the censors and that led to
that scene being cut out. Yeah, that was a time
where there were places you could still get arrested for
wearing a bathing suit because it was seen as obscene.
The entire transition into film acting was really incredibly stressful
(13:53):
for Theda. She did not get to rehearse, and a
lot of the earliest scenes she shot are kind of
extra pantomimey because of course these are all silent. You
can watch the film online easily enough and see for yourself.
Even after filming, there was more work and more than
Theda Bara had expected. As the film was being edited,
(14:13):
Edward Jose got in a contract dispute with Fox, and
he left the studio and refused to do any promotion
For a fool there was so suddenly this total newcomer
was the only person they had to promote the film
as one of its leads. The studio had already been
working on ways to turn Theda into a sensation, but.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Now all the eggs had to be in one.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Basket, So the studio created a whole biography of her. Uh.
They had actually been working on it while filming was
going on, and the story they ended up with was
a doozy and it was completely captivating to kind of
everyone but for various reasons. But they also didn't know
(14:56):
if this was gonna work. At first. This was such
an outlandish tape and it was so overboard in so
many ways as you were going to see because we'll
walk you through it, that there was concern that no
one would buy it. It was just too sensational. So
the PR department put together a press conference that was
really a big stunt. So the framing of this bogus
(15:18):
event was that it was for the first run of
press before the premiere of a fool there was the
studio is going to have an event in Chicago and
invite a select group of reporters. The team turned a
hotel meeting room into an Egyptian fantasy just to set
the stage for the introduction of Theta.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Bara to the world.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Al Sellig and John Goldfrapp worked for the studio as
its public relations team, and while mingling with the assembled reporters,
they talked about how Borrow was the toast of Paris
and what a fine she was, and how excited they
were to be debuting her talent in the US. Again,
she had never even been to Paris. According to their story,
(16:00):
which was presented to members of the press before the
introduction of Fox's new thrilling talent, her mother was a
French actress named Theta Delize, and her father, Giuseppe Bara,
was a sculptor from Italy. To give Theodosia's new persona
an entirely new level of exoticism, she was born quote
(16:21):
in the shadow of the Pyramids, This happened after her
mother had met her father while touring in Egypt. Even
the fake parent meet cute was sort of needlessly, in
my opinion, dramatic. According to it, Delize had found the
sculptor wandering and lost in the sands of Egypt, disoriented
and having abandoned everything he had as he wandered the desert.
(16:44):
Giuseppe was saved by Delze, and they fell in love,
and they lived in a tent near the Sphinx.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So if this sounds.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Ridiculous, brace yourselves, because this story went even further. There
was a foolish account of Theda's early life in the desert,
with dialogue written as though it had been captured by
the actor. Wistfully remembering her childhood, describing their tent home
as quote like the garden of Eden, she described how
(17:14):
her mother had taught her about acting, while her father
had educated her in art, and after describing this early,
totally fictional homeschooling, she would end with quote and through
the instruction of both, I learned the symphony of the soul.
When Theda was still a child. According to this story,
her parents moved from Egypt to Paris, and just for clarity,
(17:37):
This is not her saying these things. These are press
people claiming these quotes were from her. It was all
very ridiculous. According to the studio story, Bara performed with
all of the noteworthy theatrical companies of Paris, including with
actor Jane Hadding at the Grand Guignot, which we have
an entire episode on the gymnase and the te Flenttoine
(18:01):
Cellig and Goldfrap just gushed to the attending members of
the press that Theda had this massive following in Paris
and that she had been discovered there by Frank Powell.
Since this press event took place in January of nineteen fifteen,
it offered the Fox pr team an opportunity to use
the events of World War One to further elaborate on
(18:23):
Bara's arrival in the United States. When Germany had declared
war on Russia, France, and Belgium in August of nineteen fourteen,
Powell had quickly moved to escape Paris, and he took
this newly discovered talent with him. After all of this
incredibly thrilling exposition to explain to reporters just who exactly
(18:44):
they were about to meet this velvet curtain was opened,
and there sat the enthralling Theda Bara, making her debut
to the world. She was seated on a chaise lounge
that was covered in tiger skins, and her incredibly pale
skin and jet black hair made her look like she
came from another country or culture, but also a little
(19:05):
bit otherworldly in a more mystical sense, right in line
with this vampiric character she was playing. In a fool
there was. Although this was a presser, there was no
Q and a session. Theda Bara gave a series of
statements for reporters to quote, and these statements were very,
very well worded, more than one might anticipate from an
(19:26):
actor who had only just moved to the United States
and supposedly didn't grow up speaking English. That did not
seem to trouble the attendees, though Theda said things like, quote,
I hope I have succeeded in depicting the complex emotions
of this woman as vividly as they have appealed to me.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But there was this whole double angle being played by
Sellig and Goldfrap in all of this. Once Theda had
given all of these statements, the press conference ended and
the room was cleared. However, one carefully selected reporter was
allowed to stay like just under the guise of like,
they didn't rush her out, and that was Luella Parsons, who,
(20:06):
of course would go on to become a very famous
Hollywood gossip columnist. But that day, when she was still
a CUB reporter, they kind of picked her because she
was green, and she got to witness Theda Bara whipping
off all of the heavy velvets and furs and veils
that she had been wearing as part of this act
and running to a window to throw it open, and
(20:27):
dropping the accent she had been using throughout the presser
as she groaned.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Give me air.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
This is a genius move on the part of Box's
pr team. Seleig and Goldfrap knew that a lot of
the old school reporters in the room would never buy
this whole yarn they had spun regarding Bara's backstory. Some
reporters even recognized her as Theodosia to cop it from
her days in the theater. But simultaneously ensuring that world
(20:56):
would get out that this was all an act, they
kept Theda's name in the papers. Some papers ran straight
stories that relayed the outlandish details they'd been told that
day as though they were fact, while others mocked the
papers that did that, and yet others wrote pieces pondering
what the truth really was. So she became a celebrity
(21:17):
before anyone even saw her film. So smart, So manipulative,
but so smart. As an aside, this type of revising
and rewriting of a person's life to create essentially a
new character that they played as their public persona was
actually pretty common. It was a very successful way to
drum up public interest in stars and consequently to drive
(21:39):
box office numbers up. But it was also done obviously
with zero consideration or awareness of things like cultural appropriation.
We mentioned earlier that this was really a play on
like this penchant for exoticism that people had, where they
really were not thinking about cultures as anything but kind
of things they could pick and choose from as of interest.
(22:01):
And just as Theda Bara was allegedly a blend of
French and Arab characteristics as plucked not from reality but
from the imaginations of studio executives, a lot of other
actors had that same transformation. For example, Josephine M. Workman,
a young woman from California, was re christened as Princess
Mona Darkfeather by Bison Motion Pictures. While Workman's paternal grandmother
(22:26):
was Taus Pueblo, it does not appear that any real
cultural connection was ever integrated into that fictional persona of
Dark Feather, Although Workman became the go to choice when
a film needed to fill Native American roles for women.
This is just one example, but there are so many
similar stories in early film history. So while Theda Bara
(22:48):
was one of the biggest stars to have such a transformation,
she was really not an outlier in the least. The
title card for Bara's debut film reads, William Fox presents
a fo There was a psychological drama by Porter Emerson Brown.
And then the next card features a poem that reads,
(23:08):
a fool there was, and he made his prayer even
as you and I to a rag and a bone
and a hank of hair. We called her the woman
who did not care, but the fool. He called her
his lady fair, even as you and I. So though
the author is not mentioned, that poem is the opening
of a piece also called The Vampire, which was written
(23:29):
by Rudyard Kipling. It was quite famous at the time,
and that poem was written to a company a painting
that had been made by Kipling's cousin, Philip Burne Jones,
which was also called The Vampire. The painting, which was
inspired by bram Stoker's Dracula, shows a dark haired woman
sitting on the edge of a bed, leaning over a
man who appears unconscious with his limbs splayed out, and
(23:52):
that painting led to the poem, and then led to
a play and a book by Porter Emerson Brown, and
then to the screenplay, and the cast is introduced one
by one in the opening credits at a pace that
most modern viewers would find almost confusingly slow. I know,
I've watched a couple of very old films lately where
(24:14):
I've been like, man, this is taking so long. Yes,
it's like, uh, they introduced the fool in Jose's character,
and then it's like a full minute and a half
of like his character like on a boat waving. Yeah,
seems a little a little pokey by our usual editing today.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
So miss Theda Bara is introduced as the vampire in
her first shot, the one that was so challenging for
her to film. She's wearing a striking outfit consisting of
a black blouse and a dramatic striped skirt and an
angled hat. She's paler than anyone else in the film.
But though her character is called the Vampire, and based
(24:54):
on that description that Tracy just gave, it might seem
that she was being portrayed as an actual vampire. And
though her victim goes just as mad as Renfield, this
is not an actual vampire tale. Rather, it is the
story of a woman who is so powerfully attractive and
so void of compassion or morality that she drains men
(25:18):
dry before moving on to the next To illustrate just
how cold her character is, in one scene, a former
lover she has recently left shows up where she is
and dies by suicide in front of her. That actual
death is not shown on screen. The film cuts abruptly,
and then it's followed by a scene where two men
(25:39):
are discussing how the woman laughed demonically when this young
man took his life. The main plot of the film
features a character who's a lawyer and a diplomat who
has known both as the Fool and by his character's
name John Skuyler, who's a good family man until he's
lured away by the vampire, who steals him from his
family in a calculated scheme. Skyler has chosen to be
(26:03):
envoy to Great Britain, and his wife was set to
go with him until her sister became ill in an accident,
so this successful man was now traveling alone. When the
vampire reads at this important trip being undertaken by an
important man, she arranges to sail on the same ship,
and that's where she draws him in. So the audience
(26:25):
doesn't actually see anything especially sexual here, although for a
time there's some flirting that was probably borderline scandalous at
the time. Instead, after the two of them meet, the
film jumps forward two months in time to see them
living as a couple in Europe, and the plot plays
out from there, with Skuyler's dutiful wife learning of this
(26:47):
affair and Skyler very visibly losing his vitality and losing
everything in his life, his job, his family, et cetera.
Unable to tear himself away from the vampire, is shown
drinking more and more heavily until he is barely recognizable
as the man from the beginning of the sixty five
minute picture. Theda is cool and glamorous throughout the picture,
(27:11):
even as she does progressively uglier and uglier things. And
her large eyes were rimmed with a halo of coal.
And this was a look that became her trademarks throughout
her career. And for all of this she was dressed exquisitely.
We'll talk about the public and critical reception to the
film and Theda after we hear from the sponsors that
(27:32):
keeps stuffy missed in history class going when a Fool
There was was released. Audiences loved Theda Bara. She intrigued them,
she scared them, She enthralled them. It seems just as
(27:54):
her character, the vampire had enthralled John Schuyler and critics
were also very enthusiastic about this newcomer. The film was
called bold and relentless by the New York Dramatic Mirror,
and The New York Morning Telegraph wrote of Theda Bara
that she had created quote the most revolting but fascinating
character that has appeared upon the screen for some time.
(28:16):
Another paper touted, ahead of its run of the film,
quote it is said that her seductive beauty gives to
the role a realism that is powerful to the extreme.
She already had a degree of celebrity in the weeks
leading up to the film's release, but once it was out,
she was undeniably famous. The film also saved Fox Film Studio,
(28:37):
which went from hosting a debt at the end of
fiscal year nineteen fourteen to making several million dollars in
nineteen fifteen and then clearing the year with more than
half a million after expenses. Not everyone, we should point out,
loved this new style of screen star, and there were
definitely some complaints to the National Board of Censorship about
(28:57):
this powerful woman who was using sexual as a weapon.
There were also complaints about some of her very revealing
costumes and subsequent pictures. That's something that seems a little
bit funny, given how trepidacious she was to wear a
bathing suit in her first film. If you go looking
for photos of her online, there are some that are
incredibly revealing. And then there were also people who just
(29:20):
could not really separate film from reality and believed she
was actually a professional home wrecker that had just been
using her natural abilities to be caught on film, rather
than being a very good actress, and after she received
a letter to that effect from one viewer, she wrote
back that if she were that type of woman, she
would not have to work as an actor. She also
(29:42):
told the press quote, the vampire that I play is
the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see,
I have the face of the vampire, but the heart
of a feminist. Theta starred in forty films over the
next four years, which is incredible to me. This included Salome, Cleopatra, Sin,
(30:03):
the Serpent, and Destruction, among many others. Her specialty became
the so called vamp role, which was a woman who
would lead men to their ruin. That's still how the
word is used today, and it was really Theda Bara
who gave rise to that use. The first known use
of a noun describing such a woman was in nineteen eighties,
(30:24):
so that just was right in line with Barra's career.
The pr team at Fox continued to feed stories about
her to the press to maintain the mystique of the
character of Theda Bara. For example, they planted a story
that her name was an anagram for the words Arab death.
This kind of sensationalism sometimes clashed with her real life,
(30:46):
which was actually quite stable and pretty conventional. As her
fortunes had improved, her brother Mark moved to New York
to live with Theda Louri and their mother, Pauline. Their father, Bernard,
stayed behind in Cincinnati to keep the tailor business going.
But the problem here was that the studio couldn't have
pressed to any interviews at Theda's apartment. It was not
(31:07):
nearly dramatic enough. No one, they thought, wanted to see
the devil woman of the screen surrounded by her loving,
close knit family in a tastefully decorated apartment in Los Angeles.
Though the studio arrived for her to have a house
on West Adams Boulevard, which was decorated in a style
to match her concocted persona. She allegedly hated that house
(31:28):
and sold it as soon as she could. Yeah, she
was no fool, though, and she played the part when
she gave interviews. When a reporter visited the set of
Carmen during filming, Bara allegedly went full bore in a
scene that involved a fight with another actress, causing a
nurse to have to attend to the co star it's
not clear if this conflict was staged.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
For the press.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
The reporter asked questions about Barra's past, and the actor replied, quote,
I live under the shadow of a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I want to.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Forget it, and I want the world I once knew
to forget it. That is the reason I wished Theodebara
to be unknown save for her pictures. Having learned Every
Chicken the Book from Fox pr she told the same reporter, quote,
it is predicted I shall die in nineteen twenty two.
She's very good at doing her her public persona. She
(32:22):
did not die in nineteen twenty two, but in nineteen
nineteen her contract with Fox ended, and the mid rumors
that negotiations were going quite poorly. The decision was made
that it would not be renewed. You will see that
reported as her decision or their decision, probably both. She
did take a role in a stage play in nineteen
twenty called The Blue Flame, which opened on Broadway in
(32:45):
March of that year, but that play was very, very hokey,
and it had flopped. Reviews of her performance were brutal.
Critic Lewis Reid wrote that her performance was quote not
really worth fifteen minutes of time and said the play
was quote the most terrible play within the memory of
the writer. This play was not a comedy, but people
(33:05):
started going just to laugh at it, which felt terrible
for everyone involved. Theda never managed to have the theatrical
career that she had always dreamed of. In nineteen twenty one,
Theda married English director Charles Braven in secret. They did
not even publicly acknowledge the marriage for months. They went
to Canada for their honeymoon, they fell in love with
(33:27):
Nova Scotia, and later on they bought land there. Theta
had been in the middle of a vaudeville tour when
the two of them snuck away for the wedding, and
then she did not sign up for another one. Charles
and Theta did not always mesh when it came to
their careers. Charles did not think that Theda should keep working,
and he also hated attending public events with her. But
(33:48):
they did seem to have a pretty good understanding of
one another, and they respected one another's needs in their
established careers. Often they would spend weeks at a time
apart as one or the other raveled or worked, and
then they would come back together and live quite happily,
and that was a system that seemed to work really,
really well for their dynamic. After the honeymoon, Thedo was
(34:09):
ready to get back to work, but she had a
hard time finding roles without a studio contract, and with
the heyday of her Vamp persona having passed in favor
of more conventional screen stars, Mara just couldn't get a gig. Finally,
after several false starts on other projects, she made The
Unchastened Woman in nineteen twenty five, but the comedy drama
(34:32):
about married life didn't do very well. In nineteen twenty six,
Thea made her last film, which was Matdam Mystery. This
was a short directed by Richard Wallace and Stan Laurel.
Thedo was actually quite good at comedy, it turned out,
and producer Hal Roach wanted her for more in a series,
but Charles didn't like the to doing these films and
(34:53):
she didn't like it when she saw it, So that
was that. With the contract canceled, Thedo was officially retired
from acting, although she did a couple of radio plays
in the nineteen thirties. You can still find Madame Mystery
to watch online and see for yourself. She's got pretty
good comedic timing. It's kind of a pity to me
that she didn't like it, because I can only assume
(35:16):
after having done a bunch of dramatic stuff, it just
didn't feel right for her to see herself doing silly things.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
But she's quite good.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
You can also find a fool there was online easy
to watch. However, beyond that, you're going to run into
some problems because most of her films are lost. That's
due to a fire at the Fox Film Vault in
nineteen thirty seven. Compared to most celebrities of her time,
Theda's private life was pretty uneventful. She never had any
affair scandals, never any public mishaps where she drank too
(35:46):
much and did something embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
She didn't blow all over fortune.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
She was financially stable her entire life after her fame
sort of tapered out. She seemed to love her husband,
and they seemed genuinely pretty happy together, even though others
found their periods of separation unconventional. After her retirement, she
did as she pleased. She traveled sometimes with Charles, sometimes
with her mother and her siblings. Yeah, there's not a
(36:12):
lot of info about her retirement life because she was
just kind of chill. And then she passed on April seventh,
nineteen fifty five. She died of stomach cancer. Charles died
two years later. To sum up the incredibly powerful allure
of Theda Bara and nod to how much of it
really was just great acting skill, Holly wanted to close
(36:34):
with a quote from Luella Parsons, which she wrote in
late nineteen fifteen, when Theda's fame was really cemented. Her
hair is like the serpent's locks of Medusa. Her eyes
have the cruel cunning of Lucrezia Borgia, till now held
up as the world's wickedest woman. Her mouth is the
mouth of the sinister, scheming Delilah, and her hands are
(36:54):
those of the blood bathing Elizabeth Bathory, who slaughtered young
girls that she might bathe in them the lifeblood and
so retain her beauty. Can it be that fate has
reincarnated in Theda Bara the souls of these monsters of
medieval times? Scientists have questioned this most extraordinary of women
to secure fresh evidence to support their half proved laws
(37:17):
of transmigration of souls but the result has only been
to prove that though Miss Barrah is greatest delineator of
evil types on the stage or screen today, she is
in real life a sweet, wholesome woman who detests the abnormal.
I love that quote so much. When I stumbled across it,
I was like, There's no way this isn't how this
(37:38):
episode lands. It's a great way to sum up exactly
what was going on there because people did call her
the wickedest woman alive, and the studio, of course, wanted
to keep all of that going. She's a fun one.
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
(38:00):
this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
(38:21):
Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows
Happy Saturday. On Unearthed.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
This week we talked about some graffiti that might be
a depiction of Theta Barra if you thought while listening
to Unearthed, who's that and what does the word vamp
have to do with it? Today's Saturday Classic, we'll solve
that mystery. This originally came out May fourth, twenty twenty two.
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
(00:28):
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fryne and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Today we are going to talk about someone I love
in history, which is Theda Bara, who is often referenced
as the first sex symbol or the first celebrity to
have an entire persona crafted by a PR team. Photos
of her are pretty synonymous with the word vamp. I know.
Tracy mentioned to me that she didn't have any name recognition,
(01:01):
but the second she saw a picture, she's like, oh that's.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Oh that person yep.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And one hundred years later, pictures of her still have
a certain mysterious appeal. But she was a very different person,
I think than most people might know. And it always
cracks me up a little when people kind of model
their look after her, and I'm like, yeah, but you know,
she was actually pretty tame. So today I thought it
(01:27):
would be interesting to look at how this early film
celebrity was basically created through careful planning by a PR team,
and how the real woman was a whole lot different
from that faux persona that they made up. Yeah, to
start with totally different name. She was born Theodosia Goodman
in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July twenty ninth, eighteen eighty five.
(01:49):
Her parents were Bernard Goodman and Pauline Louis friends was
Dick Cope. Bernard was originally from Jorsela, Poland and worked
as a tailor. Pauline's father was French. Her mother was German,
although she had been born and grew up in Switzerland
and worked as a wig maker. Bernard and Pauline got
married in eighteen eighty two, and Theodosia was their first child.
(02:13):
Then in eighteen eighty eight they had a son named Mark,
and then in eighteen ninety seven, Bernard and Pauline had
another daughter named Esther, who would eventually go by Laurie.
Theodosia was named after Aaron Burr's daughter, who we have
an episode on. Yeah, she's some versions of her name.
You'll see Burr as a middle name, and I never
(02:33):
was able to verify whether that was true or maybe
a little confused when people noted that she was named
for Theodosia, br Auto completed that middle name right. Her childhood, though,
was a pretty comfortable one. The good Men's lived in
an affluent neighborhood, and Theodosia, Mark, and Laurie were all
quite close. They had two women who worked for them
(02:55):
as house staff named Anna Tusenig and Ida day Birth
and Theodosia loved to read, and she would often opt
to do that over any other activity. But she was
not a quiet, bookish child, because she could also be
a handful. She frequently pilfered her mother's closet to create
elaborate dress up ensembles, and she was prone to getting
(03:15):
all dressed up in those and then running away from home.
She was so likely to run off when she was
still quite small that her parents had to have a
new tall fence specially installed around their yard. As she
grew up, Theodosia's love for dress up evolved into a
desire to stage tableau and that was a popular parlor
entertainment at the time. She would recreate scene after scene
(03:39):
and perform recitations to go with these scenes there with
no surprise. This led her to want to get involved
in acting. Soon she was staging her own productions in
a neighbor's barn. She continued to act as she grew
into her teenage years. She read everything she could about
the actors of the day. She was really focused on this.
(04:01):
I find this very charming as somebody who put on
plays in the basement of the family home. Oh yeah,
oh icnned teachers into letting me do full blown, like
multi act puppet shows in elementary school. So it's interesting
because she was obsessed with the idea of actors and
acting at a time when, like stage actors were really
(04:23):
the thing, but there was some transition going on to film,
and she apparently read like every article she could about
everything they did in their day to day lives. Like
she was that kid that was like could tell you
everything that like any given actor of the day, like
to eat, like to wear.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Oh wow, Yeah, she was that kid.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Theodosia, who was known to her friends largely as Theo,
attended Walnut Hills high school. Starting in eighteen ninety nine,
she worked on the school paper, and she joined the
drama club, and she was known always for her ambition
to go into acting as a career. After graduating high
school in nineteen oh three, she attended University of Cincinnati
for two years, but at that point she was starting
(05:07):
to feel frustrated glee club, which she was a part of,
did not offer her the theatrical outlet that she really
longed for. She frankly wanted more than she felt like
Cincinnati had to offer, So in nineteen oh five, the
age of twenty, Theo decided to pursue a career on
the stage. In that effort, she moved to New York City,
and her father was reportedly not pleased with any of this.
(05:31):
Once she got to New York, Theodosa changed her last
name from Goodman to her mother's maiden name of de Coppet.
She would later riff off of this name. She would
change out the vowels, try out different variations. We know
that she lived in Greenwich Village in an apartment just
off Washington Square, but beyond that we don't know a
whole lot in terms of the specifics of her first
(05:54):
couple of years of New York. The first play she's
documented as having been cast in was the nineteen oh
eight summer production of The Devil. She was a minor
character in that one. After that, There's another Gap, and
then she was part of the second string touring company
for a musical called The Quaker Girl. She was paid
twenty five dollars a week initially, although after some pretty
(06:17):
bad reviews her salary was reduced to eighteen dollars a week,
and then she left the troop. Those reviews were quite scathing,
things about how really abysmal her French accent was, and
how even like a five year old wouldn't be confused
or convinced they were mean. Theo continued to pursue acting,
and she kept taking parts in touring companies, but that
(06:38):
was not at all to her liking life on the road.
The tight quarters shared with other performers and the decidedly
non luxurious accommodations were things that she would later describe
as quote unpleasant associations. This was just not the acting
career she had envisioned. She left a touring company that
was running a farce called Us Like John in nineteen
(07:01):
twelve and At that point, she went back to New York.
Her mother, Pauline, and her teenage sister Laurie soon joined
her there. And just as she was feeling her most
frustrated and dejected over what seemed like a career that
would never happen, another bad thing happened, which is at
the apartment she shared with her mother and sister had
a fire and it basically was unlivable. It burned out.
(07:25):
They were able to get by thanks to insurance money,
but there was this very real concern kind of looming
over the whole thing that Theodosia's dreams were just not
going to work out. In late nineteen fourteen, Theo was
approached by a man who asked her if she might
want to try being in movies. The man who approached
her was Frank Powell. Powell hailed from Ontario, Canada, and
(07:47):
had become an actor himself before transitioning into the director's chair.
He had worked for Pathay Pictures before Fox lured him
away from them, and it was just before he started
at Fox that he saw Theo and saw something in
her that he thought might be great for film. There's
no record of the specific place where the two of
them had this first conversation. This was, of course a
(08:11):
time when the movie industry was in its infancy, but
it already had some established stars like Mary Pickford. A
career in film was not really something Theodosia had been pursuing.
According to her later accounts of being discovered, she saw
herself as a stage actress. She wanted Broadway, and she
was not particularly interested in jumping into the still fairly
(08:33):
new medium of moving pictures. But at the same time
she had to acknowledge that her theater career was not
exactly going gangbusters. She was also thirty, so she was
starting to hit the point where she was seen as
too old for most of the lead roles that she wanted. Initially,
she was curvy, and that figure had fallen out of favor.
(08:54):
People were looking more for longer, leaner physique. So she gambled,
and she took Fred Powell at his word on this. Yes,
I want to talk about her as a curvy person
in our behind the scenes. Yeah, because I really think
she looks quite thin in most of her pictures.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
The first project that Frank Powell put Theo in was
actually a film called The Stain, which he made while
he was still finishing up his contract at Patha. Theodosha
was cast in just a tiny role. This was really
her screen test. Powell made sure that she was positioned
near the camera so that he could see how she
played on screen, and he was very pleased after that.
(09:36):
William Fox, the head of the studio, also reviewed the
footage and liked it, and so sat down with THEO
for an interview. Both men thought that she was right
for a very unusual and difficult to cast role they
were working on, and they offered her a five year
contract at the studio at a rate of one hundred
dollars per week. THEO negotiated that up to one hundred
(09:58):
and fifty dollars per week before she signed, and that
is how an unknown landed a leading role in the
upcoming project called A Fool There Was for Fox Film Company.
The studio, though also knew this was a gamble. Theodosia's
co star in the picture was Edward Jose who was
a famous Broadway actor at the time, so casting this
(10:20):
complete newcomer to film was something that William Fox, who
was the head of Fox Films, was concerned about. So
the solution was to construct this really alluring persona for her,
and her name had been the first to go. She
was going by Theodosia de cape or to cop It
or as we said, many other variations she tried out.
(10:42):
None of them were really zinging, So after considering her
nicknames of Theo and Teddy, which her family members also
sometimes called her, they landed another nickname, Theta, and decided
that was the one. And then for the last name,
they wanted something far easier than any of the on
Dakopit or Decape, and her maternal grandfather had been named
(11:04):
Francois Berngais, and that last name was shortened to Bearra.
As a quick aside, you'll see different versions of how
this played out, how much of it was her idea
versus the studios, which studio executives kept credit for which pieces,
But I'm calling it a group effort because there are
so many different versions. So once her name was figured
(11:25):
out and rendered on that Fox contract, it was time
to get to work, and we will talk about that.
After a quick sponsor break in the autumn of nineteen fourteen,
with the contract for Theta Bea in place, filming for
(11:45):
a fool, there was could finally get under way. The
picture was shot in part on location on the Florida
coast at Saint Augustine, and right out of the gate
there were some interesting problems. The cast and crew for
the film were sent down to the location along the
Atlantic coast on a steamer that was a German steamer.
It was called the Essen, and because World War One
(12:08):
was freshly underway, this raised some concern. They also were
not flying a US flag, which apparently was part of
the problem. The British Navy stopped them, and things got
more tricky because Theda's co star, Edward jose answered questions
that had been posed to him in German by also
speaking German. He was fluent and that was just the
(12:29):
natural way to do it. But this made the British
utterly convinced that they had trapped a boatful, perhaps of
spies or other operatives, and it took a lot of
frantic explaining and finally a cable from the studio to
get things smoothed over just so they could get to
the shooting location. Even once they were on location and
filming started, none of this project was the glamorous scenario
(12:52):
that Theda had envisioned. There was a huge crowd of
onlookers that had come to see a movie being made
the pier where she shot her first scene. The early
makeup for film was not something that looked good in
real life, so she felt like she was being gawked
at while also not feeling pretty at all. The whole
thing was harrowing. Barra later said of the moment, quote,
(13:16):
the whole world seemed to have turned into human eyes.
I trembled, I shook, I all but died right there
on the dock. She also had to wear a bathing
suit in the film, and she was so mortified by
that that she almost quit.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
She didn't need to be worried, though.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Even though she wore this bathing suit for the shot,
there were objections from the censors and that led to
that scene being cut out. Yeah, that was a time
where there were places you could still get arrested for
wearing a bathing suit because it was seen as obscene.
The entire transition into film acting was really incredibly stressful
(13:53):
for Theda. She did not get to rehearse, and a
lot of the earliest scenes she shot are kind of
extra pantomimey because of course these are all silent. You
can watch the film online easily enough and see for yourself.
Even after filming, there was more work and more than
Theda Bara had expected. As the film was being edited,
(14:13):
Edward Jose got in a contract dispute with Fox, and
he left the studio and refused to do any promotion
For a fool there was so suddenly this total newcomer
was the only person they had to promote the film
as one of its leads. The studio had already been
working on ways to turn Theda into a sensation, but.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Now all the eggs had to be in one.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Basket, So the studio created a whole biography of her. Uh.
They had actually been working on it while filming was
going on, and the story they ended up with was
a doozy and it was completely captivating to kind of
everyone but for various reasons. But they also didn't know
(14:56):
if this was gonna work. At first. This was such
an outlandish tape and it was so overboard in so
many ways as you were going to see because we'll
walk you through it, that there was concern that no
one would buy it. It was just too sensational. So
the PR department put together a press conference that was
really a big stunt. So the framing of this bogus
(15:18):
event was that it was for the first run of
press before the premiere of a fool there was the
studio is going to have an event in Chicago and
invite a select group of reporters. The team turned a
hotel meeting room into an Egyptian fantasy just to set
the stage for the introduction of Theta.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Bara to the world.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Al Sellig and John Goldfrapp worked for the studio as
its public relations team, and while mingling with the assembled reporters,
they talked about how Borrow was the toast of Paris
and what a fine she was, and how excited they
were to be debuting her talent in the US. Again,
she had never even been to Paris. According to their story,
(16:00):
which was presented to members of the press before the
introduction of Fox's new thrilling talent, her mother was a
French actress named Theta Delize, and her father, Giuseppe Bara,
was a sculptor from Italy. To give Theodosia's new persona
an entirely new level of exoticism, she was born quote
(16:21):
in the shadow of the Pyramids, This happened after her
mother had met her father while touring in Egypt. Even
the fake parent meet cute was sort of needlessly, in
my opinion, dramatic. According to it, Delize had found the
sculptor wandering and lost in the sands of Egypt, disoriented
and having abandoned everything he had as he wandered the desert.
(16:44):
Giuseppe was saved by Delze, and they fell in love,
and they lived in a tent near the Sphinx.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
So if this sounds.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Ridiculous, brace yourselves, because this story went even further. There
was a foolish account of Theda's early life in the desert,
with dialogue written as though it had been captured by
the actor. Wistfully remembering her childhood, describing their tent home
as quote like the garden of Eden, she described how
(17:14):
her mother had taught her about acting, while her father
had educated her in art, and after describing this early,
totally fictional homeschooling, she would end with quote and through
the instruction of both, I learned the symphony of the soul.
When Theda was still a child. According to this story,
her parents moved from Egypt to Paris, and just for clarity,
(17:37):
This is not her saying these things. These are press
people claiming these quotes were from her. It was all
very ridiculous. According to the studio story, Bara performed with
all of the noteworthy theatrical companies of Paris, including with
actor Jane Hadding at the Grand Guignot, which we have
an entire episode on the gymnase and the te Flenttoine
(18:01):
Cellig and Goldfrap just gushed to the attending members of
the press that Theda had this massive following in Paris
and that she had been discovered there by Frank Powell.
Since this press event took place in January of nineteen fifteen,
it offered the Fox pr team an opportunity to use
the events of World War One to further elaborate on
(18:23):
Bara's arrival in the United States. When Germany had declared
war on Russia, France, and Belgium in August of nineteen fourteen,
Powell had quickly moved to escape Paris, and he took
this newly discovered talent with him. After all of this
incredibly thrilling exposition to explain to reporters just who exactly
(18:44):
they were about to meet this velvet curtain was opened,
and there sat the enthralling Theda Bara, making her debut
to the world. She was seated on a chaise lounge
that was covered in tiger skins, and her incredibly pale
skin and jet black hair made her look like she
came from another country or culture, but also a little
(19:05):
bit otherworldly in a more mystical sense, right in line
with this vampiric character she was playing. In a fool
there was. Although this was a presser, there was no
Q and a session. Theda Bara gave a series of
statements for reporters to quote, and these statements were very,
very well worded, more than one might anticipate from an
(19:26):
actor who had only just moved to the United States
and supposedly didn't grow up speaking English. That did not
seem to trouble the attendees, though Theda said things like, quote,
I hope I have succeeded in depicting the complex emotions
of this woman as vividly as they have appealed to me.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
But there was this whole double angle being played by
Sellig and Goldfrap in all of this. Once Theda had
given all of these statements, the press conference ended and
the room was cleared. However, one carefully selected reporter was
allowed to stay like just under the guise of like,
they didn't rush her out, and that was Luella Parsons, who,
(20:06):
of course would go on to become a very famous
Hollywood gossip columnist. But that day, when she was still
a CUB reporter, they kind of picked her because she
was green, and she got to witness Theda Bara whipping
off all of the heavy velvets and furs and veils
that she had been wearing as part of this act
and running to a window to throw it open, and
(20:27):
dropping the accent she had been using throughout the presser
as she groaned.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Give me air.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
This is a genius move on the part of Box's
pr team. Seleig and Goldfrap knew that a lot of
the old school reporters in the room would never buy
this whole yarn they had spun regarding Bara's backstory. Some
reporters even recognized her as Theodosia to cop it from
her days in the theater. But simultaneously ensuring that world
(20:56):
would get out that this was all an act, they
kept Theda's name in the papers. Some papers ran straight
stories that relayed the outlandish details they'd been told that
day as though they were fact, while others mocked the
papers that did that, and yet others wrote pieces pondering
what the truth really was. So she became a celebrity
(21:17):
before anyone even saw her film. So smart, So manipulative,
but so smart. As an aside, this type of revising
and rewriting of a person's life to create essentially a
new character that they played as their public persona was
actually pretty common. It was a very successful way to
drum up public interest in stars and consequently to drive
(21:39):
box office numbers up. But it was also done obviously
with zero consideration or awareness of things like cultural appropriation.
We mentioned earlier that this was really a play on
like this penchant for exoticism that people had, where they
really were not thinking about cultures as anything but kind
of things they could pick and choose from as of interest.
(22:01):
And just as Theda Bara was allegedly a blend of
French and Arab characteristics as plucked not from reality but
from the imaginations of studio executives, a lot of other
actors had that same transformation. For example, Josephine M. Workman,
a young woman from California, was re christened as Princess
Mona Darkfeather by Bison Motion Pictures. While Workman's paternal grandmother
(22:26):
was Taus Pueblo, it does not appear that any real
cultural connection was ever integrated into that fictional persona of
Dark Feather, Although Workman became the go to choice when
a film needed to fill Native American roles for women.
This is just one example, but there are so many
similar stories in early film history. So while Theda Bara
(22:48):
was one of the biggest stars to have such a transformation,
she was really not an outlier in the least. The
title card for Bara's debut film reads, William Fox presents
a fo There was a psychological drama by Porter Emerson Brown.
And then the next card features a poem that reads,
(23:08):
a fool there was, and he made his prayer even
as you and I to a rag and a bone
and a hank of hair. We called her the woman
who did not care, but the fool. He called her
his lady fair, even as you and I. So though
the author is not mentioned, that poem is the opening
of a piece also called The Vampire, which was written
(23:29):
by Rudyard Kipling. It was quite famous at the time,
and that poem was written to a company a painting
that had been made by Kipling's cousin, Philip Burne Jones,
which was also called The Vampire. The painting, which was
inspired by bram Stoker's Dracula, shows a dark haired woman
sitting on the edge of a bed, leaning over a
man who appears unconscious with his limbs splayed out, and
(23:52):
that painting led to the poem, and then led to
a play and a book by Porter Emerson Brown, and
then to the screenplay, and the cast is introduced one
by one in the opening credits at a pace that
most modern viewers would find almost confusingly slow. I know,
I've watched a couple of very old films lately where
(24:14):
I've been like, man, this is taking so long. Yes,
it's like, uh, they introduced the fool in Jose's character,
and then it's like a full minute and a half
of like his character like on a boat waving. Yeah,
seems a little a little pokey by our usual editing today.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
So miss Theda Bara is introduced as the vampire in
her first shot, the one that was so challenging for
her to film. She's wearing a striking outfit consisting of
a black blouse and a dramatic striped skirt and an
angled hat. She's paler than anyone else in the film.
But though her character is called the Vampire, and based
(24:54):
on that description that Tracy just gave, it might seem
that she was being portrayed as an actual vampire. And
though her victim goes just as mad as Renfield, this
is not an actual vampire tale. Rather, it is the
story of a woman who is so powerfully attractive and
so void of compassion or morality that she drains men
(25:18):
dry before moving on to the next To illustrate just
how cold her character is, in one scene, a former
lover she has recently left shows up where she is
and dies by suicide in front of her. That actual
death is not shown on screen. The film cuts abruptly,
and then it's followed by a scene where two men
(25:39):
are discussing how the woman laughed demonically when this young
man took his life. The main plot of the film
features a character who's a lawyer and a diplomat who
has known both as the Fool and by his character's
name John Skuyler, who's a good family man until he's
lured away by the vampire, who steals him from his
family in a calculated scheme. Skyler has chosen to be
(26:03):
envoy to Great Britain, and his wife was set to
go with him until her sister became ill in an accident,
so this successful man was now traveling alone. When the
vampire reads at this important trip being undertaken by an
important man, she arranges to sail on the same ship,
and that's where she draws him in. So the audience
(26:25):
doesn't actually see anything especially sexual here, although for a
time there's some flirting that was probably borderline scandalous at
the time. Instead, after the two of them meet, the
film jumps forward two months in time to see them
living as a couple in Europe, and the plot plays
out from there, with Skuyler's dutiful wife learning of this
(26:47):
affair and Skyler very visibly losing his vitality and losing
everything in his life, his job, his family, et cetera.
Unable to tear himself away from the vampire, is shown
drinking more and more heavily until he is barely recognizable
as the man from the beginning of the sixty five
minute picture. Theda is cool and glamorous throughout the picture,
(27:11):
even as she does progressively uglier and uglier things. And
her large eyes were rimmed with a halo of coal.
And this was a look that became her trademarks throughout
her career. And for all of this she was dressed exquisitely.
We'll talk about the public and critical reception to the
film and Theda after we hear from the sponsors that
(27:32):
keeps stuffy missed in history class going when a Fool
There was was released. Audiences loved Theda Bara. She intrigued them,
she scared them, She enthralled them. It seems just as
(27:54):
her character, the vampire had enthralled John Schuyler and critics
were also very enthusiastic about this newcomer. The film was
called bold and relentless by the New York Dramatic Mirror,
and The New York Morning Telegraph wrote of Theda Bara
that she had created quote the most revolting but fascinating
character that has appeared upon the screen for some time.
(28:16):
Another paper touted, ahead of its run of the film,
quote it is said that her seductive beauty gives to
the role a realism that is powerful to the extreme.
She already had a degree of celebrity in the weeks
leading up to the film's release, but once it was out,
she was undeniably famous. The film also saved Fox Film Studio,
(28:37):
which went from hosting a debt at the end of
fiscal year nineteen fourteen to making several million dollars in
nineteen fifteen and then clearing the year with more than
half a million after expenses. Not everyone, we should point out,
loved this new style of screen star, and there were
definitely some complaints to the National Board of Censorship about
(28:57):
this powerful woman who was using sexual as a weapon.
There were also complaints about some of her very revealing
costumes and subsequent pictures. That's something that seems a little
bit funny, given how trepidacious she was to wear a
bathing suit in her first film. If you go looking
for photos of her online, there are some that are
incredibly revealing. And then there were also people who just
(29:20):
could not really separate film from reality and believed she
was actually a professional home wrecker that had just been
using her natural abilities to be caught on film, rather
than being a very good actress, and after she received
a letter to that effect from one viewer, she wrote
back that if she were that type of woman, she
would not have to work as an actor. She also
(29:42):
told the press quote, the vampire that I play is
the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see,
I have the face of the vampire, but the heart
of a feminist. Theta starred in forty films over the
next four years, which is incredible to me. This included Salome, Cleopatra, Sin,
(30:03):
the Serpent, and Destruction, among many others. Her specialty became
the so called vamp role, which was a woman who
would lead men to their ruin. That's still how the
word is used today, and it was really Theda Bara
who gave rise to that use. The first known use
of a noun describing such a woman was in nineteen eighties,
(30:24):
so that just was right in line with Barra's career.
The pr team at Fox continued to feed stories about
her to the press to maintain the mystique of the
character of Theda Bara. For example, they planted a story
that her name was an anagram for the words Arab death.
This kind of sensationalism sometimes clashed with her real life,
(30:46):
which was actually quite stable and pretty conventional. As her
fortunes had improved, her brother Mark moved to New York
to live with Theda Louri and their mother, Pauline. Their father, Bernard,
stayed behind in Cincinnati to keep the tailor business going.
But the problem here was that the studio couldn't have
pressed to any interviews at Theda's apartment. It was not
(31:07):
nearly dramatic enough. No one, they thought, wanted to see
the devil woman of the screen surrounded by her loving,
close knit family in a tastefully decorated apartment in Los Angeles.
Though the studio arrived for her to have a house
on West Adams Boulevard, which was decorated in a style
to match her concocted persona. She allegedly hated that house
(31:28):
and sold it as soon as she could. Yeah, she
was no fool, though, and she played the part when
she gave interviews. When a reporter visited the set of
Carmen during filming, Bara allegedly went full bore in a
scene that involved a fight with another actress, causing a
nurse to have to attend to the co star it's
not clear if this conflict was staged.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
For the press.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
The reporter asked questions about Barra's past, and the actor replied, quote,
I live under the shadow of a tragedy.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I want to.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Forget it, and I want the world I once knew
to forget it. That is the reason I wished Theodebara
to be unknown save for her pictures. Having learned Every
Chicken the Book from Fox pr she told the same reporter, quote,
it is predicted I shall die in nineteen twenty two.
She's very good at doing her her public persona. She
(32:22):
did not die in nineteen twenty two, but in nineteen
nineteen her contract with Fox ended, and the mid rumors
that negotiations were going quite poorly. The decision was made
that it would not be renewed. You will see that
reported as her decision or their decision, probably both. She
did take a role in a stage play in nineteen
twenty called The Blue Flame, which opened on Broadway in
(32:45):
March of that year, but that play was very, very hokey,
and it had flopped. Reviews of her performance were brutal.
Critic Lewis Reid wrote that her performance was quote not
really worth fifteen minutes of time and said the play
was quote the most terrible play within the memory of
the writer. This play was not a comedy, but people
(33:05):
started going just to laugh at it, which felt terrible
for everyone involved. Theda never managed to have the theatrical
career that she had always dreamed of. In nineteen twenty one,
Theda married English director Charles Braven in secret. They did
not even publicly acknowledge the marriage for months. They went
to Canada for their honeymoon, they fell in love with
(33:27):
Nova Scotia, and later on they bought land there. Theta
had been in the middle of a vaudeville tour when
the two of them snuck away for the wedding, and
then she did not sign up for another one. Charles
and Theta did not always mesh when it came to
their careers. Charles did not think that Theda should keep working,
and he also hated attending public events with her. But
(33:48):
they did seem to have a pretty good understanding of
one another, and they respected one another's needs in their
established careers. Often they would spend weeks at a time
apart as one or the other raveled or worked, and
then they would come back together and live quite happily,
and that was a system that seemed to work really,
really well for their dynamic. After the honeymoon, Thedo was
(34:09):
ready to get back to work, but she had a
hard time finding roles without a studio contract, and with
the heyday of her Vamp persona having passed in favor
of more conventional screen stars, Mara just couldn't get a gig. Finally,
after several false starts on other projects, she made The
Unchastened Woman in nineteen twenty five, but the comedy drama
(34:32):
about married life didn't do very well. In nineteen twenty six,
Thea made her last film, which was Matdam Mystery. This
was a short directed by Richard Wallace and Stan Laurel.
Thedo was actually quite good at comedy, it turned out,
and producer Hal Roach wanted her for more in a series,
but Charles didn't like the to doing these films and
(34:53):
she didn't like it when she saw it, So that
was that. With the contract canceled, Thedo was officially retired
from acting, although she did a couple of radio plays
in the nineteen thirties. You can still find Madame Mystery
to watch online and see for yourself. She's got pretty
good comedic timing. It's kind of a pity to me
that she didn't like it, because I can only assume
(35:16):
after having done a bunch of dramatic stuff, it just
didn't feel right for her to see herself doing silly things.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
But she's quite good.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
You can also find a fool there was online easy
to watch. However, beyond that, you're going to run into
some problems because most of her films are lost. That's
due to a fire at the Fox Film Vault in
nineteen thirty seven. Compared to most celebrities of her time,
Theda's private life was pretty uneventful. She never had any
affair scandals, never any public mishaps where she drank too
(35:46):
much and did something embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
She didn't blow all over fortune.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
She was financially stable her entire life after her fame
sort of tapered out. She seemed to love her husband,
and they seemed genuinely pretty happy together, even though others
found their periods of separation unconventional. After her retirement, she
did as she pleased. She traveled sometimes with Charles, sometimes
with her mother and her siblings. Yeah, there's not a
(36:12):
lot of info about her retirement life because she was
just kind of chill. And then she passed on April seventh,
nineteen fifty five. She died of stomach cancer. Charles died
two years later. To sum up the incredibly powerful allure
of Theda Bara and nod to how much of it
really was just great acting skill, Holly wanted to close
(36:34):
with a quote from Luella Parsons, which she wrote in
late nineteen fifteen, when Theda's fame was really cemented. Her
hair is like the serpent's locks of Medusa. Her eyes
have the cruel cunning of Lucrezia Borgia, till now held
up as the world's wickedest woman. Her mouth is the
mouth of the sinister, scheming Delilah, and her hands are
(36:54):
those of the blood bathing Elizabeth Bathory, who slaughtered young
girls that she might bathe in them the lifeblood and
so retain her beauty. Can it be that fate has
reincarnated in Theda Bara the souls of these monsters of
medieval times? Scientists have questioned this most extraordinary of women
to secure fresh evidence to support their half proved laws
(37:17):
of transmigration of souls but the result has only been
to prove that though Miss Barrah is greatest delineator of
evil types on the stage or screen today, she is
in real life a sweet, wholesome woman who detests the abnormal.
I love that quote so much. When I stumbled across it,
I was like, There's no way this isn't how this
(37:38):
episode lands. It's a great way to sum up exactly
what was going on there because people did call her
the wickedest woman alive, and the studio, of course, wanted
to keep all of that going. She's a fun one.
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
(38:00):
this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed Inhistory,
and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
(38:21):
Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen
to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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