Theda Bara
Theda Bara , actually Theodosia Burr Goodman , also Theodosia de Coppett and Theda Bara Brabin (born July 29, 1885 in Cincinnati , Ohio , † April 7, 1955 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actress. She was the first sex symbol in the silent film .
Life
After attending the University of Cincinnati, she worked in theater productions and moved to New York in 1908 . For a short time she also appeared under the stage name Theodosia de Coppett. In 1908 she made her Broadway debut in the production The Devil .
The film mogul William Fox cast the largely unknown actress as a vampire for the film A Fool There Was (1915), which is based on the famous poem The Vampire by Rudyard Kipling . The flick was very daring for the time and reflects the fear of a society shaped by Victorian morals of unbridled female sexuality: Theda Bara plays a wicked woman who seduces and destroys men who were previously innocent. She meets her youngest victim on an ocean liner and uses her uninhibited sex appeal to make them docile. All attempts by the man's family to free him from the dependence of the vamp fail; in the end the man dies. The final scene shows Theda Bara sprinkling flower petals on the corpse and smiling mysteriously. The phrase Kiss Me, my Fool - to be read as part of a subtitle in the film - found its way into everyday American language. The film became a financial success, and William Fox developed an unprecedented PR campaign around the new discovery. In press reports it was read that Theda Bara was an anagram from Arab Death , and Theda the daughter of a French artist and an Arab princess. She was abducted by desert tribes and fed with snake blood. She also has the gift of prophecy . Her insatiable sexual appetite on the screen is also reflected in the actress' private life. In photos she was often seen half-naked in erotic poses and / or with magical symbols such as skulls, skeletons and ravens. Their film costumes were hard to beat for clarity. Since film censorship was not tightened until the mid-1920s (see Hays Code ), suggestive presentations and sexually provocative scenes were possible. The role type of the vamp was established.
The constantly increasing advertising that made Bara the “most vicious woman in the world” fell on fertile ground during and shortly after the First World War. Many studios also tried to establish vamps. In the succession of Bara, actresses such as Dagmar Godovsky , Miss DuPont , Geraldine Farrar and Alla Nazimova became known. Bara played from 1915 to 1919 in a good 40 mostly thinly disguised variations of her first success, the title mostly being the program: Sin , The Devil's Daughter , The Vixen , The Serpent or The Tiger Woman . She also portrayed well-known characters from history: Salome, Cleopatra, Comtesse du Barry and similarly "rejected" women. The endless repetition of the same thing quickly led to a decline in their popularity, and soon after 1918 the cheerful bathing beauties of Mack Sennett and the erotic fantasies of Cecil B. DeMille such as New Morals for Old , Why Change Your Wife? and Don't Change Your Husband , who often featured Gloria Swanson in carefully choreographed bathing scenes, for a change in audience taste. Eroticism was no longer demonized, but interpreted as a normal part of human coexistence. Bara went to Broadway in 1919 and attempted a half-hearted comeback to film in 1921, only to say goodbye to the big screen in 1926. Married to director and actor Charles Brabin since 1921 , Theda Bara spent the rest of her life graciously hosting prominent salons and celebrations in Hollywood and Cincinnati.
The young Marilyn Monroe embodied well-known sex symbols of the past in a photo series for LIFE magazine in the early 1950s, including Theda Bara. When Bara got involved in a publicly escalating dispute between Joan Crawford and Confidential magazine in 1954 , Crawford commented on it with the words: Poor Theda. No one ever knew that she was still alive. (Translation: Poor Theda. Nobody knew she was still alive. )
Bara died of stomach cancer in 1955 and was buried as Theda Bara Brabin in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Theda Bara has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a postage stamp was issued in her honor in 1994. Louis Vuitton honored this woman by naming one of its bags after her.
Filmography
- 1914: The Stain
- 1915: A Fool There Was
- 1915: The Kreutzer Sonata
- 1915: The Clemenceau Case
- 1915: The Devil's Daughter
- 1915: The Two Orphans
- 1915: Lady Audley's Secret
- 1915: Sin
- 1915: Carmen
- 1915: The Galley Slave
- 1915: Destruction
- 1915: Siren of Hell
- 1916: The Serpent
- 1916: Gold and the Woman
- 1916: The Eternal Sappho
- 1916: East Lynne
- 1916: Under Two Flags
- 1916: Her Eternal Life
- 1916: Romeo and Juliet
- 1916: The Vixen
- 1917: The Tiger Woman
- 1917: Her Greatest Love
- 1917: Heart and Soul
- 1917: Camille
- 1917: Cleopatra
- 1917: Madame Du Barry
- 1917: The Rose of Blood
- 1917: The Darling of Paris
- 1918: The Forbidden Path
- 1918: Salome
- 1918: When a Woman Sins
- 1918: Under the Yoke
- 1918: The Soul of Buddha
- 1918: The She Devil
- 1919: The Light
- 1919: A Woman There Was
- 1919: Kathleen Mavourneen
- 1919: La Belle Russe
- 1919: When Men Desire
- 1919: The Siren's Song
- 1919: The Lure of Ambition
- 1921: The Prince of Silence
- 1925: The Unchastened Woman
- 1926: Madame Mystery
Web links
- Theda Bara in the Internet Movie Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bara, Theda |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Goodman, Theodosia Burr (real name); De Coppett, Theodosia; Bara Brabin, Theda (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | US-american actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 29, 1885 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Cincinnati , Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 7, 1955 |
| Place of death | Los Angeles , California |