July 29 Theda Bara

Happy Birthday Theda Bara, Clara Bow, William Powell and Thelma Todd.

To celebrate Theda Bara’s birthday I watched A Fool There Was. Theda plays a Vampire (a seductress not the other kind that is very popular right now). She uses men for her own gain and doesn’t care what happens to the men. She uses all of her feminine charm to seduce men and make them bend to her will. A man pulls a gun on her stating he will kill her for what she has done. She very lightly pushes the gun away and he realizes that he cannot kill her and kills himself. Theda laughs as he pulls the trigger (we are told, this can’t be shown in 1915). She has a new victim, a happily married man who she seduces on the boat to Italy. When they come back the mans family and friends try to get him back but he is fully wrapped around her finger and falls weak and trembling to her.

I don’t get what makes her a seductress. The only thing I can think of is that she is an independent woman who cares about her own comfort and not others. She kisses in public where most don’t. Her cloths don’t seem fast but are bright and colorful compared to the white Victorian clothing the other women wear.

On the DVD a special feature has that Rudyard Kipling wrote is poem, The Vampire, based upon a painting. Porter Emerson Brown wrote the Broadway play based upon the poem which eventually became the movie. The poem was often read before the showing of the film (it is listed on the title cards).

Theda Bara was part of what may be the very first publicity stunts. The studio put out a fictional biography that she was an exotic Arabian actress. Later they made an intentional leak that it was a hoax.