Theda Bara
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia Theda Bara (born Theodosia Burr Goodman, July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955) was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the most popular actresses of the silent era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname The Vamp (short for vampire). Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most are now lost because the 1937 Fox vault fire destroyed most of her films. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more feature films and retired from acting in 1926, having never appeared in a sound film. Bara died of stomach cancer in 1955 at the age of 69.
Born: July 28, 1885
Place of Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Known For
Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films
Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).
Salome
Palestine, under the rule of Rome. Salome, daughter of Herodias and both niece and stepdaughter of King Herod, becomes infatuated with the prophet John the Baptist, who publicly denounces the depravity of the royal family and proclaims the arrival of a new messiah. (Film presumed lost.)
Madame du Barry
After Jeanette becomes the mistress of the ambitious Jean du Barry, he marries her off to one of his cousins so that she has an entre to the royal court. She soon becomes the favorite of the King and Jean du Barry becomes a regular around the court too. But all this is disturbed when Madame du Barry falls for Conte Brissac of the King's Guard. Jean du Barry's attempts to expose her affair only get him banished from the court.
Carmen
A Spanish soldier falls under the spell of a fiery gypsy girl named Carmen. His obsession with her leads to his ruin.
The Woman with the Hungry Eyes
The true story of the life of the movies first femme-fatale, Theda Bara, who made over 40 films, only a handful of which survive. Born in America, her film producers insisted she was an exotic foreigner, born in Egypt. Her most famous film was "Cleopatra" (Fox, 1917).
Madame Mystery
A female secret agent has gotten ahold of a new type of explosive gas. She has to avoid the efforts of two men who are trying to steal it. They succeed in doing so, but the gas turns out to be not quite what they expected.
45 Minutes from Hollywood
A young man visiting Hollywood on family business gets into trouble when he sees a bank robbery in progress, and thinks it is a movie scene.
The Tiger Woman
Theda Bara's vamping is at its most evil here. She plays the Russian Princess Petrovitch, who loves only her pearls. Her husband, the Prince (E.F. Roseman), sells state secrets to a spy to pay her exorbitant bills, and her response is to report him to the secret police. Then she runs off to Monte Carlo with her lover, Count Zerstoff (Emil deVarney), but she poisons him after he racks up a load of gambling losses.
A Fool There Was
John Schuyler, a happily married lawyer, is appointed diplomat and sent to England. Due to an unfortunate accident, his wife and child can not come along with him. On the ship to England, Schuyler meets the notorious Vampire - a relentless gold digger who causes the moral degradation of those she seduces, first fascinating and then draining the very life from her victims.
The Unchastened Woman
When she goes to tell her husband Hubert that she is expecting a child, Caroline Knollys finds him in the arms of another woman. Caroline leaves him and, not telling him of her pregnancy, runs off to Europe where she has her child and becomes the toast of European society. Then she returns to settle with her husband once and for all.
Filmography
as Herself (archive footage)
as Self (archive footage)
as Archival Footage
as Self - From 'A Fool There Was' (archive footage)
as (archive footage) (uncredited)
as Self
as Herself
as Madame Mysterieux
as Caroline Knollys
as Olga Dolan
as Fleurette Sackton / La Belle Russe
as Kathleen Mavourneen
as Princess Zara
as Marie Bernais
as Marie Lohr
as Blanchette Dumond, aka Madame Lefresne
as Lolette
as Lilian Marchard / Poppea
as Salome
as Maria Valverda
as Bava
as Mary Lynde
as Madame du Barry
as Lisza Tapenka
as Cleopatra
as Marguerite Gautier
as Jess
as Vera Herbert
as Princess Petrovitch
as Esmeralda
as Elsie Drummond
as Juliet
as Mary Doone
as Cigarette
as Lady Isabel Carlisle
as Laura Bruffins
as Juliet DeCordova
as Vania Lazar
as Ferdinande Martin
as Francesca Brabaut
as Carmen
as Rosa
as Henriette
as Helen Talboys
as La Gioconda
as Iza
as Celia Friedlander
as The Vampire
as Gang Moll (as Theodosia Goodman)