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