Theda Bara

Almost all of her forty films have been lost (only six survive, as well as a handful of fragments, as of 2020), leaving her with perhaps the highest percentage of lost work of anybody with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Pictured on one of ten 29¢ US commemorative postage stamps celebrating stars of the silent screen, issued 27 April 1994. Designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, this set of stamps also honored Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charles Chaplin, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert, Zasu Pitts, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and the Keystone Kops.

She was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6307 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

A movie based on her life was planned in the 1950s, but nothing ever came of it.

Most of her films were unfortunately lost in 1937, in a fire at Fox Studios. Bara had her own personal archive. She did not realize that the nitrate film had disintegrated until the 1940s when she took some reels out to show a child friend, who she hoped would play herself in a film.

She announced, during a 1936 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast, that she was planning to return to films and that she was in the process of finding the right script.

She tried the stage briefly in the 1930s but nothing really set the fires burning.

In 1926 she made her last film, Madame Mystery (1926), and promptly went back into retirement, permanently, at the age of 41.

In 1921 she married director Charles Brabin and retired.

Her screen persona was that of an exotic foreign beauty, the ultimate "vamp", who would go through men like a shark. In reality, she was born in Ohio. Those who knew her claimed that she was a quiet, reserved woman who would be more likely found in a bookstore rather than a Hollywood nightclub. In the early 1920s, she married director Charles Brabin. This marriage lasted until her death, despite allegations that Brabin had cheated on her (by Frederica Sagor Maas).

After seven films in 1919, ending with Lure of Ambition (1919), her contract was terminated by Fox, and her career never recovered.

In 1918 Theda wrote the story and starred as the Priestess in The Soul of Buddha (1918).

The next year would prove to be another busy one, with theater patrons being treated to eight Theda Bara films, all of which would make a great deal of money for Fox Films, and in 1917 Fox headed west to Califoria and took Theda with them.

That year she starred in a mega-hit, Cleopatra (1917).

This was quickly followed by The Rose of Blood (1917).

However, it was her ability to take direction which helped her gain the lead role as the "vampire" in A Fool There Was (1915) later that year, and "The Vamp" was born. It was a well-deserved break, because Theda was almost 30 years old, at a time when younger women were always considered for lead roles. She became the screen's first fabricated star. Publicists sent out press releases that Theda was the daughter of an artist and an Arabian princess, and that "Theda Bara" was an anagram for "Arab Death"--a far cry from her humble Jewish upbringing in Cincinnati.

The public became fascinated with her--how could one resist an actress who allowed herself to be photographed with snakes and skulls? Theda's second film, later that year for the newly formed Fox Studios, was as Celia Friedlander in Kreutzer Sonata (1915).

Theda was hot property now and was to make six more films in 1915, finishing up with Carmen (1915).

After returning to New York in 1914, she began making the rounds of various casting offices in search of work, and was eventually hired to appear in The Stain (1914) as an extra, but she was placed so far in the background that she was not noticed on the screen.

In 1911 she joined a touring company.

In the mid-to-late 1910s, she owned a large Tudor-style home at 649 West Adams Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles. She sold the property to Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and Minta Durfee in 1918. It was eventually also the home of filmmaker couples Raoul Walsh and Miriam Cooper and Joseph M. Schenck and Norma Talmadge.

By 1908 she was in New York in search of roles. That year she appeared in "The Devil", a stage play.

Attended and graduated from Walnut Hills High School (1903).

Theda Bara was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Theodosia Goodman, on July 29, 1885. She was the daughter of a local tailor and his wife. As a teenager Theda was interested in the theatrical arts and once she finished high school, she dyed her blond hair black and went in pursuit of her dream.

Her mother, Pauline DeCoppett (1861-1957), was Jewish and she was born in Switzerland. She outlived her daughter Theda by two years.