cliterature

Today I picked up some reproduction posters for some of my favorite movies, well–two favorite movies and a fascinating actress.  Since then I have been thinking particularly about the actress depicted on the far right.  The movie La Belle Russe is (or, more accurately, was) a early twentieth century melodrama based on a good twin almost having her life destroyed by a bad twin (believe it or not, a common and popular story type at the time).  But the actress Theda Bara is now known more than any of her films, partly because so few of them remain. 

Theda Bara was one of the earliest “vampire women”, shortened to “vamps”.  But to say that Theda Bara is iconic is, to some extent, to miss the point.

 It is true now, and was even more true then, that an actress could employ a sexy persona and profit by it in gaining memorable roles that showcase her beauty and to some extent her talent.  But once an actress has made the choice to vamp it up they are likely to become type cast and excluded from the ‘respectable’ dramatic roles that film buffs covet and preserve.  Theda Bara felt this restriction acutely and made several attempts to escape her dark and sensual persona, writing about her efforts in a 1919 Vanity Fair article entitled, optimistically, “The Ex-Vampire”[pdf].

So what is remembered about Theda Bara is in fact largely a studio created mask.  Even more than more modern vamps like Marilyn Monroe, Theda Bara is remembered mainly through still, costumed images: “a long succession of rags, bones and hanks of hair” (from ‘A Fool There Was’).  Sloe-eyed and silent, and no matter how luminous,  her work was not valued enough that her films were preserved–only 6 of her 43 known films can be viewed in full today and 2 of these are relatively trivial short comedies made at the end of her career.  (The 4 longer works can be viewed here)

And La Belle Russe is not one of the movies that exists today. The poster on the wall represents not so much Theda Bara’s work as an actress, as how thoroughly her efforts were ultimately not appreciated. The famous vamp: a poster for which the movie was lost–a cat’s head blocking the view of a woman’s face–an actress promoted as exotically Arabian but actually a Jew–the vamp’s name that almost obliterates Theodosia Burr Goodman.

Of course, most woman from her age are not remembered at all. So by becoming a sexualised celebrity Theodosia/Theda become a shadow of her real self–yet an enduring one.  So perhaps she is more like a vampire than ever, immortally beautiful but at the sacrifice of the greater part of herself.  (And her entire family immortalised her legacy by changing their name from Goodman to Bara). 

And it must be noted that although, in her career, Theda never did become an ex-vampire–afterwards she did become a respectable married woman.  And it may be that this act ultimately contributed to the slimness of her legacy.  Theda Bara worked as an actress for 12 years, but could certainly have continued, and indeed expressed an interest in doing so.  However her husband did not consider acting an appropriate activity for a married woman and so she she receded into a comfortable retirement.

Theda Bara represents something insidious about taking on the role of the vamp.  She was arguably the most famous actress of her time and certainly Fox Studio’s greatest star, and images of her beauty have become icons of her era.  But in taking on this darkly sexual role Theda Bara became both the most loved, and also the most lost, of all the film femme fatales.  Is it simply that an actress who opens herself to being depicted as both lovely and lustful will be profitably adored but never fully respected even by the industry that creates and cultivates her “vamp” image?  And is this still true today?

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