Catalyst: (Greek) Dissolution.

Theda Bara:

The progenitor of the modern gothic image was not Vincent Price, nor Peter Murphy, Anne Rice, nor likely anyone you've heard of. The true progenitor of the gothic image was in fact the very first (silent) movie star, Theda Bara.

Born Theodosia Goodman in 1885 near Cincinnati, the young Jewish woman who would later become the first cinematic sex symbol was a misfit from day one. As a youngster she was so ferocious that her parents kept her in a wooden cage during picnics in their back yard. Throughout highschool, the tall thin and caustic Theda dressed entirely in black, wore a long cape, rarely smiled, and sometimes claimed to be a witch.

In 1905 Theda moved to Greenwich Village, looking to broaden her horizons. Her first three years there were traumatic, and she refused to discuss them in her interviews except that she got mixed up in a series of "weird incomprehensable experiences which are too intimate for the public eye." By the end of this period, she was seriously looking for work in the movies.

It took until 1914 before Theda made her break. Fox Studios, the largest film company when the majority of the industry was still located in Fort Lee New Jersey, hired her as the villainess in a morality play called "A Fool There Was", loosely based on the poem "The Vampire" by Rudyard Kipling.

In this film, Theda played a woman referred to only as The Vampire in the credits; a black widow who seduces, corrupts, and discards married men. Despite repeated warnings and opportunities for redemption the protagonist is led down the trail of decadence and dissolution, and is left a soulless husk at the end as Theda's character gloats. The villainess had won... evil, and an evil woman no less, had triumphed over good. This was quite controversial for 1914, when cinematic renditions of Shakespeare's tragedies often had the endings changed to happy ones!

Fox publicity intentionally blended the actress with the role puffed Theda into a figure far more exotic than she actually was, which grabbed the attention of the reporters for the film gossip rags. Her film name Theda Bara (to which she later changed her name legally) was an anagram for DEATH ARAB; the two things Fox Studios most wanted her to embody— the morbid and the exotic.

The film was beyond successful; nothing had ever happened like it before. People watched the film over and over, and fixated on Theda. In a time when most movie players were uncredited due to contractual obsessions by the studios, Theda was not only named in her film, but turned into a larger-than-life figure. Theda Bara suddenly became as well known as the US President overnight; and despite her fearsome imagery, she received fan mail by the crate every single day for years. Popular songs referred to her, and some were actually written about her.

Because of her suspected Jewish heritage she became a hero to American Jewry, but used as an example of Jewish decadence by Antisemites. Most notably, the word VAMP, denoting a seductress, was specifically coined after her first movie role. Suffragists tried to use her as a figure for women's liberation, but Theda was highly reluctant to be publically associated with any politics— not completely foolish attitude for a popular Jewish figure, as Anti-Jewish sentiment was growing both in the US and Germany.

One of the most notable things about the popularity of Theda Bara was that it was the first time in popular culture when a (mostly) fictional villain was warmly embraced by millions, as a symbol of sexual and creative liberty. This unique characteristic was a turning point in popular culture— when the moral ambiguity of those who violate norms and propriety for the greater good, was acknowledged plainly in American Entertainment Industry and among its fickle audience. Long before the philosophy-dense sixties, Theda was a precursor to the adventurous libertine spirit of the Roaring Twenties; the era of the flappers.

Theda Bara made forty films between 1914 and 1919. The phenomenon had become an industry in and of herself. Virtually all of her subsequent films she played the same kind of femme fatale; people simply couldn't get enough of The Vamp. On the set of one of her films, she met and fell for a stuffy British actor named Charles Brabin and got married. Charles forbade her to work in films following the wedding, and despite a fleeting comeback in 1925 the age of Theda Bara was over. The femme fatale role was passed on to successive larger-than-life actresses, most never realizing who originated it.

Theda Bara spent the latter part of her life in Hollywood California, breeding dogs and living a fairly conventional existence. She died in 1955. Forty years later in 1994, the US Postal Service issued a Theda Bara stamp as a part of a larger commemoration of silent film stars.

Only two out of the forty-two films Theda Bara starred in survive.