Theodosia Burr Goodman, AKA Theda Bara, AKA “The Vamp”, was the popular star of some of the most virile photodramas of the soul of the Silent Era.

A Cincinnati native born in 1885, she became one of cinema’s earliest sex symbols in the 1920s. Fox Studios marketed Bara as an exotic “bewitcher of men”, the daughter of an Arab sheik and a French woman who grew up under the shadow of the Sphinx. Her filmography attests to how she was presented: The Devil’s Daughter, Sin, The Eternal Sapho, Her Double Life, The Vixen…

The Siren of the Silent Screen didn’t graduate from theatre to cinema until she was in her 30s, but quickly became famous for her “vampire” roles, those of a sexually charged seductress, “draped across a sofa, luring her man with outstretched arms and heaving bosom”. In the pre-Hayes Code era of Hollywood, Bara was famous for her revealing costumes that involved a lot of flowing, diaphanous dresses.

Tired of being typecast as “The Priestess of Sin”, Bara retired from Hollywood in 1926 and lived in seclusion until she passed in 1955. Sadly, the 1937 Fox vault fire destroyed the vast majority of her filmography, including the 1917 film Cleopatra.

Keep your bosoms unheaved and have a peaceful night, everyone!