Ronald Genini,
Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen Vamp, with a Filmography.
Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publisher 1996
ISBN: 0-7864-0202-4.
158 pp
Uploaded 15 September 1998
Theda Bara, the best known of a large number of screen vamps, was born in the Sahara Desert. “Weaned on serpents’ blood,” she grew into “a crystal-gazing seeress of profoundly occult powers” (9). Her name was an anagram for “Arab Death.”
It’s all nonsense, as Ronald Genini points out in his slim, wonderfully illustrated volume. The lurid stories were publicity, created by the Fox studio to promote the woman Genini claims “was not only the first real star but also the first victim of the star system” (1). Theda Bara was really Theodosia Goodman, a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati who had attended university for two years. When she became a smouldering-eyed screen vamp at approximately twenty-nine, she still lived with her parents. Even her name, it turns out, was derived from family names.
Yet her audience was huge. In 1916, approximately half a million people watched her slink across the screen every day (63); the following year, one million people per day watched her (69). She made thirty-eight films during the years she was under contract to the Fox studio (1915-1919), including A Fool There Was (USA 1915), Cleopatra (USA 1917), and Salome (USA 1918). The earnings from these productions supported the studio (79).
Thus not only is Bara a significant figure herself; she also provokes examination of areas such as the representation of women, the regulation of sexuality, Orientalism, the star system, and publicity practices in early Hollywood. But Genini’s book does not explore these issues. Presenting information culled mainly from clipping files, his work is more that of the passionate dilettante than the informed scholar. (While there are no footnotes or endnotes, there is, in the back of the book, an extensive list of his source articles and clippings.)
Perhaps Genini is held a little in thrall to his subject. While he notes that a star’s private life and screen persona were both subject to publicity, he often seems to accept the articles on Bara’s private life as truth. He doesn’t, for example, question Bara’s claim to have “worked for months with the curator of Egyptology at the Metropolitan Museum in New York” in preparation for Cleopatra (39).
In the arrangement of chapters, there is a real effort to contextualise Theda Bara’s work, as well as the vamp figure. The unglamorous, production-line approach to filmmaking in the teens is captured in his chapter “A Film a Month.” Another, “The Vampire: Desired and Despised,” looks at responses ranging from censorship to satire. Unfortunately, while Genini recognises the importance of Bara’s context, he does not explore its implications.
But critical analysis is not Genini’s strength. When he attempts to relate his findings to a theoretical base, his efforts are clumsy. Thus, although he refers to Richard deCordova’s work on the development of the star system, DeCordova’s insights are cordoned off in a little section, rather than informing the entire book.
The problem is simply that the material raises tantalising questions that are not dealt with. Genini’s own opening question, “Was she a charlatan?”, begs to be answered by a critical inquiry into the construction of star personas. Instead, he unanalytically presents contradictory evidence that, no, the “real” Theodosia Goodman was nothing like her vamp persona; and yes, the persona and the “real” person overlapped.
On one hand, her own attitude to the stories was so detached that she treated them with hilarity. Her private life was quiet and respectable, since she “didn’t have the time” to attend wild parties (89). After marrying director Charles Brabin in 1921, she stayed married, apparently enjoying domesticity. She said she believed her roles, far from spreading evil, were a force for good:
During the rest of my screen career, I am going to continue doing vampires as long as people sin. For I believe that humanity needs the moral lesson and it needs it in repeatedly large doses. (29)
On the other hand, before she appeared on screen, Genini tells us, “Theo was known in theatrical circles as a very ambitious actress adept in femme fatale roles, who dabbled in spiritualism”; she claimed that she entered movies on advice of a spirit. Her own home, apparently, was decorated as befitted a vamp, “with such mysteriously sensual things as tiger-skin rugs, crystal balls and skulls” (59).
Genini points out that “at least half her roles were more sympathetic than vampirish” (29), and photographs show striking contrasts. Bara is a scantily clad vamp; an innocent cradling fluffy chickens in her hands; and a fashionably dressed modern woman. What do these complexities say about star images, or how women were represented? What do they say about the relationships between the virgin and vamp types?
Readers should remain aware that Genini’s oversimplifications sometimes create misleading impressions. However, the book is an entertaining, easy-to-read work that, in spite of its limitations, adds to our knowledge of the underresearched field of silent cinema. Perhaps it will inspire another researcher to build on the work done by Genini, and answer the provocative questions he has raised.
Jeannette Delamoir