Above: three-sheet poster for The She-Devil (1918).Theda Bara, cinema’s first bona fide sex symbol, was born 130 years ago this week. Barely remembered today, she was once one of the great stars of the silent era (only Chaplin and Pickford were bigger). She made over 40 films, most of them, astonishingly, in the space of five years—between 1915 and 1919—but, thanks to a fire at Fox Studios in 1937, only a handful can be seen today. She never made a talkie, though she lived long into the sound era. But in her heyday she was a media sensation, a Kardashian avant la lettre.Born Theodosia Burr Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 29, 1885, Bara was a New York theater actress who wasn’t discovered by the movies until she was 30. The film that, quite literally, made her name—and that name was “The Vamp”—was A Fool There Was in 1915.Adapted from a...
- 8/1/2015
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand in Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever At Film Threat, Phil Hall comes up with a follow-up to his 2008 article about important lost films. Among the 50 titles on Hall's highly eclectic new list are a version of Carmen (1915) starring Fox vamp Theda Bara; The Life of General Villa (1914), in which Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa plays himself and future filmmaker Raoul Walsh played Villa as a young man; and the Rudolph Valentino vehicle A Sainted Devil (1924). Also, the 1928 version of Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, featuring Ruth Taylor; Jealousy (1929) one of two talkies (the other being The Letter) starring Broadway legend Jeanne Eagels; Lon Chaney's last silent film, Thunder (1929); and Alam Ara (1931), the first Indian talking picture. And more: Heartache (1936), the first Cantonese-language American production; segments from what was to become part III of Sergei [...]...
- 4/20/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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