“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 larger doses.”
-Theda Bara (1917, via goldensilents)
Theda Bara (1918, via silentladies)
On the disparity between the “Devourer of Men’s Souls”/”Hell’s Handmaiden” Vamp persona that was peddled to the public & the shy, bookish woman she really was:
To understand those days, you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen. Nobody had destroyed the great illusion. Now they know it’s all make-believe. It’s the stars themselves who have been failing the fans. People have always been hungry for glamour—they still are. But it takes showmanship and a constant sense of responsibility to hold their interest.
A star musn’t allow her public to see her in slacks. She should dress beautifully at all times—I don’t mean in a bizarre way. She must live their dreams for them and remain a figure of mystery. Glamour is the most essential part of Hollywood.
-Bara in 1951 interview
“To be good is to be forgotten. I’m going to be so bad I’ll always be remembered.”
-Theda Bara, quoted in “The Confessions of Theda Bara”, Photoplay Magazine (1920)
![Theda Bara in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was (1915, dir. Frank Powell) (via)
“I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience.
Here is a letter I received during the past few months:
You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous.
Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested.
People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.”
-Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx92rr3a461qzdvhio1_r2_500.jpg)
Theda Bara in a publicity shot for A Fool There Was (1915, dir. Frank Powell) (via)
“I was held up as one who delighted in the lure of destruction and evil-doing…hardly a day passes that the postman does not bring me letters written along similar lines. Many of them attack me most unmercifully. Some intimate that no woman could portray [femme fatales] without having had the actual experience.
Here is a letter I received during the past few months:
You are a menace to the human race. Man is a mere toy in your hands or those of women like you. Your type inevitably leads to ruin and destruction. Those glittering eyes are like those of the serpent, except they are more dangerous.
Such letters hurt. It is impossible to accustom myself to them. Why do people hate me so? I try to show the world how attractive sin can be, how very beautiful, so that one must be always on the lookout and know evil even in disguise. I am a moral teacher then. But what is my reward? I am detested.
People seem to forget that I am only an actress; that an actress should never show her real self to an audience, else she ceases to be an actress.”
-Bara, quoted in The Pittsburgh Press (April 1916)
