Motion Picture (Aug 1940-Jan 1941)

[ WE CALL the girls with Oomph or what have you today, "glamorous." In the old days we said they were 'Vamps" and when Dorothy Dalton, Louise Glaum, Betty Blythe and Theda Bara led the sex parade we never thought to speak of them as having Oomph. In 1940 the word "vamp" is obsolete and so we call the girls who bring their admirers into the theatres Glamor Queens — and let it go at that. It would sound funny to say Ann Sheridan is a vamp or that Lana Turner vamped her screen boy friends. Yet these two occupy the place once held by the earlier queens of torrid emotions — the first being Theda Bara, born in Cincinnati as Theodosia Goodman, a nice Jewish girl until William Fox changed her, by a simple twist of the wrist, into an Egyptian ! The first time I saw Theda was in Chicago on a day when the temperature was at fever heat. It was so hot, that poor as I was, I treated myself to a taxi for my appointment, because I was afraid I would drop over from the combination of the thermometer and Theda. La Bara was staying at the Blackstone Hotel and when 1 arrived there I found Ben Hecht of the News, and Mae Tinee, of the Tribune, also waiting to see the mystery lady. Finally, after a proper wait, we were admitted to the Presence. Although it was midday, the room was in darkness with the exception of a single light — and in its ray, believe it or not, sat the Original Sex Queen swathed to her teeth in furs, 22 regally waiting to receive us at the foot of her improvised throne ! Her press agent loudly informed us that Her Egyptian Highness could not get used to our American weather ! Theda held out her hand, and with the air of the approach of slaves kneeling before the Queen, we went through all the necessary motions waiting until we reached the sidewalk to explode. Our roars of laughter could have been heard a mile. So you see Greta Garbo is not the first "mystery woman" concocted to impress reporters — though Greta, of course, never went to the Bara extremes. Later, to the credit of Theda, she took down her back hair and told me how she hated all this silly build-up. She was a perfectly normal woman who loved the theatre, people and having fun, but Fox wouldn't let her appear in public without veils, chalk-white make-up and a weird red mouth. Just to prove that she didn't live on canary bird tongues and caviar, Theda used to feed me corn beef and cabbage behind locked doors in her studio dressing room. I must add that she did ample justice to the meal and so did I. That was before I had to worry about my figure and certainly Theda didn't worry about hers because she was on the plumpish, seductive side — and nobody cared. Theda's masterpiece, A Fool There Was, just about finished her because the world was growing up and Vamps who lived in the shadow of the Sphinx were becoming out of date. Louise Glaum, a little later, was dubbed exotic and eccentric but neither she nor Betty Blythe was forced to go through the rigamarole with which the Fox company surrounded Theda. pvOROTHY DALTON *-J was one of the first of movie vamps to prove that you could have a sense of humor and still be called a movie siren. Dorothv Gloria Swanson was the greatest glamor girl of Yesterday. She may go down in movie history as the greatest of them all Oomph girls of today are called glamorous. Yesterday they were called vamps. Betty Blythe Vamped plenty in Queen of Sheba