Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1920)

5« rhotoplay Magazine "To be good is to be forgotten. Iin going to be so bad I 11 always be remembered. " Like thousands of other young girls, Theda Bara camped in the offices of agents and managers. And Hke thousands of other young girls, she went to the motion picture studio to make a little extra money in the dull season. There, in the studio, like the girl in "Jurgen." the cat jumped over her and she became a vampire. She was discovered. The picture was "A Fool There Was." At a time when most pictures were pretty crude, it wasn't conspicuously bad. And it was conspicuously successful. A few weeks after its release, Thedabaraism was causing considerable havoc among the young and impressionable. According to Miss Bara. it was the original intention of the company to star William Shea, but when the picture was completed it was obviously Miss Bara's picture. Miss Bara was properly excited because she had landed so quickly and so completely in the golden realm of the movies. In those days, she confesses, she felt a httle "set up.'' Consequently she was a bit irritated when she was told that she wasn't to star in her next picture. Instead she was given a part in Nance CNeil's film, "The Kreutzer Sonata." She protested, but. being still a newcomer and having no particular influence, it didn't do her any good. So she played in "The Kreutzer Sonata.' She repeated her iirst success. The company didn't star her. but the exhibitors did. Then the press clippings began to come in. Theda Bara learned a lot of things about herself that she didn't know before. She had been born in Egypt. She had a long line of ancestors. She had played at the Theatre Antoine in Paris. She was "that strange, wild woman," as the side-show barkers say. She worshipped slant-eyed gods. She used to read her clippings at breakfast, over her coffee and sausages. She says she loves sausages. She and her sister would laugh over the 'stories of her life." When the clippings denounced her as a terrible influence on the youth of the country and when the critics waxed vicious, she didn't laugh. She wondered then, as she does now. why people who do not know her could hate her so. When she was offered a contract, she had to make her choice. This was the choice: On one side she might have money and notoriety; she might have all the chances she wanted to act; she might have the position of star and the deference that comes to a celebrity. In return for this she must allow herself to be exploited as the strangest sort of freak. On the other hand, if she gave up the opportunity to take advantage of her first success, she would be obliged to go back into oblivion, to go back to looking for parts, to go back to living on the bounty of her parents. As they say in sub-titles, a soul hung in the balance, Theda Bara took the contract and lived up to it for five years. She stirred up considerable excitement. She started a school of acting. Every company looked for a rival vamp. She got herself thoroughly denounced. At times it seemed as if there would have to be another amendment in the constitution to check vamping. All that time Theda Bara "lived her own life." She went on eating sausages for breakfast, instead of live snakes. She had the option of reading her own press stories before they went out, but she says that sometimes she got around to them too late. "Anyway," she told me, "some of them were so wild that we didn't think they would be printed or that, if they were printed, they wouldn't be believed. But they were printed, all right, and they were believed, too, I suppose. The wildest press stories are the most successful ones. A lot of young exnewspaper men wrote them. I think for a while I kept a whole publicity staff working nights. "And then the interviews. They were staged. It took me hours to get ready for them. I had a special dress made that 1 never wore at other times. I remember one inter\'iew out in Chicago. My dress was black velvet and was made high at the throat. It was a terribly hot day and all the windows were down. When the interview was over, I tore off that dress and my sister and I sat down and laughed about it." LAUGHTER was what made those vamping years fairly pleasant ones. For instance, there was an interview out in Kansas. A young reporter came down to the train to meet Theda Bara and was admitted to her stateroom. "Naturally, I held out my hand, but he refused to shake hands with me — dropped my hand as though it had been a snake. After he had gone I made a little bet with the press agent. 'That reporter,' I said, 'thought I was going to kiss him.' I was right. When the interview came out, the man told how I had put out my hand. 'But I didn't take it,' the story went on. 'Because when I met Anna Hel'd, she kissed me. And if Anna Held kissed me, what would Theda Bara do?' " (Continued on page no)