Legend: Theda Bara

Theda Bara: Featured Legend for Red Hots Burlesque

Happy birthday to one of our favorite inspirations. (Lay-Si Luna of www.burlesqueandwhy.com totally reminds us of her!) This week’s legend of the week at Red Hots Burlesque is…

THEDA BARA
b. July 29, 1885

Though she never made an appearance on a burlesque stage, silent film actress Theda Bara danced and teased on the silver screen. Famous as her image as “The Vamp,” Theda Bara began her career in the early ’10s, emerging from mysterious beginnings. Hollywood rumor had it that she was the Egyptian-born daughter of an Italian sculptor and a French actress, while it was much more true that she was the daughter of middle-class Jewish immigrants. Before her notorious rise to fame, Theda Bara worked under another name on the Yiddish theater circuit. In fact, she was over 30 when she starred as some of her most risque characters: in 1915, she heated up the screen dancing and seducing as Carmen, and in 1918, she danced the “Dance of the Seven Veils” in “Salome.” Her risque pre-Production costumes in “Cleopatra” teased at full nakedness. She became known as one of Hollywood’s first sex symbols, and her career faded in the ’20s when she attempted to separate herself from her bad girl image. Between 1915 and 1918 Theda Bara had starred in 33 silent films (she actually never spoke on screen in any of her movies). Most of her work was destroyed in a Hollywood studio fire in 1937. She has been often tributed by modern burlesque performers.