Skip to main content Skip to Search Box
Listen
Email

Topic Pages contain an overview, definitions, biographies, related topics, images, plus links to relevant articles and other content provided by your library. Topic Page: Bara, Theda, 1885-1955

Definition: Bara from The Macquarie Dictionary
1.

1890--1955, US actor, especially in silent films; gave currency to the term `vamp'.

Image from: Bara, Theda (1885 Cincinnati, OH-1955 Los Angeles, CA) in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930, An
Summary Article: Theda Bara
from Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins

Theodosia Burr Goodman (1885-1955), U.S. stage, movie actress. Goodman was the daughter of Bernard Goodman, a Polish Jew, and Pauline Louise de Coppet, a French immigrant. In 1917, Goodman's parents legally changed their name to Bara, after de Coppet's Swiss father, Francis Bara de Coppet. Goodman thus first came on stage under the name Theodosia de Coppet. Then in 1914 she was cast as the vampire in the movie A Fool There Was (1915), directed by Frank Powell, who renamed her Theda Bara for the part. For publicity purposes, as the first “vamp,” Goodman was said to be the love child of a French artist and his Egyptian mistress, her name a near-reversal of “Arab death.” “The anagrammatic connection between Theda Bara and Arab Death so often evoked in awed tones is today like an archaeological find, proving only that we live in a different culture” [Thomson 2003, p. 50].

"Theda Bara." In Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, by Adrian Room. 5th ed. McFarland, 2010. https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/bara_theda_1885
Theda Bara. (2010). In A. Room, Dictionary of pseudonyms: 13,000 assumed names and their origins. (5th ed.). [Online]. Jefferson: McFarland. Available from: https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/bara_theda_1885 [Accessed 16 June 2019].
"Theda Bara." Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins, Adrian Room, McFarland, 5th edition, 2010. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/bara_theda_1885. Accessed 16 Jun. 2019.
© 2010 McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers

Related Articles

Full text Article Bara, Theda (1885 Cincinnati, OH-1955 Los Angeles, CA)
Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930, An

Born Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a tailor, Theda Bara went on to become a “female fiend incarnate” who heartlessly lured...

Full text Article 1915
The Hutchinson Chronology of World History

Subject: cinema and film The film A Fool There Was, directed by Frank Powell, is released in the USA, starring Theda Bara.

See more from Credo