Fort Lee Film Commission presents Cliffhanger 2012 Series with a Tribute to Theda Bara
Theda Bara, an American silent film actress, was one of the most popular of her era, and one of cinema’s earliest sex symbols. A Fool There Was (1914) is the film that made Theda Bara a star, creating the term “vamp” to describe a hypnotically alluring woman and coining the now famous quote– “Kiss me, my fool!” (often misquoted as “Kiss me, you fool”). Theda plays a heedless homewrecker – credited only as “The Vampire” someone who casually destroys the marriage of a successful diplomat who seems powerless to escape her. It was based on a successful stage play, which was based on an 1897 poem by Rudyard Kipling:
A fool there was and he made his prayer
(Even as you or I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair,
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair—
(Even as you or I!)
The poem and the “the Vamp”, originated from an era where there was a growing anxiety about the position of women in society, when questions over whether women had a right to higher education, to vote, to divorce, or even to smoke, were highly controversial. It became a popular term for a sexually predatory woman.
03/08/2012
NYWiFT