For five years, Avondale native Theda Bara was one of the nation's biggest silent screen stars.
She was the original screen “vamp,” a seductive woman who was dangerous to men. Studio publicists promoted her as an Arab princess, raised in the shadow of the Sphinx, whose name was an anagram for “Arab Death.”
Actually, she was “a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati” – her description – who was born Theodosia Goodman to a Jewish tailor and Swiss mother at 823 Hutchins Ave., Avondale, on July 29, 1885.
After graduating from Walnut Hills High School, she spent two years at the University of Cincinnati before moving to New York City to become an actress. She was was one of the biggest stars on the silent silver screen, making 40 films between 1914 and 1919.
“She’s truly a fascinating Cincinnati figure,” says Nadya Ellerhorst, producer of The Art Show series on public television stations WCET-TV and WPTD-TV and producer-director of Theda Bara’s Memoirs, an eight-minute film about the actress.
Her films included The Stain (in 1914 at age 29); A Fool There Was, The Devil’s Daughter, Sin, Siren of Hell (1915); The Serpent, East Lynne, Romeo and Juliet, The Vixen, (1916); Cleopatra (1917); The Forbidden Path, When A Woman Sins, The She Devil (1918); When Men Desire, The Siren’s Song and Lure of Ambition (1919).
Bara’s career and legacy will be celebrated at a sold-out evening at the Mariemont Theatre Saturday, Oct. 24. A Fool There Was and Theda Bara’s Memoirs will be screened, followed by a panel discussion with Dr. Jennifer Glaser, a University of Cincinnati associate professor and Bara historian; Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library historian Brian Powers; and Ellerhorst. There’s also a Theda Bara costume contest since Halloween is only a week away.
Because the event is sold out, you can see Theda Bara’s Memoirs below. It has had 50,000 views on YouTube since May 2025, after it aired on Channels 48 and 16. Excerpts of A Fool There Was, East Lynne, The Unchastened Woman and Cleopatra appear in the documentary, which also details her 450-page typed unpublished biography in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Book Library.
Only three of Bara’s films still exist. The others were destroyed in a Fox Studios fire in 1937. Her movie career essentially ended in 1919, before she turned 35. Bara returned to the screen five years later with two films, The Unchastened Woman (1925) and Madame Mystery (1926).
Bara married movie director Charles Brabin in 1921. Xavier University has long said that Bara’s former home, at Victory Parkway and Ledgewood Drive, was acquired by XU from a different owner in 1979, and used as the “Villa” for the Honors College and other purposes. The Spanish-style home was demolished in 2011 by the university.
Bara died of abdominal cancer in 1955, at age 69, in Los Angeles.
