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The Vamps: Theda Bara, Louise Glaum, Kitty Gordon, Olga Grey, Alice Hollister, and Valeska Suratt
- The University Press of Kentucky
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THE VAMPS Theda Bara, Louise Glaum, Kitty Gordon, Olga Grey, Alice Hollister, and Valeska Suratt The vamp was a character unique to silent films. neither heroine nor villainess . She was a predatory female. whose behavior was so distinctly lacking in eroticism that she was positively asexual. Many actresses might spend time vamping the leading man. but only a handful gained distinction at the art and craft. Their popularity was sustained not through any acting talent. but rather because of the manner of their performance. The vamp. or more accurately vampire, owes her existence to a painting. "The Vampire." by the Victorian artist. Sir Edward Burne-Jones. and to an 1897 verse of the same title by Rudyard Kipling that begins with the words. "A fool there was and he made his prayer...." The best-known exponent of the vamp is THEDA SARA (Cincinnati. Ohio. July 22. 1890-Los Angeles. April 7. 1955). Born Theodosia Goodman and [44.197.191.240] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 16:15 GMT) 390 The Vamps given the name Theda Bara, an anagram of ''Arab Death," by a publicist, she came to the screen in January 1915 in a lurid William Fox production, A Fool There Was, based on the Kipling verse and a 1909 play by Porter Emerson Browne. When Bara uttered the immortal words, "Kiss me, my fooL" contemporary audiences gasped and modern audiences laughed, as well they might. She is not a good actress, and a rediscovery of her films, the majority of which are lost, will not alter her reputation. Her 1919 retirement made sense, and when she returned briefly to the screen for two films in 1925 and 1926 it was to parody herself. In real life, she was apparently both charming and intelligent, a sophisticated wife to director Charles Brabin. George Walsh was her leading man in The Serpent (1916), directed by brother Raoul, and he described her as "a grand person, very, very fine." Fan magazine writer Adele Whitely Fletcher knew her socially: "She was one of the best informed women that I have ever known. She knew who she was. I think she started my interest in food. She would pick me up in her chauffeur-driven car, and we would go to a place in Jersey, where they served beautiful Italian food, then we went out to a place on Long Island, where they did beautiful seafood. Always we'd stop along the road, and the chauffer would take out a silver cocktail shaker and we'd have a martini or maybe one-and-a-half martinis, just enough to whet the appetite." Theda Bara was not the first screen vamp. As early as 1910, the Selig Polyscope had released a one-reel short, The Vampire, the star of which is unknown. ALICE HOLLISTER (Worcester, Massachusetts, September 28, 1886Costa Mesa, California, February 24, 1973) became the first recognized vamp. playing the adventuress Sybill in Kalem's three-reel short. The Vampire. released on October 15, 1913. The highlight of the production is the "Vampire Dance," performed by Bert French and Alice Eis. Hollister also starred in a second film, The Vampire sTrail, a two-reel short, released on August 3, 1914. The greatest of vamps is the least known. and she is OLGA GREY (Budapest, Hungary. 1897-Los Angeles, April 25. 1973). the only major D.W. Griffith-trained vamp, plying her craft in a handful of Fine Arts productions in 1915 and 1916. Despite being born Anushka Zacsek in Hungary, she was always referred to by Dorothy Gish as "That Russian femme fatale." An extra in The Birth ofa Nation (1915). Olga Grey was cast as the Bible's best-known reformed vamp. Mary Magdalene, in Intolerance (1916), following in the footsteps of Alice Hollister who played the same Biblical character in Kalem's 1912 From the Manger to the Cross. Grey entered films without explanation in 1914. and disappeared. equally without reason. in 1919. She was not the only vamp who learned her craft with D.W. Griffith. Equally impressive is Viola Barry (1894-1964). stealing Lillian Gish's husband, Walter Miller, away The Vamps 391 from her in the 1913 American Biograph two-reel short, The Mothering Heart. KITTY GORDON (folkestone, England, April 22, 1878-Brentwood, N.Y., May 26, 1974) starred in some 22 features between 1916 and 1919, and she was expert at the art of vamping without turning her face to the camera. "Miss Gordon's opulent back is alone...