Cincinnati Celebrities: Theda Bara, Vamp

Dear George,

If I’d grown up in the 1920’s, I definitely would have had a crush on Theda Bara. I think I only saw one of her films on late night TV many years ago, but she’s always been an intriguing pop culture icon. She was born Theodosia Burr Goodman in Cincinnati’s West End in 1885. Her father was Bernard Goodman, a prosperous Jewish tailor from Chorsei, Poland, and her mother, Pauline Louise Francoise de Coppet, was Swiss of French descent. Bara grew up in Cincinnati’s Avondale neighborhood, going to see the silent movies after her classes ended at Walnut Hills High School (J’s alma mater). She studied for two years at the University of Cincinnati, then dropped out and moved to New York in 1908 to become an actor.

Bara’s breakthrough movie role was the sultry vampire in A Fool There Was, a 1915 silent film inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The Vampire.” She was paid $150 a week. She got her stage name with this film; publicists claimed it was an anagram for “Arab death.” At the end of the film she leaned over her dead lover’s corpse and said, “Kiss me, my fool!” Her performance generated the nickname “vamp”, i.e., a woman who seduced and ruined honorable, middle-aged men who became slaves crawling at her feet. Theda Bara starred in forty films between 1915 and 1919 as a deadly seductress, movies with titles like Sin, Destruction, The Serpent, and Salome. Her films were considered shocking to the public, but they made her the movies’ original sex idol. She frequently appeared in see-through costumes that were barred by the Hays Code and would still be considered risqué today. Bara said in an interview, “The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman.”

Despite her movies scandalizing the middle classes, Theda Bara’s popularity was unstoppable. The studio billed her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor who had spent her early years in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the sphinx. She received over two hundred letters a day and got over a thousand marriage proposals. Thousands of fans named their babies after her. One criminal defendant claimed he murdered his mother-in-law after watching one of Theda Bara’s films. Her movies ran repeatedly, sometimes playing six times a day. In response to public criticism, Bara defended her role: “The vampire that I play is the vengeance of my sex upon its exploiters. You see, I have the face of a vampire, but the heart of a feministe.”

At the height of her career Theda Bara was one of the most popular movie stars, superseded only by Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. She made $4,000 a week. She relocated from New York to Los Angeles in 1917 to film Cleopatra, one of her greatest hits. However, tired of vamp roles, she let her contract with Fox lapse in 1919. By 1920 Cecil B. DeMille had cleaned up the vamp image for a wider audience, and new stars like Clara Bow and Louise Brooks conveyed a cleaner image of sex and sexuality. Theda Bara married director Charles Brabin in 1921 and, despite his disapproval of a married woman working, starred in two more films in 1925 and 1926. In the 1920s she built a white Spanish villa in Cincinnati on Victory Parkway near Dana Avenue, a duplicate of her Hollywood home. Once the honors villa at Xavier University, it was razed in the 1980s. Theda Bara is famous for having a higher percentage of lost films than any actor on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A 1937 fire at Fox Studio’s storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed nearly their entire collection of silent films, and only six of Bara’s movies remain. Theda Bara died of cancer in L.A. in 1955, and she is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery. We think it ironic that prudish Cincinnati gets credit for conceiving one of America’s most famous and sensuous sex symbols. Go Theda!

Love,

Dave

SOURCES: Cincinnati Enquirer, 2-15-11; Jewish Women Encyclopedia (jwa.org); Wikipedia; Internet Movie Data-Base; www.thedabara.net

G-Mail Comments

-Donna D (2-7): interesting.... donna

Boyhood Dreams

Boating on the Menominee, Pig Island in the background (VAL photo, ca. 1949)

Dear George,

The shores of the Menominee River were lined with second and third growth evergreen and hardwood forests when we were growing up (as they are today). During the summer before seventh grade Jimmy Jorgenson and I rowed across the river to Pig Island and gathered up a batch of dried out tree trunks which we dragged home behind the boat. We cut the logs to a uniform length and strapped them together to make a raft, then fashioned large poles so we could navigate our way down river to Brewery Park and back.

Frank S., Dave L., & Jim J. at Riverside Country Club (1953)

Living in a small town and its rural environs, we frequently suffered from childhood boredom, and Jimmy and I decided we were meant for bigger things. I was reading Huckleberry Finn, and I told him about Huck and Jim’s adventures rafting on the Mississippi. Jimmy figured out from his family’s World Atlas that we could travel by raft all the way from the mouth of the Menominee River around the edge of Green Bay, down the Lake Michigan shore to Chicago, then over to the Illinois River, and from there to the Mississippi and all the way to New Orleans. We talked about that fantastic journey for weeks on end and began dreaming of how we could make it happen. We knew our parents would never permit it, but, like Huck, we were prepared to run away if necessary. However, we’d need a much more substantial raft than our roped-together Pig Island version. Jimmy knew a few things about construction, and he drew up a blueprint for a sturdy 8 x 10’ raft made of cut lumber and oil drums with a sheltered sleeping hut and a sail. He estimated it would cost $150.

We thought and thought some more. I can’t remember who, but one of us came up with a brilliant idea. Once we’d hashed over the details, we went downtown to the offices of the Menominee Herald-Leader. My parents were friends with the newspaper’s editor, Jean Worth, and I felt confident that he would help us. We told the receptionist that we’d come to see Mr. Worth, and, though she raised an eyebrow, she asked us to take a seat.

Five minutes later we were ushered into the editor’s office. Jean Worth was very cordial and asked why we’d come to see him. We told him about our idea of rafting from Menominee to New Orleans, and he seemed impressed with the grandness of that idea. Then we explained our need for money to build our raft and finance our trip. Jean paused for a moment and invited the managing editor to join us since this might be shaping up as a newsworthy story. Then we explained our plan. We’d decided to hold a citywide contest which we hoped the Herald-Leader would sponsor and publicize. It would be a liar’s contest, and the entrant who composed the best lie, as judged by Jimmy and myself, would be awarded a prize of $75. There would, of course, be an entry fee of $5. We felt confident that the contest would generate enough citywide interest that we would be able to pay out the winner’s prize and still make at least $200 in profits to finance our trip.

Jean Worth

Jean Worth thought it over and offered his reactions. First, he told us about the Burlington (Wisc.) Liars’ Club which held an annual event very much like our proposed contest. He went to his files and got out a couple of examples of winning lies from Burlington. We’d never even heard of the Burlington Liars’ Club, but it seemed to prove that we were on the right track. Then he said that the Herald-Leader would be more inclined to sponsor such an event if the proceeds went to a worthy charity rather than to private profit for ourselves. He suggested the St. Joseph-Lloyd Hospital or clothing for poor children. We were taken aback, of course, since that would derail the basic purpose of our plan. In an effort to compromise, we offered to donate at least ten percent of our proceeds to charity. Jean said he’d need to think it over, and he suggested that, in the meantime, we compose a couple of lies that would give him a better sense of what we wanted to do.

Jimmy and I went back to my Uncle Kent’s drugstore, got some paper and pencils, and sat down at the lunch counter to compose our lies. Though I don’t remember the exact content, Jimmy got his done quickly, and it was a short one paragraph story, similar to the Burlington examples that we’d seen. It was clever and funny. I was more obsessive and wrote a page-long story that was filled with preposterous adventures in the deepest heart of Africa.

We took our products back to the Herald-Leader and were once again led into the editor’s office. Jean Worth read over our stories. He said they were very good, though he thought Jimmy’s was more suitable for such a contest, while mine was a little too elaborate. He explained the advantages of conciseness in one’s writing, then asked if he could keep our stories for a while, and said he’d be back in touch.

We didn’t hear anything for several days. Then, at the dinner table one evening, my parents showed me a copy of the Herald-Leader’s editorial page. There, believe it or not, was a detailed account of Jimmy’s and my visit to the newspaper office and our idea about holding a liars’ contest. It was a very warm and flattering account and included the verbatim stories that Jimmy and I had written (our very first publications). The editorial wound up, unfortunately, with an explanation of why the Herald-Leader couldn’t legitimately sponsor our contest, but it did say something like the future of Menominee was in good hands if we were representative of the upcoming generation.

Eventually Jimmy and I forgot about our Mississippi River idea and moved on to more practical ventures. We were excited though about having been featured in the newspaper. I decided that, when I grew up, I’d like to be a newspaper writer, maybe even for the Herald-Leader.

Love,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Vicki L (3-5): Dear David, This has to be your very best story yet. I had no idea, really, that you and your boyhood friends were so incredibly adventurous. As a child, I always viewed you as sort of shy and somewhat inscrutable, busy building forts out of birch tree limbs in the trees off the driveway. Tin pans and twine.

What I didn't know about was your social life and your world with other boy adventurers (except for the Boy Scouts which never seemed particularly thrilling ... perhaps this was because the Girl Scouts mainly ordered hats, pins and rings from catalogues and learned how to properly set a table). The encounters with Jean Worth ring so true as to how life was lived in Menominee. A precious account. Hope all is well on your front. Love, Sis

-Kiera O (3-5): How absolutely wonderful...i think we were the luckiest of all children to grow up where we did.

-Jennifer M (3-3): I love this story. I grew up near the Zumbro river as well as a creek that fed into it. The river was too dangerous near our house to play in or near it, but the creek was the site of homemade rafts (we used empty plastic mild jugs) and imaginary adventures. However, I was a less ambitious child that you were- I never sought funding for a river trip to New Orleans!

Valentine Smoochie Poochies

Mikey, will you be my Valentine?

Dear George,

We’ve had two straight months of lousy weather – cold, snow, ice –and it’s kept us all, including the sheepdogs, cooped up in the house. Mike and Duffy’s younger sister, Sophie, came to visit for a long weekend after Valentine’s Day. Sophie peps everybody up. She’s very perky with her more laidback brothers, and she enjoys Katja’s and my company too. When they were younger the dogs would have occasional skirmishes, nearly always initiated by Duffy, but now they get along almost perfectly. Here are a few views around the house.

Mike (left) and Sophie – sweet friends

Mike looking regal

Mike watches, Duffy sleeps

Duffy wonders if it’s time for something

Of course, it’s treat time – such well behaved dogs

Our wintry weather let up on Saturday, so I took the dogs for an expedition to Mt. Airy Forest. Mt. Airy’s been closed much of the winter while they’ve thinned the deer herd, and they just reopened full-time recently. We took a trail near the Treehouse which runs down the hill to a dried-up creek. Then we got off the trail and took a hike along the creekbed. The occasional pools of water didn’t deter the dogs who were just happy to be out exploring in the cool weather.

Sophie, Duffy, Mike – the pack sets out on the trail

Mike thinks it's a great day to be out

We find the creekbed – Duffy stops, Sophie moves on

Look! Water! (Mike at right, Sophie left)

Duffy says to Sophie, "This is just the best hike!"

Duffy agrees to sit for his portrait

Sophie to Duffy: "Hey, where are you going?"

Oh no, Sophie, what happened to your freshly washed legs?

The end of a sunny afternoon in the forest

Mike and Duffy celebrate their ninth birthday in April, Sophie in November. Wow! That’s gone by quickly. But they still have a lot of puppy sensibility, and we enjoy them more every single day.

Love,

Dave

Hey, It's Family Birthday Week

Vicki on the window seat (circa 1957)

Dear George,

I seem to suffer from some congenital defect that messes up my ability to do the correct thing on anniversaries, Valentine’s Day, family birthdays, etc. Today is Vicki’s birthday, and, while I managed to send off an e-card, that’s admittedly a poor second to a real card in the mail. I love my sister with my whole heart, and I think it’s ridiculous that California and Ohio are so far apart and that we’re such erratic communicators.

The fourth week of February was the biggest birthday week of the year for our family. I don’t think even Christmas rivaled it in emotional intensity. Vicki leads it off today on Feb. 24, celebrating her sixtyish birthday (which one regards as youthful when you’re her ten year older brother). Then our mother Doris’ birthday is tomorrow on Friday, Feb. 25, and our brother Steven’s is Sunday, Feb. 27. As siblings we’d have lengthy discussions of the meaning of this remarkable cluster. Already jealous about Vicki’s special status as the youngest child and only daughter, we three older brothers would pretend to be peeved about her #1 placement in Birthday Week, insisting that that honor should have belonged to our mother. Vicki didn’t even bother to pay attention to her brothers’ teasing, having learned to fend them off at an early age. Steven would be grumpy about being last in the sequence, but then he would change his mind and declare that the preceding birthdays were just preliminaries for the biggest celebration of all. He claimed that there was no family birthday on Feb. 26, just so everybody could recharge their batteries in order to celebrate his grand day on Feb. 27.

Steve’s 8th birthday (1949)

Peter and I were sort of left out. We were born in the summer, he in June, I in July. Though in a minority, we claimed that summer was preferable to mid-winter, given swimming in the river and fires in the outdoor fireplace. Our dad Vic was born in November, a cold and gray time in Menominee. We felt guilty that he had no birthday partners, but he was unflappable. My dad’s opinion was that birthdays were matters for the young, and he discouraged any sort of recognition for himself and Doris, though we would all go to the drugstore and bring home some baubles.

Peter’s 5th birthday (1950)

My 10th birthday (1947)

We children got very excited about our birthdays, primarily about the bevy of gifts. Now that I think about it though, these events had much larger significance for the family as a whole. They provided the ritual occasion for collectively telling individuals they were loved and were so special that they deserved a family celebration centered wholly upon themselves. So I send our birthday wishes to Vicki today and encourage her to enjoy the special place she has occupied in our hearts for all these many years.

LOL,

Dave

G-Mail Comments

-Vicki L (3-5): Hi David, Yet another delayed email. Thank you for this birthday tribute. I, too, always thought it was amazing that Doris, Steven and I had birthdays clustered together. Of course, I was oblivious to how you and Peter may have felt.

Vic was a true Swede - minimizing his own needs for attention - but, I agree, we knew better. I suppose we're nonetheless still challenged (given his modeling) - to enjoy recognition and overt expressions of love. This is still uncomfortable for me, but I must say, I'm learning to enjoy these gestures - including your reaching out to wish me a happy (64th) birthday. You're such an excellent older brother. Love, Vicki

-Kiera O (2-28): What a wonderful remembrance and birthday tribute...again I’m grateful to Terry for keeping me tuned in to David's treasure trove. love, Kiera

-Jennifer M (2-24): This is a very nice birthday message for Vicki. :-)

Krewe du Vieux 2011 [a letter from J]

Dear Mom & Dad, Family, & Friends,

Just got home from a wild night parading in Krewe du Vieux which, for those of you who don't know, is a smallish parade (900 or so people) that goes through the French Quarter and has a focus on sex and politics. It's really the kickoff parade for the whole Carnival season. My Krewe's float portrayed Sarah Palin as a racer in the "Idiot-a-rod" - she was whipping a sleigh dog with the face of Bobby Jindal with an American flag, and every so often he would lift his leg to pee on a figure of the state of Louisiana. Very subtle stuff. Anyway, some of the pics do capture the moment.

Newsweek declared earlier this week that New Orleans is America's #1 dying city whatever that means. But as I see it, the city has died at least a dozen times before and we're already deep into the afterlife. And what a great afterlife it is, at least on nights like tonight. If this is being dead, I say bring it on baby!! 
For those of you not in nola right now, the Mardi Gras season is now officially on. That's why everyone's screaming and in various levels of undress.

Happy Mardi Gras everybody!

J

G-Mail Comments

-Gayle CL 92-21): David......Cooooool;))))))

My First Annual Valentine Letter

Me and my Valentine in NYC

Dear George,

We got several annual Xmas letters this year, and they are always enjoyable. Katja and I consider doing this each time, but we’re such procrastinators. A blog is a good medium though, so I think I will start an annual Valentine’s day letter instead. My short-term memory only seems to stop abruptly after six months. But here’s what I do recall.

By far the biggest family news this past year is that our son and daughter-in-law, J and K, along with their 2-year-old daughter V and K’s dad Ted, completed their trip to China in August to meet and bring back their new 2-year-old son, L. This plan has been in the works for years, and the journey generated great excitement for everybody. We’ve gotten lots of photos, but it was thrilling when the whole family came up from New Orleans to visit us in Cincinnati for Thanksgiving. L is a darling child and has already picked up an impressive command of English. He and V are exactly the same age (two years old in mid-September), and they’re very close and amicable as brother and sister. They delight in saying one another’s name, keep busy doing things together, and are very alert to one another’s whereabouts and states of mind. I’d forgotten how much energy two-year-olds generate; having two at once quadruples the level of excitement. Plus J and K are wonderful parents – loving, sensitive, fun. We are lucky to be grandparents to such a great family.

J & L, K & V, and Ted in China

For our vacation tripping, we went to New York to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary on Aug. 28 with Katja’s sister and brother-in-law, Ami and Bruce. They were gracious and loving hosts, and we couldn’t have wished for a more enjoyable trip. Katja’s friends had given us golden sparkly baseball caps, and we wore them all around the city. Highlights of our stay included the elevated High Line Park; the Whitney, the Met, and MOMA; Fela and Back to Normal on Broadway; Ground Zero and the Brooklyn Promenade; dinner at Jean-Georges; and fun time with Ami, Bruce, and Ami’s close friend Jean. Soon after we got back to Cincinnati we went out for dinner to Brio’s at Newport on the Levee with the Feinbergs and the Johnsons to celebrate multiple events: the Feinbergs’ 45th anniversary, Norris’ seventy-something birthday, and our own milestone. Nobody could believe we’d reached these multi-decade milestones that we associate more with our grandparents than ourselves.

Ami & Katja at the Met

Then we hit a rocky period. In late September Katja climbed up on a wobbly stool to retrieve a book from the top shelf, leaned over too far, and came tumbling down, crashing to the floor. An X-ray at the Emergency Room confirmed that she had broken her humerus near the shoulder. Katja saw her orthopedist the next morning, and he determined that surgery wasn’t the preferred option, but the fracture was bad and recovery would take months. The first month was awful; Katja was in continous pain and heavily medicated. Then she began physical therapy, and she did make steady progress. Now her fractured arm is completely recovered, and she’s been back at work since December. Soon after she got better, though, Katja tripped over some rough pavement in a Panera parking lot and jammed her left shoulder. It’s not nearly as serious, but she’s still dealing with a bunch of pain.

Nothing keeps Katja down

J and V bought us a new flat-screen TV for our fiftieth anniversary, and it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable gift. Our former TV was old and dated, so this new, high-definition version enhances our quality of life on a daily basis. We’ve watched a lot of the NFL (Bengals and Packers, not to mention the Super Bowl), PBS, and, given that Katja and I courted in Atlantic City in our youth, we loved Boardwalk Empire on HBO.

We stayed home for Christmas. Our close friends, the Minkarahs, invited us to a big birthday party for 50 or 60 people at The Precinct – Randa’s 50th and Sam’s 80th (both of them looking young and energetic). Then we joined Eleanor, Sam, and the whole Minkarah clan for Christmas Day dinner. We’re very honored to be ad hoc members of their family, and it made for a happy holiday.

Katja with the Minkarah women (Grace, Randa, Maria, Katja, Eleanor)

The current year looks filled with excitement and change since Katja is giving serious thought to retiring. Our original plan was that I’d retire first, and she would follow the next year. Now two years have gone by, so it’s about time. Katja has worked for her entire life, and she views this step with trepidation. However, I think she’ll totally enjoy it. She’s thinking about Paris; I’m ready to hit the road with the sheepdogs.

Despite a cold and snowy winter, many other things have been going on. Line dancing remains fun, I work out faithfully at the fitness center, I enjoy seeing colleagues at UC where I still have my office, I’m busy with various photography projects, we’ve taken in lots of good Esquire movies with our friend Donna, and our sheepdogs Mike and Duffy keep us filled with good feelings. All in all, life is like a dream (merrily, merrily).

Love,

Dave