Cleopatra (Fox Film, 1917; presumed lost) Theda Bara as "Cleopatra, Queen of Caesars"10" x 8" Original ...

Description

Cleopatra (Fox Film, 1917; presumed lost) Theda Bara as "Cleopatra, Queen of Caesars"10" x 8" Original Portrait Studio Custom Photograph by Albert Witzel. PSA/DNA Type 1. Collection of Steve Sustayta. Vintage gelatin silver matte double-weight 10" x 8" portrait studio custom photograph of Theda Bara as "Cleopatra", "Queen of Caesars", in Cleopatra by Albert Walter Witzel, with "Theda Bara" in graphite and key book album residue on the verso. Hand-printed at Witzel Studios in Los Angeles. The last known prints of the film were destroyed in the Fox vault fire in 1937. The film contains the largest number of costume changes by one performer (50) in a silent film. Cleopatra survives only in a brief fragment, as seen here, in a glittering bra of jewels, a gauzy, draped skirt, and a serpent-crowned headdress, an exotic vision of opulence. Theda Bara - 'Serpent of the Nile' and 'Siren supreme of the screen' - was not the offspring of an Arab sheik and a French woman nor of Egyptian of royal lineage as Fox publicists claimed, but was born Theodosia Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bara was generally typecast by William Fox after A Fool There Was (1915) as "the Vampire," the destructive siren who devoured men in her rapacious frenzy. Modest of person, quiet, studious, and thoughtful off-screen, her fictional character was a seductive lure during her heyday, 1915-1919, commanding the public's constant gaze. Though all but six of her 44 films are now lost, she was the dramatic actress prototype, a direct antecedent of the modern Diva. From the Collection of Steve Sustayta.

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