Salome (Fox Film, 1918; presumed lost) Theda Bara 10" x 8" Original Portrait Studio Custom Photograph b...

Description

Salome (Fox Film, 1918; presumed lost) Theda Bara 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 in Salome by Albert Walter Witzel, signed "Witzel / L.A." in white ink on the recto, and "Theda Bara" in graphite on the verso. Hand-printed at Witzel Studios in Los Angeles. Owing to the inadvertent exposure of Bara's breasts in the initial cuts of the film, objections were made that children should be barred from attending. Salome was subject to restrictions and cuts by censorship boards, though it remained a sensation. "Miss Bara wore an elaborate 'costume ... rich and glittering and scant." 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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