The story of Salome, her father King Herod, her passion for John the Baptist, his rejection of her which somehow leads her to do a suggestive dance that arouses her stepfather (I think) to grant her whatever she wishes which turns out to be John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter, has long been a fascination of screen and stage authors and actors. Oscar Wilde wrote a version–in French! A number of movies have been fashioned after the biblical tale, including a 1953 version with Rita Hayworth. Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain got in on the act in a very peculiar and interesting quasi-doc made in 2013. Even actresses who didn’t really exist wanted to play Salome–you may remember that Norma Desmond’s comeback vehicle in ‘Sunset Blvd.’ was to be a version of the story. Desmond was too old for the role alas. Also, she murdered her co-writer/lover, putting a rather definitive end to her rather Theda Bara-ish career.

The first American version of  ‘Salome’, was made in 1918 and starred Theda Bara. Alas it’s a lost film. All of Theda Bara’s films were destroyed in a fire at Fox Studios vaults in 1937. Bara, who was still alive, was devastated. Though long forgotten at the time of the fire, Bara was still very much active in staging a comeback and the loss of her life’s work must have been impossible to comprehend. (Hollywood has many ways of disposing of you, but that ones a real pip.) The good news, though, is that somehow two or so minutes of the film–fragments, not complete scenes–turned up a couple of years ago. I’ve posted them above. The only word I can think of to adequately describe Bara’s presence is ‘trippy’. You’ll see what I mean.

Who was Theda Bara? She was one of the movie’s earliest sex symbols known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. It was popular at that time to promote an actress as mysterious, with an exotic background. The studios promoted Bara with a massive publicity campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara desert under the shadow of the Sphinx, then moved to France to become a stage actress. In fact, Bara never had been to Egypt, and her time in France amounted to just a few months. The exotic and deadly princess–her name was an anagram of ‘Arab Death’–was in fact a Jewish girl from the midwest named Theodosia Goodman. Frr the whole skinny on this mysterious woman’s career, cick here for her Wikipedia entry.