Related
Items
|
 • Buy this item from our featured Merchant - Featured Price: $19.95
 |
Product Reviews:
Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: Wanting more...
Comments: Written in 1996 this is considered the best biography on Theda Bara. Its hard to complain about it...Eve does a fantastic interesting job and she does her research. However its a thin book, especially compared to someone like Mary Pickford or Douglas Fairbanks whos books are maybe twice as big.
What people do not understand about Theda Bara is she was a major star in her day. She was up there with Mary and Doug, Mabel Normand, Chaplin, and later Valentino. Her films did well and she was major major force until times started changing (the Great War) and she grew tired of vamping (in fact a lot of people do not know her final role caused controversy as she tried to play a little Irish girl, and people did not like the Jewish vamp in the role!!). However the FOX fire vault in the late 30s destroyed a great chunk of her films. Of 43 films only 6 survive, and only 3 of those completely!!
I think Eve did the best she could, however I was definitly left wanting more. Its doubtful we will ever get more...however1can dream!! |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: Not the great read...
Comments: This book is a nominal read describing the acting career of Theda Bara, however it doesn't explain Theda herself. I take off2stars for a couple of reasons:
1st, this book reads more like a filmography of her career than a biography. The middle of the book goes into a outline of "Theda did this film...the critics said this...then she did this activity...then she did this film...then she did this activity...and so on." So, while discussions of her filming career and some of her life understandably deserve much detail, there is insufficient description of Theda herself. You know what she did, however you are not placed into her life.
Second, the biography is short around the beginning and end of Theda's life. Understandably, her film career is so much more well documented and interesting, so this is where the bulk of the material will go. however, her 30 year retirement is cut way short, giving little information on what Theda did with the second half of her life.
Third, the book lacks second-hand accounts that would inject zest into the story. What did Theda's friends say about her? What did they do together? There are no personal anecdotes that would give us glimpses into her life and personality.
After reading this, I get the perspective of "Theda was a working girl who did many films, and then lived a quite life afterwards." While she looked glamorous on the screen, she did not consider herself so.
This book is certainly great in many respects. The writing is interesting, so it's no labor to read. Also, the description of the historical times and place is rich in detail. The reader will fully understand the context of the silent film era, its growth, and its cultural influence.
|
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: endorseed.
Comments: Incredibly, Eve Golden's book was the 1st biography of the famed silent film star, and because so few of Bara's films are available today and virtually all of her family and associates are deceased, these were handicaps for her. However, she had access to Bara's scrapbooks and consulted with the likes of silent film experts Kevin Brownlow and the late David Gill to present as accurate a picture of Bara and her career as possible.
Accuracy was a bit of a problem for Golden in her book on Jean Harlow, however because she consulted with people who were experts on Bara and the silent film genre, she has supplied the almost all complete picture of this legendary star available. There are almany photographs, many never published before, from Bara's career. It is also an easy read. 1can read this book in a day.
I highly endorse this book. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Couldn't put it down
Comments: A while ago,I purchased this book after reading some high praise for it on a message board. It went into my to-be-read pile, where it languished for some months while I worked my way down through previous purchases.
Then yesterday evening I started into it. And couldn't stop (except for necessities) till I'd finished it, far later than I'd intended to stay up. It was well-written, illuminated by early film history without a whiff of dustiness, illustrated with a marvelous collection of images, and best of all, took the Theda Bara I'd known only from campy college posters and revealed the delightful, complex woman behind the image.
Highly, highly endorseed, and has spurred me on to purchase Eve Golden's other books, and to hover by my mailbox in keen anticipation of their deli. |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: All hail the Queen of the Vamps!!
Comments: This is a fascinating quick read on1of the earliest real moviestars, the screen's 1st sex symbol, and a honestly legendary star. Ms. Golden writes with a balanced style, neither an unapologetic sycophant nor a hard-to-please critic. She's an admirer of Theda's life, interested in both her acting career and in her life off of the screen, although she isn't afraid to call a spade a spade and discuss a critical turkey that Theda was cast in. However, as lively and informative a read as this may be, it can only go into so much depth about Theda's life and acting career, given what a private person she was and how a lot of details about her early life and her life after retiring from the screen may never be fully known. And, of course, since only a handful of her films survive, none of them representative of her true talents, the discussion about her films can also only go so far and deep. We get plenty of information about the storylines, critical response to them, the filming experiences, Theda's feelings at acting in them (she was quite unhappy at how almost all of her roles were Vamping roles instead of getting more chances to play sympathetic characters), however without having a chance to actually see these films, we can not really have a full valid analysis of them. Reviewers of the time either loved or hated her, and it really does seem like she were a fine screen actor (her stage acting is another matter), however minus the visual evidence, even a great biography such as this1can only go by what people of the time said and what is evident about her talents even in her handful of surviving mediocre vehicles. Unless more of her films are found, like 'Salome,' 'Cleopatra,' or 'Under2Flags,' there is no way1can convincingly prove her full worth as an actor, how many of her films would have held up over time, if time might have given some of them their revenge. however what we do know for certain are the facts reported in this book, that Theodosia greatman was a pampered child from Ohio, an intellectual snob and insatiable bookworm her entire life, interested in mysticism and things many people today would term Goth (although the stories cooked up about her by the press are another story; she was never that much of a mystic!!), devoted to her husband, a talented actor who was trapped in a role she did not entirely feel comfortable in, a stunningly beautiful woman when photographed correctly or seen in motion (all of the photos in the book are wonderful!!). I also liked the information on why almost all of her films were lost; it's well-known that at least 75% of all silents have been lost, however I did not know the specifics as to why many of Theda's in particular were lost apart from the fire at Fox Studios in 1937. Many silents were lost within their own lifetimes, not just by the Thirties and Forties. It's also explained why she went out of vogue; besides the fact that there were new Vamps on the scene, and that the public preferred flapper movies now, Theda's style of acting had majorly gone out of vogue by the mid-Twenties, when the method of acting that was taught and praised in the Teens had long since been replaced by a more natural acting style. |
|
