Theda Bara - The Eternal Sapho

Stills from Cleopatra (J. Gordon Edwards, 1917), Salome (J. Gordon Edwards, 1918) & The Eternal Sapho (Bertram Bracken, 1916).

Theda with husband & British film director Charles Brabin

Theda Bara at 60

Theda Bara & Fritz Leiber, Sr. in Cleopatra (1917)

Theda Bara & Thurston Hall in Cleopatra (1917)

From the Soibelman Syndicate News Agency Collection

To understand those days, you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen....Audiences thought the stars were the way they saw them. Why, women kicked my photographs as they went into the theaters where my pictures were playing, and once on the streets of New York a woman called the police because her child spoke to me.
--Theda Bara