Sold-out Mariemont screening spotlights rare Theda Bara films

The Mariemont Theatre in Cincinnati will host a sold-out tribute to silent-film actress Theda Bara on Saturday, Oct. 24. The event marks a local effort to preserve the work of a star whose filmography was nearly destroyed by disaster.

Bara made 40 films between 1914 and 1919. A 1937 fire at Fox Studios destroyed most of her output. Only three prints survive. Her career effectively ended in 1919, before her 35th birthday, though she returned to the screen in 1925 and 1926 for two additional titles.

Born Theodosia Goodman in Avondale on July 29, 1885, she was the daughter of a Jewish tailor and a Swiss mother. She attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati before moving to New York. Studio publicists later fabricated a backstory, billing her as an Arab princess and calling her name an anagram for 'Arab Death.' Bara described herself simply as 'a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati.'

The program will screen A Fool There Was alongside Theda Bara's Memoirs, an eight-minute film produced and directed by Nadya Ellerhorst. A panel discussion will follow, featuring Ellerhorst, University of Cincinnati associate professor Dr. Jennifer Glaser, and Brian Powers of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. A costume contest will conclude the evening, timed for the week before Halloween.

Those unable to attend in person can watch Theda Bara's Memoirs online. The film has garnered 50,000 YouTube views since May 2025. It includes excerpts from A Fool There Was, East Lynne, The Unchastened Woman, and Cleopatra. The documentary also details a 450-page unpublished biography held in the University of Cincinnati Archives.

Bara married film director Charles Brabin in 1921. Xavier University acquired her former home on Victory Parkway and Ledgewood Drive in 1979. The university demolished the Spanish-style house in 2011. Bara died of abdominal cancer in Los Angeles in 1955 at age 69.