Cincinnati honors silent film star whose work nearly vanished in a 1937 fire

Cincinnati will pay tribute to one of its earliest movie stars on Saturday, Oct. 24, with a sold-out program at the Mariemont Theatre dedicated to silent-film actress Theda Bara.

The event centers on the scarcity of Bara’s surviving work. Only three of her films remain today. The rest were destroyed in a 1937 fire at Fox Studios. Bara made 40 films between 1914 and 1919. Her career effectively ended in 1919 before she turned 35, though she returned for two titles in 1925 and 1926.

Born Theodosia Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Avondale, Bara was the daughter of a Jewish tailor and a Swiss mother. She grew up at 823 Hutchins Ave. and attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati before moving to New York. Studio publicists crafted a fictional backstory, billing her as an Arab princess and describing her name as an anagram for "Arab Death." Bara described herself as a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati.

Saturday’s program will screen the eight-minute documentary Theda Bara's Memoirs and the feature film A Fool There Was. Nadya Ellerhorst, producer of The Art Show series on WCET-TV and WPTD-TV, serves as the producer-director of the documentary. A panel discussion will follow the screenings. Dr. Jennifer Glaser, an associate professor and Bara historian at the University of Cincinnati, will join Brian Powers, a historian with the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, and Ellerhorst on stage.

The evening also features a Theda Bara costume contest, timed to the week before Halloween. Those without tickets can view the documentary online. It has accumulated 50,000 views on YouTube since May 2025 and previously aired on Channels 48 and 16. The film includes excerpts from A Fool There Was, East Lynne, The Unchastened Woman, and Cleopatra. It also details a 450-page unpublished biography held in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Book Library.

Xavier University acquired Bara’s former home at Victory Parkway and Ledgewood Drive in 1979. The institution used the Spanish-style house for its Honors College and other purposes before demolishing it in 2011. Bara married film director Charles Brabin in 1921. She died of abdominal cancer in Los Angeles in 1955 at age 69.