Cincinnati screens Bara's last three films

The Mariemont Theatre in Cincinnati will host a sold-out screening of Theda Bara's work on Saturday, October 24.

Three key facts define the event and the legacy of the actress who was born in Avondale.

Bara made 40 films between 1914 and 1919, including The Stain, A Fool There Was, and Cleopatra. Studio publicists marketed her as an Arab princess, a persona derived from an anagram of her stage name. In reality, she was Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of a Jewish tailor and a Swiss mother, who attended Walnut Hills High School and the University of Cincinnati before moving to New York.

A 1937 fire at Fox Studios destroyed the majority of her filmography. Only three of her films survive today. Her primary acting career ended in 1919, though she returned to the screen in 1925 for The Unchastened Woman and in 1926 for Madame Mystery.

The evening program includes a screening of Theda Bara's Memoirs, an eight-minute film produced and directed by Nadya Ellerhorst, alongside A Fool There Was. A panel discussion will follow, featuring Dr. Jennifer Glaser, Brian Powers, and Ellerhorst. The event also includes a costume contest.

Ellerhorst, the producer of The Art Show series on WCET-TV and WPTD-TV, described Bara as a fascinating local figure. The documentary Theda Bara's Memoirs has drawn 50,000 views on YouTube since May 2025. It includes excerpts from A Fool There Was, East Lynne, The Unchastened Woman, and Cleopatra, and it details a 450-page unpublished biography held in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Book Library.

Bara's former home at Victory Parkway and Ledgewood Drive was acquired by Xavier University in 1979 and demolished in 2011. She died of abdominal cancer in Los Angeles in 1955 at age 69.