Cincinnati crowd braves a ghost: Only three of 40 Theda Bara films survive the 1937 fire

The Mariemont Theatre in Cincinnati is full for a Saturday evening event dedicated to Theda Bara, the silent-film actress who was born in the city's Avondale neighborhood. The sold-out screening marks a rare public look at a figure whose cinematic legacy was reduced to just three surviving prints by a 1937 fire at Fox Studios.

Bara, born Theodosia Goodman on July 29, 1885, at 823 Hutchins Ave., spent her childhood in Cincinnati before moving to New York City to pursue acting. Her film career, which ran from 1914 to 1919, produced 40 movies, including The Stain, A Fool There Was, and Cleopatra. Studio publicists crafted a fictional narrative around her, billing her as an Arab princess and playing on the anagram of her name, but Bara described herself simply as a nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati.

The 1937 fire at Fox Studios destroyed the majority of her work, leaving only three films intact. Her active period in the industry ended in 1919 when she was 34, though she returned for two additional projects in the mid-1920s. Nadya Ellerhorst, producer of The Art Show series on WCET-TV and WPTD-TV, called Bara a truly fascinating Cincinnati figure.

Saturday's program will screen Theda Bara's Memoirs, an eight-minute documentary produced and directed by Ellerhorst, alongside the surviving feature A Fool There Was. The event also features a panel discussion with Dr. Jennifer Glaser, a University of Cincinnati associate professor and Bara historian; Brian Powers, a historian with the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library; and Ellerhorst. A costume contest will also take place during the event.

For those without tickets, Theda Bara's Memoirs is available online. The documentary has garnered 50,000 views on YouTube since May 2025. It includes excerpts from A Fool There Was, East Lynne, The Unchastened Woman, and Cleopatra, and details a 450-page typed biography held in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Book Library.

Bara's physical connection to the city has also shifted over the decades. In 1921, she married film director Charles Brabin. Xavier University acquired her former home at Victory Parkway and Ledgewood Drive in 1979 and used it as the Villa for its Honors College until its demolition in 2011. Bara died of abdominal cancer in Los Angeles in 1955 at age 69.