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48-417: East Lynne is an 1861 English sensation novel by Ellen Wood , writing as Mrs. Henry Wood. A Victorian-era bestseller, it is remembered chiefly for its elaborate and implausible plot centering on infidelity and double identities. There have been numerous stage and film adaptations. The much-quoted line "Gone! And never called me mother!" (variant: "Dead! Dead! And never called me mother!") does not appear in

96-716: A motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Her star is located at 6307 Hollywood Boulevard, and is shown in the film MaXXXine . Bara never appeared in a sound film, lost or otherwise. A 1937 fire at Fox's nitrate film storage vaults in New Jersey destroyed most of that studio's silent films. Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but complete prints of only six still exist: The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), East Lynne (1916), The Unchastened Woman (1925), and two short comedies for Hal Roach . In addition to these,

144-434: A burlesque version of the story. Some argue that the novel champions middle classes over the lower orders; others, however, find this claim "too simplistic" and argue that the novel "highlights the shortfalls inherent to bourgeois masculinity." Sally Mitchell argues that the novel simultaneously upholds and undermines middle-class values. Other critics include the late 19th century English novelist George Gissing , who read

192-485: A few months.) A 2016 book by Joan Craig and Beverly F. Stout chronicles many personal, first-hand accounts of the lives of Bara and her husband Charles Brabin . Bara married British-born American film director Charles Brabin in 1921. They honeymooned at The Pines Hotel in Digby, Nova Scotia, Canada, and later purchased a 400-hectare (990-acre) property down the coast from Digby at Harbourville, Nova Scotia, overlooking

240-475: A few of her films remain in fragments, including Cleopatra (less than a minute of footage), a clip thought to be from The Soul of Buddha , and a few other unidentified clips featured in the documentary Theda Bara et William Fox (2001). Most of the clips can be seen in the documentary The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (2006). As to vamping, critics stated that her portrayal of calculating, cold-hearted women

288-463: A name for such novels appears in the 1861 edition of the Saunders, Otley, & co.'s Literary Budget. Sensation novels were the precursor of pulp fiction , which were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 until around 1955. The Victorian sensation novel has been variously defined as a "novel-with-a-secret" and as the sort of novel that combines "romance and realism " in

336-416: A version of Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet . Although Bara took her craft seriously, she was too successful playing exotic wanton women to develop a more versatile career. The origin of Bara's stage name is disputed. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats says it came from director Frank Powell , who learned Theda had a relative named Baranger, and that Theda was a childhood nickname. In promoting

384-546: A way that "strains both modes to the limit". More recently, Anna Peak has suggested that the Victorians themselves identified a wide range of works as "sensation novels" and that the connecting characteristic is the way such works represent lower-class characters: "one way of thinking of the sensation novel is as a genre that disrupts a middle-class perspective, whereas realist novels (that famously middle-class genre), even when including lower-class characters, deal with them in

432-465: A way that usually does not similarly disrupt a middle-class perspective." Sensation novelists drew on the influences of melodrama , Gothicism , and the Newgate novel to explore themes considered provocative by societal norms and to question the artificiality of identity. In the 1860s, the sensation novels and theatre became closely intertwined; many of the famous sensation novelists wrote as well for

480-612: Is a melodrama starring Ann Harding , Clive Brook , Conrad Nagel and Cecilia Loftus . Only one copy of the film is known to exist. The screenplay was in turn novelised by Arline de Haas. The 1952 film Thai Ullam is a Tamil language adaptation of East Lynne . In the 1970s, a TV dramatisation was broadcast from the City Varieties Theatre in Leeds, with the audience all in Victorian costume and Queen Victoria in

528-452: Is reflected in novels such as The Woman in White and Lady Audley's Secret . Sensation fiction is commonly seen to have emerged as a definable genre in the wake of three novels: Wilkie Collins ' The Woman in White (1860); Mrs. Henry Wood 's East Lynne (1861); and Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Lady Audley's Secret (1862). Perhaps the earliest use of the term "sensation fiction" as

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576-613: The Bay of Fundy , eventually building a summer home they called Baranook. They had no children. Bara resided in a villa-style home in Cincinnati, which served as the "honors villa" at Xavier University. Demolition of the home began in July 2011. In 1936, she appeared on Lux Radio Theatre during a broadcast version of The Thin Man with William Powell and Myrna Loy . She did not appear in

624-504: The Gothic novel , by setting these themes in ordinary, familiar and often domestic settings, thereby undermining the common Victorian-era assumption that sensational events were something foreign and divorced from comfortable middle-class life. W. S. Gilbert satirised these works in his 1871 comic opera A Sensation Novel . For Anthony Trollope , however, the best novels should be "at the same time realistic and sensational...and both in

672-530: The 1917 film Cleopatra , Fox Studio publicists noted that the name was an anagram of Arab death , and her press agents, to enhance her exotic appeal to moviegoers, falsely promoted the young Ohio native as "the daughter of an Arab sheik and a French woman, born in the Sahara ". In 1917, the Goodman family legally changed its surname to Bara. Bara was known for wearing very revealing costumes in her films. It

720-484: The 1930 feature film Ex-Flame (starring Neil Hamilton ) was a modernised version and provided unintentional comedy. Halliwell quoted Variety 's contemporary review of the film as "mush stuff for the women." A film version of East Lynne was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1931. The film was adapted from the novel by Tom Barry and Bradley King and directed by Frank Lloyd . The film

768-699: The East Coast, where the film industry was based, primarily at Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey . She lived with her family in New York City. The rise of Hollywood as the center of the American film industry forced her to move to Los Angeles to film the epic Cleopatra (1917), which became one of her biggest hits. No complete prints of Cleopatra are known to exist today, but numerous photographs of her in costume as Cleopatra have survived. Bara

816-526: The abstract nature of the stories gave the authors room to explore scenarios that wrestled with the social anxieties of the Victorian era . The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety; in Britain, there was an increased use in record keeping and therefore people questioned the meaning and permanence of identity. The social anxiety regarding identity

864-529: The book whilst staying in Rome in March 1898 and wrote in his diary that it was "not at all a bad book, of its sort." Perhaps the most practical assessment came from one who produced the play many times, actor and theater manager Tod Slaughter : "No other play in its time has ever been more maligned, more burlesqued, more ridiculed, or consistently made more money." The town of East Lynne, Missouri took its name from

912-408: The book, including a 1913 film . Another film, starring Theda Bara , was made in 1916 . An Australian film was produced six years later in 1922, directed by actor and exhibitor Charles Hardy. In 1925, another version reached the screen that starred Alma Rubens , Edmund Lowe , Lou Tellegen and Leslie Fenton . Leslie Halliwell cited in the 7th edition of Halliwell's Film Guide that

960-717: The book; both variants come from later stage adaptations. The book was originally serialised in The New Monthly Magazine between January 1860 and September 1861, and it was issued as a three-volume novel on 19 September 1861. Lady Isabel Vane, a beautiful and refined young woman, is distraught when her beloved father dies suddenly. The earldom and all property are bequeathed to a distant relation, leaving Isabel homeless and penniless. With no other options, she marries hard-working lawyer Archibald Carlyle, who buys her former home, called East Lynne. Carlyle's elder sister Cornelia comes to live at East Lynne. She hates

1008-463: The conventions of sensation fiction. The Luminaries includes uses of "suspect wills and forged documents, secret marriages, illegitimacy and opium ". Sarah Waters stated that her third novel Fingersmith ( Virago Press , 2002) is meant as a tribute to the sensational novel genre. Theda Bara Theda Bara ( / ˈ θ iː d ə ˈ b ær ə / THEE -də BARR -ə ; born Theodosia Burr Goodman ; July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955)

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1056-440: The crime mysteries of the sensation novels, however, were less interested in actually catching the criminal and instead focused more on the criminal's identity and how they became a criminal. Typically the sensation novel focused on shocking subject matter including adultery, robbery, disguise, revenge, kidnapping, insanity, bigamy , forgery , seduction and murder. It distinguished itself from other contemporary genres, including

1104-450: The highest degree". When sensation novels burst upon a quiescent England these novels became immediate best sellers, surpassing all previous book sales records. However, highbrow critics writing in academic journals of the day decried the phenomenon and criticized its practitioners (and readers) in the harshest terms; John Ruskin perhaps providing the most thoughtful criticism in his 'Fiction – Fair and Foul'. Some scholars speculate that

1152-730: The marriage and, by taking over the household, makes Isabel's life miserable. Carlyle, a kind man, had previously been friendly with a local lady, Barbara Hare, who had hoped to marry him. Suspicious of the relationship, Isabel leaves her husband and their infant children to elope with aristocratic but poor Captain Francis Levison. However, once abroad with Levison, Isabel realises he has no intention of marrying her even though she has borne their illegitimate child. He deserts her. Isabel's cousin, Lord Mount Severn, visits her in Europe and offers to support her. She learns from him that her husband

1200-683: The name Thorn, Levison had been guilty of the murder of a Mr. Hallijohn. But Richard Hare, the brother of Barbara, had been falsely accused of that murder and goes on the run. When the facts eventually come to light, there is a dramatic trial involving Hallijohn's daughter Afy as a reluctant witness. The pressure of maintaining a façade (wearing blue glasses, adopting a foreign accent) to disguise her identity and being constantly reminded that her husband has moved on physically weakens Isabel. On her deathbed, she tells all to Carlyle, who forgives her. There have been multiple adaptations for stage, radio, films and television. East Lynne has been adapted for

1248-586: The nickname "Lori". In 1890 the family moved to Avondale , a Cincinnati suburb with a substantial Jewish community. Bara attended Walnut Hills High School , graduating in 1903. After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she worked mainly in local theater productions, but did explore other projects. After moving to New York City in 1908, she made her Broadway debut the same year in The Devil . Most of Bara's early films were shot along

1296-504: The notoriety of the genre may have contributed to its popularity. Henry Longueville Mansel from the Quarterly described the sensation novel as "extremely provocative of that sensation in the palate and throat which is a premonitory symptom of nausea". {{Columns-list|colwidth=30em| Neo-Victorian novels, such as Celia Fremlin 's The Hours Before Dawn (1958) and Eleanor Catton 's The Luminaries (2013), have been seen to draw on

1344-686: The novel. Sensation novel Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels , which focused on tales woven around criminal biographies; it also drew on the Gothic , romance , as well as mass market genres. The genre's popularity was conjoined to an expanding book market and growth of a reading public, by-products of the Industrial Revolution . Whereas romance and realism had traditionally been contradictory modes of literature, they were brought together in sensation fiction. The sensation novelists commonly wrote stories that were allegorical and abstract;

1392-480: The path less trodden. The main character, Jennings, inadvertently opens up an inner eye that can see the spiritual world after consuming too much green tea. Sensation novels drew influence as well from the Newgate novels that were popular during the 1830s and 40s; similarly to the sensation novel, Newgate novels created much controversy and debate. Authors of both genres found inspiration in newspaper police reports;

1440-527: The play but instead announced her plans to make a movie comeback, which never materialized. She appeared on radio again in 1939 as a guest on Texaco Star Theatre . In 1949, producer Buddy DeSylva and Columbia Pictures expressed interest in making a movie of Bara's life, to star Betty Hutton , but the project never materialized. On April 7, 1955, after a lengthy stay at California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles, Bara died of stomach cancer. She

1488-569: The royal box. The famous TV host of The Good Old Days , Leonard Sachs , introduced the proceedings. The story was filmed in 1982, in a BBC made-for-television production starring amongst Martin Shaw , Gemma Craven , Lisa Eichhorn , Jane Asher , Annette Crosbie and Tim Woodward . A radio serial was produced in Australia in 1939 with Queenie Ashton (as Lady Isabel) and Ronald Morse (as Francis Levison). A radio adaptation in seven parts

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1536-436: The search for a secret. Moreover, crime scenes at wells or near water are symbolic of the "depth" which is a key element of Gothic fiction . The sensation novel puts a modern spin on the classic Gothic ghost stories by placing the stories in contemporary settings and this produces the effect of creating a terror that is real and believable. Le Fanu's story, " Green Tea ", is exemplary of the sensation novelists desire to explore

1584-399: The sensation novel is described by Laurence Talairach-Vielmas thus: secrecy and the body go hand in hand, and the more sensation novels highlight the elusiveness or artificiality of human identity, the more hair-raising Gothic loci appear as the ultimate place where fragment of truth can be recollected and reunited and story rewritten. A common Gothic influence seen in the sensation novels is

1632-421: The short comedy Madame Mystery (1926), directed by Stan Laurel for Hal Roach ; in this, Bara parodied her vamp image. At the height of her fame, Bara earned $ 4,000 per week (equivalent to $ 70,300 in 2023). Her better-known roles were as the "vamp", although she attempted to avoid typecasting by playing wholesome heroines in films such as Under Two Flags and Her Double Life . She appeared as Juliet in

1680-454: The stage many times; the play was so popular that stock companies performed the play whenever they needed guaranteed revenue. It became so common that theatres stuck with a badly received play would assuage audiences with the hopeful promise, "Next week, East Lynne !", which eventually became a catchphrase in comedies and cartoons, often as a sign outside a theatre. The play was staged so often that critic Sally Mitchell estimates that some version

1728-439: The stage. Dickens , Reade , and Collins all wrote and acted for the theatre, and the stage helped many novelists gain recognition as authors. Peter Brooks defines melodrama as an attempt "to find, to articulate, to demonstrate, to 'prove' the existence of a moral universe which, though put into question, masked by villainy and perversions of judgement, does exist and can be made to assert its presence. The Gothic influence on

1776-409: Was an American silent film and stage actress. Bara was one of the more popular actresses of the silent era and one of cinema's early sex symbols . Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname "The Vamp" (short for vampire , here meaning a seductive woman), later fueling the rising popularity in "vamp" roles based in exoticism and sexual domination. Born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Bara

1824-514: Was born Theodosia Burr Goodman on July 29, 1885, in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was named after the daughter of U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr . Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936), a prosperous Jewish tailor from Poland . Her mother, Pauline Louise Françoise ( née de Coppett; 1861–1957), was born in Switzerland . Bernard and Pauline married in 1882. Theda had two younger siblings: Marque (1888–1954) and Esther (1897–1965), who went by

1872-657: Was honored with her image on a U.S. postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld . The Fort Lee Film Commission dedicated Main Street and Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, as "Theda Bara Way" in May 2006 to honor Bara, who made many of her films at the Fox Studio on Linwood and Main. Over a period of several years, filmmaker and film historian Phillip Dye reconstructed Cleopatra on video. Titled Lost Cleopatra ,

1920-609: Was made for BBC Radio 4 by Michael Bakewell, with Rosemary Leach narrating as Mrs. Wood, first broadcast in 1987. As the more melodramatic aspects of the story became dated, several parodies were performed, including East Lynne in Bugville with Pearl White (1914), Mack Sennet 's East Lynne with Variations (1917) and in 1931 the comedy East Lynne on the Western Front , in which British soldiers in World War I stage

1968-426: Was morally instructive to men. Bara responded by saying "I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin." Additional footage has been found which shows her behind the scenes on a picture. While the hairstyle has led some to theorize that this may be from The Lure of Ambition , this has not been confirmed. Small fragments from Salomé were discovered in 2021 by an intern at Filmoteca Española. In 1994, she

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2016-546: Was not unfaithful. On her way back to England, there is a train accident, and Isabel's baby is killed and Isabel, badly injured, is reported dead. Isabel, in disguise and under a new name, takes the position of governess in the household of her former husband and his new wife (Barbara Hare), allowing her to be close to her children. This situation becomes a source of great misery, however, as the little boy William dies of tuberculosis. Carlyle stands for Parliament, as does Sir Francis Levison, Isabel's seducer. It transpires that under

2064-683: Was popular at that time to promote an actress as mysterious, with an exotic background. The studios promoted Bara with a massive publicity campaign, billing her as the Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor. They claimed she had spent her early years in the Sahara desert under the shadow of the Sphinx , then moved to France to become a stage actress. (In fact, Bara never had been to Egypt, and her time in France amounted to just

2112-605: Was seen by audiences in either England or North America every week for more than 40 years. The "Next week, East Lynne !" catchphrase is mentioned in the 1936 film Libeled Lady in a scene with Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy . The novel was first staged as Edith, or The Earl's Daughter in New York in 1861 and under its own name on 26 January 1863 in Brooklyn; by March of that year, "three competing versions were drawing crowds to New York theaters." The most successful version

2160-455: Was survived by her husband, her mother, and her younger sister, Lori. She was interred as Theda Bara Brabin at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Bara bequeathed $ 100,000 to her sister, $ 8,000 to her husband, and $ 1,000 to her sister-in-law. Bara often is cited as the first sex symbol of the film era. For her contributions to the film industry, Bara received

2208-691: Was the Fox studio's biggest star between 1915 and 1919, but tired of being typecast as a vamp, she allowed her five-year contract with the company to expire. Her final Fox film was The Lure of Ambition (1919). In 1920, she turned briefly to the stage, appearing on Broadway in The Blue Flame . Bara's fame drew large crowds to the theater, but her acting was savaged by critics. Her career suffered without Fox Studios' support, and she did not make another film until The Unchastened Woman (1925) for Chadwick Pictures . She retired after making only one more film,

2256-469: Was the biggest star of Fox Studios , who prompted a fictitious persona for her as an Egyptian-born woman interested in the occult. She made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, most of which were lost in the 1937 Fox vault fire . She left Fox in 1919 and was unable to recapture her previous success. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more films and then retired from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in any sound films . Bara

2304-538: Was written by Clifton W. Tayleur for actress Lucille Western , who was paid $ 350 a night for her performance as Isabel Vane. Western starred in East Lynne for the next 10 years. At least nine adaptations were made in all, not including plays such as The Marriage Bells that "used a different title for the sake of some copyright protection." The work was revived on Broadway in 1926 in a production directed by James Light . There have been many silent film versions of

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