The Pleasures of Cinema & Music & Art

06/05/2025

"In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star." Bette Davis

Ma###ine (Ti West 2024)

06/05/2025

Theda Bara in a promotional photo for the 1915 film "A Fool There Was"

A FOOL THERE WAS, based on a play by Porter Emerson Browne, which in turn was based on Rudyard Kipling's poem THE VAMPIRE, launched Bara’s career. Her role was not that of a supernatural vampire, but a lustful and ruinous “vamp.”

Theda was born Theodosia Goodman in the Avondale section of Cincinnati, Ohio, but her publicity agents concocted an elaborate story that claimed she was born in the shadows of the pyramids in Egypt and had an illustrious career as a stage actress in France in the gory Grand Guignol and Antoine theaters of Paris.

Bara’s nicknames included "the Satanic Temptress," "Hades' Handmaiden," "Purgatory's Ivory Angel," "The Devil's Daughter," "Satan's Soulmate," "The Satanic Sorceress of the Shadow Stage," and more. After the fact, Fox publicists realized her stage name, Theda Bara, could also be said to be an anagram for ARAB DEATH. Almost 90% of her films are lost.

There is an excellent interview with Theda Bara biographer Joan Craig here: https://www.cvltnation.com/theda_bara/

05/23/2025

RIP Sebastião Salgado 💔

03/11/2025

Anora (Sean Baker 2024)

01/30/2025

Marianne Faithfull in Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger 1972) 💙

Marianne Faithfull in Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger 1972)

01/30/2025

RIP Marianne 🌹💔

01/17/2025

RIP Joan Plowright 🌹
Drowning by Numbers (Peter Greenaway, 1988)

01/17/2025

🖤

Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

01/17/2025

Thanks You Mr. Lynch 💔

08/22/2024

released: August 21st, 1981
An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)

08/18/2024

Monica & Alain 🖤🖤