Birth
Theodosia Burr Goodman was born in the Avondale section of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936), a prosperous Jewish tailor born in Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise de Coppett (1861–1957), was born in Switzerland. Bernard and Pauline married in 1882.
Theda's siblings were a boy, Marque (1888–1954) and a girl, Esther (1897–1965), who also became a film actress as Lori Bara and married Francis W. Getty of London in 1920.
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 Barranger. In promoting the 1917 film "Cleopatra", Fox Studio publicists noted that the name was an anagram of "Arab death", and her press agents claimed inaccurately that she was "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".
Read more about this topic: Theda Bara
Famous quotes containing the word birth:
“Alas! The time is coming when man will no longer give birth to stars. Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, one who can no longer despise himself. Behold! I show you the last man.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Some say that ever ‘gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy tale nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“They do not live in the world,
Are not in time and space.
From birth to death hurled
No word do they have, not one
To plant a foot upon,
Were never in any place.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)