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Theda Bara (born Theodosia Goodman, but she was given the much more exotic stage name of Theda Bara, which is an anagram of "Arab Death") was the leading sex star in the mid 1910s. Unfortunately, her "fall" was as quick as her "rise", and by the early 1920s, her career was pretty much over (although old friend Hal Roach gave her some parts in his comedies in the early 1920s). But in her time, she was as great a sex symbol as there ever was! Some of her film roles include: Cleopatra, A Fool There Was, and Salome. She died in 1955 at age 69.

Artist: Alfred Cheney Johnston (photo)

Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly.

Note that William Fox (later Fox Films, and beginning in 1935, as 20th Century-Fox) owned one of the leading Hollywood studios in the 1910s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood for the next several decades (although they ran into big trouble in 1929, when they went bankrupt after trying to buy MGM, which is a very long story!). Through the decades, they had a great lineup of stars, and they created many sets of personality posters to promote them (we know of ones from the 1910s and the 1920s, and also ones from the 1940s, but we are not sure if they made more than a few in the 1930s, perhaps related to their financial troubles at that time). You can tell their different sets in two ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout, although oddly, their personality posters from the 1940s usually have no printing on them, just stars' images and names, which is completely different from how almost every other studio created theirs. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that some of the later Fox personality posters from the 1940s are NOT printed on high quality paper stock like that used for their earlier ones. All of these posters do not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!

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