They named her Arab Death.
Not really. Long after Hollywood imagemakers dreamed up her mellifluous, exotic, vaguely Oriental pseudonym, Theda Bara, and long after she`d become that somewhat scandalous icon, the first silent screen vamp, somebody figured out that the actress`s made-up name also happened to be an anagram for Arab Death.
So Hollywood publicists cashed in on that one, too, after the fact, and pretended they`d known all along. But by then Bara (the subject of a new musical, ”Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi,” now in previews and to get its world premiere Feb. 13 at the Wellington Theatre) had spawned such an avalanche of fiction, apocryphal biography and pure legend that the origins of the hidden anagram in her name hardly mattered.
According to one story, she was a fortunetelling mystic born in the Sahara, the daughter of a French painter and his Egyptian mistress. Another had her as the love child of an Arab sheik and a can-can dancer. She wore special indigo makeup in public to tint her skin, she often posed surrounded by ravens or skulls or other macabre symbols, and she once gave a press conference stroking a living, coiling snake, in a room aromatic with incense. And so, Arab Death, in time, she became as well.
But she was really Theodosia Goodman, a nice Jewish girl and the wholesome daughter of a Cincinnati tailor, who left her home town for New York to become a serious actress on the stage.
Instead, she made it big for a half-dozen years or so as the kittenish, notorious Madonna of her time, titillating World War I America and giving the 20th Century an early look at its centurylong obsession: sex.
She also gave Hollywood and the then-nascent film industry one of its first name celebrities. (For a time, Bara and Mary Pickford were the only film players known by name to the public.) Bara`s vampy, chili-hot looks even helped encourage an early movie effort at self-censorship in the form of the National Board of Review, precursor of the Hays Office and the movie-rating system.
And she did all this through more than 40 silent movies, of which only two survive: ”A Fool There Was” and ”East Lynne.”
He” which left behind the sultry still photograph that is the most enduring image of Bara as star, is lost. And Bara herself, who burst onto the scene in 1914, the creation of mogul William Fox, was washed up as a movie star five years later, the victim of her own exaggerated persona at age 28.
When the boys returned from World War I and Europe, they sneered at Bara`s hokey leers and ludicrously overblown biography, and she was through, except for a disastrous Broadway effort and a few brief satires sending up her earlier screen image that Hal Roach filmed in the `20s.
But Theodosia Goodman survived and did OK. She married well, lived with her husband, movie director Charles Brabin, for many years, and died in the
`50s wealthy and happy, a legend forgotten, but not cowed or ruined or the victim of Tinseltown self-destruction. She died of cancer at 65.
”I am fascinated by her,” says Jeff Hochhauser, who wrote the book for the musical ”Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi” and co-wrote the lyrics with composer Robert L. Johnston. ”Initially, I wondered, why didn`t she go the way of all sex goddesses? They believed in their fame and their images, and when their looks went, they fell apart. But she was happily married and died a natural death. I kept wondering, why her?
”Everyone must have assumed back then that she had this secret life, that she was a sex slut. But the more I learned about her, I realized she was just this nice Jewish girl whom the film industry really did a number on. Men must have pawed at her. Wouldn`t it be interesting to imagine a blind date between her and a Jewish rabbi?”
Hochhauser`s scenario, which covers one week in Bara`s life at the height of her fame, is pure conjecture, what he and partner Johnston describe as a combination fable and borderline musical farce. Their Theda meets up with a fictional romancer. A rabbi, caught in a movie house watching one of her films, covers up his lapse of morals by pretending he`s there doing research for a sermon he has been planning to deliver against the evils of silent movies and actresses like Bara.
Meanwhile, his sister, who knows the real Bara, arranges a blind date. So, in the fanciful setup of the story, on the day that he`s about to give a sermon excoriating the evils of the cinematic Bara, the rabbi meets the real- life Theodosia Goodman. It sounds zany, unlikely and a little nonsensical, but Hochhauser and Johnston, who say it is all that, also believe the story turns on a sweet, appealing, touching human truth.
”The two themes are censorship and being yourself,” says Hochhauser.
”It`s about letting go of what people expect and being instead just who you want to be. Both Theda and Isaac, our rabbi, are living lies. She pretends to be a vamp. He`s just a nice, laid-back guy who goes out to California and gets locked into delivering this diatribe against someone he doesn`t really despise.”
An unlikely combo
There are plenty of elements inspired by Bara`s life and the wacky world of early moviedom. One bit has Bara giving a press conference in a made up, nonsensical, Egyptian-sounding tongue, instantly translated by her manager at her side.
But Hochhauser and Johnston are actually trying to forge an old-fashioned musical comedy hit from their real-life subject.
”We live in the era of musical spectacles,” says Hochhauser. ”There`s not much musical comedy anymore. We wanted to find a musical comedy that contemporary audiences could go for, one that would give this generation the kind of thrills my parents got from `Pajama Game.` ”
They are, in some ways, as unlikely a combo as Theda and her rabbi boyfriend. Both 39, they come from different backgrounds and boast contrasting sensibilities and personalities. Hochhauser is a Jewish New Yorker and Broadway fanatic, who saw his first show at age 10 and has been obsessed with the American musical theater ever since. Eager, talkative, and a walking definition of enthusiasm and energy, he has probably seen every musical ever to open on Broadway and is one of the few people ready with a list of flops that, he says, ought to have made it (”Carrie” and ”70 Girls 70” top his list).
The quiet, soft-spoken, definitively gentile Johnston is Toronto-bred, brought up on the Beatles and pop music, and uninterested in musicals until
”Sweeney Todd” came along in the `70s.
This is their first show together, and already they`re talking about a Broadway opening this spring and Tony Award competition, something that drives the show`s director, Broadway veteran Vivian Matalon (”Morning`s at Seven,” ”The Tap Dance Kid”), a little crazy.
But then, they`ve been working, pretty much nonstop, on ”Theda Bara and the Frontier Rabbi” for nearly 10 years. In the time that they met and teamed up for the project, Johnston has married, fathered a child and gotten divorced.
”I went to New York in the early `80s to study musical theater and composing” at New York University, Johnston says. ”I attended a workshop for composers and lyricists, one that was set up to help them meet and get together, and I saw the first three scenes of `Theda` that Jeff had written. I fell in love with his writing. I`m not Jewish, I knew very little about rabbis and not much about Theda Bara. But I was drawn to his hipness from the beginning.”
Since then, they`ve written and rewritten, often long-distance, over the telephone, with Johnston back in Canada to visit his little girl. Their faith in their project is unwavering and contagious. Says Hochhauser, for example, in championing Johnston`s music, ”The score is eclectic, but contemporary in the way that Jules Styne`s score for `Funny Girl` reflected that story`s time period but stayed in 1964 at the same time.”
Johnston can be more world weary: ”We thought the whole thing would take a couple of years. I`m glad we didn`t know how long it would all really take.”
Top quality talent
But their journey is nearing its end. After years of readings, workshops and rewrites, a demonstration tape caught the fancy of a regional theater outside Albany, N.Y. A production there (”The first act played like a dream, the second act was a mess,” says Johnston) won a rave review in Variety, and that attracted the attention of Dodger Productions, a New York-based producing organization.
Dodger mounted more workshops, one of them glimpsed by Chicago producer Michael Leavitt, whose string of successes here include ”Lend Me a Tenor”
and the recently closed ”Prelude to a Kiss.” He and his new partnership, Fox Theatricals, are mounting ”Theda” here at the Wellington, an unusual move for Leavitt, who is more accustomed to bringing in established, New York-based hits.
In this case, he may be in on the ground floor of a pre-Broadway show. Leavitt hopes that the musical will settle in for a long run here and that the New York follow-up will open and run concurrently.
Meanwhile, the high hopes and involvement of Dodger Productions spelled top quality for the Chicago original, in terms of the names involved on and offstage.
Director Matalon, for one, who has worked with the likes of Jessica Tandy, Anne Baxter, Alec McCowan, Raymond Massey, Lee Remick and Edith Evans, has demonstrated over his career an ability at a variety of styles. For a musical, it`s encouraging that he`s schooled in the standards of serious straight drama (he`s British by birth and upbringing).
Choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett`s credits include the movie
”Footloose,” the Broadway musical ”Chess” and numerous repertory works for serious dance companies, including our own Hubbard Street Dance Company.
Onstage talents include Rachel Sweet, a pop singer who wrote and recorded the hit title song for the movie ”Hairspray,” as Theda, and New-York based Jason Graae as the rabbi. (The 15-member cast is split between New York and Chicago performers.)
Everybody-not surprising for this stage of a musical about to be unveiled-is sunny and upbeat, as blithe and blissful as Hochhauser`s take on Theda Bara`s long and happy later life.
”They`re two of the sweetest people I`ve met in years, and they`re wonderful to work with,” says Matalon of his novice composer-lyricist team. Matalon`s contributions include a determination to prevent the show from spilling over into camp, which he detests.
”I`ve not had as lovely a time for years and years, not since `Morning`s At Seven,”` a big break for Matalon. ”I knew who Theda Bara was, but not much about her. But it`s not a biography, it`s a fable. I once said this is a story about a movie actress who never made a movie and a rabbi who was never in a synagogue. It`s not real, it`s truthful, which is different.”
