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In the 1930's William Fox created his own star: Theda
Bara. Fox constructed a ready-made
persona and later hired an
actress to be the part. While actually the demure daughter of a
tailor from Cincinnati née Theodosia Goodman, she
was
remodelled by the Fox publicity department into the image of a
sex siren. Her star status held that she was the child of a
sheik and princess born in Egypt and weaned on serpant's blood;
she was to have been given in mystic marriage to the Sphinx,
fought over by nomadic tribesmen, to be clairvoyant, and
insatiably lustful. Audiences widely held the name. Theda Bara,
to be an anagram of the evocative words 'death' and 'arab'.
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