Back in the silent movie era, William Fox, from the studio that shared his name, came up with a novel idea...create a movie persona and then find a person to fill it. The woman they found and molded into the modern day vamp was Theda Bara. As seen with this famous studio shot, Bara was pictured as a man eater in both a metaphorical and literal way. Her breakthrough was the 1915 film A Fool There Was. She was the women that men both wanted and feared. In the age of Freud, it's not hard to see her apeal. She played the vamp both on stage and off for five years and then her career ground to a halt with a disastrous go at the theater. Her fault, as with most silent era stars, was that her voice didn't match the mystery her on-screen persona portrayed.