Second Section
Hongkong Telegraph
Magazine Feature
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 1941.
HER NAME IS VERONICA LAKE
FERONICA Lake and Theda Bara—
superficially they're as opposite as women can be, and yet Veronica is the 1941 version of the Theda Bara of twenty-five years ago. In 1916, the sultry and tempestuous Theda was the onchantress of the screen, and to-day her role is filled by this slender blonde- haired girl. Both reflect their times, and the evolution from the vamp to the glamour girl is as indicative of this as the change in aeroplanes since the Wright brothers.
A quarter of a century ago, in the days when life was still lived in the grand manner, Theda Bara appeared on the scene. Formality was the keynote, entertaining meant formal calls and eight-course dinners, and the movies, like everything else, were expected to conform to tradition. She was cast in the sombre roles of the stage and opera, "Carmen," "DuBarry," "Camille," and "Salome." Perhaps her greatest suc- cess was in a particularly lurid version of Kipling's "A Fool There Was," in which she enacted a rag, a bone and a bank of hair with a vengeance, and may it be said to her credit that she played her roles with so much vigour and went after her men with such a healthy zest that to-day her fame still stands as one of the greatest vamps of them all.
Tarned the "wickedest woman on the screen," her studio withheld that she was born Theodosin Goodwin of Cincinnati and, playing up her Oriental beauty, let it be known that she was of Arabian descent (her stage name, Bara, being Arab spelt backward). BUT the end of the Great War of
1914-1918 brought in a new era, and although the standards of the early *twenties were still rooted in the pre- ceding decade, changes were taking place, particularly women's position in the social order; With the voting booth and business office the now and ne- cepted background for the female sex, the incense-laden atmosphere of the Bara movies began to have a dated look, and the transition between her arn and that of the flapper was marked by two stars, Nita Nald and Pola. Negri.
Still of the vamp school, both of them were more recognisable as human beings than their predecessor. They rolled, on fewer tiger skins for effects," and although they were essentially exotic and picturesque, they brought the characterisation of real women to their roles.
POLA Negri was the first great foreign ator, and established the
She was
tradition Inter" developed by Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. mysterious and provocative.
But they were transitions; the rent spirit of the twenties, those years that tacked the word "flaming" on to youth and discarded the waltz for the Charleston, was found in the “It** girl, Clara Bow. Post-war depression over and the world going up on a-wave of prosperity, there came Prohibition in America, which ushered in a spirit of rebellion that expressed itself in speed and recklessness. With Elinor Glyn at the back of her, Clara Bow beenme queen of the flappers and the symbol of sex appeal at a time when a woman's charm was measured by her "pep" and "personality." Some of her greatest Successes were "Mantrap," " Kid Boots," and "True to the Navy." THE sobering effect of 1929 and the
early thirties set the stage, for Greta Garbo's entrance. She came to the sereen at a time when the public needed an escape from reality, and her maturity and strange personality were an antidote to a perplexed and depres sion-ridden world.
Garbo's two great contemporaries, Marlene Dietrich and Jean Harlow, were like her in their tremendous personal appeal-Dietrich the woman of the world, and Harlow as American as the city in Missouri where she was. born. The films that brought them their first fame, "The Blue Angel" and "Hell's Angels," are as vivid right now to anyone who saw them as the picture playing around the corner, They established the school of glamour.
At this same time the need for laughter produced another type of sex appeal, this time with capital letters and spelling out Mae West. More the vamp than anything else, she made sex funny, and soon had' thọ whole world schuckling and standing in lind to hear her tell a missionary, "Come up and see me 'some timo!"
TO-DAY with the newspapers full of
speed and planes and youth nude war, there is a new streamlined version: of the femme fatale, Veronica Lake. Her beauty is as clear and cleancut as the wings of a bomber, and she typifies the moment we're living in right now, the present.
She brings the lure of the enchantress up-to-date. Her slender- ness and straight hair make her a symbol of polished steel and whirling propellers, but the expression in her eyes is that of a Garbo or a Bara, the ngeless feminine. She has made only one picture, "I Wanted Wings," but is already the most talked-about actress. in Amorica
SCREEN SIREN
1941 MODEL!