Theda Bara, the Original Vamp, Posing With a Skeleton as Publicity for the Silent Film ‘A Fool There Was’ (1915)

A Fool There Was is an American silent drama film produced by William Fox, directed by Frank Powell, and starring Theda Bara. Released in 1915, the film was long considered controversial for such risqué intertitle cards as “Kiss me, my fool!”

The film is one of the few extant films featuring Theda Bara. It popularized the word vamp (short for vampire), which describes a femme fatale who causes the moral degradation of those she seduces, first fascinating and then exhausting her victims.

In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”