Orval Hixon · Public domain

Born Theodosia Burr Goodman to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Theda Bara became one of silent cinema's first manufactured stars: Fox built her into "the Vamp," a fictional Egyptian-born seductress, and sold it so completely that audiences believed it. She made 43 films between 1914 and 1926, most of them lost in a 1937 studio vault fire, and never adapted to sound before retiring after her 1921 marriage.