In truth, his name was Jacob Krantz, the son of a kosher butcher, born and raised in the mean streets of New York’s Lower East Side.

Cortez worked as a runner on Wall Street while training to be an actor at night.  Soon his good looks afforded him an opportunity to break into the young but flourishing movie business. Paramount groomed the tall and handsome Cortez by giving him bit parts, and then moving him up to more substantial roles.

One of the more interesting glimpses into Cortez’s career and character comes from a 1965 interview Cortez granted to silent film historian Kevin Brownlow, published in The Parade’s Gone By. Brownlow was seeking information regarding director D.W. Griffith. Cortez had starred in Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926).

Said Cortez:

I recall vividly making the The Sorrows of Satan. He [Griffith] took an awfully long time. I went to California for eight weeks and made Eagle of the Sea while he kept going with Lya de Putti, Adolph Menjou, and Carol Dempster.

Griffith was a strange sort of man—very quiet. There seemed to be an invisible barrier around him. You couldn’t get near him. I was under the impression that he was a very lonely man—although I got to know him quite well. I felt terribly sorry for him and would visit him at his hotel—the Astor.

He would go out for a walk, and end up at the Pennsylvania railroad station, where he’d sit on a bench and just watch people.

During the making of the picture, I was playing in one of the attic scenes. We’d been working for six weeks, not getting very far, and for just thirty seconds I lost my temper.

He had said, “If you knew anything about acting you wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know a thing about acting,” I snapped, “which was why I wanted to be directed by you.”

Cortez was a leading star for a brief period during the silent era. His dashing good looks and Latin lover image catapulted him into competition with other Latin lovers of the era such as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Navarro and Antonio Moreno.

In fact, Cortez was chosen to star opposite a new foreign actress studio chief L.B. Mayer brought to MGM and was grooming for stardom—Greta Garbo.

The Torrent, Garbo’s first American film, is the only film where Garbo takes second billing, under Ricardo Cortez.

At the time, Cortez, 26, had been working non-stop in the movies for over four years. His stardom was such that he was considered a threat to Valentino. Cortez resented new comer Garbo from the beginning. He was deeply annoyed at being made to work with a “chubby, dumb Swede” who barely spoke a word of English.

Ricardo Cortez and Greta Garbo in The Torrent. Cortez treated her with disdain
and she almost sailed back to Sweden in despair.

The Torrent was a hit and Garbo clicked with the public—big time. Garbo never again took second billing, and as we all know, she went on to become one of the most popular actresses in the world. Soon, Garbo had the clout to choose her own leading men, and Cortez never appeared in a Garbo film.

Cortez should have heeded the first rule I learned when I came to Hollywood as a wide-eyed screenwriter. My agent took me to lunch and advised: “Be nice to everyone in the business, because the kid answering the phones will be running a studio in a few years.”

Cortez was married in 1926 to the deeply troubled actress Alma Rubens. For a brief period, 1910-1920, the lovely, doe-eyed Rubens was one of the biggest stars of the silent cinema, but like so many early stars who came from broken homes and impoverished backgrounds, Alma had a self-destructive streak a mile wide. She succumbed to drugs—cocaine and heroin—and her marriage to Cortez was a nightmare unfolding in slow motion.

In my Big Hollywood profile of Alma Rubens, I quoted from Ruben’s lurid but historically important 1930 confessional This Bright World Again, serialized in newspapers and tabloids, in which the bitter actress outed her estranged husband:

Many persons who have followed my career on the screen and stage mistake me for a Jewess. This belief perhaps was strengthened when I married Ricardo Cortez, my third husband, the only one I ever really loved, and whom I am now trying to divorce.

Although I didn’t find it out until almost a year after our marriage, Ric, instead of being a gallant Spanish caballero which I believed him, was the son of a kosher butcher, with a shop on First Avenue, New York City. His real name is Jacob Krantz.

Alma Rubens. Her marriage to Cortez lasted a short time.
Rubens was a drug addict given to erratic and violent behavior.
She died in 1931 at age 33, a casualty of narcotics and fast-living.

Obviously, Rubens (her father was probably Jewish) was attempting to damage Cortez’s career. But by this time, sound had arrived and Cortez, with his unmistakable New York accent, had been carefully shifted by the studios from Latin lover—the public didn’t buy that story for long, anyway—into urban leading man roles. And the anti-Semitism that Ruben’s felt sure would hurt her husband’s Hollywood career never materialized.

America is far more tolerant country than many would have us believe.

Cortez’s portrayal of detective Sam Spade in the original Maltese Falcon (1931) is an absolute stunner. Cortez is more dangerous and sensual than the lip-curling and deeply mannered Bogart. There’s a great moment when Cortez suspects leading lady Bebe Daniels of stealing money and hiding it under her clothing. Casually, with an amused but sharp-as-dagger delivery, he orders Daniels to strip naked. The delight he takes in the bad girl’s oh-so-shocked expression is just priceless. He’s playing a game with her, but she knows it’s a game with deadly consequences. It’s a beautifully modulated performance—one minute silken, the next steel—and Cortez is in charge of every inch of the frame.

Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels, The Maltese Falcon, 1931.

On TCM a few months ago—G-d bless Robert Osborne—I was lucky to catch a little known Cortez film, Symphony of Six Million, AKA Melody of Life, (1932). Cortez plays a brilliant Jewish surgeon—is there any other kind—from the Lower East Side, who, in his drive to build a “Park Avenue practice” abandons his family and his Jewish roots.

Irene Dunne co-stars as Jessica, a love interest from the old neighborhood who—get this—walks with a limp and teaches blind children braille.

Sheesh, talk about stacking the deck against the beautiful and haughty WASP babe with whom Cortez takes up.

Anyhoo: Irene Dunne, with her lilting Kentucky accent, doesn’t even try affecting a Noo Yoik accent. She was too smart an actress. But Dunne, doing Jewish, sorta, well, it’s priceless.

Keep in mind that Hollywood, for the most part, did not make movies about Jews. Okay, there was The Jazz Singer, (1927) but really Jolson transcended ethnic boundaries. He was an entertainer—in black face.

Ricardo Cortez and Irene Dunne, Symphony of Six Million, 1932.
The title refers to the six million people in New York City, not to the
Holocaust, which had not yet taken place.

The studio heads, all Jewish, generally shunned movies with authentic Jewish themes, especially after The Motion Picture Code went into effect. The moguls were deeply self-conscious about their humble Jewish roots and wanted, more than anything, to be full fledged Americans. For most Hollywood Jews—and for a vast number of American Jews—this meant shedding their Jewish identity, especially the religious Orthodoxy of their parents.

Which makes Symphony of Six Million so unusual. It’s the only Hollywood film I have ever seen where a Pidyon Ha-Ben, the Redemption of the First Born ceremony, is enacted. Although some of the Jewish characters are cringe inducing stereotypes, so were all ethnic groups portrayed in movies in those days. But what’s lovely and unique here is that the Jewish characters are depicted lovingly as decent, hard-working people struggling upwards in the Goldenah Medinah, the Golden Country. The film comes down squarely on the side of old-fashioned values, where ritual, tradition and loyalty to family and friends take precedence over the blind stampede to assimilation.

Cortez appeared in over 100 films starring opposite Hollywood’s leading players: May McAvoy, Louise Dresser, Adolphe Menjou, Betty Bronson, Lois Wilson, Lon Chaney, Bebe Daniels, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck, Mae Clarke, Mary Astor, Helen Twelvetrees, Joan Crawford, Loretta Young, Carole Lombard, and Bette Davis.

As he aged, Cortez was downgraded from leading man to character actor. His last appearance was in a 1960 episode of Bonanza, El Toro Grande, where Jacob Krantz AKA Ricardo Cortez played—you guessed it—a Mexican, Don Xavier Losaro.

In the mid-thirties, Cortez realized that good roles were getting harder to secure, and so he tried his hand at directing. He helmed seven B movies between 1939 and 1940, but was dissatisfied with the work.

Cortez retired from the film business before he was relegated to a has-been status—smart move—and returned to Wall Street where he built a successful career.

His many fine performances and long list of credits should afford Cortez a prominent place in the pantheon of great Hollywood actors. But I’m afraid that our celluloid memories are tragically short and Ricardo Cortez is all but forgotten.

Ricardo’s younger brother was cinematographer Stanley Cortez, (1908 – 1997) whose best credits include The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and The Three Faces of Eve (1957).

Near the end of his career, a Hollywood committee approached Stanley Cortez proposing to honor him as a prominent Hispanic American in the film industry. With some amusement, Cortez explained that he was Stanislaus Krantz, a Jew who felt it would be easier to move upwards in American society—as a Hispanic.

Both brothers are buried in Jewish cemeteries.

Poster for The Torrent starring Ricardo Cortez and
Greta Garbo. The only film where Greta Garbo gets
second billing.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

She was the hottest sex symbol to hit the motion picture screen since, well, since the flickers started flickering. Bara was, the Vamp, the sexually insatiable woman, the lethal seductress who sucks the life out of a man, then abandons him, leaving only chaos and destruction in her wake.

This was, of course, a carefully created image.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917, a lost film.

Theda Bara was, in fact, Theodosia Burr Goodman, (1885-1955) a Jewish woman from Cincinnati who led a quiet and scandal free private life. In fact, she was a bookworm who liked nothing better than to curl up with a cup of tea and devour volume after volume of poetry and art history. She did not drink alcohol, go to night clubs, take drugs, or indulge in wild sexual escapades. She worked hard in the flourishing motion picture industry, saved money, stayed married to one man, director Charles Brabin, and wisely invested her considerable earnings.

A world-weary, hardened show-biz trooper who failed all efforts at a legitimate stage career, Theda got a break in pictures and patiently cooperated with the outlandish publicity which claimed she was born in the shadow of the Egyptian pyramids, the pampered child of a beautiful French actress and an Italian sculptor.

Fox studio publicity men Al Selig and John Goldfrap—flamboyant geniuses who invented the playbook on celebrity publicity—further embellished this nutty tale as they coached Theda to speak to the press with a heavy French accent.

Theda Bara was labeled: The Wickedest Woman in the World.

Draped in velvet cloaks in an overheated hotel room—the press was told that she was accustomed to the desert climate of her native Egypt—Theda dramatically announced to the assembled reporters:

“Raised in a huge tent not far from the Sphinx, the oasis, our little home for years, was to us like the Garden of Eden. My mother taught me the languages, expression, and the art of pantomime. On the other hand, my father taught me how to paint, and the beauty and combination of colors. And through the instruction of both I learned the symphony of the soul.”

At the height of Theda’s career, while filming “The Forbidden Path,” and during World War I, Theda received a telegram that she lovingly preserved in one of her huge, crumbling scrapbooks:

Feb.11, 1918: 158th Infantry Regiment selected you for its Godmother by unanimous vote today. This regiment composed of Arizona men all sincere admirers of yourself. Mary Pickford has adopted 143rd Artillery Regiment here. Will be greatly disappointed if you turn us down. Please wire your acceptance at once.

Theda Bara’s brother Marque, was stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in the Signal Corps. In 1917 Theda was asked to sign the American flag carried by a company of volunteers from York, Pennsylvania. Graciously, Theda autographed the stars and stripes. In gratitude the regiment sent her an ebony communion cup—unaware that she was Jewish.

This request from the 158th was profoundly touching to the patriotic movie star. She adopted the troops as her boys and finally got to meet the entire regiment in June 1918. She broke down and wept as she spoke to the star-struck soldiers.

“My heart is too full—words can’t come. This has been the most glorious day of my whole life.”

The soldiers responded by rewriting their marching song, doing their maneuvers to: “Vamp, Vamp, Vamp. The Boys are Marching!”

Theda, along with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were the most effective war bond salespeople in the United States. In 1917, on the steps of the New York Public Library, Theda sold $70,000 in bonds a single afternoon. She returned in November and sold another $300,000 worth of bonds during several rallies.

In times past, Hollywood actors and executives were deeply patriotic. As Jack Warner explained to Louella Parsons in 1941:

“My brothers and I are examples of what this country does for its citizens. There were no silver spoons in our mouths when we were born. If anything, there were shovels. But we were free to climb as high as our energy and brains could take us.”

As a first generation American—her father, a Polish born tailor, and her mother from Switzerland—Theda Bara most obviously loved America, and like all first generation American Jews, was grateful for the golden opportunities this land offered. This great movie star went out of her way to support her country and the brave troops who sacrificed so much on the bloody western front.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra.

In 1918-19 a flu epidemic swept across the United States. The motion picture business was hard hit. All across the country, film and stage shows closed, people wore cotton masks in the street. In October, one hundred and ninety-six thousand people died of influenza in America. World-wide, forty-million people lost their lives, far more casualties than combat deaths in the Great War.

Theda Bara, the vamp who made love to men and then cruelly destroyed them, in an act of incredible bravery and compassion, visited veteran’s hospitals while the flu was still raging.

She refused to wear a face mask, insisting that the veterans should have a chance to look their idol’s face.

That is a genuine movie star.

And a stark contrast to the bratty and ever so fashionable leftist celebrities who imitate—and quite badly—movies stars in contemporary tinsel town.

Theda Bara as The Vamp, publicity photo, 1915

During the mid 50’s, in one of her last interviews, Theda Bara spoke with Hedda Hopper about silent films and the essence of Hollywood stardom: glamor and mystery.

“To understand those days, you must consider that people believed what they saw on the screen. Nobody had destroyed the great illusion. Now they know it’s all make-believe… It’s the stars themselves who have been failing the fans. People have always been hungry for glamor—they still are. But it takes showmanship and a constant sense of responsibility to hold their interest. A star musn’t allow her public to see her in slacks. She should dress beautifully at all times—I don’t mean in a bizarre way. She must live their dreams for them and remain a figure of mystery. Glamor is the most essential part of Hollywood.”

Theda Bara, Motion Picture Magazine

For the information in this brief profile, I am indebted to Eve Golden’s book Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. A fine biography of this important star, highly recommended.

Theda Bara made forty-two feature films between 1914 and 1926. At the height of her fame she was earning $4,000 a week. Keep in mind that those were the days before income taxes. Complete prints of only six films still exist.  In 1937 there was a massive fire at Fox’s nitrate film storage vaults in New Jersey destroying most of the studio’s silent films, and the majority of Theda Bara movies. The rest were lost to nitrate deterioration or destroyed by uncaring studios. The four complete films—The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), East Lynne (1916), and The Unchastened Woman (1925)—to judge by reviews and articles, are not her best work. The loss of Cleopatra, save for 40 seconds, is particularly cruel. The costumes and sets, glimpsed in publicity stills, are stunning. Also lost are: Du Barry, Carmen, Salome, and Camille. Still photos from all four productions hint at deliriously lush productions.

A Fool There Was, 1915 DVD starring Theda Bara, May Allison, Victor Benoit. The film that made Theda Bara an overnight sensation. And yup, this is the movie where Theda commands: “Kiss me, you fool!”

Theda Bara.net

Denny Jackson’s Theda Bara Page

Silent Ladies & Gents, Theda Bara: Photo Galleries

Theda Bara: Silent Star of the Month

Theda Bara IMDb