The "vamp" was also a
stereotype frequently portrayed in films of the
1910s and
20s. The first vamp film was
A Fool There Was in 1915, starring the prolific vamp
typecast actress
Theda Bara.
The vamp's glamorous
eroticism and destructive
sexuality forecast the
femme fatale of classic
film noir, though vamps were inherently
evil, and often
supernatural to boot, as opposed to the femmes fatale, who were troubled, but still human. Vamps were
oversexed, conscience-less
homewreckers, luring weak men away from girlfriends, wives and families. While technically
villians, vamps were nonetheless vicariously
thrilling and
liberating to watch.
As a visual stereotype, vamps often moved via the "
vamp walk": shoulders down, knees bent, head facing in the direction perpendicular to movement, torso pointed diagonally and bobbing up and down. Vamp characters were usually not American, and were typically played by immigrants, particuarly
Eastern Europeans. This led to associations of
exoticism, and revealing
costumes sometimes designed to evoke Turkish
harems, Egyptian queens, or Gypsies. When in
Western dress, vamps wore simple, slinky dresses with extravagantly long
trains. They smoked cigarettes in long, elegant holders. And they wore
very heavy eye makeup. Think of
Man Ray's "
Tears" photograph and you may have an idea of how heavy the eye makeup I'm talking about was.
Today it's easy to laugh at the image of a woman walking diagonally with her
ass pointed out, and wearing
mascara so thick that it forms visible spheres at the tips of her eyelashes. In fact, there is some debate as to whether the
caricatured depiction of vamp sensuality made it a stronger or weaker threat to
Victorian prudishness. But vamps really did
smolder. The restrictive
Hayes code of 1930 greatly reduced
Hollywood's output of vamp films, but early
Jean Harlow and
Barbara Stanwyk films remained as vampish as could be achieved within the code.
1
1Thanks to arcanamundi for post-Hayes vamp film info. She strongly recommends Babyface and Red-Headed Woman.
Sources:
www.filmsite.org/sexualfilms.html
www.unt.edu/inhouse/november162001/negrabook.htm
http://www.mont-alto.com/schedule/VampsNSpits.html
http://eclipse.barnard.columbia.edu/~sr354/sexuality.html