A FOOL THERE WAS

   This melodrama by Porter Emerson Browne opened on 24 March 1909 at the Liberty Theatre, ran for 93 performances, and was made into the 1915 silent film of the same title that launched Theda Bara to stardom as the vampire woman who seduces and abandons men. Browne's play took its title from Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Vampire," which begins "A fool there was. . . ." On Broadway, Robert Hilliard played the straying husband who comes to a bad end, and Katharine Kaelred played the irresistible woman. According to the New York Times review (25 March 1909): "When it was all over at the Liberty last night except the shouting, they showed the Vampire Lady and her victim, beautifully lit up with calciums, very much after the fashion of Little Eva on her way to glory. Only, of course, this pair was bound in the other direction, a fact frequently emphasized in the course of the evening."