Comedy
Or, so is Clara the "Arab Clown?" Happy International Women's History DAY, everyone! We're celebrating with a special podcast minisode dedicated to Theda Bara, a trailblazing actress from the 1910s, and Clara Brown (no, not THAT Clara Brown, who is also a heroine but less forgotten). Our Clara was born in 1839 in Massachusetts. At 21, she was one of the leaders of the historic New England Shoemakers Strike of 1860. Theda Bara in gamine-mode Though early starlet Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman) is often remembered as an international woman born in “the shadow of the sphinx,” she was actually from Cincinnati. Between 1915-1919, she starred in forty movies, yet only one still exists today. She was one of the first major Hollywood sex symbols. Because of her edgy, “exotic” appeal, she received hate mail and marriage proposals in equal measure on a daily basis. Her successfully cultivated image gave rise to the "vamp" aesthetic. In joining the ongoing male worker's strike, Clara emphasized organizing women around their gender itself (rather than the prevalent gender roles of the day). This approach--unifying the "shopgirl" workers and the "home working" housewives in a joint fight for satisfactory wages and working conditions--met with mixed success. The home workers were more closely allied to their husbands' interests, including the so-called "family wage" that limited an individual woman's earning potential, while (unmarried) Clara & her shopgirls understandably were more concerned with maximizing rights for all workers. Additionally, Clara's faction were much more interested in ameliorating what were typically horrendous working conditions in the factories themselves. Some male leaders of the strike (most notably Willard F. Oliver) tried to cut out the shopgirl's demands, essentially arguing that the prime role of the women in the strike should be to support the wage demands of the men they'd eventually marry. This went over... not well, leading to a schism that fairly quickly turned bitter. In the lead-up to the Women's Procession in Lynn, Massachussets--which took place 160 years ago on this date--negotiations got particularly dicey. At one meeting, as Mary H. Blewett--a great source for extant information regarding Brown--notes: Clara defends her demands At last Clara Brown got the attention of the audience and raised the central question... who had dared to change the wage list? When she received no reply, she began to address the women strikers. Trying to heal the divisions within the women's strike and rally the supporters of the high wage list [the home-workers], Clara Brown again emphasized the power of the shop girls as industrial workers who could obtain the higher wage list for all women workers. "For God's sake, don't act like a pack of fools. We've got the bosses where we can do as we please with 'em. If we won't work our machines... what can the bosses do?" Men, Women, and Work. Mary H. Blewett (130) After being heckled with yells of "Shame" and "Hoe her out" (referring to this, guys, not this) from Oliver & his supporters, Clara was shoved offstage. The Women's Procession (pictured in heading), which drew thousands of women to protest despite a heavy New England blizzard, would be her last involvement in the strike. Giving up on Clara's higher wage and conditions demands was a key factor leading to the weak, mostly management-friendly collapse of the strike a month later.