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Silent film
A Fool There Was (1915) is a silent film starring Theda Bara, one of the first sex symbols of the early 20th century. Bara plays a vamp who uses her charms to seduce and corrupt a moral Wall Street lawyer, John Schuyler (Edward Jose). A Fool There Was was long considered controversial for such risqué title cards as "Kiss me, my fool!"

A Fool There Was was based on a play by Porter Emerson Browne, in turned based on Rudyard Kipling's poem The Vampire. The producers were keen to pay tribute to their literary source, having a real actor read the full poem to the audience before each initial showing, and presenting passages of the poem throughout the film in intertitles. Bara's official credit is even "The Vampire"; for this reason the film is sometimes cited as the first "vampire" movie.