Helene Sullivan — The Evolution of the “White Vamp” (1926) 🇺🇸

The “white vamp” has returned to the screen. Helene Sullivan glories in that name and fame, having won it some years ago in “The Soul of Rafael.” Her first important return rôle is with Leatrice Joy in “Hell’s Highroad,” and in keeping with her traditions, she makes life miserable for the heroine.

Miss Sullivan was probably one of the very first players to demolish the notion that vamps were never vamps unless they possessed a crown of jet tresses Theda Bara was dictator of siren styles, and a film Circe even approaching blondness was not to be thought of.

In The Soul of Rafael, Clara Kimball Young played the starring rôle. She desired that the “other woman” in the picture should be a blonde, for contrast. Miss Sullivan, who was appearing in stage productions in Los Angeles, was accordingly chosen, and the reviewers dubbed her the “white vamp.”

For a season or so, she appeared with fair regularity on the screen — finally, in the revival of “The Sign of the Rose,” in a stage version of which she toured the country. The stage tour, of course, meant giving up her start in pictures, and upon returning to Hollywood, she found that the opposition to blonde vamps had increased.

—

Photo by: William Davis Pearsall

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, January 1926