A Fool There Was is an American silent drama film produced by William Fox, directed by Frank Powell, and starring Theda Bara.

It popularised the word vamp (short for vampire),[2] which describes a femme fatale who causes the moral degradation of those she seduces, first fascinating and then exhausting her victims.

Scenes ostensibly set in England and Italy were actually shot in the USA:[9] in St. Augustine, Florida,[10] New York Harbor, and at Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which at the time was home to America's first motion picture industry.

At a press conference in January 1915, the studio gave an elaborate fictional biography of Theda Bara, making her an exotic Arabian actress, and presented her in a flamboyant fur outfit.

The film has been said to be unusual for the period in that the Husband does not experience a redemption, even when he hears the cries of his daughter, nor is the Vampire ever punished for destroying a family.

[16] The other surviving Bara films are The Stain (1914), East Lynne (1916), The Unchastened Woman (1925), and two short comedies that she made for Hal Roach in the mid-1920s.