Oscar Wilde's play Salomé first appeared in French in 1891 but although Wilde 's work was greatly admired by the French, proud too that he had first written it in their language, and subsequent French film versions are generally based on the Wilde play, it did not have quite the same impact in what the French call the "anglo-saxon world" (Britain and the US) even after its publication in English in 1894 with the wonderful art nouveau lithographs by Aubrey Beardsley. Cult dancer Loïe Fuller did however create a Salomé dance in 1900.
In the US the story was more associated with Vision of Salome, a version created by Maud Allan in 1906, whose version of the Salomé dance gained a certain notoriety. In 1908 she published her book My Life and Dancing and toured England, giving 250 performances in under a year. What really launched the craze however was Richard Strauss' opera, composed after he had seen Max Reinhardt's version of the Wilde play in Berlin in 1902 and first performed at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 9 December 1905.
The Strauss opera was banned in London until 1907 and did not receive a première at Covent Garden until 1910. In the United Sates, the Strauss opera received a dress rehearsal on 20 anuary 1907 with Olive Fremstad in the title role with the dance performed by Bianca Froehlich and was first performed on 22 January 1907. A further three performances were promised and rapidly sold out. Alas, Mrs. Herbert Satterlee, who had attended the dress rehearsal and evidently seen "something nasty" in the Judean court if not in the proverbial woodshed, persuaded her father J. P. Morgan to bully the board of the Met into cancelling the remaining performances. Considered "repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds", it was not performed there again until 1934. Antoine Mariotte also composed his Salomé in 1905, which was first produced at the Grand-Théâtre de Lyon on 30 October 1908.
By this time a veritable "Salomania" had set in with innumerable paintings and lithographs devoted to the theme. Of film versions of the story, IMDB records a 1907 version by British Gaumont, seemingly lost and a 1908 French version by Albert Capellani but I can find no confirmation of this from any other source. This version by J. Stuart Blackton with Florence Lawrence in the principal role and Maurice Costello as Herod is not based particularly on the Wilde play bu the footage preserved in the Library of Congress paper print collection (originally deposed for copyright purposes) show a powerful and intense drama that compares favourably in many ways with the franco-Italian version of 1910 made by Ugo Falena for Film d'Art Italiana with Viottoria Lepanto as Salomé.
Films that highlighted or lampooned the Salome craze include Lubin's Salome and the Devil to Pay, which neatly combines two of the year's "crazes) (for discussion see my review of He Went to See the Devil Play), The Saloon Dance 1908, also Lubin and not obviously, from its title, associated with Salome, except that it in fact tells a tale of two tramps who find a Salome costume and attempt to profit from it. There was also Gaumont's: L'Inconsciente Salomé in 1908, Hepworth's Salome Mad and an A. E. Coleby film of the same name (parodying a lampoon) and a Warwick Trading Company film, Oh Salome, Oh, Oh, Oh!, all in Britain in 1910
The image of Salomé would later be conflated with that of "the vampire" or vamp and Theda Bara, following her success in A Fool There Was, went on to play Salomé in a 1918 film directed by J. Gordon Edwards. The weirdest but by far the most interesting version of Salomé remains the 1923 art nouveau classic by Charles Bryant and Alla Nazimova.
For the other two crazes of 1908 see The Merry Widow Hat and He Went to See the Devil Play, both of which are available, like the 1908 Salomé, in synoptical footage preserved in the LoC peper print collection.
In the US the story was more associated with Vision of Salome, a version created by Maud Allan in 1906, whose version of the Salomé dance gained a certain notoriety. In 1908 she published her book My Life and Dancing and toured England, giving 250 performances in under a year. What really launched the craze however was Richard Strauss' opera, composed after he had seen Max Reinhardt's version of the Wilde play in Berlin in 1902 and first performed at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 9 December 1905.
The Strauss opera was banned in London until 1907 and did not receive a première at Covent Garden until 1910. In the United Sates, the Strauss opera received a dress rehearsal on 20 anuary 1907 with Olive Fremstad in the title role with the dance performed by Bianca Froehlich and was first performed on 22 January 1907. A further three performances were promised and rapidly sold out. Alas, Mrs. Herbert Satterlee, who had attended the dress rehearsal and evidently seen "something nasty" in the Judean court if not in the proverbial woodshed, persuaded her father J. P. Morgan to bully the board of the Met into cancelling the remaining performances. Considered "repugnant to Anglo-Saxon minds", it was not performed there again until 1934. Antoine Mariotte also composed his Salomé in 1905, which was first produced at the Grand-Théâtre de Lyon on 30 October 1908.
By this time a veritable "Salomania" had set in with innumerable paintings and lithographs devoted to the theme. Of film versions of the story, IMDB records a 1907 version by British Gaumont, seemingly lost and a 1908 French version by Albert Capellani but I can find no confirmation of this from any other source. This version by J. Stuart Blackton with Florence Lawrence in the principal role and Maurice Costello as Herod is not based particularly on the Wilde play bu the footage preserved in the Library of Congress paper print collection (originally deposed for copyright purposes) show a powerful and intense drama that compares favourably in many ways with the franco-Italian version of 1910 made by Ugo Falena for Film d'Art Italiana with Viottoria Lepanto as Salomé.
Films that highlighted or lampooned the Salome craze include Lubin's Salome and the Devil to Pay, which neatly combines two of the year's "crazes) (for discussion see my review of He Went to See the Devil Play), The Saloon Dance 1908, also Lubin and not obviously, from its title, associated with Salome, except that it in fact tells a tale of two tramps who find a Salome costume and attempt to profit from it. There was also Gaumont's: L'Inconsciente Salomé in 1908, Hepworth's Salome Mad and an A. E. Coleby film of the same name (parodying a lampoon) and a Warwick Trading Company film, Oh Salome, Oh, Oh, Oh!, all in Britain in 1910
The image of Salomé would later be conflated with that of "the vampire" or vamp and Theda Bara, following her success in A Fool There Was, went on to play Salomé in a 1918 film directed by J. Gordon Edwards. The weirdest but by far the most interesting version of Salomé remains the 1923 art nouveau classic by Charles Bryant and Alla Nazimova.
For the other two crazes of 1908 see The Merry Widow Hat and He Went to See the Devil Play, both of which are available, like the 1908 Salomé, in synoptical footage preserved in the LoC peper print collection.
