ABSTRACT
Historically positioned as she was between the passive, pure ideal woman of the late 1800s and the ‘New Woman’ of the 1920s, the vamp of Hollywood silent film has ties to both stereotypes. In this chapter I briefly consider these relationships and then examine the career of Pola Negri – one of the actresses most associated with vamping – for the evidence it may provide about the images and understandings of transgressive ethnic femininity in early twentieth century American culture.
