Officially GoneFILM & TV

Salomé (1918) — Complete Film

Theda Bara's lavish biblical spectacle once ran for more than an hour; a rediscovered two-minute fragment is all that can now move on screen.

HOW CLOSE TO REALITY100/100
CATEGORYFilm & TV
LIFECYCLE1918—partially lost
00

Quick facts

Existence state
Officially Gone
Peak stage
general availability
Research confidence
high
Last verified
01

What it was

The complete original cut of J. Gordon Edwards's silent Fox production starring Theda Bara.

The film presented the dance and downfall of Salomé through large sets, elaborate costumes and Fox's most famous vamp star.

02

Existence timeline

Fox production completed

Theda Bara stars in the large-scale biblical drama.

Public release

The complete silent feature reaches cinemas.

Fox vault fire

A major studio fire destroys many silent-era negatives.

Complete print disappears

Archives list the feature as lost in its original form.

Fragments identified

Filmoteca Española finds roughly two minutes of footage.

Full version remains missing

Only fragments, stills and documentation survive.

03

Why it ended

No complete print is known to survive; the archive unit is the original full public film, not the later recovered fragment.

04

Last confirmed trace

Filmoteca Española identified roughly two minutes of nitrate fragments in 2021, supplementing stills and printed publicity.
05

What it left behind

The discovery showed that a work can remain officially gone in complete form while newly recovered pieces change what can be seen.

06

How we classified it

The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.

Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.

07

Sources & verification

Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.

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