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When Delilah, of the Philistines, lured Samson, the Israelite, to her tent, that she might practise upon him those artful wiles for which she was famed, and which proved his undoing, this raven-haired and black-eyed houri became, unconsciously, the prototype of the modern sirens to whom were first given the designation "vampires."
For the modern vampire, like Delilah of old, preys upon impressionable men, luring him with her smiles, fascinating him with beauty that is only a hollow mask, and weaving about him a fatal spell with her inviting eyes. And, like Delilah, she casts her victim aside, helpless and broken, when he has served her purpose.
Although the traits of Delilah have been recorded for us in the undying pages of the Bible itself, and Kipling's vampire immortalized us "a rag and a bone and a hank of hair," after all it is the motion picture audiences who know most about vampires and their sinister, deceptive ways. It is the movie screen that has made the modern siren a familiar thing in all corners of the earth. And it is the movie screen that has visualized her, and virtually set her apart as never being anything else than a tall, sinuous, beautiful young woman with coal-black hair and scintillating black eyes.
Delilah was a brunette -- as were all the Philistine women -- and she was chosen to trap Samson because her hair was blackened, her eyes the darkest, and her face the fairest of them all. Kipling's vampire was a brunette, beautiful teeth shone like pearls, the more jewel-like because their whiteness contrasted so strikingly the blackness of hair and eyes and the darkness of her luscious lies.
And those who make motion pictures followed the fashion set by the foolish men who have pictured vampires on the screen and presented them in the theatres, being entirely too slavish to the Delilah precedent. Mrs. Edward Demarest Mooers who is just out of her teens and yet has had, because of her position as one of the leaders of the younger millionaires of Southern California, great experience with the society in which vampires tend to move, declares that, if the truth was known, blondes make better vampire, than brunettes. And to prove her assertion, revolutionary as it is, young and lovely Mrs. Mooers has temporarily laid aside her social career, closed her California mansion, left her rich, handsome husband for a while to become a vampire herself either on the stage or in the movies.
She wants to be the first "blonde" vampire, and, incidentally, but quite as important to her, Mrs. Mooers, who is to be known by her maiden name, De Sacia Saville, is going to prove that a vampire can be a lovely, wholesome young woman, after all.
Not long ago Southern California society was shocked when Mrs. Mooers calmly announced to her friends that she was going to close her home on Alvarado Terrace, forsake her clubs and her gay round of social duties, and go on the stage. No one could believe such a thing. Her marriage several years ago to young "Eddie" Mooers, the heir to the great Yellow Aster Gold Mine, the richest gold mine in the United States, had been a great event. She had become immensely popular in the circle of Mooers's family friends, and was easily upholding the Mooers traditions. And she attracted a great deal of attention because she was said to be the most striking blonde in all Southern California -- where native families still display a frequent trace of Spanish days, when blondeness was a curiosity.
If it had been "Eddie" Mooers, now, who proposed going on the stage, or going into motion pictures, that, would have been different. In his college days he joined the chorus of the "Morning Glories" burlesque troupe just for a lark, and remained, quite fascinated by his unique surroundings, until rescued by his mother. And once, when he grew angry at his college professor, he retaliated by almost running away with that professor's daughter. His mother again saved him. But nothing of the unconventional ever had been dreamed of his charming, vivacious young wife -- certainly not that she could do such a plebeian thing as go on the stage.
But, Mrs. Mooers said she was tired of seeing vampires who always were brunettes. "A real vampire has to display one of the most valuable accomplishments a woman can have," said Mrs. Mooers, "the power to make her man love her. Why is it that all dramas, appealing daily, as they do to millions and millions of our new generations, have to create the impression, gradually but certainly, that only a dark-haired woman -- a brunette -- can make the man she is interested in love her? It's ridiculous. Of course, the vampire uses her power with sinister intent. But it is the same power every woman wants to wield, the good woman reserving it for the man she wants to marry, or the man to whom she is married. But if this 'brunette-only-vampire' idea continues to be drilled into our impressions, men gradually will come to think that the only woman who can arouse and feed the emotions is the brunette. I'm going to prove that idea all wrong."
And so Mrs. Mooers, with many, many more millions than she has had days of experience, went to New York and said to the great motion picture producers there:
"I have come to be a vampire."
"Impossible, "they replied. "A blonde vampire? Such a thing does not exist."
"But, I am here to prove to you," she returned, "that a blonde is the greatest of all vampires, when she turns her abilities that way. No brunette who ever lived, Delilah to the contrary notwithstanding,' can lure and trap a man so quickly as can a blonde, if she once sets her mind to it. I'll prove it, and I don't want any salary -- for I've plenty of money of my own."
So young and lovely Mrs. Mooers, "the most striking blonde in all California, with eyes the shade of a Colorado lake and hair the color of a Klondike nugget," has set out to prove the general belief that brunettes "were made for love and vampires, and blondes for ornaments and chums" completely erroneous.
It is interesting to observe that Mrs. Mooers, in furthering her ambition, has science in her favor and science against her. Professor W. B. Mooney, chief of the extension department of the Colorado Teachers' College, not long ago completed a series of investigations into the characteristics of the blonde and brunette woman which have been generally adopted as conclusive in many leading universities throughout the world. Professor Mooney found that blondes are inherently sharper, shrewder, more combative, and more likely to fight for their rights and hold on to their property -- masculine or material -- than the brunette. He founded his conclusion upon a research into the very origin of blondeness -- the prehistoric peoples of the North. These peoples had to struggle for their existence against, a harsh climate: they had to fight for their food against an improvident nature; their women were not pampered and petted, but made to carry their share of the tribal burdens, to master all the arts of trickery, subtlety, and quick-wittedness by which their tribes overcame the rigors of cold and famine.
"The blonde woman will hold her man against all odds," says Professor Mooney in his book, "Mental Measurements," "even if she has to fight for him to the death. In the first days of her existence she had virtually to trap her man, because the men of her tribe always were hungry, and a hungry man seldom has thoughts of love. She learned to bait, him with such wiles as wore hers to fall hack upon, and having baited him, she held him in a bondage as firm as iron."
So far science is on the side of Mrs. Mooers. For the vampire first, must "bait" her man, and then she must hold him until she is ready to sunder his fetters and cast him aside."
But, on the other hand:
"The brunette," says Professor Mooney, "descends from the women of the warm countries. Her tribes had food in abundance -- they merely had to pluck it from the trees, or linger in the earth for it. Their life was largely idleness -- relieved only by their intertribal clashes. The woman of these tribes soon discovered that her sex enabled her, by various artful practices, to influence the men to bring her food to her, sparing her the necessity of hunting for it. She traded kisses for a meal, and lured her man by coquetry, in which she had plenty of time to become a master."
So the brunette was given to coquetry and kisses -- as any vampire must be. Here science is against Mrs. Mooers. In summing up his observations, Professor Mooney says: "A brunette weeps quicker, screams easier, and caresses oftener than does a blonde; a blonde is more self-possessed in an emergency, more unemotional as concerns the tendencies of her heart, and when she does kiss she makes that kiss count."
Mrs. Mooers agrees wholly with this last observation of the learned scientist. "That is just the difference between a blonde vampire and a brunette one," she says. "The vampires we are accustomed to, the black-haired ones, kiss much and often. To kiss is their second nature. They would rather kiss than say 'thank you.' Their caress is endowed with more of art than sincerity.
"But with the blonde it is different -- and I am a blonde and so speak from an intimate knowledge. The blonde kisses but seldom, but when she does kiss, her soul goes with it. When she turns her head toward a vampire's goal, she has more in her one kiss with which to lure her intended victim than has a brunette in a score of her caresses."
Mr. Mooers is quite willing that his charming wife expound her theories upon the screen, but there are some of his relatives, millionaires like himself, who are not. So there was a bargain made -- Mrs. Mooers, as De Sacia Saville, is to have a year as the blonde vampire on the screen. Each month her rich husband is to visit her in her studio, accompanied by representatives of his relatives. They are to watch Mrs. Mooers progress quite closely. And if, at the end of the year, Mrs. Mooers still remains the lovely, charming, conventional young woman her friends know so well, all is to be well at the Mooers mansion. But if being a vampire on the screen has made her too unconventional in her demeanor -- then there may be a different story. That is the agreement in the Mooers family.
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