MOVIES' MOST MEMORABLE VAMPS

Wiki's VAMP … never knew there were so many definitions... #1 was a surprise !
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vamp
sample:
Vamp or vamps may refer to:
Vamp (shoe), the upper part of a shoe
Vamp (woman), a seductress or femme fatale; derived from "vampire"
Vamp (music), a repeating musical figure or accompaniment
Vamp (firefighter), a slang term for a volunteer firefighter in the USA

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The afore mentioned Theda Bara :

Grace Jones in 'Vamp'.

Valeska Suratt

"From 1915 to 1917 she made 11 feature films all of which are considered lost today. In the late 1920s her fame waned and she quickly disappeared from public view, never to return. "



"She only appeared in 11 movies, mostly as vamps and seductress types, between 1915 and 1917. William Fox had purchased the film rights to "A Fool There Was" about a young diplomat seduced and ruined by a woman only known as "The Vampire." Fox considered and rejected Suratt for the part and then chose Theda Bara. The role launched Bara into super-stardom as a "vamp" and relegated Suratt to similar parts in lesser films."

Louise Glaum



"Called "The Spider Woman" or "The Tiger Woman" as one of silent screen's most infamous and exotic vamps.
At one time a serious rival to Theda Bara', a critic dubbed Louise the "best actress of all the screen vamps". As the vamp fad began to outstay its welcome, her popularity also declined."


1920

My two cents: there's overlap, although a sexpot or bombshell needn't necessarily be a vamp. But a vamp, by definition, is seductive, which the word being both verb and noun suggests. To put it another way, being a "vamp" has at least as much to do with behavior as with looks. 

I suppose the term "vamp" had become passé by Harlow's day, although films were still full of representations of the type. To my mind, each term suggests an era: "vamp," the silent one; "bombshell," the '30s; "sexpot," the '50s. And to throw in one more, "pin-up girl," the '40s (for that period when all-American womanhood and values were under existential threat). I guess since the '60s, the generalized "sex symbol" has taken hold (and not only for women). Incidentally, "vamp" does come from a shortening of "vampire," and in many silent films, such a character is indeed referred to with the longer word ("one who lives by preying on others" or "a woman who exploits and ruins her lover," according to Merriam-Webster's #2 definition). 

Along with exuberant home-grown flappers, mysterious international exoticism was a trend of the silent era, and so Theodosia Goodman became Theda Bara, Mariam Leventon became Alla Nazimova, Mary Dooley became Nita Naldi, and Muriel Harding became Olga Petrova. But flappers Clara Bow or Louise Brooks could vamp with the best of 'em. 

The stereotypical image of Harlow strikes me as that of a woman who's aware of her, um, attributes, and which often encompasses a tough, wrong-side-of-the-tracks element. A variation was that of the sophisticated and exotic woman of the world, very much aware of her power over men, perhaps most notably embodied by Marlene Dietrich (in films like Shanghai Express and The Devil Is A Woman). Another variation was personified by Mae West, for whom it was all in the spirit of good fun. Passé or not, what might have been the '30s most quintessential vamp was portrayed by Barbara Stanwyck, not so much outwardly seductive by appearance but very much incorporating in-it-for-everything-she-can-get toughness and seduction, in Baby Face, leaving male human wreckage everywhere in her climb from the roadhouse to the penthouse. Running neck-and-neck was Harlow's Red Headed Woman (with her platinum permanent wave bewigged for the occasion). 

Although an all-American pin-up-girl, Rita Hayworth could weave that sense of jaded worldliness into her characters when called upon; she played a true vamp in Blood and Sand, and while Gilda displayed vamp-ish behavior, she's motivated most by true love (and Hayworth played more "good girls" than "bad" ones in the '40s). But unless they were enemy spies - and except for a Maltese Falcon here or a Double Indemnity there - '40s filmgoers would, for the most part, have to wait for the immediate postwar years for the vamp to make a comeback in the femmes fatale of the film noir cycle.      

Marilyn Monroe more closely typified that "unawareness" to which you refer, adding naiveté to the mix that left her stereotypical character somewhat nonplussed by men's attention to her (never more so than in The Seven Year Itch and, to some extent, Some Like It Hot). She was an unabashed gold digger in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How To Marry A Millionaire, but her one duplicitous, out-for-herself vamp aware of her charms was Rose in Niagara. Jayne Mansfield came off rather differently: a woman who knows exactly what she's got, with an air of unsophistication as a pure put-on. As Ginger Rogers told Harriet Hilliard in Follow the Fleet, "It takes a lot of brains to be dumb."