How to get rid of action bars in a splash activity

To remove the action bar, in the onCreate() of the splash activity,

setContentView(R.layout.splash);
getActionBar().hide();

I did it like this. Maybe it's because I saw it before onCreate was called, but the action bar comes out and disappears. I don't want to show it at all. What should I do?

<item name="android:windowActionBar">false</item> I tried this, but it didn't work.