Clara Bow
in Rough House Rosie (1927)
Born	Clara Gordon Bow (1905-07-29)July 29, 1905 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	September 27, 1965(1965-09-27) (aged 60) Culver City, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1921–1933
Spouse	Rex Bell (m. 1931–1962) «start: (1931-12-03)–end+1: (1962-07-05)»"Marriage: Rex Bell to Clara Bow" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Clara_Bow) (his death)
Children	Tony Beldam (1934–2011) George Beldam, Jr. (b. 1938)

Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl." Bow came to personify the roaring twenties^[1] and is described as its leading sex symbol.^[2] She appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927) and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930.^[3][4] Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost 2-to-1, a "safe return".^[5] In January 1929, at the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters.^[6] After marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow ended her career in 1933 with the film Hoop-La, becoming a rancher in Nevada.

Early life[link]

Clara Bow at three with a Teddy bear.

Clara Bow at three with a Teddy bear.

Sarah Bow 1895

Clara Bow was born in 1905 ^[7] in a slum tenement in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York, where she was also raised.^[8] Bow was the third child; the first two, also daughters, born in 1903 and 1904, died in infancy.^[9] Her mother, Sarah Bow (née Gordon, 1880–1923), was told by a doctor not to become pregnant again for fear the next baby might die as well. Despite the doctor's warning, Sarah Bow became pregnant with Clara in the fall of 1904. In addition to the risky pregnancy, a heat wave besieged New York in July 1905 and temperatures peaked around 100°F;^[10] the infant mortality rate rose to 80%.^[9] "I don't suppose two people ever looked death in the face more clearly than my mother and I the morning I was born. We were both given up, but somehow we struggled back to life".^[11]

Bow's parents were descended from English and Scotch-Irish immigrants who had come to America the generation before.^[9] Bow said that her father, Robert (1874–1959), "had a quick, keen mind ... all the natural qualifications to make something of himself, but didn't".^[11] Others, however, characterized him as unintelligent, ugly, and physically puny.^[9] Robert seldom managed to hold on to a job and the family income varied drastically as a result. Between 1905 and 1923, the family lived at 14 different addresses; among them 160 Sands Street and 697 Bergen St., where Bow was born.^[12] Robert was often absent, leaving his family without means to survive.^[13] "I do not think my mother ever loved my father. He knew it. And it made him very unhappy, for he worshiped her, always".^[11]

It was snowing. My mother and I were cold and hungry. We had been cold and hungry for days. We lay in each others arms and cried and tried to keep warm. It grew worse and worse. So that night my mother – but I can't tell you about it. Only when I remember it, it seems to me I can't live^[14]

Clara's maternal grandfather, a heavy drinker who was regularly physically abusive towards his wife, went insane.^[9] Although Clara's mother Sarah was considered very attractive, her family situation limited her marriage prospects considerably.^[9] In addition, at sixteen, Sarah fell from a second-story window and suffered a severe head injury. She was later diagnosed with "psychosis due to epilepsy",^[15] a condition apart from the seizures that is known to cause disordered thinking, delusional ideation, paranoia, and aggressive behavior.^[16]

From her earliest years, Bow learned how to care for her mother during the seizures as well as how to deal with the psychotic and hostile episodes. She said her mother could be "mean" to her, but "didn't mean to ... she couldn't help it".^[11] Still, Bow felt deprived of her childhood; "As a kid I took care of my mother, she didn't take care of me".^[17] Sarah worsened gradually, and when she realized her daughter was set for a movie career, Bow's mother told her she "would be much better off dead". One night in February 1922, Bow awoke to a butcher knife held against her throat by her mother. Bow was able to fend off the attack and locked her mother up. In the morning, Sarah had no recollection of the episode and was later committed to a charity hospital.^[11]

Sarah Bow died on January 5, 1923. When relatives gathered for the funeral, Bow accused them of not being supportive in the past. Reportedly, her anger led her to attempt jumping into her mother's open grave.^[11]

Bow attended both PS 111 and PS 9.^[9] As Bow grew up she felt shy among other girls, who teased her for her worn-out clothes and "carrot-top" hair. From first grade, Bow preferred the company of boys her age, stating, "I could lick any boy my size. My right arm was quite famous. My right arm was developed from pitching so much ... Once I hopped a ride on behind a big fire engine. I got a lot of credit from the gang for that".^[11] Her best friend, a younger boy named Johnny who lived in her building, burned to death in her presence after an accident. Bow's athletic ability led her to becoming a track champion in high-school. Of her purported arm strength, Louella Parsons noted, "... curiously enough, she has muscles on her arms that stand out like whip-cord".^[18] Bow left school at 13 and didn't return, working at Nathan's in Coney Island after the family had moved briefly to Sheepshead Bay in 1918 before returning to Prospect Heights the next year.

Motion pictures[link]

In the early 1920s, roughly 50 million Americans—half the population at that time—attended the movies every week.^[19] Bow discovered that as she grew into womanhood, her stature as a "boy" in her old gang would be "impossible". As well, she didn't have any girlfriends, school was a "heartache" and home "miserable". On the silver screen, however, she found consolation; "For the first time in my life I knew there was beauty in the world. For the first time I saw distant lands, serene, lovely homes, romance, nobility, glamor". And further; "I always had a queer feeling about actors and actresses on the screen ... I knew I would have done it differently. I couldn't analyze it, but I could always feel it".^[11] "I'd go home and be a one girl circus, taking the parts of everyone I'd seen, living them before the glass."^[20] At sixteen Bow "knew" she wanted to be a motion pictures actress, even if she was a "square, awkward, funny-faced kid".^[11]

The New York starlet (1921–1923)[link]

[edit] The Fame and Fortune contest

Clara Bow 1921

Contest form 1921

Against her mother's wishes but with her father's support, Bow competed in Brewster publications' magazine's annual nationwide acting contest, Fame and Fortune in 1921. In previous years, several of the contest's winners had found work in movies after winning.^[21] In the contest's final screen test Bow was up against an already scene-experienced woman who did "a beautiful piece of acting". A set member later stated that when Bow did the scene she actually became her character and "lived it".^[22] In the January issues 1922 of Motion Picture Classics the contest jury, Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa Mcmein, and Harrison Fisher, concluded:

"She is very young, only 16. But she is full of confidence, determination and ambition. She is endowed with a mentality far beyond her years. She has a genuine spark of divine fire. The five different screen tests she had, showed this very plainly, her emotional range of expression provoking a fine enthusiasm from every contest judge who saw the tests. She screens perfectly. Her personal appearance is almost enough to carry her to success without the aid of the brains she indubitably possesses."

[edit] Beyond the Rainbow (1922)

Bow won an evening gown and a silver trophy and the publisher committed to help her "gain a role in films". But nothing happened. Bow's father told her to "haunt" Brewster's office (located in Brooklyn) until they came up with something. "To get rid of me, or maybe they really meant to (give me) all the time and were just busy", Bow was introduced to director Christy Cabanne who cast her in Beyond the Rainbow, produced late 1921 in New York City and released February 19, 1922.^[23] Bow did five scenes, impressed Cabanne with true theatrical tears,^[11] but was eventually cut from the print. Bow wasn't told, but found out when she saw the movie at a theater in Brooklyn. "I was sick to my stomach", she recalled and thought her mother was right about the movie business. Bow, who dropped out of school after she was notified about winning the contest, possibly in October 1921, got an ordinary office job.^[24] However, movie ads and newspaper editorial comments from 1922–1923 suggest that Bow was not cut from Beyond the Rainbow. Her name is on the cast list among the other stars, usually tagged "Brewster magazine beauty contest winner" and sometimes even with a picture.^[25]

[edit] Down to the Sea in Ships (1923)

Encouraged by her father, Bow started to run around studio agencies asking for parts. "But there was always something. I was too young, or too little, or too fat. Usually I was too fat."^[11] Eventually director Elmer Clifton needed a tomboy for his movie Down to the Sea in Ships, saw Bow in Motion Picture Classic magazine and sent for her. In an attempt to overcome her youthful looks, Bow put her hair up and arrived in a dress she 'sneaked' from her mother. Clifton said she was too old, but broke into laughter as the stammering Bow made him believe she was the girl in the magazine. Clifton decided to bring Bow with him and offered her $50 a week, but added he couldn't say whether or not she would "fit the part".^[26]

Down to the Sea in Ships was shot on location in New Bedford, Massachusetts, produced by Independent 'The Whaling Film Corporation', and documented the life, love and work in the whale-hunter community. The production relied on a few less known actors and local talents. It premiered at 'Olympia', New Bedford, on September 25, and went on general distribution on March 4, 1923.

Bow was billed 10th, but shined through and critics sang her praise:

• "Miss Bow will undoubtedly gain fame as a screen comedienne".^[27]
• "She scored a tremendous hit in Down to the Sea in Ships..(and)..has reached the front rank of motion picture principal players".^[28]
• "With her beauty, her brains, her personality and her genuine acting ability it should not be many moons before she enjoys stardom in the fullest sense of the word. You must see 'Down to the Sea in Ships'".^[29]
• "In movie parlance, she 'stole' the picture ... ".^[30]

Bow was chosen the foremost "baby" by WAMPAS^[31]

WAMPAS Baby Star (1924)[link]

Bow found herself walking time after time by a Broadway movie theater, staring at her name in shimmering electric light above the entrance. "I can never tell you what happiness I felt, life had been so terrible hard and it seemed to me that now all my troubles were to be in the past".^[26] By mid December 1923, primarily due to her merits in Down to the Sea in Ships, Bow was chosen the most successful of the 1924 WAMPAS Baby Stars.^[32]

[edit] Grit (1924)

Three months before Down to the Sea in Ships was released, Bow danced half nude, on a table, unaccredited in Enemies of Women (1923).^[33] In spring she got a part in The Daring Years (1923), where she befriended actress Mary Carr, who taught her how to use make-up.^[34]

In the summer, she got a "tomboy" part in Grit, a story, which dealt with juvenile crime and was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Bow met her first boyfriend, cameraman Arthur Jacobson, and she got to know director Frank Tuttle, with whom she worked in five later productions. Tuttle remembered:

Her emotions were close to the surface. She could cry on demand, opening the floodgate of tears almost as soon as I asked her to weep. She was dynamite, full of nervous energy and vitality and pitifully eager to please everyone".^[26]

Grit was released on January 7, 1924. Variety reviewed;

• "... Clara Bow lingers in the eye, long after the picture has gone."^[36]

While shooting Grit at Pyramid Studios, in Astoria, New York, Bow was approached by Jack Bachman of independent Hollywood studio Preferred Pictures. He wanted to contract her for a three months trial, fare paid and $50 a week. "It can't do any harm",^[11] he tried. "Why can't I stay in New York and make movies?", Bow asked her father, but he told her not to worry.^[37]

On July 21, 1923 she befriended Louella Parsons, who interviewed her for The New York Morning Telegraph. In 1931 when Bow came under tabloid scrutiny, Parsons defended her and stuck to her first opinion on Bow:^[38]

She is as refreshingly unaffected as if she had never faced a means to pretend. She hasn't any secrets from the world, she trusts everyone ... she is almost too good to be true ... (I) only wish some reformer who believes the screen contaminates all who associate with it could meet this child. Still on second thought it might not be safe: Clara uses a dangerous pair of eyes.

The interview also revealed that Bow already was cast in Maytime and in great favor of Chinese cuisine.^[39]

Hollywood (1923–1933)[link]

Frame from rediscovered (May 2010, New Zealand) copy of Maytime. Bow comforting Ethel Shannon

Preferred Pictures (1923–1925)[link]

July 22, 1923, Bow left New York, her father and her boyfriend behind for Hollywood.^[40] As chaperon for the journey and her subsequent southern California stay, the studio appointed writer/agent Maxine Alton, whom Bow later branded a liar.^[11] In late July Bow entered studio chief B. P. Schulberg's office wearing a simple high-school uniform in which she "had won several gold medals on the cinder track".^[41] She was tested and a press-release from early August says Bow had become a member of Preferred Picture's "permanent stock".^[42] She and Alton rented an apartment at The Hillview near Hollywood Boulevard.^[40] Preferred Pictures was run by Schulberg who started as a publicity manager at Famous Players-Lasky, but in the aftermath of the power struggle around the formation of United Artists ended up on the losing side and lost his job. In 1919, at age 27, he founded 'Preferred'.^[43]

1923[link]

[edit] Maytime

Bow's first Hollywood picture was an adaptation of the popular operetta Maytime, in which she essayed "Alice Tremaine". Before Maytime was finished, Schulberg announced that Bow was given the lead in the studio's biggest seasonal assessment, Poisoned Paradise,^[41] but first she was lent to First National Pictures to co-star in the adaptation of Gertrude Atherton's 1923 bestseller Black Oxen, shot in October, and to co-star with Colleen Moore in Painted People, shot in November.^[44]

[edit] Black Oxen

Bow as "Janet", the "horrid" flapper in Black Oxen (1923), holding Flaming Youth to her chest; with Kate Lester and Tom Ricketts

Director Frank Lloyd was casting for the part of high society flapper Janet Oglethorpe, and more than fifty women, most with previous screen experience, auditioned.^[40] Bow reminisced; "He had not found exactly what he wanted and finally somebody suggested me to him. When I came into his office a big smile came over his face and he looked just tickled to death".^[11] Lloyd told the press; "Bow is the personification of the ideal aristocratic flapper, mischievous, pretty, aggressive, quick-tempered and deeply sentimental".^[45] It was released on January 4, 1924.

• New York Times: "The flapper, impersonated by a young actress, Clara Bow, had five speaking titles, and every one of them was so entirely in accord with the character and the mood of the scene that it drew a laugh from what, in film circles, is termed a "hard-boiled" audience"^[46]

• Los Angeles Times: "Clara Bow, the prize vulgarian of the lot...was amusing and spirited...but didn't belong in the picture".^[47]

• Variety: "...the horrid little flapper is adorably played...".^[48]

[edit] Painted People controversy

Colleen Moore made her flapper debut in a successful adaptation of the daring novel Flaming Youth, released November 12, 1923, six weeks before Black Oxen. Both films were produced by First National Pictures, and while Black Oxen was still being edited and Flaming Youth not yet released, Bow was requested to co-star Moore as her kid sister in Painted People (AKA The Swamp Angel).^[49]

Moore essayed the baseball-playing tomboy and Bow, according to Moore, said "I don't like my part, I wanna play yours".^[50] Moore, a well-established star earning $1200 a week — Bow got $200 — took offense and blocked the director from doing a close-up on Bow. Moore was married to a studio executive and Bow's protests fell short. "I'll get that bitch", she told her boyfriend Jacobson, who had arrived from New York. Bow had sinus problems and decided to have them attended to immediately. A bandaged Bow left the studio with no options but to recast her part.^[51]

Robert and Clara Bow (1931) ...

1924[link]

[edit] The Perfect Flapper

During 1924 Bow's "horrid" flapper raced against Moore's "whimsical".^[52] In May Moore renewed her efforts in The Perfect Flapper, produced by her husband, but despite good reviews she suddenly withdrew. "No more flappers ... they have served their purpose ... people are tired of soda-pop love affairs", she told the Los Angeles Times,^[52] that commented a month earlier, "Clara Bow is the one outstanding type. She has almost immediately been elected for all the recent flapper parts"^[53] In November 1933, Bow described the Hollywood years as a French Revolution picture, where "women are hollering and waving pitchforks twice as violently as any of the guys ... the only ladies in sight are the ones getting their heads cut off".^[54]

[edit] "If that's what my baby wants, that's what my baby does"^[55]

By New Year 1924, Bow defied the possessive Maxine Alton and brought her father to Hollywood. Bow remembered their reunion; "I didn't care a rap, for (Maxine Alton), or B. P. Schulberg, or my motion picture career, or Clara Bow, I just threw myself into his arms and kissed and kissed him, and we both cried like a couple of fool kids. Oh, it was wonderful".^[11] Bow felt Alton had misused her trust; "She wanted to keep a hold on me so she made me think I wasn't getting over and that nothing but her clever management kept me going".^[11] Bow and her father moved in at 1714 North Kingsley Drive in Hollywood, together with Jacobson, who by then also worked for Preferred. When Schulberg learned of this arrangement, he fired Jacobson for potentially getting "his big star" into a scandal. When Bow found out, "She tore up her contract and threw it in his face and told him he couldn't run her private life". Jacobson concluded, "[Clara] was the sweetest girl in the world, but you didn't cross her and you didn't do her wrong".^[56] On September 7, 1924, The Los Angeles Times, in a significant article "A dangerous little devil is Clara, impish, appealing, but oh, how she can act!", her father is titled "business manager" and Jacobson referred to as her brother.^[57]

Bow appeared in eight releases in 1924.

• In Poisoned Paradise, released on February 29, 1924, Bow got her first lead. "... the clever little newcomer whose work wins fresh recommendations with every new picture in which she appears".^[58] In a scene, described as "original", Bow adds "devices", to "the modern flapper"; she fights a villain, using her fists, and significantly, does not "shrink back in fear".^[59]
• In Daughters of Pleasure, also released on February 29, 1924, Bow and Marie Prevost, "flapped unhampered as flappers De luxe ... I wish somebody could star Clara Bow. I'm sure her 'infinite variety' would keep her from wearying us no matter how many scenes she was in".^[60]

[edit] Wine

Bow's first single lead: Wine (1924)

As an out-loan to Universal-Jewel, Bow top-starred, for the first time, in the prohibition, bootleg drama/comedy Wine, released on August 20, 1924. The picture exposes the widespread liquor traffic in the upper-classes, and Bow portrays an innocent girl who develops into a wild "redhot mama".

• "If not taken as information, it is cracking good entertainment", Carl Sandburg reviewed September 29.^[61]
• "Don't miss Wine. It's a thoroughly refreshing draught ... there are only about five actresses who give me a real thrill on the screen — and Clara is nearly five of them".^[62]

Alma Whitaker of The Los Angeles Times observed on September 7, 1924:

She radiates sex appeal tempered with an impish sense of humor ... She hennas her blond hair so that it will photograph dark in the pictures ... Her social decorum is of that natural, good-natured, pleasantly informal kind ... She can act on or off the screen — takes a joyous delight in accepting a challenge to vamp any selected male — the more unpromising specimen the better. When the hapless victim is scared into speechlessness she gurgles with naughty delight and tries another.

Bow remembered: "All this time I was "running wild", I guess, in the sense of trying to have a good time ... maybe this was a good thing, because I suppose a lot of that excitement, that joy of life, got onto the screen".^[11]

1925[link]

1925 Bow appeared in fourteen productions: six for her contract owner, Preferred Pictures, and eight as an "out-loan".

• "Clara Bow ... shows alarming symptoms of becoming the sensation of the year ... ", Motion Picture Classic Magazine wrote in June, and featured her on the cover.^[63]

"I'm almost never satisfied with myself or my work or anything...by the time I'm ready to be a great star I'll have been on the screen such a long time that everybody will be tired of seeing me...(Tears filled her big round eyes and threatened to fall)".^[64]

"I worked in two and even three pictures at once. I played all sorts of parts in all sorts of pictures ... It was very hard at the time and I used to be worn out and cry myself to sleep from sheer fatigue after eighteen hours a day on different sets, but now (late 1927) I am glad of it"^[11]

Preferred Pictures rented Bow to producers "for sums ranging from $1500 to $2000 a week".^[65] The studio like any other independent studio or theater at that time, was under attack from "The Big Three", MPAA, who had formed a trust to block out Independents and enforce the monopolistic studio system.^[66] On October 21, 1925, Schulberg filed Preferred Pictures for bankruptcy, with debts at $820,774 and assets $1,420.^[67] Three days later, it was announced that Schulberg would join with Adolph Zukor to become associate producer of Paramount Pictures, "...catapulted into this position because he had Clara Bow under personal contract".^[68]

Adolph Zukor, Paramount Picture CEO in his memoirs: "All the skill of directors and all the booming of press-agent drums will not make a star. Only the audiences can do it. We study audience reactions with great care".^[69] Adela Rogers St. Johns had a different take, in 1950 she wrote: "If ever a star was made by public demand, it was Clara Bow".^[70] And Louise Brooks from 1980: "(Bow) became a star without nobody's help ... ".^[71]

[edit] The Plastic Age