Clara Gordon Bow (; July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom during the silent film era of the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
Bow appeared in 58 films, all but 11 of which were silent. 33 are extant in their entirety, 14 are partially lost, and 11 are completely lost. Some hits include Mantrap (1926), It (1927), and Wings (1927). She was named the first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and the second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a "safe return". At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month, in January 1929.
After marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting in 1933. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. She then became a rancher in Nevada. Bow had two children. In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.
Early life
Bow was born in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn in New York City, at 697 Bergen Street, in a "bleak, sparsely furnished room above [a] dilapidated Baptist Church". Her birth year, according to the US Censuses of 1910 and 1920, was 1905. In US census records, enumerated April 15, 1910, and January 7, 1920, Bow's age is stated 4 and 14 years, respectively. The 1930 census stated an age of 23.
Bow was her parents' third child. Her two older sisters, born in 1903 and 1904, had died in infancy. Her mother, Sarah Frances 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 warning, Sarah became pregnant with Clara in late 1904. In addition to the risky pregnancy, a heat wave besieged New York in July 1905, and temperatures peaked around . Years later, Clara wrote: "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."
Bow's parents were descended from English and Scots-Irish immigrants who had come to America the generation before. Bow said that her father, Robert Walter Bow (1874–1959), "had a quick, keen mind... all the natural qualifications to make something of himself, but didn't... everything seemed to go wrong for him, poor darling." From her earliest years, Bow had learned how to care for her mother during the seizures, as well as how to deal with her psychotic and hostile episodes. She said her mother could be "mean to me—and she often was," but "she didn't mean to be and that it was because she couldn't help it." On January 5, 1923, Sarah died at the age of 43 from her epilepsy. When relatives gathered for the funeral, Bow was so upset that she "went crazy" and tried to jump into the grave to be with her, shouting that they were "hypocrites" and that they hadn't loved or cared for her mother while she was alive. The Bows and Bakers shared a house—still standing—at 33 Prospect Place in 1920.
Career
1921–1922: Early years
In the early 1920s, roughly 50 million Americans—half the population at that time—attended the movies every week. As Bow grew into womanhood, her stature as a "boy" in her old gang became "impossible". She did not have any girlfriends, school was a "heartache," and her home was "miserable". On the silver screen, 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." 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". In the January issues 1922 of Motion Picture Classic, the contest jury, Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, and Harrison Fisher, concluded:
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. Bow did five scenes and impressed Cabanne with her ability to produce tears on cue, but was cut from the final print.
- "Clara Bow who has reached the front rank of motion picture principal player ... [has] scored a tremendous hit in Down To The Sea In Ships."
- "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."
- "In movie parlance, she 'stole' the picture ..."
thumb|upright=1.4|right|Bow was chosen the foremost "baby" by [[WAMPAS Baby Stars|WAMPAS.]]
thumb|upright=1.4|right|Cartooned: Bow as "Orchid McGonigle" in Grit, having a hard time keeping her boyfriend "Kid Hart" (Glenn Hunter) on track
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. Three months before Down to the Sea in Ships was released, Bow danced on a table uncredited in Enemies of Women (1923). During the year, she made a short film, The Pill Pounder (1923). In spring, Bow got a part in The Daring Years (1923), where she befriended actress Mary Carr, who taught her how to use make-up. 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-month trial, fare paid, and $50 a week. "It can't do any harm," he said.
1923–1925: Preferred Pictures
thumb|upright=1.3|Frame of Bow comforting [[Ethel Shannon in Maytime (1923), which had been classified as a lost film until a partial copy was found in New Zealand in 2009]]
On July 22, 1923, Bow left New York, her father, and her boyfriend behind for Hollywood. She was tested and a press release from early August says Bow had become a member of Preferred Pictures' "permanent stock".
Bow signed with Preferred Pictures, also working with other studios. Alton and Bow rented an apartment at The Hillview near Hollywood Boulevard. It was released on January 4, 1924.
thumb|upright=1.2|Bow as Janet, the "horrid" flapper in [[Black Oxen (1923), holding Flaming Youth to her chest; with Kate Lester and Tom Ricketts]]
"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." The Los Angeles Times commented that "Clara Bow, the prize vulgarian of the lot... was amusing and spirited but she never belonged in the picture". Variety said that "the horrid little flapper is adorably played".
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 with Moore as her kid sister in Painted People (The Swamp Angel). Moore essayed the baseball-playing tomboy and Bow, according to Moore, said "I don't like my part, I wanna play yours."
Moore, a well-established star earning $1200 a week—Bow got $200—took offense and blocked the director from shooting close-ups of Bow. Moore was married to the film's producer and Bow's protests were futile. "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 that very evening. With Bow's face now in bandages, the studio had no choice but to recast her part.
thumb|upright=0.9|Clara Bow in 1931 with her father, Robert, who married Clara's friend, Mary Lorraine Tui (Tui Lorraine) at Clara's insistence
In May, Moore renewed her efforts in The Perfect Flapper, produced by her husband. 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, which had commented a month earlier, "Clara Bow is the one outstanding type. She has almost immediately been elected for all the recent flapper parts". In November 1933, looking back to this period of her career, Bow described the atmosphere in Hollywood as like a scene from a movie about the French Revolution, 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."
By New Year 1924 Bow had defied the possessive and brought her father to Hollywood. Bow remembered their reunion: "I didn't care a rap, for (her), nor B. P. Schulberg, nor my motion picture career, nor 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."
thumb|Bow in Stars of the Photoplay, 1924
Bow appeared in eight releases in 1924; two were released the same day. 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". Atypical of that time, her character, "skilled in the art of self-defense, preparedness and all the other devices with which the modern flapper is endowed," fearlessly beats off the villain. 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."
Lent out to Universal, 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 "red-hot mama", "a naughty, inebriated flapper". Carl Sandburg reviewed it on September 29 saying; "If not taken as information, it is cracking good entertainment". Alma Whitaker of the Los Angeles Times observed on September 7, 1924:
thumb|Bow's first lead role was in [[Wine (1924 film)|Wine (1924), a seven-reel feature currently classified as lost by the Library of Congress]]
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."