Background
Bow, Clara was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn. Daughter of Robert and Sarah Bow.
Bow, Clara was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn. Daughter of Robert and Sarah Bow.
Clara Bow won a beauty contest and by 1922 she was in pictures: a tiny part in Beyond the Rainbow (22, W. Christy Cabanne); and a better one in Down to the Sea in Ships (23, Elmer Clifton). She was then signed up bv B. P. Schulberg who worked her very hard in a succession of cheap films and loan-outs. B.P.'s son, Budd, has said that Bow was none too bright—“an irresistible . . . little know-nothing.” But on-screen, she had a very knowing eye; if nothing else, she understood being photographed. The best films of this time are Grit (24, Frank Tuttle); Black Oxen (24, Frank Lloyd); Wine (24, Louis Gasnier); Helen's Babies (25, William A. Seiter); Eve’s Lover (25, Roy del Ruth); Kiss Me Again (25, Ernst Lubitsch); The Plastic Age (25, Wesley Ruggles); and My Lady of Whims (26, Dallas M. Fitzgerald).
Then, in 1926, Schulberg and Bow moved together to Paramount and her status improved: Dancing Mothers (26, Herbert Brenon); Mantrap (26, Victor Fleming); and Kid Boots (26. Tuttle). Next year, she was Betty Lou, the shop girl, who wows her boss, Antonio Moreno, in It (27, Clarence Badger). The film had the sixty-year-old Elinor Glyn appearing to explain what “It” was. But Bow carried the weight of education like a lipstick butterfly veering between old adages and fresh opportunities.
For the next three years, Clara Bow was a top star: Children of Divorce (27, Lloyd); Rough House Rosie (27, Frank Strayer); as an ambulance driver in Wings (27, William Wellman); Hula (27, Fleming); Get Your Man (27, Dorothy Arzner); Red Hair (28, Badger), with a color sequence to show off Bow’s own red curls; Ladies of the Mob (28, Wellman); The Fleet's In! (28. Malcolm St. Clair); Th ree Weekends (28, Badger), another Glyn script; The Wild Party (29, Arzner); Dangerous Curves (29, Lothar Mendes); and The Saturday Night Kid (29, Edward Sutherland).
Her career faltered in 1930. She was only twenty-five, but she had made forty-eight films. Sound exposed her rough Brooklyn accent, and curtailed her reckless energy, for the unwieldy apparatus meant she could not move about the set so freely. Most damaging was the backlash of bourgeois hypocrisy. She had to buv off an aggrieved wife, she was dogged by gambling debts, and in 1931 she sued her former secretary, Daisy DeYoe, for selling stories about Bow movie stars and most of the USC football team. DeVoe was trying blackmail on Bow, and it is possible that the secretary was jealous of Bow’s romance with cowboy actor Rex Bell. The court hearings were sensational, and lurid accounts of Bow’s private life became common currency.
Her last good year was 1930: True to the Navy, Love Among the Millionaires, and Her Wedding Night—all directed by Frank Tuttle. No Limit (31, Tuttle) and Kick In (31, Richard Wallace) were neglected bv a prudish public and her last two films were made for Fox: Call Her Savage (32, John F. Dillon) and Hoopla (33, Lloyd). Gome- back attempts failed and she grew onlv in weight, reclusiveness, and melancholy, married to Bell, residing in Nevada, and suffering breakdowns. All so sad, and unlikely, if one looks again at her astonishingvibrance. It was people like Clara Bow who taught cameras how lucky they were.
Appeared in 56 films (silent and sound) including Down to the Sea in Ships, 1922, Beyond the Rainbow, 1922, Helen's Babies, 1924, Black Lightning, 1924, Black Oxen, 1924, Daughters of Pleasure, 1924, Poisoned Paradise, 1924, Empty Hearts, 1924, Capital Punishment, 1925, The Primrose Path, 1925, Free to Love, 1925, The Plastic Age, 1925, Parisian Love, 1925, My Lady's Lips, 1925, Keeper of the Bees, 1925, The Best Bad Man, 1925, My Lady of Whims, 1926, Dancing Mothers, 1926, Mantrap, 1926, Kid Boots, 1926, Hula, 1927, It!, 1927, Wings, 1927, Rough House Rosie, 1927, Children of Divorce, 1927, Get Your Man, 1927, The Wild Party (first talkie), 1929, Dangerous Curves, 1929, The Saturday Night Kid, 1929, True to the Navy, 1930, Love Among the Millionaires, 1930, Her Wedding Night, 1930, No Limit, 1931, Kick In, 1931, Call Her Savage, 1932, Hoopla, 1933.
Clara Bow’s identity was chiefly that of sexual advertisement. Her appeal may no longer operate urgently, but she is the first actress intent on arousing sexual excitement who is not ridiculous. She still looks pretty and her fevered agitation— the fluttering eyes, the restless fingering of men, and teasing angled glances—does seem to speak for the liberated lascivious energies of the new American girl of the twenties. She has a speed that is sensual. She is very funny. And she knows, and likes, more than her movies can admit.
For Bow herself and the women she plaved, the 1920s was an age of brutal but enticing opportunism: a girl with bounce, or energy, could make it, provided she had that much-talked-about but still hidden ingredient—“it"—a willingness. “It" was the promise of sex; and it was a ploy of advertising. Thus Bows career demonstrates the busy collaboration of movies and publicitv. She was the first mass-market sex symbol, and she complained that it was “a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very tired, hurt, and bewildered." Her hurt was a dry run for that awaiting Marilyn Monroe, whose mother came of sexual age in Bow’s brief glory. Bow’s mother and Marilvn’s had something else in common: mental illness.
Married Robert Bow, 1902. 1 child, Clara.