CLARA BOW
JULY 29, 1905-SEPTEMBER 27, 1965
WORK: Actress
SPOUSE: Rex Bell (m. 1931; div. 1962)
CHILDREN: Tony Beldam, George Beldam
Happy Monday, kids! This has been a hell of a day, and I an ready for some respite. Today I want to talk about a true icon, someone that sort of defined an era. Let’s talk about Clara Bow, the original “It” girl!
Clara was born in Brooklyn in 1905, during the hottest heat wave in years, with temperatures peaking at 100 degrees. Her parents were very poor and her father was often absent, due to his issues with alcohol and his strained relationship with his wife. Clara’s childhood was bleak and by many standards practically Dickinsonian. She and her mother worked endlessly to support themselves, with Clara attending school in homemade outfits that the other children mocked her for. She didn’t fit in, for she was too boyish and rough, preferring the tumble and rumble of other boys to girls her own age. She found solace in sports, gaining a reputation for her pitching arm.
When Clara was 16, her mother fell out of a second story window, suffering a head injury. After the accident her mother started to have violent episodes, during which she would lash out at Clara physically, oftentimes not remembering the next day. To cope with her bleak childhood, having to care for her mother and not having any real friends, Clara found consolation in the movies. She knew early on that she wanted to be a screen actress, sensing that she had something inside her that was made for it. In 1921, when she was 15, she competed in Brewster magazines nationwide acting contest against her mother’s wishes. Deemed a natural as well as a prodigy, she won the contest and was promised film work, but nothing came of it. Her father told her to “haunt” the offices of the publishing house that held the contest, and they eventually caved and introduced her to director Christy Cabanne, who cast her in “Beyond the Rainbow.” After begging casting offices in New York for work, she got a tomboy role in “Down to the Sea in Ships.” Though the role was small, almost every review singled her out as a future star and gifted comedian. Another tomboy part followed in “Grit,” after which an executive from Preferred Pictures in Hollywood approached her for a three month trial contract. At the urging of her father and against her own reluctance, Clara left for Hollywood in 1923. By 1925 she was making 14 pictures a year, always receiving rave reviews, usually for playing carefree young flappers. Despite her peppy on screen image, she worked herself to the point of exhaustion, usually making two or three films at once, working 18 hour days at a time when film actors had no union to protect them. In 1927 she made the film that would define her image. “It” is a romantic caper, the title referring to sexual magnetism. Clara plays a compassionate, funny, and very sexually liberated store clerk who is pursuing her older boss. Because of the film’s success and Clara’s continuing rise to fame, she was deemed America’s “It Girl.”
Even with the advent of “talkies” in the late 20s and early 30s, Clara held her position as a top box office draw. However, she hated the new way of working, as the microphones and more subdued style of acting made her nervous and rigid. During this period she began exhibiting signs of depression of even schizophrenia, her nerves became shot and she began to succumb to her public scandals. In April of 1931, when she was still one of the top 5 stars in Hollywood, she was brought to a sanatorium and requested to be released from her contract with Paramount. At 25, her career was deemed over.
Clara left Hollywood and married a rancher, Rex Bell, and lived in then small-town Las Vegas. She recovered enough to return to Hollywood soon after, and soon every major studio wanted her services. Clara just wanted to make enough money to leave Hollywood behind forever. In 1933, she officially retired from acting, living with Bell in Nevada. For the rest of her life she was plagued by insomnia and depression, as well as what would now be called social anxiety. When her husband was running for the US House of Representatives, Clara tried to commit suicide, leaving a note that said she preferred death to a public life. She and her husband separated, and she lived alone in a small bungalow in Los Angeles for the rest of her life. Clara died at age 60 from a heart attack.
HIGHLIGHTS AND LITTLE KNOWN FACTS:
1. The biggest misconception about Bow is that her career foundered with the coming of sound because her Brooklyn accent was too ugly. She made several talkies, in fact, starting with “The Wild Party,” a big success that was directed by her friend and champion Dorothy Arzner. In truth, Bow’s physical and mental health issues (she had schizophrenia, like her mother) were exacerbated by the stresses of her fame, particularly the fallout from her notorious tell-all memoir in Photoplayand a lurid lawsuit brought by her former secretary.
2. Perhaps because of those misfortunes and the outsider status they brought, she can now be claimed as one of the sharpest commentators on show business, and the studio system. She knew what it meant to be a “jazz baby” and it wasn’t always a party. “All the time the flapper is laughing and dancing, there’s a feeling of tragedy underneath,” she said once. “She’s unhappy and disillusioned, and that’s what people sense.”
WHY HER LEGACY MATTERS:
Clara’s legacy was almost completely wiped away by the efforts of her contemporaries. Fellow actors, as well as the studio heads that made millions from her work deemed her “too wild,” “too sexual,” and a slew of other things. Clara was a Brooklyn girl, and she was not about to pretend she wasn’t. When Hollywood royalty was putting on airs, Clara was a brash reminder of the humble upbringings that most of them had. She was sexual, sure, but no more sexual than any other top actress of the time. The difference was, she didn’t hide it. She didn’t believe in pretending to be anything other than herself, and that is what alienated her from the rest of the Hollywood elite.
Clara was the first sex symbol of American cinema, the foremost flapper, and a model for plucky girls around the world, but she was also a no-nonsense woman who had the courage that nobody else had at the time (or most times, honestly) to call out the film industry for all of their pretensions. She is also a cautionary tale of what the film business did to those that dare to break the mold, to rock the boat, and to disobey the rules. Like Marilyn Monroe (who Clara viewed as her natural successor) some decades later, Clara’s career was overshadowed by personal issues, brought on by stress and overwork from studio’s trying to make as much off of her as they could.
Clara endured too many hardships during her too short career and life, but her work and her image helped to free the American woman from the confines of societal norms and encouraged the masses to choose their own destiny. No good deed goes unpunished, and no one thanks a trailblazer until it is too late, unfortunately. And Clara truly was a one of a kind, trailblazing woman. Her success came from her, not an image she put on. And that’s how she wanted it.
I highly recommend further reading on on Clara, as well as viewing her films that are still available!
See you tomorrow!
-E
The Diva Dictionary 