Clara Bow
Clara Gordon Bow 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, It, and Wings. 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 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, 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, "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". By the time Clara was four and a half, her father was out of work. Between 1905 and 1923, the family lived at 14 different addresses, but seldom outside Prospect Heights, with Clara's father often absent. "I do not think my mother ever loved my father", she said. "He knew it. And it made him very unhappy, for he worshipped her always."
When Bow's mother was 16, she fell from a second-story window and suffered a severe head injury. She was later diagnosed with "psychosis due to epilepsy". 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". Still, Bow felt deprived of her childhood; "As a kid I took care of my mother, she didn't take care of me".
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. Clara was able to fend off the attack and locked her mother in her room. In the morning, Bow's mother had no recollection of the episode. Later, she was committed to a sanitarium by Robert Bow.
Clara spoke about the incident later:
According to Bow's biographer, David Stenn, Bow was raped by her father at age sixteen while her mother was institutionalized. 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.
Bow attended P.S. 111, P.S. 9, and P.S. 98. As she grew up, she felt shy among other girls, who teased her for her worn-out clothes and "carrot-top" hair. She said about her childhood, "I never had any clothes. ... And lots of time didn't have anything to eat. We just lived, that's about all. Girls shunned me because I was so poorly dressed."
From first grade, Bow preferred the company of boys, 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." A close friend, a younger boy who lived in her building, burned to death, something that haunted her. She heard his screams and ran to his aid, rolling him up in carpet to stop the fire, but he died in her arms. In 1919, Bow enrolled in Bay Ridge High School for Girls. "I wore sweaters and old skirts ... didn't want to be treated like a girl". Her mother had a long spell of good health, and changed Bow's appearance, cutting her hair more femininely. Bow said that "there was one boy who had always been my pal ... he kissed me ... I wasn't sore. I didn't get indignant. I was horrified and hurt ... I knew I could never go back to being a tomboy."
Bow's interest in sports and her physical abilities led her to plan for a career as an athletics instructor. She won five medals at the "cinder tracks" and credited her cousin Homer Baker—the national half-mile champion in 1913 and 1914 and 660-yard world-record holder—for being her trainer. 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, and 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". "I'd go home and be a one girl circus, taking the parts of everyone I'd seen, living them before the glass." At 16, Bow says she "knew" she wanted to be a motion pictures actress, even if she was a "square, awkward, funny-faced kid."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 fall 1921. In previous years, other contest winners had found work in the movies. 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 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. "I was sick to my stomach", she recalled and thought her mother was right about the movie business.
Bow dropped out of school in her senior year, after she was notified about winning the "Fame and Fortune Contest", possibly in October 1921, and got an ordinary office job. However, movie ads and newspaper editorial comments from 1922 to 1923 suggest that Bow was not cut from Beyond the Rainbow.
1922–1924: Early silent films
Encouraged by her father, Bow continued to visit 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." 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 take Bow with him and offered her $35 a week. Bow held out for $50 and Clifton agreed, but he could not say whether she would "fit the part". Bow later learned that one of Brewsters' subeditors had urged Clifton to give her a chance.Down to the Sea in Ships, shot on location in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and produced by independent "The Whaling Film Corporation", documented life, love, and work in the whale-hunter community. The production relied on a few lesser-known actors and local talents. It premiered at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford, on September 25, 1922, and went on general distribution on March 4, 1923. Bow was billed 10th in the film, but shone through:
- "Miss Bow will undoubtedly gain fame as a screen comedienne".
- "Clara Bow who has reached the front rank of motion picture principal player... 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 ..."
Grit was released on January 7, 1924. The Variety review said, "Clara Bow lingers in the eye, long after the picture has gone." 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. "Why can't I stay in New York and make movies?" Bow asked her father, but he told her not to worry. 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:
The interview also revealed that Bow already was cast in Maytime and liked chop suey restaurants.