Clara Bow

At 60 years old, Clara Bow has this physical status:

Career

About 50 million Americans, half of the population at that time, watched the movies every week. As Bow's character developed into adulthood, her status as a "boy" in her old squad became "impossible." She didn't have any girlfriends, and school was a "heartache" and her home was "miserable." "I was aware there was beauty in the world for the first time in my life." "I saw distant lands, peaceful, lovely houses, love, nobility, and glamor" for the first time. "I had a queer feeling about actors and actresses on film" goes the advice of the writer. I had hoped to do it differently. I couldn't investigate it, but I could always feel it." "I'd go home and be a one-girl circus," the singer said, "living them before the glass." Even if she was a "square, awkward, funny-faced child," Bow says she "knew" she wanted to be a motion pictures actress.

Bow performed in Brewster magazine's annual nationwide acting competition, "Fame and Fortune," against her mother's wishes but with her father's support. Other contest winners had won jobs in the movies in previous years. Bow was up against a woman who had never appeared before in the contest's final screen test. Bow created her character and "lived it," a set member later revealed. Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, and Harrison Fisher said in the January issue 1922 of Motion Picture Classics, the jury selected Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, and Harrison Fisher concluded: "The contest jury, Howard Chandler Christy, Neysa McMein, and Harrison Fisher concluded:

Bow received an evening gown and a silver trophy, and the publisher promised to assist her "in gaining a career in film," but no one came. Bow's mother begged her to "went" Brewster's office (located in Brooklyn) until they came up with something. "To get rid of me, or maybe they really wanted to (give me) all the time and were just jammed," Bow was introduced to director Christy Cabanne, who starred her in Beyond the Rainbow, late 1921 in New York City and published February 19, 1922. Bow performed five scenes and impressed Cabanne with her ability to shed tears on call, but she was barred from the final print. She recalled and thought her mother was correct about the movie business, saying, "I was sick to my stomach."

Bow, who had dropped out of school (senior year), after being alerted of winning the "Fame and Fortune Contest in October 1921, may have moved to a regular office position; however, film advertisements and newspaper editorial remarks from 1922 to 1923 indicate that Bow was not hired from Beyond the Rainbow. Her name appears on the cast list among the other actors, with some of them being tagged "Brewster magazine beauty competition champion" and others with a photograph.

Bow, who was encouraged by her father, continued to visit television studio companies looking for roles. "But there was always something." I was either too young or too little, or obese. I was usually overweight." Director Elmer Clifton needed a tomboy for his film Down to the Sea in Ships, and Bow appeared in Motion Picture Classic magazine, and he sent for her. Bow sneaked" from her mother's dress as a way to disguise her youthful appearance. Clifton said she was too old, but he burst into laughter as the stammering Bow made him believe she was the girl in the magazine. Clifton decided to take Bow with him and she was charged $35 per week. Bow and Clifton agreed for $50, but Clifton said he would not say whether she would "fit the role" as a performer. Bow learned later that one of Brewster's subeditors had begged Clifton to give her a chance.

Down to the Sea in Ships, a film made in New Bedford, Massachusetts, by independent "The Whaling Film Corporation," chronicles life, passion, and work in the whale-hunter community. The production was based on a few less well-known actors and local talents. On September 25, 1922, it premiered at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford, 1922, and on March 4, 1923, it went on general sale. Bow was billed 10th in the film, but she shone through:

Bow was chosen the most popular of the 1924 Wampham Baby Stars by mid-December 1923, largely due to her contributions in Down to the Sea in Ships. Bow danced on a table three months before Down to the Sea in Ships was released, uncredited in Enemies of Women (1923). She appeared in The Daring Years (1923), where she befriended actress Mary Carr, who taught her how to use make-up. In the summer, she appeared in Grit as a "tomboy," a tale about juvenile justice that 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 appeared in five subsequent productions.

Tuttle remembered:

Grit was published on January 7, 1924. "The Variety essay said "." Clara Bow lingers in the eye long after the photograph has faded." Bow was approached by Jack Bachman of independent Hollywood studio Preferred Pictures while shooting Grit at Pyramid Studios in Astoria, New York. He wanted to hire her for a three-month trial, fare paid, and $50 a week. "It can't do any harm," he said. "Why can't I sit in New York and make films?" Bow begged her father, but he told her not to be concerned. Louella Parsons, who interviewed her for The New York Morning Telegraph on July 21, 1923, befriended her on July 21, 1923. Parsons defended her and remained to her first opinion on Bow in 1931, when Bow was under tabloid scrutiny.

Bow had already been cast in Maytime and was notably fond of Chinese cuisine, according to the interview.

Bow and her father, her uncle, and her boyfriend departed Hollywood on July 22, 1923. The studio hired writer/agent Maxine Alton, whom Bow later branded a liar as a chaperone for the trip and her subsequent stay in southern California. Bow wore a simple high-school uniform in which she "had earned several gold medals on the cinder track" in late July. Bow had been tested and a press release from early August indicates she had become a member of Preferred Pictures' "permanent stock." Bow has signed to Preferred Pictures, and he has also worked with other studios. Alton and Bow rented an apartment on The Hillview near Hollywood Boulevard. Preferred Pictures was operated by Schulberg, who had worked as a public relations manager at Famous Players-Lasky, but after the power struggle over the founding of United Artists, he went back to the losing side and lost his career. He founded Preferred in 1919 as a result of his education, at the age of 27.

Bow's first Hollywood film, an adaptation of the famous operetta Maytime, in which she debating "Alice Tremaine," was a hit at Maytime. Schulberg revealed that Bow was given the lead in the studio's biggest seasonal review, Poisoned Paradise, well before the film was finished. But first, she was lent to First National Pictures to co-star in Gertrude Atherton's 1923 best seller Black Oxen, shot in October and co-star Colleen Moore in Painted People's shoot in November. More than 50 people auditioned for Janet Oglethorpe, the high-society flapper, and many of whom had never been on screen before, with most having no previous experience. "But he hadn't found exactly what he wanted, and then somebody suggested me to him," Bow reminisced. A big smile greeted him as I stepped into his office, and it seemed to be he was tickled to death." "Bow is the personification of the ideal aristocratic flapper, mischievous, vivacious, quick-tempered, and deeply sentimental," Lloyd said in the paper. It was launched in 1924 on January 4, 1924.

"The flapper, impersonated by a young actress, Clara Bow, had five speaking titles, and every one of them was so clearly in accordance with the scene and the time that it attracted a chuckle from a "hard-boiled" audience, according to the Los Angeles Times, although Variety said "the horrible little flapper is adorably performed."

Colleen Moore made her flapper debut in a hit adaptation of Flaming Youth published November 12, 1923, six weeks before Black Oxen. Both films were produced by First National Pictures, and although Black Oxen and Flaming Youth were still being edited and Flaming Youth were not yet announced, Bow was offered to co-star with Moore in Painted People (The Swamp Angel). Moore wrote about the baseball-playing tomboy and Bow. Moore said, "I don't like my part, I want to play yours." Moore, a well-established actor making $1200 a week, took responsibility and barred the director from shooting close-ups of Bow. Moore was married to the film's director, and Bow's demonstrations were futile. "I'll get the bitch," she told her boyfriend Jacobson, who had come from New York. Bow had sinus problems and decided to have them attended to the very evening. With Bow's face now in bandages, the studio had no choice but to recast her role.

During 1924, Bow's "horrid" flapper raced against Moore's "whimsical" style. Moore revived her interest in The Perfect Flapper, a husband's line; however, despite positive reviews, she suddenly stopped earning. "No more flappers have served their purpose, people are sick of soda-pop love affairs," she told the Los Angeles Times, a month before. "Clara Bow is the one of the most unique types." She was almost immediately nominated for all of the new flapper parts." Bow described the scene in Hollywood as "like a scene from a movie about the French Revolution," where "women are hollering and waving pitchforks twice as aggressively as any of the guys." "The only women in sight are the ones with their heads cut off."

Bow had defied the obsessive Maxine Alton and carried her father to Hollywood by 1924. Bow remembered their reunion: "I didn't care a rap, for (her), not B. P. Schulberg, nor my motion picture work, nor Clara Bow, nor Clara Bow, I just threw myself into his arms and kissed and kissed him, and we all cried like a pair of fool kids." It was amazing." Bow thought "Mrs Smith" (the pseudonym she used) had misappropriated her trust: "She wanted to keep a hold on me so she made me feel she wasn't getting over and that her clever leadership kept me going." Bow and her father died on 1714 North Kingsley Drive in Hollywood, along with Jacobson, who later worked for Preferred. When Schulberg learned of this arrangement, he chastised Jacobson for potentially bringing "his big star" into a controversy. "She ripped up his deal and threw it in his face, and told him he couldn't handle her private life" when Bow found out. "Clara] was the world's sweetest girl, but you didn't cross her and you didn't do her wrong," Jacobson said. In a significant column published on September 7, 1924, The Los Angeles Times published " Clara, impish, appealing, but oh, how she does act!" "Her father is referred to as a "business manager," Jacobson referred to as her brother."

Bow appeared in eight published in 1924, two of whom were released the same day. Bow took her first lead in Poisoned Paradise, 1924; "the clever little newcomer whose career earns fresh recommendations with every new picture in which she appears." Bow's "original" scene "throws": she fights a villain with her fists but not "shrink back in fear"; she does not "shrink back in fear." Bow and Marie Prevost, a De luxe flapper, were also published in Daughters of Pleasure, which was later published on February 29, 1924. Clara Bow may have been a lead. I'm sure her 'infinite variety' would keep her from wearing our clothes no matter how many scenes she was in." For the first time in the prohibition, bootleg drama/comedy Wine, which was released on August 20, 1924, loaned out to Universal, Bow top-starred. Bow depicts an innocent girl who emerges as a wild "red-hot mama" ("a naughty, inebriated flapper" in the upper classes. "If not taken as information, it is cracking good entertainment," Carl Sandburg wrote about it on September 29. The Los Angeles Times' Grace Kingsley said, "Don't miss Wine." It's a deeply refreshing draught — there are only about five actresses on film who make me a happy ending —and Clara is almost five of them." Alma Whitaker of the Los Angeles Times announced on September 7, 1924, which was the Los Angeles Times' Alma Whitaker.

"I was going wild" during this period, I suppose, in the sense of wanting to have a good time... maybe this was a good thing, because a lot of the excitement, the joy of life, made it into televisions." Bow appeared in 14 productions, six for her employer, Preferred Pictures, and eight as an "out-loan" in 1925. In June, Motion Picture Classic magazine announced that "Clara Bow... has alarming signs of becoming the year's sensation" and included her on the cover.

Preferred Pictures loaned Bow to producers "for sums ranging from $1500 to $2000 a week," while paying Bow a salary of $200 to $750 a week. The studio, as with every other independent studio or theater at the time, was under assault from "The Big Three," which had established a trust to discourage Independents from entering the studio and enforce the monopolistic studio system. Schulberg filed Preferred Pictures for bankruptcy on October 21, 1925, with debts of $820,774 and assets $1,420. Schulberg would work with Adolph Zukor to become "I was attracted to Paraphrasedoutput because he had Clara Bow under personal contract," three days later.

In his memoirs, Adolph Zukor, Paramount Pictures CEO, said: "All the talent of directors and all the burgeoning of press-agent drums would not make a movie star." Only the followers will do it. "We are investigating audience reactions with utmost care." Adela Rogers St. Johns had a different take on it in 1950: "If ever a celebrity was made by public demand, it was Clara Bow." "(Bow) became a star without anyone's assistance," Louise Brooks (from 1980) says.

Bow's last attempt for Preferred Pictures was the Plastic Age, her highest hit to date. Cynthia Day, the good-bad college girl, appeared against Donald Keith, who portrayed him as the bad guy in the movie. It was shot on location at Pomona College in 1925 and released on December 15, but it wasn't until 1926 that it was seen in New York. "The college climate is implausible, and Clara Bow is not our picture of a college girl," the photoplay was dissatisfied: The theater owners were ecstatic, with the manager of The Liberty Theater stating that "The film is the biggest spectacle we've ever had in our theater." It is 100% at the box-office. Some commentators believed Bow had conquered new territory, "Bow) adds a whimsical touch to her film work, adding to her rising star of screen fame. "Only the amusing and frank act of Clara Bow saves the picture from the limbo of the impossible," Time called Bow out, complimenting her on saving the image.

Bow started to date her co-star Gilbert Roland, who became her first fiancé. Bow was credited with being the first to wear hand-painted legs in public in June 1925, and he attracted a following at the Californian beaches. Bow experimented with gender norms and sexuality in her public image through the 1920s. She appeared in boxing films and posed for advertising photos as a boxer, as well as her tomboy and flapper roles. Bow portrayed herself as a strong, modern woman by appropriating traditionally androgynous or masculine characteristics.

Bow described "rehearsals sap my pep," Bow said in November 1929, and she started her career by relying on immediate results: "Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it." Bow was keen on poetry and music, but Rogers St. Johns said that her attention span did not enable her to enjoy novels. Bow's central point was the scene, and her ingenuity had her producers bring in additional cameras to document her spontaneous behavior rather than holding her down.

Bow compared Bow to a Stradivarius violin, and she responded with genius years after Bow left Hollywood. William Wellman was less poetic: "Movie stardom isn't acting talent; it's personality and temperament..." Clara Bow (Wings) was once directed by me. She was wild and crazia, but WHAT a personality! "Understandable winner of the dumbbell award" who "didn't act," and Budd Schulberg likened Bow to a puppy "trained to become Lassie" in 1981.

In 1926, Bow appeared in eight films, five for Paramount, five for Paramount, including the film version of the musical Kid Boots starring Eddie Cantor and three in 1925. Bow returned to New York in late 1925 to co-star in the Ibsenesque drama Dancing Mothers as the wealthy/bad" upper-class daughter Kittens, as the good/poor "flapperish" upper-class child. Alice Joyce starred as her dancing mother, with Conway Tearle portraying her as "bad-boy" Naughton. The photograph was published on March 1, 1926. Local feedback were extremely encouraging; "Clara Bow, the screen's top flapper, does her stuff as the child and does it well," and "her outstanding appearance in Dancing Mothers... "" Louise Brooks recalled her in Brownlow's book, "She was absolutely sensational in the United States... in Dancing Mothers... she swept the country"; I know I saw her... and I wondered... "Wow!" says the narrator.

Bow's first marriage contract with Paramount began on April 12, 1926: "To maintain your performance as an actress for the period of six months from June 6, 1926 to December 6, 1926 at a salary of $750.00 per week." Bow negotiated that her Paramount contract did not include a morals clause. Victor Fleming's comedy-triangle Mantrap Bow, as Alverna the manicurist, brings a bleakness to the great northern, as well as pill-popping New York divorce attorney runaway Ralph Prescott (Percy Marmont). "Alverna] was bad in the book, but—darn it—they couldn't make her that way in the picture." So I played her as a flirt." The film was released in 1926 and attracted rave reviews. "Clara Bow just walks away with the photo from the time she walks into camera range," Variety said, though Photoplay informed readers that "nothing else matters when she is on the screen." When she is off, the same is true." "It's the smartest and fastest work as yet seen from Miss Clara Bow," Carl Sandburg said. In The Reel Journal, Sam Carver of the Newman Theater said, "Clara Bow will take the place of Gloria Swanson...(and)...filling a longing demand for a well-known taste movie actress" (and).

Bow's five-year contract was extended to Paramount on August 16, 1926: "Her pay will begin at $1700 a week and increase yearly to $4000 a week for the first year." Bow said she intended to leave the motion picture industry at the end of the agreement, i.e. 1931. Bow appeared in six Paramount publications in 1927: It, Children of Divorce, Rough House Rosie, Wings, Hula, and Get Your Man. Betty Lou Spence (Bow), a poor shopgirl from Cinderella, conquers the heart of her employer Cyrus Waltham (Antonio Moreno). The personal quality—"It"— makes it happen. "The 'It' Girl" was Bow Bow's nickname in the film. "Bow" is vivacious and, as Betty Lou, saucy, which may be one of the ingredient of It, is certainly not surprising: "Bow" was nothing less than stellar, according to the New York Times. "Clara Bow gets a chance and does it justice with honors," the Film Daily said, "you can't get away from this Clara Bow girl." She has that definite 'It' and goes away with the film,' as she says. "It" is smart, funny, and true, Carl Sandburg wrote. Clara Bow is the main star of the film. Dorothy Parker is often quoted as having referred to Bow when she wrote, "It, hell; she had Those." In the book of the same name, Parker was not referring to Bow or to Bow's character in the film It, but to a different character, Ava Cleveland.

Bow was in Wings, a war film that was rewritten to include her, but she wasn't happy about her role: "I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." The film went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Bow appeared in four Paramount advertisements: Red Hair, Ladies of the Mob, The Fleet's Inception, and Three Weeks, all of which are now out of date. Adela Rogers St. Johns, a well-known screenwriter who had published a number of images with Bow, wrote about her: a famous screenwriter who had taken many photographs of her clients, wrote about her: a former screenwriter who had done a number of articles about her.

Bow's bohemian lifestyle and "dreadful" demeanors were considered reminders of the Hollywood elite's uneasy place in high society. "They beggar at me to be dignified," Bow fumed.

But what are the dignified people like?

People who are used as examples for me? They are snobs. ... frightening snobs... I'm a bit curious about Hollywood.

I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!"

Bow was "the greatest emotional actor on film," MGM executive Paul Bern said, "sentimental, simple, kidish, and sweet" with her "hard-boiled attitude" as a "defense system."Bow maintained her position as the top box-office draw and queen of Hollywood with "talkies" The Wild Party, Dangerous Curves, and The Saturday Night Kid. Neither Bow's voice nor her Brooklyn accent was a problem for Bow, her followers, or Paraphrasedoutput. Bow, like Charlie Chaplin, Louise Brooks, and the majority of silent film actors, was skeptical of the novelty: "I hate talkies... they're rigid and restrictive." Because there is no chance for movement, you lose a lot of your cuteness, and action is the most important thing to me." In The Wild Party, a somewhat tense bow had to do a number of retakes because her eyes were always wandering up to the microphone overhead. "I can't buck progress" is the answer. "I must do the best I can," she said. Bow described her nerves as "all shot" in October 1929, saying she had reached "the breaking point," according to Photoplay, who cited photos of "rows of sedative bottles" by her bed. "They're now having me sing." With hips-and-eye stuff, I'm sort of half-sing, half-talk. You know what I'm talking about: Maurice Chevalier, to be precise. I used to sing at home, and people would say, 'Pipe down!'

You're terrible!'

My voice is "strong," the studio claims.

Bow was second at the box-office only to Joan Crawford in 1930 with True to the Navy, Love Among the Millionaires, and Her Wedding Night. Bow maintained their position as fifth in the box-office in 1931 with No Limit and Kick In, but job pressures, political scandals, and overwork all took their toll on Bow's fragile emotional stability.

Paramount-friendly Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C. Doran, a woman charged with financial mismanagement, charged her secretary Daisy DeVoe with financial mismanagement, was charged with financially mismanagement by Paramount-friendly Los Angeles city attorney Burn Fitts, Paramount-friendly Los Angeles assistant District Attorney David Clark, and Paramount-friendly Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William C. Doran.

Bow and her secretary and hairdresser Daisy DeBoe (later DeVoe) owned 512 Bedford Drive in a house valued at $25,000 with neighbors named "Horse-keeper," "Physician," "Builder" in the 1930 census. Bow said she was 23 years old, i.e., born 1906, 19th century censuses, 1910 and 1920.

As she got closer to a big crash, her boss, B.P., was brought to a crashing conclusion. Schulberg began referring to her as "Crisis-a-day-Clara." Bow was admitted to a sanatorium in April and then Paramount released her from her last assignment: City Streets (1931). Her career was basically over at 25 years old. B. P. Schulberg tried to substitute Bow with his partner Sylvia Sidney, but B. P. Schulberg attempted to replace Bow with his girlfriend Sylvia Sidney, but Schulberg's.

David Selznick explained:

In June, Bow left Hollywood for Rex Bell's ranch in Nevada, her "desert paradise," and married him in small-town Las Vegas in December. In an interview on December 17, Bow addressed her return to health, sleep, workout, and food, as well as the fact that she returned to Hollywood "for the sole purpose of making enough money to stay out of it." Every studio in Hollywood (except Paramount) and even abroad demanded her assistance within a few months, and even overseas. Bow "was a fantastic actress" and wanted her to appear in Secrets (1933), according to Mary Pickford, Howard Hughes gave her a three-picture contract and MGM wanted her to act in Red-Headed Woman (1932). Bow accepted the script but later decided against it because Irving Thalberg demanded that she sign a long-term deal. Bow and Fox Film Corporation got a two-picture contract for Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoop-La (1933). Both were fruitful; Variety favored the former. The film was rated as "pretty good entertainment" by the October 1934 Family Circle Film Guide, and Miss Bow wrote "This is the most acceptable bit of talkie acting Miss Bow has done." "Miss Bow appears in her dancing career as often as possible," they wrote, and her dancing troupes would not weigh two pounds soaking wet." "Rex accused me of enjoying showing myself off," Bow said of her unveiling of her costume in Hoop-La. I was a little sore when I woke up. Darn Well I was doing it because we could use a little money these days.

Who can't?"

Bow reflected on her career:

Source

Awards and honors

• For her contributions to the film industry, Bow was awarded a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. Her star is located at 1500 Vine Street.
• In 1994, she was honored with an image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.