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The original ‘It Girl’
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SHE HAS ‘IT’: Clara Bow stars in “Children of Divorce” playing Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Allison Brophy Champion,
[email protected] , (540) 825-0771 ext. 101
Published: January 21, 2010
Updated: January 21, 2010
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The paradoxical Brooklyn-born silent film starlet Clara Bow (1905-1965) emulated sex on the silver screen.
In doing so, the wildly popular actress “upended the whole ritual of courtship,” said Bow biographer David Stenn, contending that it was she, in fact, who launched America’s sexual revolution decades before the wild and free 1960s.
On and off the screen, if Clara Bow wanted a man, she would go after him, unlike the “good girls” of the time, he said.
Her influence rubbed off onto popular culture.
Bow was also independent, self-supporting, generous and “a major talent,” said Stenn, author of 1988’s “Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild.”
Without question, she was a tragic figure as well.
But Stenn doesn’t like to talk Ms. Bow up too much. He wants folks to go see her for themselves.
She comes to the big screen in the Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater Saturday night for a rare showing of her silent film, “Children of Divorce” (Paramount, 1927), with Andrew Simpson on piano.
“Sex symbols to that point had been foreign and exotic,” said Stenn, a New York-based writer and television producer who counts among his credits a stint with Fox’s Beverly Hills 90210.
“Clara Bow brought sex into America’s backyard,” he said, referring to some of her movie titles — ‘Daughters of Pleasure,’ ‘My Lady’s Lips,’ ‘Kiss Me Again’ and ‘Get Your Man.’
At one point, she was “engaged” to three men at one time: actors Gary Cooper and Gilbert Roland and “Gone With the Wind” director Victor Fleming. At the time, “engaged” was a euphemism for being romantically involved, Stenn clarified.
Bow starred in 58 movies from 1922-1933 and was Hollywood’s first sex symbol, he said, noting she always played working girls, that is, a waitress, manicurist, etc. Audiences, male and female, loved her, he said, noting, “The men wanted to be with her and the women wanted to be her.”
Impressively, Bow was the original “It Girl,” a term coined by English writer Elinor Glyn to describe her in 1927’s “It.”
“She didn’t break the mold, she created the mold,” Stenn said.
Today, when something is “It” it means new or hot, he said, but that’s not what “It” originally meant.
“You can’t explain what she has,” Stenn said, “but what she has makes her different and better than everyone else.”
And yet underneath all of Bow’s carelessness and abandon was a deep sadness and intense emotionality, he said, stemming from her horrific childhood. To say that Bow was not wanted is putting it lightly.
“Her mother tried to kill her and her father molested her,” said Stenn, who interviewed Bow’s friends and associates when researching her biography and was granted access by her family to her personal records. “She came from the slums.”
Bow never hid her past though and it was her boldness on screen and in real life that made her a threat to a lot of people in the business, he said. In fact, she was considered an embarrassment in Hollywood and wasn’t invited to her own movie premiers.
But it was the emotional power behind Bow’s beauty that made her one of the most naturally gifted actresses of all time, said Stenn.
Bow not only survived, but she transcended, retiring at age 26, buying a huge ranch in Nevada, marrying and raising two sons. Her films are like “great art,” Stenn said, because they are not dated and continue to gain new fans.
For modern followers, he went on, Bow is like “The Sex in the City” girl of the roaring 20s.
Her role in “Children of Divorce” is atypical, he said, in that the movie is a drama, meant to be shocking because of its subject matter. For Bow’s character, the movie ends tragically.
Of the 58 movies she was in, only about 30 survive, Stenn said, noting that Saturday’s screening in Culpeper was a special event.
“There is a moment in the film that is the acumen of silent screen acting,” he said, referring to Bow’s dramatic ‘triple take’ in one fleeting scene. “It’s this idea that you didn’t need words because you could convey all the words on your face. That kind of power is what makes those people so different.”
Want to go?
The Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater presents Clara Bow in “Children of Divorce” (Paramount, 1927) Saturday night at 7:30.
Make reservations for the free show at (540) 827-1079 ext. 79994.
Hey, does Criterion know that this is the Von Sternberg most wanted on DVD? Because the majority of fans haven't seen it. I'll wager that most of them have seen the old Paramount VHS releases of DOCKS OF NEW YORK and THE LAST COMMAND, and probably UNDERWORLD too. The mere presence of Clara Bow and Gary Cooper would sell 5 times more copies than the other three films would combined.