CHARLEY BRADY
For a while there it looked like Clara Bow would slide into the ranks of the lesser-known female stars of the silent film era. While names like Greta Garbo, Gloria Swanson, and even Mary Pickford still quite easily tripped from the
modern tongue, Clara Bow seemed to be passing into that Twilight Realm for Half-Remembered Goddesses.
Well, no longer. Taylor Swift is just the latest to shine a light on this most vibrant of all stars, even giving her a title song on her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department. And then there’s Margot Robbie, skillfully tapping her inner-Clara for her role as Nellie LeRoy in Damien Chazelle’s 2022 Babylon.
(Unfortunately, Mr. Chazelle’s agenda was to focus on the mainly unsubstantiated sleaze reports from the silent age. Put it this way: as a glance at the Last Days of Silence, his film was closer to writer Kenneth Anger’s tablet of trash Hollywood Babylon than it was to Singin’ in the Rain. Each to their own.)
The Clara Bow who, along with a very select few, dominated 1920s cinema, was an ephemeral creature of beauty, and a – yes, I’ll say it – STAR of the kind that they simply don’t make anymore. Within one scene she could go from being a playful seductress to a woman that made a man want to put a protective arm around her. And it wasn’t only men that she had a devastating effect on. In the excellent old-movies site A PERSON IN THE DARK, FlickChick writes:
“Now you know I love the stars and like to have fun with them, but I can only gush about Clara Bow. Forgive me for being serious, but our Clara deserves respect!
“A silent film viewer’s response to Clara Bow is immediate and emotional. She, more than any other performer of the silent era, represents raw emotion. There is joy in her presence. She is young, healthy, full of fun, and really, really pretty. She has magical star quality. Clara makes me happy.”
‘There is joy in her presence’. What a wonderful thing to say about anyone or have anyone say about you. There is an enchantment at work, right there.
Yet few suffered so much at the hands of the more rotten kind of journalist, especially those writing for a rag called ‘The Coast Reporter’. It was from here that came many of the stories that continue to this day. It was a shameful way to treat a woman who had experienced the very worst kind of childhood, from a mother who actually tried to kill her, to a waste-of-air father who was both useless and abusive.
And there are a lot of factors that led to her taking an early leave of the screen, including her growing fear of the microphone and her really lousy taste in men.
Yet Clara Bow – at least for a few shining years – rose above it and left us a legacy that is enshrined in her surviving films.
And on June 15 Cinephile Paradiso and Silent Cinema Galway will be showing one of her most famous and one of her best, screenwriter/novelist Elinor Glyn’s 1927 It – the film that gave rise to the phrase ‘the IT girl’. As Ms. Glyn said:
“‘IT’ is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With ‘IT’ you win all men if you are a woman – and all women if you are a man. ‘IT’ can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.”
Yet of her becoming forever associated with IT, Ms. Glyn also opined:
“She could have become one of the greatest artists on the screen, particularly in tragic parts, for which she had a far greater aptitude than for the comic scenes which I had to make her act in my films.”
We look forward to seeing you for the screening at Silent Cinema Galway, followed afterwards, by a discussion about the incomparable, exciting, tragic, and wonderful Clara Bow.
NB: For one of the best biographies of the lady, you could do worse than read Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild by David Stenn. And one of these days I’ll get around to doing a comprehensive listing of the really excellent silent and old-movie sites and blogs out there; but for now – especially since I’ve borrowed a quote -- let me unhesitatingly recommend A Person in the Dark. The love and enthusiasm pour from this blog. Thank you, FlickChick.
charleybrady@gmail.com