^{CHARLEY BRADY}

I hear ye. As a certified and paid-up member of the Male, Pale & Stale Dinosaur Brigade, I’m hardly the target audience for the new Taylor Swift album, The Tortured Poets Department. Let’s be honest, at this stage in my life I’m working on my first heart attack, not my first broken heart. That ship sailed about fifty years ago.

But the lovely Taylor had me at “You look like Clara Bow in this light/ Remarkable/ All your life, did you know/ You’d be picked like a rose.” 

Oh yeah. Anyone under the age of 35 who thinks that a genuine icon can be a lady of the 1920s is OK with me. And it seems that Ms. Swift does just that in her song Clara Bow, where she draws a number of parallels, but I’ll let you interpret the song for yourselves. It makes this Old Codger very happy just to know that it even exists in this crass age where you are as likely to become famous because of a sex tape (‘Hi Kim!’) than through talent (‘Hi Clara!’). Clara Gordon Bow starred in 46 silent movies and even made the tricky transition to the talkies with a further 11. She was the original ‘IT’ girl.

And wonder of wonders. Possibly around the time that Ms. Swift was recording her song about the silent star, one of that lady’s lost films was found. Gary Huggins had to buy a whole package of 20 vintage reels at an auction in Omaha, to get the cartoon he wanted.

“It was the best $20 I’ve ever invested, for sure”, he said, after discovering that the box contained The Pill Pounder, a short comedy from 101 years ago that featured a young Bow in several scenes.

More coincidences! As I was looking over Taylor Swift’s lyrics for the song, a message came in from Holly Buckley, showing the Hot Girl Summer poster for the coming collaboration between Cinephile Paradiso and Silent Cinema Galway. And there is Clara Bow’s name yet again – writ large!

We’ll keep you posted.

Hoo boy! Talk about excitement! I may just get that heart attack yet!

^{charleybrady@gmail.com}