The average American adores Clara Bow. Unlike the stars of the time, she did not claim to be haughtily elegant, a Hollywood aristocrat. She is comfortable in her own skin, tells everything without filter and this candor contributes to making her an idol of the Roaring Twenties.
With the depression of the 1930s, she became one of the symbols of a perverted and dissolute film industry.
The character of Nellie LaRoy played by Margot Robbie in the film Babylon by Damien Chazelle is inspired among others by Clara Bow. She is, like many actresses and many actors, from a poor background and who will experience a meteoric rise to fame.
Nicknamed the It Girl, Clara was 18 when she was promoted to star but her career would be very short. When she had to retire in 1931, accelerated by a flood of scandals and rumors against her, she was then 26 years old.
Clara and the Roaring Twenties
Clara Bow could be a star today. She doesn't seem to belong to the 20s. Her way of moving, of flirting with the camera means that you can't take your eyes off her.
Director Billy Wilder explained about Marilyn Monroe "This girl had something I hadn't seen since the days of silent movies. She was the first girl who looked like one of those 'lush' movie stars. silent era. Every image of the test radiated sex."
"Flesh Impact is rare. I remember three people who had it, Clara Bow, Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth. Such girls have flesh that photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch her."
In 1927, Clara Bow is the archetype of the desirable woman, she is the number 1 star in the United States. After two years of small roles and small successes, she finds herself under contract with the Paramount studio.
We are after the First World War and many women have tasted independence. They left their generally rural environment, came to town, lived in shared accommodation with other women, had a job and became consumers of clothing, make-up, magazines and cinema.
Clara Bow becomes the most popular boy (or flapper) of her time.
Girls wanted to look like her and boys dreamed of dating her.
She will shoot nearly 8 films a year from 1921 to 1928. She succeeds in her transition from silent to speaking star, although she hated them and her Brooklyn accent did not please everyone.
Un parfum de scandale
Women had become a little too free in their lives and their bodies.
We had to sort it all out. And Clara Bow was the representation. She came from a popular background and referred to the same image of culture considered as popular as was the cinema of the 1920s, even vulgar, in contrast to Broadway theater which was promoted as an elitist art.
With the advent of talkies and the Great Depression of the 1930s, the cards in the entertainment industry were redistributed.
In 1929, the United States fell into crisis. Hollywood cinema then turned to Broadway, in search of respectability and renewal, notably with the arrival of the Hays Production Code.
Except that Clara really likes boys, parties, games, and doesn't respect the rules.
Out of Hollywood in the 1920s is trying to prove that it has the same prestige as Broadway. We must rehabilitate the image of the studios and erase all the cases that could tarnish their shine.
Only Clara Bow refuses to get rid of her accent, her attitude and smooth out who she is.
Too embarrassing, too provocative, too "trash" and no longer invited to "who's who" parties, she will create her own parties. She threatens the small circle of hypocrites with her pranks and therefore ends up being expelled.
Hollywood stars, journalists and all those who want to preserve their image will have no qualms about letting go or even tarnishing Clara Bow's image when the rumors start.
I don't know if you know this rule, but in France we talk about the 3 L rule (we lick, we let go, we lynch).
His trial with his secretary Daisy DeVoe, who will seek to extort money from him by trying to blackmail her, triggers an earthquake of revelations, each more misguided and abject than the next.
The Paramount studio could have stifled the affair, but Clara Bow's success was beginning to decline and the management did not wish to renew her contract.
From a joyful and hedonistic woman, the tabloid press creates an image of a bestial woman with debauched sexuality. His contract is broken with Paramount and his career is over.
Despite a few films shot with Fox, his image is tarnished and his career will not take off again.
It is 1932, the world is plunged into the Depression and everything that Clara Bow had embodied, the joy, the consumption seemed this time obscene, excessive and perverted.
Clara Bow the most desired woman in America had become persona non grata.
To review her films
As Betty Lou Spence for It by Clarence G. Badger and Josef von Sternberg
As Mary Preston for Wings by William A. Wellman
To know more
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