page_title: Clara Bow
section_title: Paramount Pictures
hierarchical_section_title: Clara Bow / Career / Paramount Pictures
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped screenshot of Clara Bow from the film Wings.
context_page_description: Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
  Bow appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap, It, and Wings. She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a "safe return". At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month.
  Two years after marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.
context_section_description: "Rehearsals sap my pep," Bow explained in November 1929, and from the beginning of her career, she relied on immediate direction: "Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it." Bow was keen on poetry and music, but according to Rogers St. Johns, her attention span did not allow her to appreciate novels. Bow's focal point was the scene, and her creativity made directors call in extra cameras to cover her spontaneous actions, rather than holding her down.
  Years after Bow left Hollywood, director Victor Fleming compared Bow to a Stradivarius violin: "Touch her, and she responded with genius." Director William Wellman was less poetic: "Movie stardom isn't acting ability—it's personality and temperament ... I once directed Clara Bow (Wings). She was mad and crazy, but WHAT a personality!". And in 1981, Budd Schulberg described Bow as "an easy winner of the dumbbell award" who "couldn't act," and compared her to a puppy that his father B. P. Schulberg "trained to become Lassie."
  In 1926, Bow appeared in eight releases: five for Paramount, including the film version of the musical Kid Boots with Eddie Cantor, and three loan-outs that had been filmed in 1925.
  In late 1925, Bow returned to New York to co-star in the Ibsenesque drama Dancing Mothers, as the good/bad "flapperish" upper-class daughter Kittens. Alice Joyce starred as her dancing mother, with Conway Tearle as "bad-boy" Naughton. The picture was released on March 1, 1926.
  "Clara Bow, known as the screen's perfect flapper, does her stuff as the child, and does it well."
  "... her remarkable performance in Dancing Mothers ... ".
  Louise Brooks remembered: "She was absolutely sensational in the United States ... in Dancing Mothers ... she just swept the country ... I know I saw her ... and I thought ... wonderful."
  On April 12, 1926, Bow signed her first contract with Paramount: "...to retain your services 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...".
  In Victor Fleming's comedy-triangle, Mantrap, Bow, as Alverna the manicurist, cures lonely hearts Joe Easter (Ernest Torrence), of the great northern, as well as pill-popping New York divorce attorney runaway Ralph Prescott (Percy Marmont). Bow commented: "(Alverna)...was bad in the book, but—darn it!—of course, they couldn't make her that way in the picture. So I played her as a flirt." The film was released on July 24, 1926.
  Variety: "Clara Bow just walks away with the picture from the moment she walks into camera range."
  Photoplay: "When she is on the screen nothing else matters. When she is off, the same is true."
  Carl Sandburg: "The smartest and swiftest work as yet seen from Miss Clara Bow."
  The Reel Journal: "Clara Bow is taking the place of Gloria Swanson...(and)...filling a long need for a popular taste movie actress."
  On August 16, 1926, Bow's agreement with Paramount was renewed into a five-year deal: "Her salary will start at $1700 a week and advance yearly to $4000 a week for the last year." Bow added that she intended to leave the motion picture business at the expiration of the contract, i.e., in 1931.
  In 1927, Bow appeared in six Paramount releases: It, Children of Divorce, Rough House Rosie, Wings, Hula and Get Your Man. In the Cinderella story It, the poor shop-girl Betty Lou Spence (Bow) conquers the heart of her employer Cyrus Waltham (Antonio Moreno). The personal quality —"It"— provides the magic to make it happen. The film gave Bow her nickname, "The 'It' Girl."
  The New York Times: "(Bow)...is vivacious and, as Betty Lou, saucy, which perhaps is one of the ingredients of It."
  The Film Daily: "Clara Bow gets a real chance and carries it off with honors...(and)...she is really the whole show."
  Carl Sandburg: "'It' is smart, funny and real. It makes a full-sized star of Clara Bow."
  Variety: "You can't get away from this Clara Bow girl. She certainly has that certain 'It'...and she just runs away with the film."
  Dorothy Parker is often said to have referred to Bow when she wrote, "It, hell; she had Those." Parker in actuality was not refer
caption: Wings (1927)
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