CLARA BOW DENA SEVERO
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“Katlyn Clark.”
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A short story. -Katlyn Clark is a short story based upon the beginning of flapper culture, of what it meant to be a woman with character before women had the right to vote in August 1920. It engages with deep sentimental values of the decade, the fear and the not knowing what would happen next.)
I am looking into my reflection, wondering what I should do next. I had chosen the perfect dress for the occasion and pointed shoes to match, but I could not help myself and ask, is this what I want? This was going to mark my life. An occasion, to separate my future from my past. The power I had been waiting for years. I ran towards my wardrobe and gazed at the closed doors, unconscious of my face expressions. Then, it hit me. I hurried over to my mother’s old wardrobe, one, that had been closed since she passed. One, I had always refused to acknowledge. I took a deep breath and built the courage to open it one last time. I looked through the wardrobe looking for that one specific thing, a little something I had not seen in many years. My a favourite accessory, a Caroline Reboux cloche hat. When I found it, I could not help myself but to tear up, it still smelled like her. It did not take me long to realise I was running late and that I had to carry on, so I closed the wardrobe doors one last time, but this time, to never be opened again. I went back to my boudoir and sat on my dresser, containing myself of any feelings that could break me.
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I had a white silk shimmer dress on that ended just inches below my knees, with a curved neckline and a waist band separating the torso from the hanging skirt. It had an open back with a thin bow completing the look. It was so loose; I could barely feel the fabric touching my skin. I already had my pearl necklace on and eye makeup on, I just had to add the red carmine on my lips for the final touch. I lit a cigarette and took a sip of my whiskey, finding myself lost in my mirrored image. I ran my fingers through my short hair whilst the burning ashes fell onto the glass tray. I was almost ready to walk out the door but then, I heard footsteps approaching. I looked into the mirror, this time with concern on my face, I was shocked and anxious, all at once. Seeing him there, standing, looking at me with fear in his eyes, I knew exactly what it meant.
“Dear, it’s time.” I looked away from the mirror and into the ashtray, leaving to burn what was left of my cigarette. I walked over to the door picking up my case. I glanced at my room one last time, before walking away from it all. I closed my eyes and mumbled to myself,
“Goodbye, Katlyn Clark.”.
One on One: The Flapper “It” girl Clara Bow, and her particular lifestyle. The silent film icon speaks in depth about her life in the silver screen and what it was to be ‘it’.
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Clara Bow in Lady of Whims (1925)
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O
nce upon a time, a young girl called Clara Bow, came across with what would change her life forever. Who knew a contest would be your ticket to fame and success? Due to her pictures winning the contest at the age of 16, Bow was cast in her first ever motion pictures film, Beyond the Rainbow. Unfortunately for Clara, her scenes were cut out from the final edit and was then taken under B.P Shulberg’s wing, a film producers and studio executive from Hollywood with whom her career took off.
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Young Clara Bow for Fame and Fortune Contest
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LWLies: When you were a teenager and saw the Fame and Fortune contest published on Motion Pictures magazine, how and what made you do it? Bow: I used to see admirable images and posters of actors and actresses. I was in love with the idea of motion pictures and I needed something to focus on and a reason to leave Brooklyn. We were very poor when young so an opportunity like this was incredible, it made me wish for a better future. I found the coupon at the bottom of the advert and I decided to ask my father for permission, which he granted but kept it secret from my mother at the time; she saw actresses as street walkers with heavy makeup on. I went all the way to Coney Island from Brooklyn to get some photographs of myself. They were cheap images, but it was all I could afford back then, and I then went to Brewster Publication office and dropped my form and my two photographs. I did some test shoots with other contestants at first and then I ended as one of the finalists. After more shoots I was nominated the winner of the contest. I was happy beyond believe, I was speechless, I could not believe it at the time. I thought that was it, the beginning of my career! As the winner I was able to get a small role on my first film ever, Beyond the Rainbow. I would be lying if I was to say that my experience there was smooth. In fact, it was a rocky start. Christy Cabanne, the director did not like my young chubby me, but Brewster Publications made a deal with her; I was hired in exchange of free publicity. The saddest part of it all was that once the film was released, the few scenes I was in were cut out of the final edit. What could I say, except that I was humiliated? Of course, that did not stop me.
With a successful career of 58 films within 11 years Bow experienced all sorts of events. After her failure in her first film role, Bow was soon cast for a tomboy role in Down to the Sea in Ships. This role boosted her career as an actress. She was discovered. Her talent exposed when the cameras were all on her. Bow was soon recognised by her facial expressions and her depth in emotions when acting. She’d brought to the screens, “naturalism. – a prodigy, a genius”. No one understood how she did it, no training no nothing and yet she was perfect at it. “A teenager doing its best as a teenager”. Due to the Depression and the crash of Wall Street, it caused Hollywood to commit itself to the ‘dogma’ of happy ending. This new idealistic format preferred the “escapism” of the audience and this impression came from realism. In other words, “too much realism manipulated”. Over the decade, the majority of films, were based on romantic comedies. Keeping the audience entertained and giving them the happy ending they all wish they had. As Dyer suggests, “stars are like characters in a story, representations of people”. Becoming more usual in appearance, more ‘psychologically’ credible in personality and Bow, recreated these characters with all the emotions. p. 16
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Your first ever film was ‘Beyond the Rainbow’, but as we know, it did not go as expected. You are known as the “It Girl”, how was the filming of ‘It’ and what were your favourite moments? Well, ‘It’ was phenomenal. I had the opportunity to be the leading role alongside Tony Moreno on a film based on a story written by a powerful British novelist of the era, Elinor Glyn. Did you know… that in the original story is the male the one pursuing the female? And that the original female character was an upper class? We also did a publicity stunt to build up the interest, that ended on every tabloid. Paramount Pictures bought the rights for what I believe it was $50,00, without them and Madame Glyn, none of it would have happened in the first place. Playing Betty Lou was very fulfilling. She and I had a lot in common, then again, she was me. Betty and I have similar ways of doing things, we are both a little too energetic and we both definitely say thing as they are, in other words, neither of us has a filter. I had a lot of fun being her it was truly amazing. Sharing screen time with Will Austin was always a laugh, I sometimes even struggled to deliver because I cannot stop laughing. I think the storyline was brilliant for that time, a working woman go after their boss?! It’s absolutely crazy and the truth is people loved it! It was simply scandalous. Working with everyone was so easy and enjoyable. I believe everyone had good time filming, it was set in a good environment and I don’t recall there being any issues between anyone really. If I was to pick my favourite scene, I probably could not choose one. I loved every minute of it. One I really like was the one when Betty tries to catch Mr Waltham’s attention at the beginning of the film, but he doesn’t acknowledge her at all. Also, the diner at the Ritz with Will, the car scene with the cheeky kiss and the quick slap or even when Betty knocks out cold Adela in the water after falling of the yacht.
It, was a product from the roaring twenties,
“the product of the hour”. A slang term in America used for sex appeal, which not too long after the release of the film, became a synonymous with Bow. “Being released in 1927, proved to be a popular phenomenon of extraordinary proportions and, since then, it has been fixed in popular memory as a quintessential ‘Jazz Age’ movie”. Bow was well known for being a “Jazz Baby”, as B.P Shulberg would say or the famous “It Girl”. Even the novelist and writer of It, Elinor Glyn, new that Clara Bow had it. On an interview she claimed that it was not just the sex appeal but also to do with the soul and the eyes. Before she met Bow, her alongside with the production company created a stunt to promote the film, but once she met Clara, she knew instantly that she had it. The unique and charming character that fitted the ideal perfectly. Being the flapper that she was, set the barriers for what then became the movie flappers genre, per say. “Movie flappers provided specially enticing and influential models of the new femininity who best embodied the modern ideal”. Flappers were recognised for their unique and energetic freedom, adopting a way of life that by many, back in the day, would see as childish, outrageous and scandalous. Flappers were the stylish girls that partied all night and would break rules; they would drive in the big cities, drank alcohol and would engage in sexual activities freely. They threw away their corsets and instead they wore lingerie. Emerging the new ideal of modern femininity (Conor, 2004). This visible feminine body threatened women’s modernity. p. 18
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Clara Bow on Three Weekends (1928)
So, Clara, I have heard about that story when you wore a bathing suit to a party? Oh, that story, I remember it well haha. The director Frank Tuttle invited me for a dinner soirée with his family at the luxurious Beverly Hills Hotel. I decided to show up wearing a bathing suit and pair of matching high heels. I wasn’t being ignorant by dressing up like that and ignoring the dinner dress code nor the hotel’s code, but I could never understand why anyone would care about what I was wearing… I wasn’t being disrespectful; I was… being my young self. Until this day, I will never regret wearing that bathing suit to the dinner party. If they want to talk, let them talk. Some people might have been offended or bothered but I certainly wasn’t.
According to feminist historian Lois Banner, “Bow’s movie flapper provided the most influential model of femininity for American women during the 1920s” (Felando, 2004, p21). Bow climbed all the way to Fame in no time. She received thousands of letters from her fans weekly, talking about her behaviour and films. Bow was a humble actress, who identified herself as one of them (the fans). The indicators of her influence included red henna hair colouring as well as a highly requested “Bow bob” at the hair parlours all over the States. “Retailers took advantage of her fame and immediately capitalised on Bow’s huge appeal on women offering product supported by Bow”. Other critics and authors had different views on Bow’s performance in It. Author Sumiko Higashi, said that It produced a ‘negative’ model of femininity, as the heroine, a working-class ‘sexual predator’, plots her ultimate goal of marriage to a rich man, rather than following her own career and independence as we would have expected.
It unleashed commentary, mainly focused
on the It girl, Bow. Her performance touched a sensitive socio-cultural nerve amongst the critics and the audiences. Conservative critics pointed out that the illusions of a spirited young women, loving the new morality posed a serious threat to the already weak refined feminine ideals.
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Clara Bow on The Wild Part (1931)
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How or where did you learn to act in front of the cameras? Well, if I am being honest, I didn’t. I don’t mean to sound arrogant by it. I never had any acting background, in the sense that I didn’t go to acting school, I didn’t have that privilege. I always thought of acting as a way of living, maybe that’s why I didn’t find it so hard when filming a silent film perhaps. Also, whenever I was acting, the director of the film in the making would go through the scene with so I could visualise it and then act it out. Doing little things to add touch to the scenes, just happened spontaneously. With It for example, when I was back from the date with Cyrus [Antonio Moreno] I sat by the window looking out to watch him drive away whilst fiddling with the teddy bear dog that he got me and I was spinning it around, looking under his tail. It just happened; I would just let go when the cameras were on me. Also, when I went to Cyrus office, I made my way to his desk and sat on it and the slid across to be closer to him. I really enjoyed filming It, Joseph von Sternberg [director] believed in me.
Silents, were the films originated in the late 1800s, films without synchronised sound. The first film being around from 1890s to the ‘last’ one in 1927, when the first ‘talkie’ was released, The Jazz Singer, produced by Warner Bros. Studios. It became the first successful talkie. The silent films lasted for the same period of time as the flapper culture, until the ends of the decade. By the time the 30s arrived, ‘talkies’ took over the big screen all across the globe. During the 30s, there were still some silent films released, City Lights (1931) by the famous filmmaker Charlie Chaplin. Countless silent films from the early times, were either dramas, epics, romances, or comedies. One-reelers (a cartoon or comedy, of 10 to 12 minutes) soon became four-reelers films creating longer films to entertain the public. Silent films had titles, were captions where placed between sequences to narrate the film with information that may have not be as obvious when watching the film. These titles were usually, dialogues, from sentences to one word. In the 1920s alone, Hollywood produced an output of around 800 films annually. Silent films were made with little resources as well as with a low budget. Due to silent films not having actual dialogues, the directors had to give the actors alluring and well narrated story of the scene recording so the actors could portray their characters and story through their postures, facial expressions and gestures. New film vocabulary came from this era, from the silent films. Such as the classic expression mise-en-scene, that was used to describe the set design/theme, lighting, costume, cinematography, angles etc. The editors of film used montages and cross-cutting amongst other techniques to complete and finish the film with the right tempo and consistency.
There are five major studios born in the United States, also referred to them as the Big Five. These include; Warner Bros Pictures, Paramount Pictures (that signed Clara Bow who won their first Academy Award for Best Picture with the film Wings), RKO Pictures, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (mostly recognised for their roaring lion) and Fox Film (21st Century Fox). Each of the Big Five owned their own theatres where they would release their productions all across the States, mainly in the big cities. As film historian Tim Dirk explains in his article, “they distributed their films to this network of studio-owned, first-run theatres (or movie palaces), mostly in urban areas, which charged high ticket prices and drew huge audiences. They required blind or block bookings of films, whereby theatre owners were required to rent a block of films (often cheaply-made, less-desirable, B-pictures) in order for the studio to agree to distribute the one prestige A-level picture that the theatre owner wanted to exhibit. This technique set the terms for a film’s release and patterns of exhibition and guaranteed success for the studio’s productions”.
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Two of the Big Five, Paramount and Fox, had contracts with Clara all along her career. She was first signed by Paramount. She completed an overall of over 15 films whilst working with them. Including major box office hits: Dancing Mothers (1926) and Wings (1927). When she first retired from the big screen, she moved to Nevada with her partner and soon to be husband, Rex Bell. Whilst in Nevada, she was pursued to go back to Hollywood with a 2-film contract with Fox Films; which she accepted. She starred in Call Her Savage (a 1932 best seller) and HoopLa (1933). Hoop-La was Bow’s last appearance in the big screen of her career. After the release, she retired forever at the age of 28.
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Clara Bow on set for Hoop-La
With the 1930s, or as we all call them, The Golden Age started with revolutionary technology, the talkies. It was then followed by the Great Depression, which affected the theatres. The attendance dropped drastically, and the film industry and Hollywood felt it. The Golden Age did not just bring crises, but it also brought colour into film. Technology was moving fast; talkies were no longer in black and white. This new modern creation did not stop production companies to film in black and white but, it did put a stop to some actors’ and actresses’ careers. The transition from silent films to talkies was a huge step. Many actors suffered from stage fright, others had to drop their accents, and many just could not cope with the pressure. During the decade, new genres were born, including; western, horror, gangster, musicals, news-reports, social-realism and many more. The early talkies were a huge success at the box office and there was no doubt, because they were the new thing. Unfortunately, a lot of them were filmed with poor audio and visual quality. These talkies were dialogue-dominated, ‘artificial’ acting (meaning, inexperienced performers) and cameras and mics were still, making the films slightly ‘boring’ to watch. The characters needed more emphasis and the screenwriters were enforced to explore new ways to make the characters more appealing. Even though the talkies weren’t perfect, they still brought to the screen a lot of variety in style and elegance. p. 24
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How did the ‘talkies’ affected you? Talkies were a great invention, look at them now! I remember when Paramount told the crew they had something new that they wanted to try out with me. I, of course, felt delighted by it, but it soon it hit me, and it turned out to be a real slap in the face haha. I immediately got mic fright; I could feel the intense pressure of Hollywood on my back. Talkies came at a peak time of my career; I was pretty well and then things started to fall apart. That same year Wall Street crashed, and the Depression happened. Sound in films caught me and other actors completely off guard. I remember Garbo, was struggling. She had to drop her Swedish accent before she could film! I eventually got rid of the mic fright and continued doing films.
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All things considered; Clara Bow was a phenomenon of the silver screen, a unique and energetic one of her own character. Bow was a major influence in modern femininity, she was the game changer. She, along with other women such as Louise Brooks and Colleen Moore, raised the flapper culture. The rebellious lifestyle that everyone once loved and enjoyed during the Roaring Twenties. After starring as the lead role on It, Bow was named the It Girl, which Elinor Glyn, the writer, agreed to such statement. As we know, Bow was one of the few to make a full transition from period to period. She began her career in the early 1920s with very little success, but once she was discovered she quickly raised to the top, having major success with silent films. Bow, struggled through the changes in the film industry and suffered, but she made it through the modern technology of the era. She achieved major contracts with big production companies, Paramount throughout her career on silent cinema and Fox Films, where she appeared in two coloured talkies but was also her last ever debut on the big screen. She was one of the few actors that went through the entire transition from silent films, to talkies, to films in colour. Even though, she was one of the few to battle through, she had considerable problems overcoming her mic fright and the pressure of Hollywood. No matter what was on Bow’s way, she did her best to survive it all.
Clara, I have one more question for you. Go ahead. Is there anything you regret doing when you were young? That is indeed, a tricky a question... I would certainly like to say no, but I believe I would be lying. My career was a blessing and I will always be grateful to those who believed in me, such as my late husband Rex amongst other actors and directors. But if I was to regret things, perhaps it would be the way I dealt with the press back then. I sure loved being in the spotlight, I mean, who doesn’t like getting attention, specially at a young age? Growing up in the public eye wasn’t ideal, I didn’t know how to have a private life, instead I fed it more and more every year until one of the biggest scandals made me leave Hollywood when I was 25. Rumours can end someone’s career, it didn’t finish mine, but it surely stained it and somethings can’t be taken back. Also, “I have learned that pictures take away more than they give. You spend all your youth and all your energy to attain the thing you thought you wanted more than anything else in the world, (fame) and when you get it, you find you don’t want it. It not only doesn’t bring you happiness, but you find it has robbed you of all the other things that might have given you happiness.” Well Clara, thank you for your time it was a real pleasure talking to the biggest flapper icons there is. Thank you. The pleasure was mine, thank you for showing interest and for choosing me.
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Happy Clara Bow dancing
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In dedication and appreciation to the It Girl, Clara Bow and her fellow colleagues in the film industry for their hard and revolutionary work that brought many masterpieces to the big screens a century ago. To the forgotten ones and to the ones that to this day, remain huge influences in society. Without Bow, the film industry would not be where it is today.
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