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Feb 6, 2024 · Quick Facts. Troubling Childhood. Movies: Becoming the “It Girl” The Toll of the Spotlight. Later Years. Death and Legacy. Who Was Clara Bow? Actor Clara Bow became famous during the silent...
- editor@biography.com
- Staff Editorial Team And Contributors
Overview. Born. July 29, 1905 · Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. Died. September 27, 1965 · West Los Angeles, California, USA (heart attack) Birth name. Clara Gordon Bow. Nicknames. The "It" Girl. The Playgirl Of Hollywood. Height. 5′ 3½″ (1.61 m) Mini Bio.
- July 29, 1905
- September 27, 1965
Apr 18, 2024 · Clara Bow (born July 29, 1905, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died September 27, 1965, Los Angeles, California) was an American motion-picture actress, called the “It” Girl after she performed in It (1927), the popular silent-film version of Elinor Glyn’s novel of that name.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Clara Bow (1905-1965) Actress. Music Department. Soundtrack. IMDbPro Starmeter See rank. Play trailer 1:10. Wings (1927) 1 Video. 99+ Photos. Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence.
- January 1, 1
- West Los Angeles, California, USA
- January 1, 1
- 1.61 m
- Clara Bow Was A Brooklyn Native.
- Clara Bow Is Connected to A Brooklyn Legend.
- Clara Bow Was Cut from Her First Film.
- Clara Bow’s Mother Tried to Kill her.
- Clara Bow Wasn’T Cinema’S First Flapper.
- Clara Bow Was The Original “It Girl.”
- “It Girl” Wasn’T Clara Bow’s only nickname.
- Clara Bow Was Amazingly Popular.
- Clara Bow Could Cry on Cue.
- Clara Bow Is The Reason The Boom Mic Was created.
Clara Gordon Bow was born on July 29, 1905 in a tenement apartment above a Baptist church at 697 Bergen Street in Brooklyn's Prospect Heights neighborhood. Bow’s parents, Sarah and Robert, were poor and moved frequently around Brooklyn during Bow’s childhood. Her strong Brooklyn accent caused her some stress when the transition to talkies came alon...
While growing up in Brooklyn, young Bow took a job working at a hot dog stand owned by a man named Nathan Handwerker. She didn’t work there long; in 1921, she won an acting contest and was put on the path toward fame. Handwerker did alright for himself in the culinary arena, though. The hot dog stand Bow worked at grew into the Nathan’s Famous bran...
Bow's victory in the “Fame and Fortune” magazine contest got her a role in her first film, Beyond the Rainbow, in which she played the lead’s little sister. When the film opened, Bow invited two friends from school to see it with her, only to discover that her role was among those that had been cut from the film entirely.
To say that Sarah Bow was angry that her daughter had entered that movie contest would be a major understatement. When she was told that Clara had entered a movie contest, Sarah fainted, then told Clara that she was going to hell for what she had done. But that wasn't even close to the worst of it: Sarah actually tried to murder Clara while she was...
Bow is often thought of as the flapper icon of silent cinema. And though she’s probably the most iconic, she wasn’t the first. That honor goes to the tragic Olive Thomas, who starred in The Flapper (1920) a good three years before Bow’s Black Oxen, the first film in which she played a flapper, hit screens. Bow was also beaten to the punch by actres...
The film of Bow’s that had the most cultural impact was It, about a salesgirl (Bow) who has a crush on the upper-class manager of the department store where she works. The movie was loosely based on a two-part serial in Cosmopolitan by Elinor Glyn, who wrote that“It” was “That quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force...
In an insensitive nod to Bow’s scandalous lifestyle and mental health issues, producer and studio head B.P. Schulberg nicknamed Bow “Crisis-A-Day Clara.”
Audiences loved Bow. Between 1927 and 1930, she was either the biggest or second biggest box office draw in America. At one point, she received a whopping 45,000-plus fan lettersin a single month.
Bow “could cry at the drop of a hat, and you'd believe her," William Kaplan, a prop man at Paramount, once said of the actress. It was a skill she utilized on her first film, Beyond the Rainbow—though she later explained her abilityin a pretty depressing way: "It was easy for me t'cry. All I hadda do was think of home."
Director Dorothy Arzner is often credited with inventing the first boom mic—which is likely a bit of a simplification, given that film professionals were all figuring how to work with this new thing called “sound” at the same time. So multiple people probably “invented” the boom mic roughly contemporaneously. Still, the story goes that Bow had a la...
- Rebecca Pahle
She was the first actress who visibly flaunted her sex appeal and, in turn, became the most talked-about resident of Hollywood. Idolized by Louise Brooks in the 20s, Marilyn Monroe in the 50s, and Madonna in the 80s, Clara was an icon of sexual freedom for women everywhere.
Born Clara Gordon Bow in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York, on July 29, 1904 (and not 1905 as usually given or 1907 as occasionally found); died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, on September 27, 1965; daughter of Robert and Sarah Gordon Bow; attended public schools 111 and 98 in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, which she left aft...
