CAUSE: She died aged 89 in her London council flat of natural causes.
Clara Bow
Born July 29, 1905
Died September 27, 1965
The original ‘It Girl’. Born at 697, Bergen St, Brooklyn, New York, Clara Gordon Bow, the definitive flapper of the Twenties, was the daughter of Robert Bow (1875–1959), a sexually aggressive waiter (who was himself one of 13 children), and Sarah Gordon Bow, an asexual, epileptic, schizophrenic, semi-invalid. Clara was the third daughter born to the Bows: the first two died within days of birth and the first girl’s body was dumped in a skip. Clara, also not expected to live, was delivered by her insane maternal grandmother. Presuming death would take her, neither parent bothered to register her birth and so no certificate exists. When Clara was a year old her grandmother was committed to a lunatic asylum and died a year afterwards. Her grandfather moved in and doted on his granddaughter, though this was to provide only a brief spell of happiness for the young Clara. On January 21, 1909, he died following an apoplectic fit suffered in front of the little girl. Afterwards, Clara’s mother told her that she wished Clara had died instead of her grandfather. Bow’s parents were dirt poor and she was teased mercilessly at infants school, P.S. 111, because of a slight stammer and because she wore her mother’s cast-offs: “I was the worst looking kid on the street”. In 1918, to avoid the flu epidemic, Robert Bow briefly moved his family to Coney Island. Clara left school, P.S. 98, aged 13 and began working firstly as a hot dog bun slicer and then as a doctor’s receptionist. She left when it was revealed that the doctor was in fact an illegal abortionist. In January 1921 she entered a Fame & Fortune Contest in Motion Picture magazine, though she did not tell her parents. On September 2 she was given a screen test. Seven days later, she was asked back for another test. Over the next couple of months she was given more tests until just she and one other girl remained. At home Clara finally told her mother what she had been doing over the previous months and Sarah Bow was furious. However, the effect of her mother’s anger was negligible because Clara had won the contest. She made her film début as Virginia Gardener in Beyond The Rainbow (1922), although all her scenes were excised before the film’s release. (When she became a star they were restored.) Returning home one night after shooting, Clara went to bed only to awake and find her mother standing over her, butcher’s knife in hand, threatening to slit her daughter’s throat. Sarah Bow then fainted and would have no recollection of her actions afterwards. Later, when the film was finished, she again tried to murder her daughter, chasing her around the apartment brandishing a knife. Clara fled to Coney Island until her father rescued her and brought her back to their home. On February 24, 1922, Sarah Bow was committed to the same asylum her mother had been sent to in 1906. Released in October, she was recommitted on New Year’s Eve 1922 and declared terminally insane. She died there aged 43 on January 5, 1923. Back at home, the sexually aggressive Robert Bow was now left alone with his vivacious 16-year-old daughter, who cooked his meals and cleaned his house because she loved him. He returned this love by raping her. Meanwhile, director Elmore Clifford had seen Clara’s picture in January 1922’s edition of Motion Picture Classic and cast her as Dot Morgan in the low-budget Down To The Sea In Ships (1922). She played a girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to go to sea. The film received positive reviews and Bow signed to Preferred Pictures in 1923. It was run by B.P. Schulberg. The 5Ȳ 3½˝ Clara appeared in a number of steady but unspectacular movies, including Enemies Of Women (1923), Maytime as Alice Tremaine, The Daring Years (1923) as Mary, Grit (1924) as Orchid McGonigle, Black Oxen (1924) as Janet Ogelthorpe (after which Schulberg quadrupled her salary to $200 a week), Poisoned Paradise (1924) as Margot LeBlanc, Daughters Of Pleasure (1924) as Lila Millas, Wine as bootlegger’s daughter Angela Warriner, Empty Hearts (1924) as Rosalie, This Woman (1924) as Aline Sturdevant (credited in The New York Times as “Clare Bow”), My Lady’s Lips as Lola Lombard, Parisian Love as Marie, Eve’s Lover (1925) as Rena DArcy, Lawful Cheaters (1925) as Molly Burns, Free To Love (1925) as Marie Anthony and My Lady Of Whims as flapper heiress Prudence Severn. Following the release of The Plastic Age (1925) in which she portrayed sexy student Cynthia Day, Bow was labelled “the hottest jazz baby in films”. While working at Preferred she rented a three-bedroomed bungalow at 7576 Hollywood Boulevard. One bedroom was for Clara and then-boyfriend Artie Jacobson, one for her father and the final one was for her dog! In early November 1925 her contract was transferred to Adolph Zukor’s Paramount Pictures at Vine Street, Hollywood, when that company bought out Preferred. Her first film at the new studio was Dancing Mothers (1926) playing flapper Kittens Westcourt. Mantrap (1926), directed by her lover Victor Fleming, received great reviews. After filming she moved to 261 West Canyon Drive and continued her affairs with Fleming and fiancé Gilbert Roland. In August 1926 she signed a five-year contract with Paramount. That same year her name was to be linked with numerous men, one of whom claimed he had attempted suicide after a one-night stand with Clara. According to a secretary at Paramount: “She took [actor] Larry Gray home with her and when he came out, he could barely stand up.” On September 16, 1926, during the filming of Wings [1927] in which she played Mary Preston, Clara announced her engagement to Victor Fleming. (Despite rumours, she did not have an affair with co-star Richard Arlen. He married the second female lead Jobyna Ralston at the completion of shooting.) Clara also, very briefly, reveals her breasts in the film. Look out for the scene one hour and twenty-two minutes into the film. Her name was made when she was dubbed the “It Girl” (from the film It (1927) in which she played the part of shop assistant Betty Lou Spence) by author Elinor Glyn (for a $50,000 fee from Paramount). In private Bow referred to Glyn as “that shithead” and when asked exactly what ‘It’ was replied, “I ain’t exactly sure.” In November 1926 she began an affair with Gary Cooper and on December 2 she broke off her engagement to Victor Fleming. She told her friend Esther Ralston: “He’s so sweet t’me. He always lets me take my dog in the tub when he gives me a bath every mornin’.” To Hedda Hopper she was more graphic: “He’s hung like a horse and can go all night”. However, she continued to see Fleming on the quiet. Clara’s star was in the ascendant (she was top female box-office star in 1928 and 1929, yet her studio charged her 25¢ for every photograph she asked for) and she had a new home 512, North Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills. The house has become infamous because it was supposedly the scene for one of Hollywood’s most enduring legends. If Kenneth Anger, writing in Hollywood Babylon, is to be believed (and he isn’t) in 1927 Clara had sex at the house with the entire University of Southern California Trojans football team, the so-called ‘Thundering Herd’, including the future John Wayne. She certainly let the squad of college football players scrimmage on her front lawn and attend teetotal parties at her house (along with Joan Crawford and Lina Basquette) but entertaining though the orgy rumour undoubtedly is, it simply isn’t true. On February 13, 1928, she underwent an appendectomy and it made front-page news. In May 1928 she received 33,727 fan letters, many addressed simply to “The It Girl, Hollywood, USA”. However, dramatic though the events had been thus far, Clara Bow’s life was to become yet more complicated. On September 22, 1928, her father married her best friend, Tui Lorraine. What Clara didn’t know, although virtually everyone else in Tinseltown did, was that Tui was in love with another Bow … Clara herself. In the parlance of the day, Tui “was on the lavender side.” Robert Bow was soon up to his old tricks again, sleeping with wannabe actresses with the enticing promise of an introduction to Clara and, who knows, possible stardom. With her lesbian lover Tui discovered her new husband in flagrante delicto and was quickly divorced on the grounds of mental cruelty. However, the split from Robert Bow also meant a split from his daughter, the real object of Tui’s passion; they never saw each other again. Clara’s next romantic entanglement was with the married Dr William Earl Pearson. It was against Bow’s moral code to consort with a married man, but the attraction proved too str
ong. It was also costly. When Pearson’s wife filed for divorce in October 1928 Paramount gave her $30,000 – i.e. three of Clara’s $10,000 film bonuses – if she kept Clara’s name out of the divorce. Paramount also withheld a $26,000 trust fund set up for Clara when she signed her contract. The films continued. Clara appeared in Rough House Rosie (1927) as Rosie O’Reilly (the film cost $225,000 to make and made over $1 million), Hula (1927) as heiress Hula Calhoun (directed by Victor Fleming, it signalled the end of her affair with Gary Cooper: “Poor Gary. The biggest cock in Hollywood an’ no ass t’push it with.”), Red Hair (1928) as Bubbles McCoy, Ladies Of The Mob (1928) as Yvonne, The Fleet’s In (1928) as Trixie Deane, The Wild Party (1929) as student Stella Ames (Clara’s first talkie, it began filming on January 2, 1929, the month she received an astonishing 45,000 fan letters), Dangerous Curves as bareback rider Pat Delaney, Love Among The Millionaires (1930) as Pepper Whipple, True To The Navy as Ruby Nolan, Her Wedding Night (1930) as randy film star Norma Martin, and No Limit (1931) as Helen ‘Bunny’ O’Day. And then it was all over. As quickly as Clara Bow rose to become a star she came down to earth with a mighty bump. Clara was not the most popular person in Hollywood – she had made no attempt to disguise her working-class background and never sought to lose her impenetrably thick Brooklyn accent. She was regularly excluded from celebrity functions and when her friend Joan Crawford took up with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, and was invited to the best social events, she dropped Clara like a hot potato. Other women didn’t like her because of her open sexuality (it was also revealed that she menstruated fortnightly) and men were scared of her or wanted to bed her but without anyone else knowing. Around this time Bow met beautiful, bleached blonde Daisy DeVoe (b. Kentucky, 1904, as Daisy DeBoe) and they quickly became friends. DeVoe worked as a hairdresser at Paramount from 1924 although the two women didn’t meet until 1927. Following the débâcle of the Pearson divorce, Daisy became Clara’s personal secretary. In quick succession Daisy fired Clara’s business manager, evicted her cousin and banned her father from access to Clara’s bank account. Clara suffered from chronic insomnia (like Marilyn Monroe) and planned to retire once her contract had expired. The problem was money – she didn’t have enough to stop working. Daisy sprang into action. In May 1929 she opened a savings account for Clara with $16,000, arranging to add 50% of her weekly salary. Another account was opened for everyday use and Daisy ‘paid’ Clara a ‘wage’ of $75 per week. When Clara began an affair with Broadway singer Harry Richman (b. Cincinnati, Ohio, August 10, 1895, as Harry Reichman, d. Burbank, California, November 3, 1972), her friends were unimpressed. Louise Brooks called him “A ham who exploited her” while Daisy DeVoe labelled him “a scumbag. He used Clara for her fame.” The press was outraged at the couple’s scandalous behaviour and more so when Richman returned to New York and she moved into his Beechhurst, Long Island, mansion. Back in Hollywood, the tryst almost ended when he caught her visiting old flame Gary Cooper. Instead, Richman wound up giving her a $5,000 engagement ring. On November 20, 1929, at Sylvan Lodge Hospital, Clara was operated on and one of her ovaries was removed. The studio announced she had suffered post-appendectomy problems. Others suspected a breakdown while still others believed she had aborted Richman’s child. The last theory was easily disprovable. Richman was sterile. Shortly afterwards, Clara began two-timing Richman again. Her new lover was Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, a former rodeo star. After a trip to New York to see Richman she returned to California and met the man who was to become her husband. Rex Bell (b. Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 1903, as George Beldam, d. Las Vegas, Nevada, July 4, 1962, from a heart attack) worked as a stunt man at Fox for four years. Then he was cast with Marion Morrison in John Ford’s Salute (1929). His name was changed to the more Western-sounding Rex Bell and Morrison’s was changed to John Wayne. The two men became firm friends. Bell was smitten by Clara and she rather liked him. She dumped Big Boy and gave Richman the cold shoulder. However, Daisy DeVoe didn’t like the newcomer in Clara’s life. In June 1930 Richman asked for his engagement ring back after Clara flew to Dallas, Texas, to ask Elizabeth Pearson to return her $30,000. Mrs Pearson says she never received the money. It seems likely her husband took the cash. The feud between Rex and Daisy grew more bitter. Overhearing a conversation one day in which Bell said he should manage Clara’s affairs, Daisy took the cheque book and locked it in her safety deposit box. Rex discovered it and told Clara Daisy was stealing from her. He had all the locks on the North Bedford Drive house changed and barred Daisy’s admission. When Daisy was fired, Clara’s savings account contained $249,000. Daisy asked for $125,000 severance pay, threatening to reveal certain things to the press that she knew would wreck Clara’s career. Next day she recanted, but by then it was too late. Rex Bell accused her of blackmail and called the police. The police opened the safety deposit box and discovered the cheque book and some jewellery. On November 6, 1930, Daisy was arrested and charged with theft. She countersued for wrongful arrest and asked Clara for $5,000 damages. A Grand Jury was convened and on November 25, 1930, they indicted Daisy on 37 counts of grand theft, based on the number of cheque stubs Daisy had written to herself on Clara’s account. Daisy’s defence that she paid for everything because Clara did not carry money and then reimbursed herself was not believed. It was almost certainly true, however. People vs. DeVoe opened on January 13, 1931, at Los Angeles County Courthouse. Daisy smeared her former best friend in the courtroom. Clara was often drunk. Clara threatened to murder Daisy. Clara was promiscuous (this one was true, but not by today’s standards). Clara blackmailed her father. When it was Clara’s turn to testify she could so easily have flung dirt at Daisy. Daisy’s father was in prison. Her boyfriend was the Chinese cameraman James Wong Howe – miscegenation was highly discouraged at the time and that revelation would have wrecked Howe’s career and won the case for Clara. However, Clara kept her counsel over those matters. She broke down in the witness box but received no sympathy from Daisy. On January 23, 1931, DeVoe was found not guilty on 34 counts but guilty on one. Even then Clara wrote to the District Attorney, begging him to ask the judge for mercy. He didn’t show any and Daisy was sent down for 18 months. The damage to Clara’s career had been done. On March 28, the Coast Reporter ran the first of four articles that defamed Bow in no uncertain terms. They claimed that she slept with any man who took her fancy, including a cousin. If men were unavailable, she allegedly bedded women and was reported to have indulged in a threesome with two Mexican whores; if there were no women around she reportedly had sex with animals. The articles also alleged that Clara had a serious gambling problem, was an alcoholic and drug addict. No journalist had the guts to sign his name to the exposé (although on July 31, 1931, the editor was jailed for eight years for distributing obscene material through the post). Bow’s mental health began to suffer and on June 8, Paramount announced her contract had been terminated. (Production chief B.P. Schulberg had already given Bow’s dressing room to his new protégée and lover, Sylvia Sidney.) Clara made two more films, Call Her Savage (1932) as Texas heiress Nasa ‘Dynamite’ Springer and Hoopla (1933) as dancer Lou but they were not successful and she retired to raise a family. She had married Rex Bell in Las Vegas on December 3, 1931. They had two sons: 6́ 5˝ Rex Larbow ‘Tony’ (b. Santa Monica Hospital, December 16, 1934) and 5́ 9˝ George Francis Robert (b. June 14, 1938); Clara had one miscarriage in-between. On September 3, 1937, Clara opened the “It Café,” a restaurant at 1637 Vine Street, Hollywood. It was not a roaring success and closed after less than a month. In the Forties Rex and Clara drifted apart. He became interested in Republican politics. From 1954 until 1963 he was Lieutenant-Governor of Nevada. In 1943 she attempted suicide. Following the death of her favourite actress Marilyn Monroe, Clara said in a comment that said much about her own experiences: “Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very tired, hurt and bewildered.”
CAUSE: B ow and Bell separated in 1950, the year after she was diagnosed schizophrenic, and
she moved to Los Angeles, renting a two-bedroomed bungalow at 12214 Aneta Street. She was looked after by a trained nurse, although when her sons came to stay she showed no outward signs of mental illness. With the nurse she would keep abreast of new films via drive-in cinemas. Her favourites were Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando. Former lovers Gilbert Roland and, for a time, Harry Richman visited. In 1961 Clara became a grandmother. The following year she made her first public appearance in 15 years at the funeral of Rex Bell. He left her nothing in his will; everything went to his lover and two sons. Clara’s privacy was protected by her mostly Japanese neighbours. When fans or tourists came a-calling, they would pretend not to understand English. Clara Bow died of a heart attack at 12.07am in her Los Angeles home. She was 60 years old. She was buried next to her husband in Forest Lawn Memorial-Park’s Freedom Mausoleum, Arlington Road, Glendale, California 91209. She planned her own funeral, even determining her make-up and coffin lining which would be “either satin or silk … preferably in apricot or eggshell.” Many of Clara’s films were destroyed or neglected. Silent film buffs still hope many will turn up in some long-lost archive. However, they are not optimistic.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 35
