CLARA BOW: Runnin' Wild

by David Stenn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

Clara Bow is second only to Garbo as the sex symbol of silent pictures: where Garbo smouldered, Clara was all superexcited, outgoing, and selling ""It."" Clara in reruns may seem less sexy today, but her liveliness remains undimmed. Then, however, her sexuality was a phenomenon: she was F. Scott Fitzgerald's quintessential flapper, known to be sleeping with director Victor Fleming and actor Gary Cooper at the same time. When she sued her best friend for embezzlement, the friend revealed Clara's goings-on to a shocked nation (items to be laughed with or applauded today). When nervous Clara defended herself on the witness stand, her tears, fears, and thick Brooklyn accent mixed with a heavy head cold had the courtroom jeering her. Since winning a beauty contest at 16 and breaking into movies, Clara had lived on her fans' adoration. Their jeering knocked her flat; she had no other resources. She had devoted so much of herself to her image over a ten-year period (in one year she made 15 movies), that--says Stenn--""off-camera, she did not exist as an actualized. personality."" Doctors agreed, labeling her schizophrenic like her mother and sisters, who were themselves in asylums. (Her mother, a part-time prostitute, would lock scared little Clara into a rat-and-roach-infested closet while turning her tricks--later she tried to murder Clara for being a ""hoor""; at 16, Clara was raped by her father.) When she died at 65, after nearly 40 years of hermetic seclusion and partial recovery from mental illness, she was wealthy, with a $450,000 estate. Aside from genetic continuance in her two sons and grandchildren, she had also really become Clara Bow, existing only in film, at her most beautiful and superspirited. Nicely turned, clean, clear debut volume by Stenn, above average as a celebrity bio.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: 0815410255

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION