Clara Gordon Bow

 Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965)

It was her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It that 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. She appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927) and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month (January 1929). With "talkies" The Wild Party, Dangerous Curves, and The Saturday Night Kid, Bow kept her position as the top box-office draw and queen of Hollywood. The quality of Bow's voice, her Brooklyn accent, was not an issue to Bow, her fans or Paramount. However, Bow, like Charlie Chaplin, Louise Brooks and most other silent film stars, didn't embrace the novelty: "I hate talkies," she said, "they're stiff and limiting. You lose a lot of your cuteness, because there's no chance for action, and action is the most important thing to me." A visibly nervous Bow had to do a number of retakes in The Wild Party because her eyes kept wandering up to the microphone overhead. 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. Bow eventually began showing symptoms of psychiatric illness. She became socially withdrawn, and although she refused to socialize with her husband, she also refused to let him leave the house alone. This might be traced back to an episode in February 1922, when Bow awoke to a butcher knife held against her throat, by her Mother (who suffered from mental illness). She was able to fend off the attack and locked her mother up. In the morning, Sarah (her mother) had no recollection of the episode but was later committed to a sanatorium by Robert (Clara's father). She was diagnosed with being schizophrenic, but did not seek further treatment. Clara Bow died of a heart attack in 1965, and is interred at Forest Lawn-Glendale.