Clara Bow.
Clara Bow was a star. Clara Bow really had “IT.”
The movie was great, save for Elinor Glyn, but it is Clara Bow who really held the picture. She had an easy naturalness that really lit up the screen.
I can’t wait until the day they figure out how to make those talkies correctly.
Oh, and “18 million blondes prepare to dine with gentlemen.”
Wonder if that will ever be used? 
Clara Bow. Sigh. So beautiful.
When I was in my late teens I dated a punk girl who was the spit and image of her. Unfortunately, it turned out that she liked to huff glue. But she looked just like Clara Bow!
(Yes, I was big into Clara Bow when I was a teenager. I’m crazy like that.)
Oh, Elinor Glyn was a hoot! I love the scene where she regally descends the staircase, “drawing her emeralds warmly about her,” as Dorothy Parker said, and someone goes, “Why, here’s Madame Glyn—perhaps she can explain ‘It’ to us!” An early example of High Camp.
It is one of my top-five favorite silent films, a terrific romantic comedy, and Clara Bow and Tony Moreno were hotter than a two-dollar pistol on Saturday night. I think I’ll watch it again this weekend.
Still haven’t seen IT, but I can’t imagine Bow’s naturalness onscreen would exceed Louise Brooks’s uncanny naturalness? Yes? No? Writing more of those reviews this weekend, so won’t see it anytime immediately, but it’s next on my list. (I got Rain from Netflix. The sent me the right envelope [1932, Joan Crawford] but the wrong disc [New Zealand, 2003]).
Clara Bow was ten times the actress Louise Brooks was. Brooks only turned in two really remarkable performances, and that’s because she had a remarkable director (Pabst). Frankly, German actresses like Marlene Dietrich, Renate Muller or Lya de Putti would have been just as good in Pandora’s Box or Diary of a Lost Girl. When you see Louise Brooks in her American programmers, though, she’s just another pleasant, unremarkable starlet.
Take a look at Clara Bow in Mantrap, Dancing Mothers, Children of Divorce, Call Her Savage—she was an Actress.
I’m not familiar with the films of Louise Brooks, but I was surprised by Bow. I was expecting a Jean Hagen/Singin’ In The Rain type, but Clara Bow wouldn’t be out of place in a “modern” film.
I still can’t quite get a handle on this “camp” business. I kinda understand it applied, as in the Elinor Glyn moment, but what is the point? What is a good definition?
A man who goes by the name of a female character from Casablanca has to have camp explained to him? Has the world gone mad?!
Elinor Glyn was the definition of camp—one of the most remarkable characters of the early 20th century. A combination Dr. Ruth, Jackie Collins and Dame Edna. Watch her closely in It—you can’t quite tell if she “gets the joke” or not.
Clara Bow was a brilliant, but instinctual, actress, which is why she wasn’t as good in talkies and hated doing them. “Following a script” and “hitting her marks” ruined her performances.
By the way, we should start a thread on Rain, too, for those who don’t think Joan Crawford could act. She runs rings around Walter Huston and Beulah Bondi in that film! Brilliant job. Great cinematography, too—catch her first entrance, via the beaded curtain!!
Well, hell! I’m only 16 and I’m not gay! Isn’t it enough that I have a burning passion for silent and other classic cinema? Jesus.
mutterrmutterrrgrumblegrumble
I mean, I kinda know what it is, but…
Otto, I am tickled pink that my Peg Entwistle quote made your sig!
No excuses, kid. I’m not gay either but I’ve been called “As camp as a row of tents.” 