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Clara Bow: Discovering The "It" Girl

1999, Movie, NR, 65 mins

Clara Bow: Discovering The "It" Girl: Review

CLARA BOW: DISCOVERING THE
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A briskly-paced introduction to the whirlwind career and sad personal life of one of the greatest icons of the silent era, the redhead who epitomized flaming youth and was dubbed the "It" girl by contemporary trend-makers. This documentary doesn't delve as deeply into Bow's psychological problems (there was a history of insanity in her family, and she was diagnosed as schizophrenic) as David Stenn's 1988 biography of the troubled star. But it's chock full of footage from her films, including her first picture, 1922's Down to the Sea in Ships, a fleeting moment of nudity from Wings and a bit of sound footage that makes it clear that the actress's notorious Brooklyn accent wasn't a career killer. The film, narrated by Courtney Love (whose posh enunciation sounds profoundly unnatural), documents the ebullient actress's miserable, poverty-stricken childhood, her almost miraculous ascent to stardom via a movie-magazine beauty contest and her rapid slide into infamy and isolation via a series of sex scandals and her own increasingly fragile frame of mind. While Bow's voice was fine, she was terrified of sound films and her studio, Paramount (for whom she made money hand over fist), was shockingly unsupportive: Greta Garbo was carefully prepared for her first sound film for two years; Bow got a scant two weeks. And her chaotic personal life left her in need of help at precisely the same time Hollywood was becoming increasingly scandal-shy, so she was left to fend for herself. Bow married cowboy star Rex Bell, by whom she later had two sons, and retired from filmmaking in 1933, 11 years and 58 films after she started. The video version of this documentary contains a few minutes of footage not seen when it was broadcast on cable television. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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