SPEAKER_00: Before we get started, a quick warning.This episode contains mentions of suicide.Hello.From Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan, and this is Womanica.Historically, women have been told to make themselves smaller, to diminish themselves.Some have used that idea to their advantage, disappearing into new identities.For others, a disappearance was the end to their stories, but the beginning of a new chapter in their legacies. This month, we're telling the stories of these women.We're talking about disappearing acts.Today's Womanikin was the talk of the town during her sparkling film career.
She inspired girls across the country to cut their hair and hem their dresses, to rouge their knees and make themselves seen, when etiquette books encouraged them to stay home and stay quiet.Even as a silent star, she was loud and boisterous for 28 years until she quickly and quietly disappeared from public life. Let's talk about Clara Bow.Clara was born on July 29, 1905, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.Her early life was tough.She was the only one of three siblings to survive childhood, born to an abusive father and a mother with mercurial moods.Clara's mom likely had severe mental illness.Untreated, she became more erratic as Clara got older.Clara sought an escape, and she found it. when she could get away in the dark of a theater hall in the silver glow of a movie screen.
Clara loved watching films, at that point an industry taking its first steps.Hollywood was already rattling with promise.Charlie Chaplin had immortalized himself on two real prints.Clara knew she had to get out there, somehow. In 1922, she got her first bite at stardom when she won a magazine's beauty contest.Her face plucked from obscurity.The prize was a small part in a 1922 film, Beyond the Rainbow, but Clara's scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.Undeterred, Clara Lynn did a different part in a different movie that same year.Another bit part, sure, but that was all she needed.Clara Bow was on film.
Within the next year, Clara had made her way out west and signed with a small production company.She starred in a string of silent films, re-signed with the much bigger Paramount Pictures.And then in 1927, Clara Bow hit the big time.Clara became the first ever It Girl.The phrase actually comes from Clara's first big success, a movie called It. She played a poor shop girl whose natural charm wins her the heart of her rich boss.Plot aside, one thing was clear.Clara had it.Her pout, her bobbed hair.A musical sort of magnetism that translated through the screen.
As one Paramount boss put it, she danced even when her feet were not moving.Clara was a star.Over the next decade, Clara made 57 films. The majority were silent, but she made a seamless jump to talkies, a shift that stunted the careers of many of Clara's peers.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's just another scovie.I've heard it a thousand times before.Larsa, you don't seem like a daughter of mine.
SPEAKER_00: I know, I know, but he's going to be very— She also made film history, co-starring in Wings, the first movie to win the Best Picture Oscar.Offscreen, Clara lived a life noisy enough to rival her greatest onscreen roles. Her red sports car, laden with her seven chihuahuas, was a common sight in Hollywood.Thousands of fan letters poured in for her each week.She was a fun-loving, jazzy, free-living kid.At least, that's what she told the world.In 1928, when she was 22 years old, Clara gave a tell-all interview for the magazine Photo Play. In it, she spilled everything.Her difficult upbringing, her rise to stardom, even her own insecurities.At the top of the article, she wrote, There's only one thing you can do when you're very young and not a philosopher.
If life has frightened you by its cruelty and made you distrust its most glittering promises, you must make living a sort of gay curtain to throw across the abyss into which you've looked and where lie dread memories." Partly due to this tell-all, partly due to a public legal trial, and partly due to the rigorous schedule required of Hollywood starlets, time started to catch up with Clara.She was called Crisis A Day Clara, and her final two movies weren't exactly successes.Unbeknownst to the public, Clara was also struggling with her mental health.At just 28 years old, Clara Bow retired from acting. In just a few years, one of the biggest stars in show business had erased herself off the map.In 1931, Clara entered a sanitarium and after a few weeks moved to her home in Nevada.That same year, Clara, whose love life had always been the subject of tabloid gossip, quietly married actor Rex Bell.Together they had two sons.Making Clara Bow, the Hollywood starlet, disappear was quite the trick.
But Clara, the girl from Bay Ridge, was only human.She'd vanished from the public eye to take a break, and things weren't any easier in Nevada.She attempted suicide and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.While Rex, her husband, remained in the headlines through his acting career and his later run for governor, Clara stayed out of the spotlight.When she appeared, quietly, at his funeral, she sent newspapers buzzing. As if to test just how thoroughly Clara completed her disappearing act, she voiced a character called Mrs. Hush on the 1947 radio show Truth or Consequences.Listeners could call in if they thought they could identify the voice behind Mrs. Hush.Fourteen years after retiring from acting, Clara stumped a nation of listeners with her voice.It took three months of broadcasts for someone to call in and identify Clara. The sports car driving jazz baby of the 20s lived the rest of her life in relative peace.
Clara Bow died on September 27th, 1965 in Los Angeles.Though she disappeared on her own terms in her own lifetime, Clara's print on film history is undeniable.Just in March of 2024, a thought to be lost movie of hers resurfaced at a garage sale in Omaha, inciting new appreciation from film lovers. Her face, her dancing feet, are what helped bring around Hollywood as we know it, the first Oscar-winning movie, and smiles to countless faces in countless dark theater halls.A disappearing act she may be, but forgotten, she is not.All month, we're talking about disappearing acts.For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast.Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. As always, we'll be taking a break for the weekend.Talk to you on Monday.
