February 19, 1927: Clara Bow, "The It Girl"

February 19, 1927: The film It is released. This film has no resemblance but title to the later Stephen King story about a killer clown.

Clara Gordon Bow was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn. She was abused by both parents, and turned to the movies, all silent and black & white then, for comfort. She appeared in her 1st film in 1923, Down to the Sea in Ships, filmed on location in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She was taken west to Hollywood, and became a star with Grit in 1924. She played flappers, the modern women of the 1920s, and Alma Whitaker of the Los Angeles Times observed on September 7, 1924:

She radiates sex appeal tempered with an impish sense of humor... She hennas her blond hair so that it will photograph dark in the pictures... Takes a joyous delight in accepting a challenge to vamp any selected male -- the more unpromising specimen the better. When the hapless victim is scared into speechlessness, she gurgles with naughty delight and tries another.

She moved to Paramount Pictures in 1926, and Mantrap raised her to bigger stardom. On February 19, 1927, the film It premiered, and it made Bow the biggest female star in movie history to that point, ahead of Pearl White and Mary Pickford.

She plays shopgirl Betty Lou Spence, who works in the "world's largest store" (implied to be the Herald Square Macy's in New York), where she has a crush on Cyrus Waltham Jr. (played by Spanish actor Antonio Moreno), the new manager of the store and the overall boss' son. But they belong to different social classes, and he's already dating socialite Adela Van Norman (Jacqueline Gadsden).

When Betty finally gets Cyrus's attention, she convinces him to take her on a date to Coney Island in Brooklyn, where he is introduced to the proletarian pleasures of roller coasters and hot dogs, and has a wonderful time. At the end of the evening, he tries to kiss her. She slaps his face and hurries out of his car and into her flat, but then peeks out her window at him as he is leaving.

The next day, meddling welfare workers are trying to take away the baby of Betty's sickly roommate Molly (Priscilla Bonner). To protect her friend, Betty bravely claims that the baby is in fact hers. Unfortunately, this is overheard by Monty, a friend of Cyrus', who tells him. Although he is in love with her, Cyrus offers her an "arrangement" that includes everything but marriage. Shocked and humiliated, Betty Lou refuses. She soon strives to forget the whole ordeal ever occurred, forgetting Cyrus for the time being.

When she learns from Monty about Cyrus's misunderstanding, she fumes and vows to teach her former beau a lesson. When Cyrus hosts a yachting excursion, with Adela on board, Betty Lou makes Monty take her along, masquerading as "Miss Van Cortland". Cyrus at first wants to remove her from the ship, but he cannot long resist Betty Lou's "It Factor. He proposes marriage, but she tells him that she'd "rather marry his office boy," which accomplishes her goal, but breaks her heart.

Cyrus then learns the truth about the baby, and leaves Monty at the yacht's helm to find her. Monty crashes the yacht into a fishing boat, tossing both Betty Lou and Adela into the water. Betty Lou saves Adela, punching her in the face when she panics and threatens to drown them both. At the end of the film, she and Cyrus reconcile on the anchor of the yacht, with the first two letters of the ship's name, Itola, between them: "IT." Monty and Adela are upset at losing their friends, but it is implied they pursue a relationship with each other as the film ends.

The invention of the concept It is generally attributed to British novelist Elinor Glyn, but in 1904, an even bigger British writer, Rudyard Kipling, in the short story "Mrs. Bathurst," introduced the idea: "It isn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just 'It.' Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walk down the street."

For the rest of her career, Bow was promoted as "The It Girl." She admitted she wasn't sure what the term meant, but later said that both Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe both qualified.

However, it has to be natural: You can't "become an It Girl" -- or, if such a thing exists, an "It Guy." Film studios tried to find the next Marilyn, and never did. In the late 20th Century, both Madonna and Anna Nicole Smith tried to get people to think of themselves as the present-day version of Marilyn. In the early 21st Century, Kim Kardashian tried. None of them ever got there, only reaching the level of being "famous for being famous," as Elizabeth Taylor, a genuine It Girl, had once been.

In her 1990 song "Vogue," Madonna mentioned Monroe (who certainly was an It Girl), Turner (yes), Greta Garbo (yes), Marlene Dietrich (yes), Grace Kelly (no), Jean Harlow (yes), Ginger Rogers (not quite), Rita Hayworth (yes), Lauren Bacall (yes), Katherine Hepburn (not really) and Bette Davis (not even close). She didn't mention Clara Bow, the It Girl who was one of the people who made the Roaring Twenties roar.

Bow's personal life fell into the spotlight, and rumors of her romantic conquests abounded, including the ridiculous one that she had slept with every member of the football team at the University of Southern California. It was easily disproven, since, at the time, the team included a tackle named Marion Morrison, who became the actor John Wayne. And none of Wayne's biographers have alleged a tryst with Bow, at any time.

But her lifestyle and "dreadful" manners were considered reminders of the Hollywood elite's uneasy position in high society. She said, "They yell at me to be dignified. But what are the dignified people like? The people who are held up as examples for me? They are snobs. Frightful snobs... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!"

Later in 1927, Bow filmed Wings, which was awarded the 1st Academy Award for Best Picture. But talking pictures arrived late that year. Legend has it that Bow's Brooklyn accent doomed her career, but that wasn't it. In 1929 alone, Paramount released 3 the sound films with her: The Wild Party, Dangerous Curves and the Saturday Night Kid. They helped her keep her position as Hollywood's top box-office actress. In 1930, she made 4 films, and finished 2nd among box-office actresses to Joan Crawford.

The problem wasn't her voice, it was her: She said, "I hate talkies... 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." By the time of the stock market crash in October 1929, she described her nerves as "all shot," saying that she had reached "the breaking point." Photoplay, the most popular film-themed magazine of the era, cited reports of "rows of bottles of sedatives" by her bed. Her manager, B.P. Schulberg, began calling her "Crisis-a-Day Clara."

In 1930, she appeared in True to the Navy, with Rex Bell, usually a Western actor, as the male lead. In 1931, they were married. In 1933, she retired from show business, and she and Bell moved to the Walking Box Ranch outside Searchlight, Nevada, near Las Vegas.

Her final film, Hoopla, was released that year. Despite the Great Depression being at its depth, and Bow's style of film being woefully out of fashion, it was successful. In spite of her mental health difficulties, Clara Bow didn't lose her career to sound, or to substance abuse. Like Garbo a few years later, and Shirley Temple a few years after that, she left Hollywood on her own terms, at the age of 28.

Bow and Bell, whose real name was George Francis Beldam, had 2 sons: Tony and George Jr. Tony later became an actor, calling himself Rex Bell Jr. Their father was elected Lieutenant Governor of Nevada in 1954 and 1958, as a Republican.

The Bells in 1960, a brief reunion.

This may be the last known photo of Clara Bow, who was 55.

In 1960, Lieutenant Governor Bell allowed his ranch to be used as a filming location for The Misfits, and it was his final film role. It was also the final film for Clark Gable. It was also the final film for Marilyn Monroe. (Montgomery Clift was in it, too, but, contrary tol popular belief, it wasn't his last: He made 2 more before his death.) But Bow did not appear in it: After Hoopla in 1933, she had only one more acting credit, appearing as herself on the radio version of the game show Truth Or Consequences in 1947.

Bell began a campaign for Governor of Nevada in 1962, but on the 4th of July, after giving a campaign speech at the El Rancho Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, he suffered a heart attack, and died at the age of 58.

Clara Bow was not there for most of his political career. In 1944, during his 1st run for office, a defeat for the U.S. House of Representatives, she attempted suicide. In 1949, she checked herself into a Connecticut psychiatric hospital, but its staff couldn't agree on what was wrong with her. She left, and, instead of returning to the ranch, moved into a bungalow in Culver City, near the Hollywood studios, under the care of a nurse, and rarely left, living off the money she made from acting.

She died of a heart attack on September 27, 1965. She was only 60. She was buried next to Rex Bell at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, California. Among her pallbearers were 1920s Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey and her Wings co-star, Buddy Rogers.

Her son, Rex Bell Jr., served as District Attorney of Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, from 1987 to 1995. He died in 2011. As of February 19, 2022, George Beldam Jr. is still alive. Rex Jr. had children and grandchildren, so Clara Bow has living descendants.

*

February 19, 1927 was a Saturday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Americans lost to the Montreal Canadiens, 3-0 at the Montreal Forum.

* The Ottawa Senators beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 1-0 at the Ottawa Auditorium.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Detroit Cougars, 4-1 at the Border Cities Arena in Windsor, Ontario. Both teams were in their 1st season in the NHL.

None of these names is still in place. The Cougars became the Falcons in 1930, and the Red Wings in 1932. In 1986, someone found the Chicago team's original NHL charter, and found that it was officially entered as one word: "Blackhawks." The NHL office was notified, and it's been published as one word ever since. Built in 1924, the Border Cities Arena became the Windsor Arena, and, unlike the Wings' next 2 homes, the Olympia and the Joe Louis Arena, still stands.

* The Montreal Maroons beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 2-1 at the Mutual Street Arena in Toronto. Duncan Munro scored the winning goal, 12 minutes into overtime. Conn Smythe had just bought the team formerly known as the Toronto St. Patricks 5 days earlier, and, being proudly English and dismissive of the Irish, changed the team's name, and its solid color from green to blue. This was only their 2nd name under the Maple Leafs name. Their 1st was on February 17, a 4-1 home win over the Americans.

* And the New York Rangers and the Boston Bruins were not scheduled.