Before Marilyn and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, there was Clara Bow. Even so, both women shared many similarities that places them in a parenthetical position akin to soul-sisters: both came from tragic homes and escaped the wrath and madness of their mothers as well as the abuse from their fathers, both entered Hollywood on a lark and rose to the top of their game playing sexually liberated women who oozed magnetism, and both women's careers -- which never fully used their talent, clearly evident but put aside in lieu of their physical presence -- came to a screeching halt too soon. While an obscure death was the culprit for Marilyn, talkies and Clara's terror of how her voice would sound in this (then) new media was hers.
However, Clara's screen persona has a different approach to the issue of female sensuality, and this is a crucial difference which separates her from Marilyn. In the 1950s, Marilyn suffered from Hollywood's excesses in their quest for the glamorization of women until they were decorative fantasies, hers being the fleshy, dim platinum blond with the breathy whisper of a voice (in strong contrast to the more gamine Audrey Hepburn, who was virtually sexless and fragile). Clara, a woman in the Roaring Twenties, was carnality personified as well, but smart, independent, assertive, a female Bugs Bunny who could turn any situation, no matter how precarious, to her own advantage and walk away with the guy and the entire picture even if it was of mediocre quality.
Plus, she had those eyes, and that capability of expression Marilyn suggested but never truly had. There is a scene in IT -- the movie which defined Clara Bow even if the word's new meaning was "codified" by Elinor Glyn's keen, self-promoting marketing -- when Antonio Moreno, the object of Clara's (rather aggressive) affections, has offered her something less noble than the marriage she wants from him (which is at the heroine's romantic and even conservative core). Her expression changes little, but her eyes are the ones who register so much pain that it literally pours itself out from the screen and into the viewer's lap. (Clara was quoted as saying whenever she needed to emote, she would think of her childhood.) Then again, it was Norma Desmond, the fictional tragic grand dame of SUNSET BLVD. who did say, "We had faces!" How true. The explanatory inter-titles never interfere too much with the action -- many silents suffer from this tendency -- and the actors always seem to be in a natural state of acting rather than a flurry of miming.
Because Clara is in practically every scene in IT, we get the most of her character's Cinderella story from the moment she spies her man (and the camera zooms in on him), concludes he's for her, and then takes us on her own journey from acknowledgment (even when she herself isn't aware how she'll achieve her goal) to the ultimate resolution. Romantic suspense is at its finest here, with the heroine bravely warding off the criticisms of a world apparently beyond her reach, happy in her own mundane yet vibrant existence, going to lengths of self-sacrifice when the "moral women" appear to condemn her house-mate friend (Priscilla Bonner) who is under scrutiny for being a single mother. This is really the essence of a contemporary character who is, while being fictional, an archetype of strength, who eclipses everyone around her just by being there as when late in the film when she attends a boat ride (at a last attempt to set things straight with Moreno), plays the part of a cultural connoisseur to a hilarious level, then stands looking out into the water (still a little hurt; she's not invulnerable) as Moreno looks on and "other woman" Jacqueline Gadsden (remarkably contrasted to Clara) seethes. That is the power of a character and a perfectly cast actor, and Clara, clearly an actress ahead of her time, was "it." If only Hollywood had known this.
However, Clara's screen persona has a different approach to the issue of female sensuality, and this is a crucial difference which separates her from Marilyn. In the 1950s, Marilyn suffered from Hollywood's excesses in their quest for the glamorization of women until they were decorative fantasies, hers being the fleshy, dim platinum blond with the breathy whisper of a voice (in strong contrast to the more gamine Audrey Hepburn, who was virtually sexless and fragile). Clara, a woman in the Roaring Twenties, was carnality personified as well, but smart, independent, assertive, a female Bugs Bunny who could turn any situation, no matter how precarious, to her own advantage and walk away with the guy and the entire picture even if it was of mediocre quality.
Plus, she had those eyes, and that capability of expression Marilyn suggested but never truly had. There is a scene in IT -- the movie which defined Clara Bow even if the word's new meaning was "codified" by Elinor Glyn's keen, self-promoting marketing -- when Antonio Moreno, the object of Clara's (rather aggressive) affections, has offered her something less noble than the marriage she wants from him (which is at the heroine's romantic and even conservative core). Her expression changes little, but her eyes are the ones who register so much pain that it literally pours itself out from the screen and into the viewer's lap. (Clara was quoted as saying whenever she needed to emote, she would think of her childhood.) Then again, it was Norma Desmond, the fictional tragic grand dame of SUNSET BLVD. who did say, "We had faces!" How true. The explanatory inter-titles never interfere too much with the action -- many silents suffer from this tendency -- and the actors always seem to be in a natural state of acting rather than a flurry of miming.
Because Clara is in practically every scene in IT, we get the most of her character's Cinderella story from the moment she spies her man (and the camera zooms in on him), concludes he's for her, and then takes us on her own journey from acknowledgment (even when she herself isn't aware how she'll achieve her goal) to the ultimate resolution. Romantic suspense is at its finest here, with the heroine bravely warding off the criticisms of a world apparently beyond her reach, happy in her own mundane yet vibrant existence, going to lengths of self-sacrifice when the "moral women" appear to condemn her house-mate friend (Priscilla Bonner) who is under scrutiny for being a single mother. This is really the essence of a contemporary character who is, while being fictional, an archetype of strength, who eclipses everyone around her just by being there as when late in the film when she attends a boat ride (at a last attempt to set things straight with Moreno), plays the part of a cultural connoisseur to a hilarious level, then stands looking out into the water (still a little hurt; she's not invulnerable) as Moreno looks on and "other woman" Jacqueline Gadsden (remarkably contrasted to Clara) seethes. That is the power of a character and a perfectly cast actor, and Clara, clearly an actress ahead of her time, was "it." If only Hollywood had known this.