The perils of ‘It’: Clara Bow, experience, agency, and the scandalous life story

ABSTRACT

This article explores the ways Clara Bow’s life story is constructed by biographical narratives from the 1920s and early 1930s, the period in which her film stardom began and ended, and from the 1970s–90s, the period in which interest in her life re-emerged at a time when studio-era Hollywood stars, as well as Hollywood films and its production and promotion practices, became objects of both nostalgia and critique. These biographical narratives, from fan magazine stories to print biographies to video documentaries, tell Bow’s story within a framework of her agency or lack of agency, with the latter connected to scandal. This historiographic approach suggests how both biography and scandal are narratives that have to be deciphered in terms of what is said, and what is not said, by whom to whom as well as in terms of who has the authority to tell his/her own life story or the life stories of others.

KEYWORDS:

• Star scandal
• star biography
• film historiography
• fan magazines

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Copies of the Coast Reporter were inaccessible to me. My information about the content of the 1931 issues concerning Bow comes from Stenn (1990).

2. I chose these particular biographical narratives (fan magazine articles published to publicise or promote Bow, print biographies, and film documentaries) because their production by major publishers, media production companies, or television channels ensured exposure to mass audiences. However, at the time of this writing, Clara Bow continues to be of interest to both fiction and non-fiction writers. A number of fiction and non-fiction self-published e-books focused on Bow’s life and image can be found via a search of Amazon.com.

3. Anne Morey’s (2006) attention to the ‘mature [new] woman’ in films of the 1920s reminds us of the historiographic problems with collapsing the ‘new woman’ into the ‘flapper’.

4. Clara Bow had actually negotiated a contract with Paramount studio that did not include a morals clause, but the studio set up a trust fund in her name which could be revoked if scandalous reports of her private life went public. See Stenn (1990, pp. 71–72).

5. Ruth Biery’s (1931, pp. 31, 120–122) ‘Clara’s Microphone Fright’.

6. Stenn often quotes letters from Brooks to Brownlow. See also Paris (1989) and Card (1994).

7. Jane Gaines, ‘Women and the Cinematification of the World’, paper delivered at Women and the Silent Screen Conference, Stockholm University, 11 June 2008.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Desjardins

Mary Desjardins is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Dartmouth College. She is author of Recycled Stars: Female Film Stardom in the Age of Television and Video (Duke, 2015) and Father Knows Best (Wayne State, 2015), and co-editor of Dietrich Icon (Duke, 2007). She is currently working on a book project concerning studio-era Hollywood publicity and public relations.