The song “You Look Like Clara Bow in This Light,” which is named after the 1920s sex symbol, is the last one on Taylor Swift’s album “The Tortured Poets Department.” She continues by mentioning two more instantly identifiable ladies, one of which is Taylor Swift. However, why would Swift choose to make a passing allusion to a silent cinema diva on an album that also included a Charlie Puth reference?
Bow, who became a cinematic star at the age of 20, ended his career at the age of 28. Swift may have set herself up to appeal to a younger audience now.
Bow, who was dubbed the “It Girl” for her leading part in the silent comedy “It” and her status as one of the leading sex icons of 1920s Hollywood, wasn’t washed up because her box office performance declined. She washed up because of the hazard her scandal-plagued existence posed to the studios as well as to her own mental state. Two quotations from David Stenn’s excellent book “Runnin’ Wild” capture the tragedy of Bow’s life. Bow was a former Brooklyn girl who gradually lost her carefree love for life.
According to Bow, being married is the culmination of everything in 1933. Yeah, I realize this sounds like the shit. But I really do mean it. I wouldn’t say it otherwise. The psychiatric report from seven years ago, which she subsequently married Hollywood cowboy Rex Bell, is just underneath Stenn. It reads, “She has been exceedingly unhappy at [Bell’s] ranch and sees nothing but hopelessness and ruin ahead of her.”
This means that despite having a damaged heart, Clara Bow was someone who understood how to enchant. And throughout the years, the tabloid press enthusiastically summarized her many accomplishments. Do you recognize this?
Not even Swift is the first to mine Bow for in-the-moment analysis. Damien Chazelle drew a lot of inspiration for Nellie LaRoy in “Babylon” from Bow and Margot Robbie. However, Bow was becoming more and more confused by how people were responding to her, in contrast to Robbie’s purposefully brazen persona. Mary Pickford, who was impoverished, rose to fame and immediately began serving tea at her Pickfair estate; Bow, who awoke one night to her mother putting a knife to her neck, also achieved fame and said things like, “Poor Gary [Cooper].” Hollywood’s largest cock, and no ass to shove it with. As a result, Bow turned into a living example of what occurs when someone is unable or unwilling to participate in the game.
According to Hollywood legend (and Kenneth Anger), man-eater Bow wrecked her first talkie set and her career (as well as the microphones) with her nasal Brooklyn honk. Her sound movies are really amazing feats because of how well her contemporary character translated into the 1920s; Bow was never cloying during that era and looked especially well-suited to go smoothly into a new phase of her life. However, Bow’s disastrous trial in which she sued her best friend and secretary for theft and the former bestie went directly to the press with rumors about Bow’s extramarital affairs soured Paramount’s desire to work with her.
One joke went, “Clara laid everything but the linoleum.” Bow was said to be a lesbian, to have engaged in orgies, to have had sex with every member of the USC football team, including a teenage John Wayne, and even to have had sex with her Great Danes! When the suits started calling her “Crisis a Day Clara,” the moniker was nasty but true.
In 1931, she married Bell and relocated to Nevada in order to flee. But Bell then entered politics, and his movie star wife was the ideal person to drag out to parties and dinners? Bell attempted suicide in 1944 while running for Congress, noting in her suicide note that she preferred death to public life. When she entered a sanitarium in 1949, nobody could agree on what, if anything, was wrong with her. After being released, she relocated to a cottage where she lived alone and apart from her family until her death in 1965.
When you read this comment from Bow about Swift’s reputation, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that she likes to sing and is thus a target for hatred and gossip: “My life in Hollywood contained plenty of uproar.” I apologize for a great deal of stuff, but not terribly. I never done anything to cause harm to other people. You cannot achieve what I did on film by adopting Mrs. Alcott’s conception of a Little Woman. I built a space for myself.”
Stated differently, “Who’s afraid of little old me?”
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