Silent Cinema
- Thread starter Tatiana
- Start date
Louloubelle said:
No need for a versus situation, both women have qualities that can't be ignored and for different reasons.
Not my words
-"Clara Bow invented the notion of sex on the silver screen. She was the first actress who visibly flaunted her sex appeal and, in turn, became the most talked-about resident of Hollywood. Idolized by Louise Brooks in the 20s, Marilyn Monroe in the 50s, and Madonna in the 80s, Clara was an icon of sexual freedom for women everywhere. But beneath Clara's radiant, carefree laughter hid a pain that she couldn't ignore forever.
Born in a Brooklyn tenement in 1905 during one of the worst heat waves New York has ever experienced, Clara was unwanted from day one. Both her mother and grandmother were mentally ill and her father was disinterested in both marriage and children (he had left Clara's mother shortly before she went into labor). Clara's mother hoped that the heat would kill both her and her child and didn't bother with a birth certificate.
"Clara developed into a lonely, hypersensitive child, acutely self-conscious of a slight speech impediment" (Stenn). School chum Catherine Mulligan remembers that a young Clara was not allowed to invite anyone to her home. To add to this she was ashamed of her wastrel father and sick epileptic mother who "entertained visiting firemen or uncles". The terrified Clara would often have to hide in a cupboard during these frequent ‘visits’."
For her escape from her oppressive home-life, Clara would turn to a new medium: the moving pictures. There she would forget her parents' bitter fights, her father’s long absences, and her mother’s increasingly bizarre behavior. Clara, much to the consternation of her mother would look in the mirror and imitate the acting styles of her favorite actresses, Mary Pickford, Mae Murray, and Theda Bara.
In the early 1920's, most every American girl dreamed of winning a fan magazine contest as a stepping stone to becoming a movie actress. Clara was no different. The plucky and ambitious street urchin recognized early what she saw in the mirror and would save what little she had to go search out the studios in New York. Always on the lookout for "beauty" and "film" contests, Clara borrowed 50 cents off of her father to get a cheap tin-type made up and entered and won one such contest that was sponsored by Motion Picture, Motion Picture Classic, and Shadowland Magazines. The January 1922 edition of Motion Picture Magazine announced Clara as the 1921 Fame and Fortune Contest. The magazine went on to say:
" She is very young, only 16. But She is full of confidence, determination and ambition. She is endowed with a mentality far beyond her years. She has a genuine spark of the divine fire. The five different screen tests she had, showed this very plainly, her emotional range of expression provoking a fine enthusiasm from every contest judge who saw the tests. She screens perfectly. Her personal appearance is almost enough to carry her to success without the aid of the brains she indubitably possesses. "
As part of her prize, Clara was promised a part in a motion picture. This came about in the 1922 feature, Beyond the Rainbow, in which she was cast as a flirtatious sub-deb who stirs up trouble by passing the note, "Consult your conscience. Your secret is common gossip." The excited Clara gathered all of her friends to view her screen debut, only to be disappointed to find out that her sequences were cut from the initial print.
Curiously, perhaps mistakenly, Clara's performance as Virginia Gardener in Beyond the Rainbow, was reviewed in Variety: "The feminine characters form a galaxy of beauty, Lillian (Billie) Dove has a wealth of brunette loveliness and makes an attractive contrast to the other two beauties, Virginia Lee and Clara Bow, both blondes and both beauty contest winners." After viewing clips of the re-issued print as shown on Hugh Munro Neely's recent documentary, Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl, it is obvious that the "dark"-haired Clara was not one of the mentioned blondes.
..... the unfettered Clara continued making the rounds at the Manhattan film and photography studios. As luck would have it, D. W. Griffith's protégé, Elmer Clifton came across her photo and the Motion Picture contest announcement and became interested in casting her. Clifton was shooting the low-budget whaling movie, Down to the Sea in Ships in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He hired Clara at $35 a week for 13 weeks to play Dot Morgan, "…a life-loving, energetic young girl who shows no respect for the rules. Set down in the middle of this staid vehicle, she is like a breath of fresh air-vivid, alive, modern. She seems to have real passion rather than just imitating it. She's the very definition of the term 'screen presence', particularly seen among the careful and stilted performances of the other actors. Cast as a young tomboy she romps, she fights, and she seems utterly unselfconscious."
.....studio chief B. P. Schulberg knew the market potential of Clara’s stardom and began to act accordingly. Eliciting the aide of popular romance novelist Elinor Glyn (not unlike Jacqueline Susanne), Schulberg crowned Clara the ‘IT’ girl. ‘It’ was a euphonium for the word "sex" in those days-mostly because it was not acceptable to say "sex." Thereafter, IT "did much to establish Bow as a popular icon, and the film itself is and exemplary showcase for the basic Clara Bow movie persona-cheerful impudence and free-spirited sexiness transcending the barriers of class and Victorian inhibition." (Hogue) And thus Clara, by all intents and purposes, became the first sex symbol (in the tradition of Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Racquel Welch, and others)."
Despite the marketing and cynical movie boss goings on, no doubt she had chemistry, and her heavy Brooklyn accent would have added to her charm in real life. Not in a patronising way, but as an antidote to the more "refined" personas of women like Louise Brooks (who partied hard though).
Indeed, but there is a line I feel between exploitation of her through her screen persona and personal life, and being "free" in thought and action and hell to the consquences. The question is though, where is this line drawn?
And although she undoubtedly was a very attractive woman, both in looks and personality, the focus, emphasis only on her sex life ignores her as a person. She is more than series of scandalous sex sessions.
Although her career was built on her inherent sexuality, and that created in the films that she made.
And although she undoubtedly was a very attractive woman, both in looks and personality, the focus, emphasis only on her sex life ignores her as a person. She is more than series of scandalous sex sessions.
Although her career was built on her inherent sexuality, and that created in the films that she made.
sleazesells
New Member
maya said:
1927 actually
Great film though, get the 2 disc DVD version and not the 80's colourised one with soft rock soundtrack!
maya
timewasting fool (in every universe)
"Häxan (the witch)" is a scandinavian one which is supposed to be good- deals with their impression of a witch sabbath or something
(the scandinavian countries experienced a massive "witch hunt" from 1600s- 1920, many (indigenous people) Sami women in particular were affected by this because of their knowledge of natural remedies and their Shamanist beliefs-
in one village in the north of norway particularly, over 1000 women and some men accused of witchcraft were publicly burned...
protestant pietism was strong in these countries, so the polarisation of "good" and "evil" was just a way of the powerful church fathers to get rid of the "wise women" whose strong position in society provoked them- a lot of knowledge about natural medicine and its practice were thus lost forever...
the film doesn't of course bring up anything of this, as a product of its time (1916?) it is a good example about the cartoon-ish impressions people from a xtian society had about these "wicked women": brewing magical witch potions in a big pot while whispering incantations, dancing to summon the devil, trying to (sic) bewitch others with magical spells, etc etc...in reality these "wise women" just dealt with healing people- they were healers with a knowledge of natural medicine and some psychology...)
(the scandinavian countries experienced a massive "witch hunt" from 1600s- 1920, many (indigenous people) Sami women in particular were affected by this because of their knowledge of natural remedies and their Shamanist beliefs-
in one village in the north of norway particularly, over 1000 women and some men accused of witchcraft were publicly burned...
protestant pietism was strong in these countries, so the polarisation of "good" and "evil" was just a way of the powerful church fathers to get rid of the "wise women" whose strong position in society provoked them- a lot of knowledge about natural medicine and its practice were thus lost forever...
the film doesn't of course bring up anything of this, as a product of its time (1916?) it is a good example about the cartoon-ish impressions people from a xtian society had about these "wicked women": brewing magical witch potions in a big pot while whispering incantations, dancing to summon the devil, trying to (sic) bewitch others with magical spells, etc etc...in reality these "wise women" just dealt with healing people- they were healers with a knowledge of natural medicine and some psychology...)
.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
Sorry - Greed is based on the book McTeague, an American classic about how winning the lottery can ruin all your dreams. It's Stroheim in his biggest most over the top magnificence, an unbelievably character.
Cabiria is a tale of kidnap and revenge and war set during the second punic wars. Stunning sets, a real epic, very influential in terms of lighting camerawork etc.
Cabiria is a tale of kidnap and revenge and war set during the second punic wars. Stunning sets, a real epic, very influential in terms of lighting camerawork etc.
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