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This listing is for an 8x10 size picture of actress Clara Bow.

Clara Bow (July 29, 1907[1]; - September 27, 1965) was an American actress and sex symbol, best known for her silent film work in the 1920s and early 1930s. Bow was widely recognized as an archetypical flapper.

Early life

Bow was born in a tenement in Brooklyn, New York, the only surviving child of a dysfunctional family afflicted with mental illness, Dickensian poverty, and physical and emotional abuse. She was the third child born to her parents; the first two children, both daughters, were stillborn. Bow's mother, hoping that her third child would also die at birth, didn't bother with a birth certificate.

Bow's mother, Sarah Gordon, was an occasional prostitute with mental illness and epilepsy. She was noted for her frequent public affairs with local firemen. Bow's father, Robert Bow, was rarely present and may have had a mental impairment. Whenever he returned home, he was verbally and physically abusive to both wife and daughter. When he was absent, Gordon would 'turn tricks' (have sex) for food money, locking her daughter in a closet whenever a customer was in the apartment. Bow's father reportedly raped his daughter when she was 15 years old.

Early career

By her mid-teens, young Clara Bow was working as an actress, having dropped out of school at the age of seven.

Bow won the Fame and Fortune contest in 1921; the grand prize was a part in the film Beyond The Rainbow (1922). She needed two photographs in order to enter the contest, so she begged her father for the money and he finally took her to a cheap studio. Although she hated the results, the contest judges were impressed. After numerous screen tests, Bow was selected the winner. She won a part in Beyond the Rainbow, but to her humiliation and disappointment, her scenes were cut from the final print and were not seen until the film was restored in later years.

Bow also had to deal with her mother, Sarah Gordon. Gordon told Bow that acting was for whores. She had also taken to sneaking up behind Bow and threatening to kill her because she would be better off dead. One night, she awoke to find her mother holding a butcher knife to her throat. She lay still until her mother collapsed to the floor in a seizure. As a result of this episode, Bow suffered insomnia for the rest of her life.

Stardom

Bow's screen introduction wasn't until her next film, Down to the Sea in Ships. This was a silent film, as were all of Bow's early films made in the 1920s. She was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1924.

Fame and fortune

Bow began to appear in small movie roles. All the while, she suffered guilty feelings over her mother's disapproval. In 1923, Bow was on the set when she learned that her mother had died. She was devastated, feeling that her acting was somehow responsible for her mother's death.

Bow got her big break when an officer of Preferred Pictures approached her on the set. He offered her a free train fare to make a screen test in Hollywood, and Bow agreed to make the trip. The first time Preferred Pictures head B.P. Schulberg saw disheveled Clara Bow in her one ragged dress, he was dismayed. He was reluctant even to give her a screen test, but when he finally did, the results astounded him. Bow was already adept at pantomime, and she could cry on command.

Starting with Maytime (1923), Schulberg cast Bow in a series of small roles. She nearly always stole her scenes. However, instead of creating projects for her, he loaned her out to other studios for easy money.

As soon as Bow started to make money, she brought her father to live with her in Hollywood. For the next few years, she funded numerous business ventures for him, including a restaurant and a dry cleaners, all of which failed. He soon became a drunken nuisance on her sets, where he would try to pick up young girls by telling them his daughter was Clara Bow. Despite the behavior of her unwanted relative, Bow was adored during this time of her career. Crew members always seemed to fall in love with her. She was friendly, generous, and so grateful for her success that she always remained humble.

In 1925, Schulberg cast Bow in The Plastic Age. The movie was a huge hit, and Bow was suddenly the studio's most popular star. She also began to date her co-star Gilbert Roland, who would become the first of many engagements for her. Bow followed her first big success with Mantrap (1926), directed by Victor Fleming. Though he was twice her age, Bow quickly fell in love with her director. She began seeing both Roland and Fleming at the same time.

The It girl

In 1927, Bow reached the heights of her popularity with the film It. Consequently, Bow was dubbed "The It Girl" — "It" being a euphemism for sex appeal, as defined by the British novelist Elinor Glyn. This image was enhanced by various off-screen love affairs publicized by the tabloid press.

Studio executives had a columnist proclaim that Bow, beyond all reason, was the "it" girl. When the word "sex" couldn't be used, some other word was needed to describe a girl of her caliber — the type men would spend hours thinking about in moments of desire, and the type women would openly loathe. However, some Hollywood insiders considered her socially undesirable, especially in light of rumored sexual escapades with many famous men of the time. Bela Lugosi, Gary Cooper, Gilbert Roland, director Victor Fleming, and John Gilbert were reputed to be among her many male lovers.

Bow's alleged alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental instability were also becoming problems for the studios. Budd Schulberg, a producer's son, said, "Clara Bow, no matter how great her popularity, was a low life and disgrace to the community." Not all of the negative rumors were true, but Bow probably did inherit mental instability from her mother.

Her acting, however, was finer than her good-time-girl reputation implied. Bow was praised for her vitality and enthusiasm — Adolph Zukor once said that "She danced even when her feet weren't moving" — though her roles rarely allowed her to show much range. At least one important film writer, Adela Rogers St. John, felt Bow had enormous promise that was never tapped by the studios.

Documentation indicates that as Bow developed a reputation as "Crisis-a-Day Clara," Paramount went out of its way to humiliate the increasingly emotionally frail actress by cancelling her films, docking her pay, charging her for unreturned costumes, and insisting that she pay for her publicity photographs. Her contract also included a morality clause offering her a bonus of $500,000 for behaving like a lady and staying out of the newspapers, and for controlling her sexual exploits.

In 1927, Bow also made Wings, a war picture largely re-written to accommodate her, as she was Paramount's biggest star at the time. The film went on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture. After movies such as Wings, Bow's career continued with limited success into the early sound film era (despite her thick, unmanageable Brooklynese accent), until she retired in 1933 to raise her children with her husband, cowboy actor Rex Bell (actually George F. Beldon), later a lieutenant governor of Nevada. Bow and Beldon married in 1932 and had two sons, Tony Beldon (born 1934, changed name to Rex Anthony Bell, Jr.) and George Beldon, Jr. (born 1938).

Mental illness

After being diagnosed a schizophrenic in 1949 and suffering a mental-health regimen that included shock treatments, Clara Bow died on September 27, 1965 of a heart attack. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Clara Bow was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1994, she was honored with an image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

We are a proud Ebay We have larger sizes available too. If you want this photo in a size larger than 16x20, please purchase this 16x20 and add your size request in the comments with your payment. We will invoice you for the difference in price. You can see the prices below. If you have any questions, please ask. 16x20 $49.95 20x25 $69.95 24x30 $89.95 28x35 $109.95 32x40 $129.95 36x45 $149.95 40x50 $169.95 44x55 $189.95 48x60 $209.95 Larger sizes and wall murals are available too. FOR SUPER ENLARGEMENTS - PLEASE CONTACT US. and confirmed Paypal member. Buy with confidence.

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