"You look like Clara Bow
In this light, remarkable
All your life, did you know
You'd be picked like a rose?"
Clara Bow by Taylor Swift
I have to be honest, I don’t really know how much
research Taylor Swift has put into the life and career of our Clara Bow especially
when she follows up with a pre-chorus about a small town girl seeing the lights
of Manhattan – Clara was a Bronx girl but here is inspiring others be they
star-struck young women or the men who wish to exploit them and her. She was a
good bet for the money men and the studio system already well set in place and one of the first "sex symbols" opening the way to Harlow, Monroe and beyond.
There are similarities with the music business a century
later and a bruising process Swift has seemingly surpassed being even herself
the victim of exploitation and bad deals leading to her re-recording a number
of earlier albums. Women, then and now are encouraged to be “marketable” and as
Taylor’s chorus reveals:
"This town is fake, but you're the real thing
Breath of fresh air through smoke rings
Take the glory, give everything
Promise to be dazzling"
Clara was nothing if not dazzling and as the all-conquering
Swift well knows… that’s what you need when you are It! But when you are
so dazzlingly The Thing, clearly the business of show may eat you up and it's difficult to draw the exact lines between the stars eventual mental
illness which even her wealthy husband was at a loss to contain and her early years in and out fo Hollywood. That said, she
was obviously a victim of her success in so many ways but able to walk away at a time of her chosing, movies still doing well, to start her family.
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| Clara dazzles |
Clara came from the slums and, after winning the Fame and
Fortune acting contest in 1921, was to become perhaps the pre-eminent sexual star of the twenties in Hollywood making mostly run of the mill films like
this one, Call Her Savage or the superior Mantrap (1925) which
emphasised her punk energy, wild beauty and not inconsiderable acting talent.
Bow was an exceptional “emotion engine” able to shift between happy and deep
sorrow, with tears, in a matter of a few frames. Her abilities partly drew on
the tragedies of her impoverished background – a friend’s death in a tenement
fire being her constant aide memoire for this misery business.
She made around a dozen films a year very few of which
could be classified as classics – It (1927), Wings (1927), the
afore-mentioned Mantrap and, probably also her first talkie The Wild
Party (1929) directed by Dorothy Arzner who was very sympathetic to her
star who showed she was more than capable of transitioning to the talkies. At
this stage in her career and especially without the foundation of stage
training, she couldn’t have wished for a better ally than Arzner – now there is
someone who needs a song! Bow made another ten talkies, most of which were hits,
before retiring in 1931 after marrying Rex Bell and starting a family.
You could argue that Clara emerged reasonably well from
her decade in the spotlight but her early years had been ruinous and she later
succumbed to mental health issues lacking the caring hinterland and wealth of
Swift’s modern entourage. But, when she shone brightly there were few to match
her and she elevates even Hula through her magnificence…as, indeed, she was expected to do with all of her rapidly produced films: she was worked so hard in the silent era.
Directed by the Victor Fleming, and based on the
novel Hula, a Romance of Hawaii (1927) by Armine von Tempski, Clara
features as the unruly Hula daughter of a Hawaiian planter, Bill Calhoun
(Albert Gran) who just loves to party along with the island’s smart set. Hula
meanwhile prefers the company of the locals and her “uncle” Edwin/Kahana "a half-Hawaiian ranch foreman" (Agostino
Borgato) who has been her "nursemaid and bodyguard sine her baby days..." and she much prefers their more balanced existence with nature. This of
course fits in with Clara’s persona of “natural” and wild, even if that would
sometimes involve more over racial coding as Call Her Savage based on
Tiffany Thayer’s frankly barmy novel about mixed race – one of his favourite
subjects if anyone remembers Thirteen Women and Myrna Loy’s character
and motivation.
Hula is certainly running wild here, opening the film
skinny dipping in a pond and giving the audience what it wants in a film that Fleming
makes sure covers as much of Clara Bow as possible. Clara is helped into her
tight jodhpurs before racing on horseback to the party being held by her
parents in their grand house with the local notables. One man, Harry Dehan
(Arnold Kent), bets that he can make her get off her horse and join them inside
by luring her with a present but she just rides inside and escapes with his bet
lost and present in hand.
She may be only just turning 18 – Bow was 21 during
filming – but Hula knows what she wants and is struck by the arrival of a “young”
British engineer Anthony Haldane (Tufnell Park’s Clive Brook who had just
turned 40), on the island to make his fortune and find a new life away from his
wife Margaret (Patricia Dupont) and a marriage that is dying from indifference.
As is the way in these films, the cultural and age differences count for little
when two characters are destined for each other and the two are soon in Hollywood
love as Hula’s inner flames melt his frozen heart of empire.
Clara and Clive
But there is just that one big complication and jealous
forces, there are always jealous forces in these films, here the widow Mrs.
Bane (Arlette Marchal), act to encourage Margaret to try and rekindle their
relationship with Anthony’s hard work seemingly about to make him a fortune.
She clearly has no idea that she’s up against a force of nature…
Clara’s spirit rises above the limitations of Von Tempski’s
source material, in this case Doris Anderson’s adaptation and Ethel Doherty’s
scenario, and she holds up the whole film especially as Brook, fine actor
though he is, has very little to work with. He’s much better suited to the more
cerebral Evelyn Brent on Underworld and he can’t match the Bow energy
or, indeed, youth. Von Tempski is an interesting woman in her own right
having been born in Maui, the daughter of a Polish ranch manager and ended up
running a ranch with her sister before moving to the US and marrying a man 15
years her junior… someone should make a film!
Overall Hula, as presented in decent quality on the Grapevine Blu-ray – a bit murky in parts but very watchable – is good Clara
fun but it does feel as though the more interesting edges of the story have
been knocked away to free up the screen for the actor’s greatest hits in terms
of expression, bodily exposure and plucky resolve to get what she wants. Clara
had that in her films even if it was harder in life.
Taylor’s song moves on to Stevie Nicks and then, surprisingly,
to herself as she fully recognises that she too is now the It girl and the
template the industry wishes to replicate with another who fits the mould.
Clara, Stevie and Taylor though, I think they broke that mould when they made
these three, whatever the efforts to monetise their natural talents, all three
are impossible to replicate; there’s never been a Taylor Swift before just as
there’s never been a Clara Bow before or since.
The fact that Ms Swift can include herself in this
company says it all about the self-awareness and power she now has in contrast
to so many who were used and suffered for their fame. Taylor’s version of Clara
is therefore smarter than men of my age might otherwise assume; she recognises
the energy and the singular presence of the first It Girl choosing to ignore
circumstances that were beyond her control. It’s a celebration as much as a
warning to those who the business will try to shoe-horn into those broken
moulds.
Only when your girlish glow
Flickers just so
Do they let you know
It's hell on earth to be heavenly
Them's the breaks
They don't come gently…
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