Clara Bow

Often trailers and coming attractions are of as much or more interest to viewers than the actual movie. Included here are some of the trailers and coming attractions seen in the Academy Award-winning Best Pictures from 1927's Wings to 1959's Ben Hur, also including The Bridge on the River Kwai, On the Waterfront, The Greatest Show on Earth, The Lost Weekend and others. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

Clara Bow, the saucy "It" girl of the silent screen, made her film farewell in the ragged musical drama Hoopla. Based on the stage play The Barker (previously filmed in 1927), the story takes place during the Chicago World's Fair of 1933. Bow plays Lou, a hootchy-kootchy dancer who is catapulted into stardom by fast-talking barker Nifty (Preston S. Foster). Hoping to escape her tawdry existence, Lou makes a play for handsome young naif Chris (Richard Cromwell), but by film's end she has bowed to the inevitable and returns to the sort of work she knows best. Despite excellent production values and a big-time promotional campaign, Hoopla was a bomb, convincing the ever-insecure Clara Bow to retire to private life as the wife of cowboy star and future Nevada politician Rex Bell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this fluffy comedy, an innocent usherette falls for a customer whom she finally meets and eventually marries. Soon after the ceremony, she learns that he is a jewel thief about to go to jail. She then moves into a girlfriend's ultra-modern apartment that is really a front for gamblers. Again, the young woman finds herself in real trouble until her hubby is released from jail and comes to her rescue. Happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Clara Bow's career as one of Hollywood's liveliest leading ladies was drawing to a close when she made this early sound farce, one of her few talkies. Larry Charters (Ralph Forbes) is a highly successful songwriter who is growing weary of life in the public eye. Hoping for a break, Larry convinces his friend Bob (Richard "Skeets" Gallagher) to impersonate him as he takes a well deserved vacation in the French Riviera. While trying to get a room at a hotel, both Larry and an attractive young American tourist, Norma Martin (Bow), are flummoxed by the fact that they speak no French and that the desk clerk speaks no English. Things get much more complicated when they discover that the desk clerk isn't a desk clerk at all -- he is the local magistrate, and instead of renting them a pair of rooms, he has just married them. Three years after making this film, Clara Bow announced her retirement from the screen at the age of 28. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Clara Bow, the "It" girl of the silent screen, goes through the motions of the Cinderella yarn Love Among the Millionaires. A humble (but dazzlingly beautiful) waitress, Pepper Green (Bow) wins the heart of Jerry (Stanley Smith), the son of a wealthy railroad magnate Hamilton (Claude King). The father, evidently well-versed in Camille, begs Pepper to give up Jerry, suggesting that she behave in a "tartish" manner so as to disillusion the boy. Reluctantly, she does so, but be assured that True Love will out by the end. It isn't that Clara Bow was an inept talkie actress: it's simply that her flapper "type" was woefully out of date in the Depression era. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Circus life provides the framework of this drama that chronicles the love, life, and aspiration of a young circus waif. The aspiring star is learning to walk the high-wire with the young wire-walker she adores. He loves another, his partner, but she is untrue to him. As a result he is almost on the edge of a breakdown. When she abandons him, he takes comfort in drinking too much. The plucky young girl tries to help him return to his former glory. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this film, the irresponsible Stella Ames (Clara Bow) spends her college career attending parties rather than studying. However, when she ends up in the difficult class of the handsome, but stern, Professor Gil Gilmore (Fredrick March), she develops a crush on him which creates a series of dilemmas for both of them. The Wild Party, directed by one of the first female directors, Dorothy Arzner was Clara Bow's first talkie film, and -- while dated -- is still good, trashy fun to watch. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

The Clara Bow vehicle Three Week Ends was based on a story by Elinor Glyn, the romance novelist who bestowed the "It Girl" title upon the saucer-eyed Bow. Seeing hero James Gordon (Neil Hamilton) driving around in an expensive, custom-built Hispano Suiza automobile, heroine Gladys O'Brien (Bow) naturally assumes that Gordon is rich. What she doesn't know is that Gordon is a low-paid insurance salesman, who was driving his boss' car while running an errand. Meanwhile, millionaire Turner (Harrison Ford) develops a yearning for Gladys and invites her to a weekend party, for purposes of you-know-what. Capriciously hiding the girl's clothes while she takes a swim, Turner is about to move in for the moment of truth when she is rescued by the timely arrival of Gordon, who'd come to the Turner mansion to make a sale. Not surprisingly, Gordon fails to collect his commission, but he does end up with Gladys as his bride. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

It was romance novelist Elinor Glyn who dubbed Clara Bow the "It" girl, so it was hardly a surprise when Bow starred in this adaptation of Mme. Glyn'sThe Vicissitudes of Evangeline. The star plays Bubbles McCoy, a crafty manicurist who hopes to land a wealthy husband. She sets her sights on handsome Robert Lennon (Lane Chandler) and also accepts expensive presents from Lennon's older male guardians. When they find out they're being played for suckers, Lennon and his cohorts give Bubbles the ozone at a fancy party. In a rage, she tears off her costly jewels and her fancy gown, jumps into a swimming pool, and, clad only in her skivvies, storms off the premises in high (and wet) dudgeon. Even so, a happy ending caps this typical Clara Bow vehicle, which also included a brief Technicolor sequence. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"Rough House Rosie" Reilly (Clara Bow) just can't seem to stay out of trouble. Hoping to become a Broadway actress, Rosie gets mixed up with rowdies and ends up in jail. Much the same thing happens when she tries to crash High Society. Eventually, Rosie finds her true niche in life when she falls in love with handsome prizefighter Joe Hennessey (Reed Howes) and helps him to win the championship bout by using her goo-goo eyes to distract his opponent. Arthur Houseman, later one of screendom's favorite "comic drunks," plays a comparatively straight role as gambler Kid Farrell, while Joseph W. Girard, perennial police chief in many a talkie serial, goes through his usual paces here. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Kitty Flanders (Yvonne Pelletier), Jean Waddington and Ted Larrabee (Don Marion) are all "children of divorce" -- the two girls are left in a convent school by their mothers and Ted's upbringing is sketchy at best. When the three of them grow up, Ted (now played by Gary Cooper) falls deeply in love with Jean (the beautiful Esther Ralston). Kitty (Clara Bow) loves Vico, an impoverished prince (Einar Hansen), but she refuses to marry him because her mother, Katherine (Hedda Hopper), has drilled into her the necessity of marrying for money. So Kitty sets her sights on the wealthy Ted, even though Jean is her friend. After a night of drunken revelry, Ted wakes up to find he and Kitty are married. Even though he is desperately unhappy, Jean doesn't want their parents' mistake repeated and refuses to allow him to seek a divorce so that he can marry her. A few years later, things have gotten much worse for Kitty and Ted. Although they have a baby, it does nothing for the marriage and Ted does everything he can to avoid his unwanted wife. Then Kitty finds out that, for religious reasons, Vico can never marry a divorced woman. Since she can see no other way out, she poisons herself so that Ted and Jean can be together. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Contrary to popular belief, Clara Bow was already Paramount's biggest box-office draw when she starred in this delightful rags-to-riches comedy. But It, from the fertile mind of bizarre best-selling author Elinor Glyn, remains perhaps the quintessential Bow picture. Not that the story of a poor shopgirl falling for her rich employer was anything new (by 1927, Bow could play that role in her sleep), but It came complete with one of the best publicity campaigns in Hollywood history. Glyn herself publicly pointed to Bow as the personification of It, "that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force." Paramount made sure that Glyn's lofty description of the word sunk in and even convinced the author to explain It in the film to leading man Antonio Moreno (who, according to Glyn, simply oozed It as well). The lightweight comedy behind all this hoopla centered on little Betty Lou Spence, a vivacious salesgirl invited to dinner at the Ritz by foppish wastrel and self-described "old fruit" "Monty" Montgomery (William Austin in one of those roles later personified by Edward Everett Horton). Betty is not paying attention to her dinner companion, however, but is ogling department store heir Cyrus Waltham (Moreno). He notices her too, and takes the salesgirl on a whirlwind tour of Coney Island. But when Betty is mistakenly assumed to be the unmarried mother of an infant (actually her roommate Molly's), stern Cyrus no longer sees her as proper marriage material. Betty, of course, gets her man in the end and Waltham's snooty girlfriend ("other woman" specialist Jacqueline Gadsden) ends up in the drink. Delivering all the vivacious punch expected of a Bow comedy, It takes time out for a couple of rather poignant scenes. With the hindsight that Brooklyn's own Bow was never fully accepted by Hollywood society despite her stardom, it is touching to watch Betty being ostracized at the snobbish Ritz; and Bow is never more affecting than when she realizes that Moreno is offering diamonds and pearls instead of marriage. Priscilla Bonner, as Bow's drab, single-mother roommate, adds a touch of realism to her brief role, enviously observing Betty's frivolity. If It only added to Bow's brilliant success, the film did little for the intelligent Bonner. To the end of her life, Bonner maintained that accepting featured billing in It lost her any chance of true stardom. A very young Gary Cooper, has a bit as a reporter and director Josef Von Sternberg reputedly took over for Clarence Badger during a brief illness. Despite its rather trite Cinderella plot, It magnificently demonstrates why Bow's guileless flapper came to define an entire decade. It is heartbreaking to realize that her decline had already set in, and Bow's very public troubles and eventual career destruction were lurking right around the corner! ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide