The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

The New Movie Magazine Norma Shearer, at the Midwick Country Club, near Los Angeles, where the polo scenes of her picture, "Their Own Desire," were filmed Why Clara Bow Can't Stay in Love (Continued from page 63) people saw beyond the little Bow girl's shabby clothes into the beauty and the soul beneath them. Here, then, entered destiny. If Clara hadn't won that contest, she would probably be married now and instead of the world's favorite flapper be a settled young matron. But the contest gave her ambition its first expression and subsequent events were to test the firmness of character her hard childhood had forced her to acquire. Clara worked in the picture her prizewinning cast her for. She didn't know how to make-up. She lacked, completely, the right clothes. The one scene she had to play was one in which she was supposed to cry. That was easy for hei*. She merely thought of home. She was through after that, except for waiting for a showing of her picture. When the film was finally released, Clara wasn't in it at all. She had bragged to all the kids in the neighborhood about her success, her future. Now she was subjected to their merciless sarcasm. Her whole little world seemed to be in ashes and it was a terrible blow to her. But a harder one was coming. Clara haunted the movie studios. There were several of them in the East at that time. She didn't find anything. She was too young and too fat and too shabby. She soon found that being a contest winner gave her no more distinction than being feminine. There were almost as many beauty winners in the studios as there were girls. The hard part of it was that the youngster had to fight not only her own discouragement but her mother's opposition. The strain of poverty, of lovelessness, of ill health had got in at Clara's mother. She turned all her feverish frustration on Clara. She resolved the girl wasn't going to get into trouble while she had a mother to guard her. And to her morbid imagination, the motion picture studios threatened her little daughter's very life. And she did her best to argue her little daughter out of her dreams. Clara had just got her first break — the part of the little roughneck in "Down to the Sea in Ships." Fifty dollars a week, a trip to New Bedford for scenes, and a real opportunity. The girl was in the seventh heaven of delight. Clara went away on location the next day. All the thirteen weeks, she was away, she was ill. She couldn't sleep because she would Avake herself up, crying violently. Yet by day she played a nutty little kid and played it magnificently. Shortly thereafter Clara's mother died and the girl went to Hollywood. As soon as "Down to the Sea in Ships" was released, Clara's future was assured. She was too good to pass by. B. P. Schulberg, the motion picture executive, signed her for a very small company. For three years Clara worked constantly, learned constantly, tried to find herself. When Schulberg went to Paramount, he took Clara with him. It was her first chance with a big company. But more important, it gave her her first chance to take stock and for a little while to be herself. It was about then that she fell in love — or thought she fell in love — with Gilbert Roland. I doubt very much that it was ever more than a case of youthful propinquity. They were each of them mere children of Hollywood, romantic, over-emotional, heart-hungry. Yet something might have come of it if Gilbert hadn't been so jealous, if he hadn't lost his temper and used too many words at the sight of Clara even making love for screen purposes to another man. So that blew up. Vic Fleming was Clara's director on "Wings." I know, myself, that Clara was bewildered, lonely, unsettled during that picture. Love was all around her. Richard Arlen was courting Jobyna Ralston. The handsome young "Buddy" Rogers was around. They were out on the desert on location, under a desert moon. Clara just had to be in love with somebody, so she chose Fleming. After they returned to Hollywood, her heart returned to normal. Robert Savage probably represented class to her. Clara is terribly conscious of her lack of education and swanky upbringing. She flapped around with young Savage, probably until she discovered, as most everybody else did, that he was more rhinestone than diamond. Gary Cooper came along just as Clara had been experiencing the heady wine of Elinor Glyn's discovering her as the IT girl; just as several of her biggest pictures smashed box-office records throughout the country. She was fussing with her hair then, getting it every color in the rainbow; fussing with her personality, making it everything from Elsie Dinsmore to Cleopatra. Gary was shy, quiet, reserved, and amusing. He is a darling and Clara sensed it. He taught her a lot and she taught him more. But when they both got through going to school to one another, they found they didn't have so much to talk about. Which brings us practically up to the present and Sir. Richman. It is true that Clara did see a lot of Harry Richman the last time she was in New York. It is equally true that he is a clever boy who makes one laugh. And after a life like Clara's the wish to laugh, to be constantly amused, is the strongest urge. Or, at least, it seems so. I believe Clara thinks that it is. I believe that is what made her agree to be engaged to Richman, even for publicity purposes. Clara wanted to laugh with Harry, play about with Harry. She was willing to give it a try. The only trouble was that Clara has climbed higher than she knows. The disturbing factor was her intuitive understanding of emotion, that subtle, lovely understanding that makes her the actress that she is. 122