Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1927 - Feb 1928)

A Flash-back on Clara Bow 29 pensive person. And seven thousand dollars a week can make me think quite a lot. Somehow, I associate such a sum only with movie folks and the crowned ' heads of Europe. I imagine the Kaiser's weekly pocket money, in the good old days of prosperity before the war, must have been something like that. Maybe you recall that, a few years ago, Wilhelm's dentist wrote an interesting book to prove that the emperor could have a toothache just like any of us. It gave me the idea thatmaybe Clara Bow fans might get a kick out of hearing something about the real off-screen aspects of their favorite. Now I'm not going to tell you that I'm a dentist's assistant who once saw Clara with a swollen jaw. Nor am I going to give you the usual picture of a star that results from eating iced melon with her during a half-hour interview. I'm going to cut back to four years ago and tell you about a kid named Clara Bow who lived in Brooklyn and wanted like heck to be a movie actress. I was a member of the obscure profession called press-agentry and was working with a company — Preferred Pictures — that has since passed into the limbo of forgotten things. One morning my boss, J. G. Bachmann, sat in his office and rang a bell twice. That meant me. When I answered the summons, the gist of what he told me was to oil up my typewriter and let the world know that he had signed up a kid who he thought had a lot of ability. He was going to send her out to Hollywood to see if his partner, B. P. Schulberg, approved of his choice and, if so, they'd perhaps let her play a little part in "Maytime." Note, please, that it was Mr. Bachmann who was responsible for the discovery of the Bow treasure, and not Mr. Schulberg, as is generally believed. Mr. Bachmann, as the New York representative of the partnership, had gone out on a scouting tour for likely talent and had seen Clara working in a tumble-down shack over at Astoria, Long Island. A producing tmit, organized in the name of art, was starring Glenn Hunter in a picture called "Grit." Like most artists, the group had lots of zeal but no money. That's why Clara had got her job — because she was unknown and would work for almost nothing. She had played in one picture before that — "Down to the Sea in Ships"— another privately financed venture that had been strapped for cash. In spite of the fact that she had stolen the picture from the leading lady by her portrayal of a hoydenish stowaway on a whaling vessel, she had found the pursuit of further work a discouraging process. My first sight of Clara was when Mr. Bachmann brought her into the publicity department and turned her over to me. Though Her performance in "Black Oxen" settled it — she was on the screen to stay. I'm relieved now of the duties of press-agenting her, I can frankly say that I thought she Photo by Harold Dean Caraey Though she arrived in Hollywood a wide-eyed child, it didn't take our Clara long to develop "allure." was one of the most vivid little girls I had ever . seen. She wasn't pretty, she wasn't dressed well, but there was the spontaneity of youth about her. Her face had a way of lighting up when she smiled. Her teeth were very white, and her dark eyes sparkled as she talked. But when her face was in repose, there crept into those eyes a softness that suggested great emotional feeling. Then, and every time thereafter that I saw her, she was chewing gum. She asked me to go to lunch with her, and we ate among hostile elbows at a chain drug store. During the next week, I got to know Clara rather well. She came into the office every day with her funny little father, who reached only to her shoulder — and Clara never was a giantess herself. He had given up his job in a Coney Island restaurant when her contract was signed and he was prepared to help her in her climb. Clara's mother had died about six months before this. The "It" girl in those days looked like any school kid. Her hair was not carrot-colored as it is now. It was very dark brown and, what's more, it was long. She used no make-up at all, except a dash of powder on the end of her nose. One morning she came into my office, with her lips quivering and two big tears running Continued on page 96