Film Friday
I’m teaching The Great Gatsby today and, to give my students a sense of the Jazz age, am showing them an excerpt from “It,” starring Clara Bow. In 1927 the film was immensely popular and Bow became known as “the It girl.”
What is “It,” you ask. We have come to call it charisma, but in the 1920s the simple pronoun was all that was used. Either you either had “it” or you didn’t. There is no doubt that Bow has “It.” Although the film is silent, she explodes off the screen. (You can see clips from the film here).
I find it fascinating how the film ducks and dodges around issues of conventional morality. Betty Lou is a clerk in a department store who catches the eye of the young store owner, who also has “It.” She gets him to fall in love with her—there are wonderful scenes of them at an amusement park—but her forward sexual behavior is balanced by the fact that she’s also a good girl, slapping him when he becomes too forward. (“So you’re one of those Minute Men – the minute you meet a girl you think you can kiss her!)
When a misunderstanding leads him to believe she is a fallen woman with a child (actually the child is her roommate’s), he thinks he can make blatant sexual moves, thereby disillusioning her. Later, when she understands the cause of the confusion, she determines to get revenge, making him fall in love with her again so that she can reject him (which has to effect of absolving her of gold digging charges). Of course, all comes right in the end.
For a culture which was trying to come to terms with newly liberated women, not to mention the hedonism of the jazz age, “It” helped people balance the old with the new. As with Gatsby, all things seemed possible.
Here’s a fan poem addressed to Bow (or a poem mimicking a fan letter) that I found on a website devoted to the actress. It gives us a fun glimpse into fan culture of the age, and also of slang from the period. The speaker tells us that he doesn’t go in for the melodramatic Lillian Gish, the girlish Mary Pickford, or the vampish Theda Bara. He’s a man’s man, after all, “Battling Bill of the Bowery.” But Clara Bow, a sexy woman who can also be a pal, is something else:
When Battling Bill of the Bowery Fell for Clara Bow
By Walter Haviland
Until I seen you, Kid, I’ll say
I never was a movie fan.
The ginks [foolish or contemptible men] what got their sport that way
Was nuts to me. When Lillian
Pulled Gishy stuff, I froze my face,
I had no use for Mary’s smile,
No goldilocks gave me a case…
Soft molls like them was not my style.
Nor did I tumble for the vamps,
From Theda Bara down the list
To all them slinky modern champs
With twenty stunts for getting kissed.
I was a hard-boiled guy, that’s all,
Who liked to watch the ponies run,
Or Babe Ruth swatting at the ball,
Film dames was not my sort of fun.
An then–well, little Clara Bow,
I’ll not forget the sight I seen
For the first time a picture show
With your feet jazzing on the screen.
I loved your cute map then and there.
“Hello, old pal!” you seemed to cry,
Aw, Kid, you’ve got me hipped for fair,
And I’m your fan until I die!
