The "IT" and How to Get It

Screenwriter Anita Loos observed, "If Hollywood hadn't existed, Elinor Glyn would have had to invent it." But it did exist, so Glyn had to content herself with changing it to fit her opinions. Glyn was the British author of scandalous romance novels (her first novel, 1907's Three Weeks, had an unmarried couple cavorting on a tiger-skin rug) who had the gall to give the strongest roles to self-assured women. When Jesse Lasky put out a call in 1920 for well-known authors and playwrights to come write films for him, she accepted, despite having never seen a film before; indeed, according to some, she considered films to be vulgar until she saw one, despite recounting in her autobiography that "I am always proud to think that I was never one of those who belittled the artistic possibilities of the cinematograph industry" (Elinor Glyn, Romantic Adventure. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1937, p. 293). (Of course, she spends the next two pages doing just that.) She took Hollywood by storm, quickly becoming Tinseltown's Grand Dame. Gloria Swanson commented, "Her British dignity was devastating . . . She went everywhere and passed her fearsome verdicts on everything. 'This is glamorous,' she would say. 'This is hideous,' she would say as she baby-stepped through this or that dining room or garden party. People moved aside for her as if she were a sorceress on fire or a giant sting ray" (David Stenn, Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild. New York: Doubleday, 1988, p. 80-81). Her greatest desire was "to stir up in the cold hearts of the thousands of little fluffy, gold-digging American girls a desire for greater joys in love than are to be found in candy-boxes and car rides and fur coats" (Glyn, 299).

From the opening title card: "IT" is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With "IT" you win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. "IT" can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.

Brooklyn-born Clara Bow had come to Hollywood in 1923 after having won a magazine beauty contest. Benjamin Schulberg, former production chief at Paramount and proprietor of indie studio Preferred Pictures, decided she had what it took to be a star, and with his help (and under his thumb) she became one of the biggest stars of silent films. He exploited her ruthlessly, cashing in on her increasing popularity while paying her $200 a week, a pittance compared to what he was earning by loaning her out to other studios. He worked her half to death: she made 36 films between 1922 and 1926, 15 of them coming out in 1925. Most of them were garbage that played a day or two in a town before moving on (Stenn, 44-47). She was plagued by scandals involving her wide-ranging romantic exploits (no, the story about the USC football team probably isn't true, despite what Kenneth Anger said in Hollywood Babylon), including concurrent romances with director Victor Fleming, actor Gilbert Roland, and ne'er-do-well Brian Savage that ended in Savage's theatrical attempted suicide (Stenn, 66-67). After working with Fleming in a starring role in Mantrap (1926), she finally arrived: she strong-armed Schulberg, now back at Paramount mainly because he virtually owned Bow and all the money her films would bring in, into giving her a better contract: a cap on the number of films she'd have to make, an end to the loan-outs that had so overworked her, an exemption from the studio's mandatory morals clause (although they managed to get her on that anyway), and guaranteed star billing. Although she had few scenes in the first Best Picture winner, Wings, she was the only actor billed above the title (Stenn, 71). After filming Wings but before its nationwide release, she met Elinor Glyn.

From Glyn's original story, highlighted in the film: "IT" is that peculiar quality which some persons possess, which attracts others of the opposite sex. The possessor of "IT" must be absolutely un-selfconscious, and must have that magnetic "sex appeal" which is irresistible.

It happened in September 1926. Ben Schulberg was looking for a new Homeric epithet for his star, "The Brooklyn Bonfire" having failed to catch on the year before. He read Glyn's story in Cosmopolitan, and decided to buy it for Clara. Paramount paid the dowager $50,000 to bestow her blessing on Clara; Glyn publicly announced, "Of all the lovely young ladies I've met in Hollywood, Clara Bow has 'It.'" Schulberg arranged an introduction at his office. Glyn was wearing purple chiffon veils. Stenn describes the meeting so well, I'll quote him at length: "So this is Clara Bow," she said, approaching Clara with mincing steps. Once she reached her, Elinor placed both hands upon Clara's head as if it were a crystal ball. "You are my medium, child," she informed Clara gravely. "You are to portray the leading role in my story . . . 'It' is an inner magic, an animal magnetism. Valentino possessed this certain magic. So do John Gilbert and Rex" (p. 82). Rex was a horse. Later, creatures bestowed with Glyn's personal seal of "IT"-ness included Antonio Moreno (cast as the male lead in the film) and the doorman at the Ambassador Hotel.

It turned out that Schulberg had paid Glyn for the concept of "IT" and little else (I'm following the film's combination of capital letters and quotation marks). He ditched the details of her novella, hiring Louis Lighton and Hope Loring to write a new story that would show off Bow's qualities, including her "IT." Clarence Badger was brought in to direct the film, which started shooting on October 7, 1926. It was released in February of 1927 and shattered box-office records. Variety enthused that "Clara Bow really does it all, and how" (Feb. 9, 1927), but not everyone was enthusiastic about the film. Mordaunt Hall of the New York Times groused that "although this subject is not annoying, it could never be assured of possessing a fraction of suspense or one iota of subtlety" (Feb. 13, 1927), and Mae Tinee in the Chicago Tribune spent more time talking about the stage show at the theater than about the film, admitting "there's not much to the story, but the acting is clever" (Feb. 8, 1927).

Definition provided by Glyn, who appears in the film as herself: "IT" is self-confidence and indifference as to whether you are pleasing or not—and something in you that gives the impression that you are not all cold.

On the basis of these definitions, Clara Bow does not have "IT," or at least she does not demonstrate in this film, the very one designed to highlight her "IT"-ness. It's there, in that third definition, which, in the film, comes straight from Miss Elinor Glyn's mouth (via a title card): "indifference as to whether you are pleasing or not." Everything about Bow's performance, which is indeed something to see, is designed to be noticed. She plays a shopgirl who wants to attract the attention of the wealthy son of the owner, newly in charge of the store. She engineers meetings, flirts, shows off her legs, drapes herself over his desk, bats her eyelashes, and wiggles. Mostly, she wiggles, all to attract the attention of a man. How, I ask, does this fit with a definition of "IT" that demands "indifference as to whether you are pleasing or not"? Of course, one look at Bow in the film clears everything up: Elinor Glyn's elaboration on "IT" is wrong. Bow has something, and that something must be "IT."

Two months after It was released, Charles Lindberg made the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. I don't want to disparage his heroic feat, but he was a little behind the times: Clara Bow had already broken the sound barrier. She's a nonstop ball of energy in It, wiggling, bouncing, rolling her shoulders, kicking up her feet, waving her arms, and generally vibrating fast enough to microwave food she comes into contact with. Adolph Zukor had previously said, "She danced even when her feet were not moving. Some part of her was always in motion, if only her great rolling eyes. It was an elemental magnetism, an animal vitality, that made her the center of attraction in any company" (Stenn, p. 70). There's an extraordinary scene in which she's preparing for her big date—not with the man of her dreams, but with a man who can get her near her dream man. Her audience had come to expect some skin, so we're treated to caressing closeups of her lovely bare shoulders as her friend powders them. All the while, Bow bounces, and it's electrifying. Often I look at female stars from the silent era and completely miss the sex appeal, but with Clara Bow it's immediately apparent why she was so beloved. She had, for lack of a better word, "IT."

She plays Betty Lou, a shopgirl at Waltham's, the biggest department store in town. Antonio Moreno plays Cyrus Waltham, the handsome new boss. The first time she lays eyes on him, she announces her intentions: "Sweet Santa Claus, gimme him!" Bow surprised and irked director Clarence Badger during the shooting of this scene. She gives Waltham a complicated look that caused Badger to yell "Cut!" Demanding an explanation, she told him, "if ya knew your onions like ya was supposedta, you'd know the first look was for the lovesick dames in the audience, and the second look, that passionate stuff, was for the boys an' their poppas, and the third look . . . well, just about the time all them old ladies're shocked an' scandalized by the passionate part, they suddenly see that third look, change their minds 'bout me havin' naughty ideas, an' go home thinkin' how pure an' innocent I was. An' havin' got me mixed up with this girl I'm playin', they'll come again when my next picture shows up" (Stenn, p. 83). And she's right: it's there in the film, exactly as she described it.

We sure notice her, but Waltham doesn't. His friend Monty (William Austin), a self-proclaimed "old fruit" portrayed as a sexless, wide-eyed ponce, has read Miss Elinor Glyn's latest story and recognizes that the sloe-eyed Betty Lou has "IT." She convinces Monty to take her to dinner at the Ritz, prompting the aforementioned bouncing scene as she's getting ready. She finally catches Waltham's eye at the restaurant, and he's immediately smitten, despite his near-engagement to society girl Adela Van Norman (Jacqueline Gadsden). The mismatched pair go on an energetic date at Coney Island, designed mostly to put Bow in positions where she has to show off her bare legs.

Misunderstandings inevitably occur. When snooping welfare agents attempt to repossess Clara's friend Molly's (Priscilla Bonner) baby, Bow pretends the baby's hers, and Monty believes her. He tells Waltham, who offers Bow a deal: all the benefits of marriage, including lots of jewelry but no ring. She's incensed at this offer of "one of those left-hand arrangements" and walks out on him and his store (a title informs us "Betty was too poor to quit her job—and too proud to stay. So she quit!"), but she decides that what she really needs is revenge: she'll convince him to propose to her despite her supposed lack of virtue, then she'll laugh in his face.

Clara Bow isn't the only reason to watch It—Badger's direction is clean and efficient, and the script and titles have some zingers, but it's all about making Bow look and sound good. She's completely free of the exaggerated movements often seen as emblematic of silent-film acting (which, once you see more than a few silent films, you realize weren't as ubiquitous as you might have thought). She makes each of her scenes feel loose and improvised, and some of them were: in addition to the complex gaze she describes above, Stenn informs us of an improvised routine just after she's slapped Waltham for kissing her on their first date. Badger later admitted that he'd "set up the camera, explain the scene to her, and just let her go." He told Lulu Brooks, "I get mad because she's doing all these things. And then I run them, and they're wonderful" (Stenn, p. 84). Badger wasn't the only one at a loss about how to deal with Bow's energetic improvisation. Cameraman Artie Jacobson said that "she was difficult to follow with the camera because she was a free soul on the set. She'd fly all over the place, which was part of her charm. Complete abandonment" (Stenn, p. 85). The film deftly balances Bow's two main attractions (no, not the two that Dorothy Parker was referring to when she said, "It? Hell, she had those"): her relentless sex appeal, and her down-to-earthness. She's not an unattainable glamour queen like Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, or Greta Garbo. Bow made men hot, but she also made them want to go out to a ball game with her. She was the Joe Sixpack of the Hollywood elite, and this film gives us both aspects of her personality. During the film, her romantic rival sniffs and says that she "seems to be rather lacking in reserve," to which Waltham replies, "personally, I think she has plenty—in reserve!"

Bow's star remained in the heavens well into the talkie period; David Thomson tells us that her career only faltered in 1930, under the weight of scandals, lawsuits, and prudish public backlash (David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film New York: Knopf, 2002, p. 99). Elinor Glyn remembers Bow as "a wonderful little actress [who] had a most remarkable personality and great talent," and praises her courage in the climactic yachting scene, when Bow has to jump off the boat, rescue her romantic rival, and then hoist herself up onto the ship's anchor (Glyn, 323-324). Bow, on the other hand, soon got tired of Madame Glyn's offscreen etiquette instructions and started referring to her as "that shithead" (Stenn, 86). Glyn's last comments about her are bittersweet: sad that the talkies ruined her career—"I believe she might have learnt to speak 'Hollywood' English well enough, and that in time she would have become one of the greatest artists on the screen"—but happy that she has retired "into a happy married life I am glad to think" (Glyn, 325). If only Bow could have had Glyn's happy ending; her own long ending entailed nervous breakdowns followed by institutionalization, diagnosis of schizophrenia, shock treatment, and a lengthy seclusion until her death in 1965.

Both Glyn and Stenn think the talkies killed Bow's career, and they're partly right. Her Brooklyn accent was a shock to viewers, and the immobile cameras limited her ability to roam around the set. But films quickly recovered from this immobility—look, for example, at 1929's Applause, with its roving cameras—and a voice coach could have taken care of much of that accent; besides, even a strong accent wouldn't be that farfetched given her everywoman image. But she was tired, and her hereditary mental illness was manifesting more and more. From the little I've read about her, it seems that even if the sound revolution hadn't occurred, Clara Bow's career would have come to an end soon enough.