Found a ton of Clara Bow pics on the net tonight. This one from "My Lady of Whims" gives a better view of the costume Clara "wears" for the masquerade party scene.
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This weekend I watched 2 more Clara Bow silents I had never seen before and so I will gladly use that as an excuse to plaster her all over my blog again!
Last night I watched "My Lady of Whims" a film she did on loan out to Arrow Studio in 1925, just one of 14 films she made in that year alone! Her leading man was Donald Keith who would also star with her in "The Plastic Age". The film is as almost totally devoid of anything resembling a plot or story and leading man Keith is as bland as bland bland bland, but Clara is so dazzlingly gorgeous and once again literally bouncing off the walls with youthful energy that who even cares about all that other stuff! I've always loved this pic of her and never knew where it was from, but it's the costume party scene, which is indeed the high point of the picture! This same pic appears on the cover of a new Peter Kobel book on silent movies I just recently got called, appropriately enough, "Silent Movies".
"If Clara Bow ever makes the picture she can make, then you will see how great screen acting can be". - Joseph Von Sternberg
"She was the biggest star, the biggest moneymaker in Hollywood - above Garbo, above them all. I was fascinated with her". - Louise BrooksI started thumbing through David Stenn's bio of Clara, "Runnin' Wild", about a week ago but ended up starting at the beginning and reading the whole thing for a second time. I'm about half through it now. Good book, a fascinating and ultimately, sad story of an enormously gifted, wholly unpretentious but scared little girl who just wanted to be loved.
"She could cry at the drop of a hat and you'd believe her!
A beautiful actress, just beautiful" - prop man William Kaplan
Bet my hit counter goes way up tonight....
My asshole aunt gave me this neat old desk when she moved a few months back. She bought it from a used furniture store and slapped a coat of white latex paint on it as soon as she got it home. OK rule number one- latex paint is NOT the proper finishing material for furniture... it NEVER fully dries and even if you do a good prep job any objects left on it for any appreciable amount of time will either stick to it or lift the paint when you pick them up!
Tonight I watched "Hula", a fun little Clara Bow silent from 1927 directed by Victor Fleming that I had never seen before.
Clara, as "Hula Calhoun", was the whole show and her co-stars could have been cardboard cutouts and it wouldnt have made much difference! Forget plot or story (apparently the writers did!) and just sit back and enjoy 63 minutes of the "It" girl bouncing off the walls, that's whatI did! Clara's first scene had her bathing nude in a river but the highlight was her doing a sexy Hula dance...hard to say if it was a "Charleston-ized" Hula or "Hula-ized" Charleston but it makes no difference, Clara pulled it off with style and vigor....yeah, lots of vigor!
I'm trying to make it a goal to watch 1 or 2 films a week that I've never seen before. I figure to blog about the ones I feel strong enough about to make the effort!
Last night I watched "Tol'able David" starring Richard Barthelmess.
"Tol'able David" was directed by the great Henry King in 1921. King later directed films like "Jesse James", "The Black Swan" and "Captain from Castille" with Tyrone Power, as well as 3 awesome Gregory Peck films "Twelve O'Clock High", "The Gunfighter" and "The Bravados". Henry King made a lot of money for 20th Century Fox studio throughout the 40's and 50's and was certainly one of Darryl F Zanuck's "Golden Boys"! "Tol'able David" was all shot on location in Virginia and King got an incredibly eboulient and physically believable performance from 26 year-old Richard Barthelmess as the young David. Some of it is quite hilarious and Richard is literally bouncing all over the place with youthful energy! (so was his dog!) The whole film paints a very vivid portrait of that period of Americana.
The film takes a dark turn when 3 extremely nasty hillbilly dudes (one of them played to the hilt by the always excellent Ernest Torrence) enter the scene and make life for David, his family and his friends quite unpleasant. This shot is from the climactic brawl between Richard Barthelmess and Ernest Torrence and it really is incredibly intense!! I dont want to give away any more plot details so I'll just say that this film gets added to my "Essential Richard Barthelmess" list and I recommend it highly to anyone who enjoys his work, silent films or just a damn good movie in general!
No doubt I left out some important ones that I'll think of later and go DOH!
Vintage late 1920's Clara Bow and Anita Page 5x7's
A small tribute to a fine actor...
Essential Richard Barthelmess:
Several of his early talking films have just been released by Warner Home video but I have yet to see some of them so I cant say if they are "essential" Richard Barthelmess or not. I'm looking forward to seeing them regardless!