Clara Bow
Women In History
The Original “It” Girl
1905–1965
She appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including “Mantrap” (1926), “It” (1927), and “Wings” (1927). At the peak of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month (January 1929). Thinking that she would die in childbirth, her mother didn’t get a certificate recording the birth. She herself, although a beautiful actress, was plagued with mental problems.
She was Clara Bow.
Clara didn’t really stand much of a chance at the beginning of her life but, despite all the odds, she still became a famous film actress. Before she was anywhere near being conceived, her mother, Sarah Francis Bow (nee Gordon, 1880–1923), fell from a second-storey window at 16 years of age, and suffered a severe head injury. As a result, Sarah was diagnosed with “psychosis due to epilepsy”.
Clara had two older sisters but they both died in infancy. So when Sarah became pregnant with Clara (against the doctor’s advice), it was not expected that either mother or child would live, which is why Sarah never got the birth certificate. Clara later wrote: “I don’t suppose two people ever looked death in the face more clearly than my mother and I the morning I was born. We were both given up, but somehow we struggled back to life”.
