Essay Example on Clara Bow was an American silent film Actress

When Clara was 16 her mother fell from a second story window and suffered a severe head injury She was later diagnosed with psychosis due to epilepsy Stenn David clara leaned how to take care of her mother during her seizures when she was very young as well as how to deal with her psychotic and aggressive episodes She said her mother could be mean to her but didn t mean to she couldn't help it Bow Clara St Johns Adela Rogers Still she felt like her childhood had been taken away As a kid I took care of my mother she didn't take care of me Morella Joe She later signed herself up to go to Bay Ridge High School for Girls Bow Clara St Johns Adela Rogers At 16 she won a photo beauty contest by Motion Picture Classic Magazine she was discovered while she was working at a Coney Island Hot Dog stand Motivated by her father she continued to talk to studio agencies about hiring her for a part But there was always something I was too young or too little or too fat Usually I was too fat Bow Clara St Johns Adela Rogers soon enough director Elmer Clifton needed a tomboy for his movie Down to the Sea in Ships he saw Clara in Motion Picture Classic magazine and asked her to audition she tried to look older because she was always tooled she looked to young she put her hair up and arrived in a dress she took from her mother Clifton said she was too old but broke into laughter because she was trying to make herself seem like the girl in the magazine but he knew she wasn't like that Clifton decided to higher her but he could not say whether she would fit the part Ponder Winifred She later learned that a sub editors had suggested to Clifton to let her try out a part Clara s mother was getting worse over time and when her mother realized Clara was going to have a movie career her mother told her she would be much better off dead 

Then one night in February 1922 Clara woke up to a butcher knife held against her throat by her mother Clara was able to calm her mother down and get her to but the knife down then she locked her mother up In the morning her mother could not remember the situation and later she was committed to a sanatorium Bow Clara St Johns Adela Rogers After filming Down to the Sea in Ships she appeared in Grit in 1924 The Plastic Age in 1925 and Dancing Mothers in 1926 Moore James Ross The one silent film that really got her career going was It in 1927 which also sold a massive number of box office tickets and how she got named the it girl of the 1920s period She then co starred in Wings in 1927 which won the first Best Picture Oscar Moore James Ross Her performance in It got her the flapper status and she was also a style icon and role model for women across the country she then made her way into talkies which are talking movies in the late 1920s Her first talkie was The Wild Party She starred in many different talkies in her career She was probably one of the more overworked and underpaid actresses in the industry she made 58 films between 1922 and 1933 Find A Grave Memorial Even though she was in a lot of talkies her thick Brooklyn accent lost a lot of her many fans Her career was put on pause when she had a breakdown and went to an sanitarium in 193 while recovering from her breakdown she met actor Rex Bell They then later got married later in 1931 and had two children after she made a recovery she started to film movies again until 1933 when she decided to retire from acting She still struggled with her mental health and tried to end her own life in the mid 1940s She became a widow in 1962 when her husband Rex Bell died Claraa died from a heart attack in California on September 27 1965 at the age of 60