Although she had a turbulent relationship with her mother (more on that later), Bow never stopped being her biggest defender. After Sarah passed in 1923, Bow screamed at her other family members who had gathered for the funeral, calling them “hypocrites” for never caring about Sarah. If that weren't unhinged enough, Bow then tried to jump into her mother's grave. Eventually, Bow’s scraping and begging paid off…sort of. She landed a role in 1921’s Beyond the Rainbow. Desperately eager to please, Bow nailed her five scenes and even managed to cry real tears—a feat many actresses today can’t even match. But when she sat down to watch the film, she was utterly devastated. Bow had plenty of charm, but her manners were atrocious. High-class Hollywood society considered her and her brassy ways “dreadful” because she refused to bow down to them or their old rules. As Bow once retorted, "They are snobs. Frightful snobs ... I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!" For a time, Bow tried to return to a normal life. She settled down with her hunky Cowboy co-star Rex Bell, moving into his ranch outside of Hollywood and marrying him in December, 1931. It almost worked: They had two children together and lived happily at first. Yet as always with Bow, darker days were just around the corner.

Facts About Clara Bow, Hollywood’s First “It” Girl Tragic Facts About Clara Bow, Hollywood’s First “It” Girl

The film clip doesn’t offer much to see, but still is risqué and, therefore, very typical of 1930-34 movies.

35. She Earned a Fiery Nickname

The biggest misconception about Bow is that her career foundered with the coming of sound because her Brooklyn accent was too ugly. She made several talkies, in fact, starting with The Wild Party, a big success that was directed by her friend and champion Dorothy Arzner. In truth, Bow’s physical and mental health issues (she had schizophrenia, like her mother) were exacerbated by the stresses of her fame, particularly the fallout from her notorious tell-all memoir in Photoplay and a lurid lawsuit brought by her former secretary. In front of the judge and jury, DeVoe related a series of stories about Bow’s fast and loose ways, many of them exaggerated. True or not, it didn’t matter. The tabloids started running infamously vicious stories about her, with outlandish claims of beastiality and other unsavory acts. After this blow, all her inner torment reached a terrifying climax. An entire book was written on Jasper Maskelyne called The War Magician. The book has been optioned for a film and like a lot of films it’s been in development hell. The interesting thing about this film though is there was a press release in 2015 announcing Benedict Cumberbatch would play Maskelyne. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a press release on a film that was obviously still in development that mentioned casting. The closest I’ve seen was that Manson Film that was apparently all a scam. Bow's friends wondered what Tui was possibly getting out of the marriage. Tui did complain about Creepy Robert's insatiable appetite in bed, but she put up with it. That's because she was hiding a more scandalous motive than money. Tui wanted to be closer to Clara...since she was actually in unrequited love with the star. Of course she was, have you seen the girl?

Nude Photos Classic Actresses : Nude Photos

Soon enough, Bow’s wild lifestyle caught up to her in a big way. The beautiful Bow was pretty indiscriminate about where she lay her head, and her habits always got her into hot water if her bed-mate was actually, uh, married. A woman even once brought Bow to divorce court for stealing her husband. And a bigger scandal was on the horizon… When it came to Lugosi, Bow took her bad girl image into overdrive. The pair were obsessed with each other, but as two Hollywood hotties, they also saw other people. Lugosi must have gotten confused about this arrangement, because during this time he married... not Clara Bow. In 1929, Lugosi tied the knot with wealthy socialite Beatrice Weeks. This did not end well. Bow truly loved movies, but her adoration came from an incredibly dark place. She had a miserable home life and few friends, yet films were different. When she watched them, she said, “For the first time in my life I knew there was beauty in the world.” The Production Code basically kept nudity out of American movies for approximately the next thirty years. The Legion did not begin to lose its grip on Hollywood until the early sixties when an unfinished 1962 film, Something’s Got to Give, was to have taken on the Code by featuring a skinny dip from Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn’s death temporarily scotched the snake of mainstream nudity, but other films soon took up the baton. There was Jayne Mansfield in Promises, Promises in 1963. Cleopatra featured a modest look at Liz Taylor’s bum in 1963, and The Pawnbroker managed to sneak fairly substantial nudity into arthouse theaters in 1964 despite a “condemned” rating from the Legion. Despite these efforts and a rapidly liberalizing culture in the mid-sixties, it was not until 1968 that the Production Code was officially replaced with the first version of the current rating system.

12.  She Was One of the Boys

In 1924, Bow was on the set of Painted People with the more famous star Colleen Moore; the still-green Bow was due to play a bit part as Moore’s kid sister. Well, that simply wasn’t good enough. Bow reportedly went up to Moore and stated frankly, “I don’t like my part. I wanna play yours.” Moore’s response was swift and brutal. Clara was always a charmer with men, but she was also deeply damaged. Half her playmates nursed crushes on the young Bow, and one of her best school friends friends even tried to kiss her. Bow’s response? She said she was “horrified and hurt” by the gesture. Well, can you blame her for having a such a maladjusted view of affection? During his career he ended up photographing several hundred actresses and showgirls, a few of who eventually became famous in the movies. Although he was quite well known for his nudes, he had stated,…“I’ve never been interested in making lewd photographs. On the other hand, I’ve always believed that if a woman had a beautiful body, it should be shown. That’s why I’ve always used the simplest of drapes. Effectively, tastefully, of course; but never as an excuse for lewdness nor for covering up a beautiful figure.” Bow was born into tragedy. Though she was her mother’s third daughter, Sarah had lost her two eldest children when they were babies, and doctors begged her not to get pregnant again or have another child for fear that this infant would perish too. Sarah didn’t listen—and the conditions of Clara’s birth couldn’t have been worse. Though Bow lost her fair share of cat fights in Hollywood, she did have one secret weapon. She was renowned throughout the studio lots for her ability to cry on cue. As her director Frank Tuttle recalled, “She could cry on demand, opening the floodgate of tears almost as soon as I asked her to weep.” This, however, came with a dark side…

Clara Bow Nude - Will We See It Again? | Mr. Skin Clara Bow Nude - Will We See It Again? | Mr. Skin

After reading The Parade’s Gone By, Bow’s fellow silent film star Louise Brooks personally wrote to Kevin Brownlow and admonished him for giving her a whole chapter while giving Bow zilch. As the sassy broad wrote, “You brush off Clara Bow for some old nothing like Brooks.” Brooks' letter actually had the intended effect. Of all of Bow’s scandalous affairs, her tryst with horror star Bela Lugosi was the most bizarre—right from the very beginning. Bow was attracted to Lugosi when he was still doing the stage version of Dracula, and sauntered down to a performance one night wearing only her mink coat and bathing suit. Need I say that Bela was hooked? Hollywood saw Bow in much the same way – she was the scruffy, lower-class kid whose behaviour jarred with the smart set and who had to work twice as hard as the others for her success. Louise Brooks, who saw through the workings of Hollywood just as keenly as Bow, said that she “became a star without nobody’s help”. She found friends more readily among the studio crew than the actors and directors who should have been her peers. A magazine quoted her as saying: “Mosta my friends’re ones I knew before I paid income tax.” When Clara was born, New York was in the middle of a ravaging heat wave, with temperatures rising over a punishing 100 degrees. This had devastating consequences. Both Clara and her mother nearly didn’t make it, and Bow later recalled how the two of them “looked death in the face" that day. Sadly, more harrowing moments were in store. In 1925, Clara started a scandalous sensation. That year, she went out of her house in hand-painted legs, a phenomenon that soon women all over California were taking up.According to those close to Bow on her film sets, the actress was hiding a dark secret. Never that emotionally stable, the stressors of talkies pushed her over the limit. Her nerves were “all shot,” and Photoplay even reported sightings of bottles of sedatives by her bed in one long row. But the worst was yet to come. In addition to athletics and acting, Bow was also a fan of poetry and music. The only art that was off-limits to her, according to some, was novels. She simply didn’t have the attention span for long-form literature. Steve Allen was a genius pioneer of the early television talk show format, but ultimately he was fairly conventional. The way I’d put it is Steve Allen was a genius pioneer of conventional television talk shows while Ernie Kovacs was a genus pioneer of unconventional television talks shows. Mind you, Kovacs was too unconventional to be mainstream and it’s possible Allen could have pioneered similar ideas but simply realized they wouldn’t attract large audiences.