Theda Clara Bow Biography

Actresses of the Jazz Age
Modern, rebellious, sex, and freedom are just some of the words one would use to describe the women of the Jazz Age. With the Great Depression over and women having the right to vote, the idea of the victorian woman was old news and flapper girls became the spirit of the 1920’s. They changed their long hair to short bobs, shortened their dresses to show their knees and elbows, wore makeup, smoked, danced, and worked (all going against the traditions of the previous decade). The movie empire had several actresses who paved the way for the new and controversial girls who followed suit with the idea of women being able to express themselves more freely, such as Theda Bara and Clara Bow.
Theda Bara was born on July 29, 1890 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She had a traditional childhood with her parents. After she graduated, she went on to New York to work on Broadway and
With her bobbed hair and classic flapper style, she was said to be, “the embodiment of beauty, abandonment, and sex appeal of the Jazz age,” (Encyclopedia Britannica). Clara Bow later received the nickname, “The It Girl,” from staring in the movie It (1927). She also starred in over thirty movies, including; Mantrap (1926), Rough House Rosie (1927), and Dangerous Curves (1929). Clara was on of the top five Hollywood box office attractions from 1927-1930 and was said to be the spirit of flappers in the 1920’s. However, with the merging of sound and movies, this would all soon change. With her Brooklyn accent, she was not able to move to movies with sound and then had several scandals following her. She retired to a cattle ranch in Nevada with her husband, Rex Bell, in 1931. She later suffered from a heart attack and died September 27,