Earlier than this week is out, Taylor Swift could have dropped a brand new album, one she introduced was coming on the 66th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 4.

“The Tortured Poets Division” will probably be Swift’s eleventh studio album and will earn her one more raft of Grammys. However though its 16 songs haven’t but made it to the general public, one specifically is already getting Swifties and non-Swifties alike buzzing: the closing observe, “Clara Bow.”

A pleasant identify, “Clara Bow.” It might ring a bell, significantly amongst Swifties’ older family. That’s as a result of Bow was not only a actual individual — a film actress who lived from 1905-1965 — however she additionally was the primary true “It Woman.”

She was one of many first Hollywood intercourse symbols and celebrities, and acquired 35,000 letters monthly at her peak, as biographer David Stenn, who wrote “Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild” (2000) informed TODAY.

“We couldn’t consider it,” Bow’s great-granddaughters, Nicole Sisneros and Brittany Grace Bells, informed Folks journal in February, once they realized of the observe Swift could be releasing. “We have been shocked after which the intrigue set in as a result of nobody from our household has been contacted or knew about this prior.”

Revisit our reside protection of the discharge of “The Tortured Poets Division.”

Clearly, there’s one thing about Clara that has captured Swift’s creativeness. However what?

“If I have been to hazard a guess, it is as a result of Clara Bow was each celebrated and condemned within the media in a means that male stars by no means have been,” Stenn mentioned. “I don’t suppose that double customary sadly, has left.”

He added: “Clara Bow skilled an unprecedented quantity of each and endured and prevailed.”

Sound acquainted? Nicely, let’s draw again our Bow and take purpose at these info concerning the “It Woman” of the previous, who’s all the excitement almost 120 years after she was born.

Clara Bow’s tough early years

Bow was born Clara Gordon Bow in Brooklyn, New York on July 29, 1905, Stenn informed TODAY. She got here into the world in the course of a warmth wave, after a dangerous being pregnant (her two older sisters had died as newborns).

When her mom was 16, she’d suffered a head harm and began having epileptic seizures and psychotic episodes. Bow was left taking good care of her, and generally fending her off: One evening in 1922, Bow awoke to seek out her mom holding a butcher knife at her throat, in response to the Nationwide Museum of American Historical past.

“I’m gonna kill ya, Clara,” her mother reportedly mentioned, in response to Stenn’s biography. “It’ll be higher.”

Bow escaped, and her mom was despatched to a public asylum. Together with her mom away, 16-year-old Bow was raped by her father, in response to Stenn’s e-book. Bow’s mom died in 1923.

Crimson-haired and infrequently sporting worn-out garments, Bow was picked on in school. However she was powerful and behaved in what was thought of a tomboy style of the day. Finally, she deliberate on a profession educating athletics, she wrote in a bit that appeared in The Boston Globe in 1924.

Clara Noticed the longer term in movies

After profitable nationwide appearing contest Bow landed a job “Past the Rainbow” (1922), however that did not carry prompt fame.

She gave an in depth Photoplay interview (by way of GoldenGlobes.com) in 1928 and mentioned, “Issues weren’t breaking for me in any respect. Successful the competition hadn’t appeared to imply a factor.

“I wore myself out looking for work, going from studio to studio, from company to company, making use of for each potential half. However there was all the time one thing. I used to be too younger, or too little, or too fats. Normally, I used to be too fats. After I informed them that I’d received this contest, they solely laughed.”

However showing within the film “Right down to the Sea in Ships” (1922) earned her constructive consideration, and extra roles.

After relocating to Hollywood, Bow signed a contract (which was commonplace for actors on the time) with Most popular Photos and shortly was incomes $200 per week, wrote Stenn.

Generally she made a number of movies on the identical time, with 31 motion pictures that includes Bow launched in three years. In 1925 she made 15 movies — and one among them, “The Plastic Age,” was successful.

With Most popular going out of business, she shifted to Paramount Photos with Most popular’s B.P. Schulberg, and commenced to work in additional outstanding movies like “Dancing Moms” and “Mantrap” (each 1926).

How she turned ‘It’

We consider “It Woman” as referring to “oh, she’s acquired ‘It’” — like an unidentified wow issue.

And whereas that was true of Bow, the concept of being the “It Woman” got here from a film she starred in from 1927 referred to as “It,” which was written together with her in thoughts.

She performed a retail employee whose boss fell for her — and Bow’s look (perky persona, bowed lips, doll-like face) turned the massive development of the day.

Over the following years, Bow turned the face of the Roaring ’20s. Finally she made 57 motion pictures whole, 11 of which have been talkies.

She additionally was one of many few actors to efficiently leap from silent movies. She was the fashionable liberated lady, a jazz child who smoked, drank and spoke her thoughts.

Her 1927 movie, “Wings,” a few love triangle between Bow and two pilots, received the primary Academy Award for greatest image.

Because the Golden Globe Awards web site notes, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald mentioned she was “the true factor, somebody to stir each pulse within the nation.”

Bathing fits and lots of males: Clara’s freedom is her downfall

With each spectacular rise there may be typically a fall, and Bow’s got here shortly.

She had affairs with actors like Gary Cooper (her co-star in 1927’s “Youngsters of Divorce”) and administrators like Victor Fleming, confirmed up at a elaborate resort dinner sporting a washing swimsuit below a fur coat, and gossip magazines began to write down about her.

Her hairdresser-turned-personal secretary went on trial for embezzlement, Los Angeles Journal reported, and B.P. Schulberg — who’d signed her Most popular Photos contract and introduced her to Paramount — began calling her “Disaster-a-Day Clara,” as The Chicago Tribune wrote.

The strain was an excessive amount of to take care of. Bow had been coping with psychological challenges all through her whirlwind profession, Stenn notes, probably brought on by her traumatic childhood.

“The historical past of intercourse symbols within the motion pictures is the historical past of sexually abused ladies,” he says.

There have been additionally actually scandalous and vile accounts being written about her and distributed on road corners, he mentioned. One report mentioned she’d slept together with her canine, that she slept with ladies, and that she stole males’s husbands.

“Right now we would name it slut-shaming,” he says. “This concept of an impartial robust lady nonetheless poses a menace to many individuals in our tradition, particularly when she is presented and has immense expertise.”

In 1931, when she was 25, Bow entered Glendale Sanatorium, L.A. Journal wrote. She married an actor-politician named Rex Bell in 1931, and retired to have two kids with him in Nevada and reside on The Strolling Field Ranch.

However with out her work to maintain her psychological challenges stabilized, she skilled a spiraling.

“She was deeply traumatized earlier than she arrived in Hollywood, however working offered a artistic fulfilling outlet,” says Stenn. “She was very happy with her profession. She referred to as herself a ‘working woman’ and was a self-made individual. She all the time mentioned a profession was extra essential to me than marriage. You were not alleged to say that then.”

She was recognized with schizophrenia, in response to the Nationwide Museum of American Historical past, and tried to kill herself. In 1949 she underwent shock remedy, and moved again to Hollywood in 1950, estranged from Bell. They by no means divorced, and he died in 1962.

She remained very personal whereas residing in California once more, admitting few guests, says Stenn. “It is a means of controlling her life,” he explains. “When she went out she went out in disguise.

A couple of third of her silent movies are misplaced right now, Stenn informed The Kansas Metropolis Star this yr. However she did obtain a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in 1960, and a caricature by Al Hirschfeld was used on a 1994 postage stamp.

In March, an 11-minute comedy wanting Bow’s, “The Capsule Pounder” (1923) surfaced, the Star reported.

The Taylor connection

Addressing Bow in a track isn’t the primary time Swift has dipped into the wealthy historical past of twentieth century ladies. In 2020, her “Folklore” album included a track referred to as “The Final Nice American Dynasty,” concerning the couple who as soon as owned Swift’s Rhode Island mansion, which she purchased in 2013.

As Elle journal defined on the time, that tune informed the story of Rebekah and Invoice Harkness. Because the track explains, he was the inheritor to the Customary Oil fortune. After they married, she turned one of many wealthiest ladies in America.

Swift’s attraction to Bow appears clear, although the singer hasn’t spoken about it but. However there are parallels — a younger lady with a novel expertise, who captured the zeitgeist and was attacked by the tabloid press.

Citing “Clara Bow,” although, may be her warning sign that whereas she’s undoubtedly the “It Woman” of the second — she’s not going to let this second slip by way of her fingers.