Bow, Clara (the It Girl)

1905 – She was born Clara Gordon Bow in real life, on the 29th day of July this year in York. Her mother, Sarah Gordon, was an occasional prostitute who suffered from mental illness and epilepsy. She was noted for her frequent public affairs with local firemen.

1920 – She was reportedly rape by her father at age 15.

1921 - Always an avid movie fan herself, Bow won the Motion Picture Magazine's Fame and Fortune contest in this year, the grand prize being a part in a film.

1922 - After numerous screen tests, Bow was selected the winner. She won a part in Beyond the Rainbow, but to her humiliation and disappointment, her scenes were cut from the final print and were not seen until the film was restored years later.

1923 - She began to appear in numerous small movie roles. All the while, she suffered guilty feelings over her mother's disapproval. In this year, she was on the set when she learned that her mother had died. She was devastated, feeling that her acting was somehow responsible for her mother's death.

1924 – She started to make a name for herself through these many small roles and was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in this year.

1925 - Schulberg cast Bow in The Plastic Age. The movie was a huge hit, and Bow was suddenly the studio's most popular star. She also began to date her co-star Gilbert Roland, who would become the first of many engagements for her.

1926 – She followed her first big success with Mantrap, directed by Victor Fleming. Though he was twice her age, Bow quickly fell in love with her director. She began seeing both Roland and Fleming at the same time.

1927 – She reached the heights of her popularity with the film It, after she had already been dubbed "The It Girl" by Elinor Glyn “that strange magnetism which attracts both sexes.

1928 - At the height of her popularity, Bow wrote the foreword for making a novel of one of her films.

1932 – She and Beldon married this year and had two sons.

1933 – She finally retired this year to raise her children with her husband, cowboy actor Rex Bell (actually George F. Beldon), later a lieutenant governor of Nevada.

1949 – She was diagnosed with a schizophrenia, she was treated by a mental-health regimen that included shock treatments. Later in her life her husband sent her to one of the top mental institutions in the nation at the time.

1965 – She died on the 27th of September this year of a heart attack. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

1994 – She was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and she was honored with an image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.