Queer Places:
Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale,
California
Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an
American actress who rose to stardom during the silent film era of the 1920s
and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a
plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The
It Girl".[1] Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties[2] and is described as
its leading sex symbol.[3][4] Bow appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies,
including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927), and Wings (1927). She was
named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in
1927 and 1930.[5][6] Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured
investors, by odds of almost two-to-one, a "safe return".[7] At the apex of
her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month
(January 1929).[8]
Two years after marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow
retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada.[9][10][11] Her final film,
Hoop-La, was released in 1933. Before she left Hollywood for the simply life, Clara was known as a free-wheeling party girl who danced naked on tables and enjoyed sex with both men and women. It was also rumored that Clara had a fling with director
Dorothy Arzner, who directed Clara in the famously lesbian-themed The Wild Party.
Bow spent her last years in Culver City, under the constant care of a nurse, Estalla Smith, living off an estate worth about $500,000 at the time of her death.[132] In 1965, at age 60, she died of a heart attack, which her autopsy attributed to atherosclerosis. She was interred in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Heritage at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[134] Her pallbearers were Harry Richman, Richard Arlen, Jack Oakie, Maxie Rosenbloom, Jack Dempsey, and Buddy Rogers.[2]
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