Clara Bow

Taylor's next.

And, like, from what we know from, like, the life of Showgirl, Clara Bow, she, Taylor sees herself in this, like, lineage of great women.

Yeah.

Constantly.

This one.

Yeah.

There are other, like, complicated lineages she's in, but Clara Bow, like, there's a lineage painted for her in that.

And then Showgirl, she's in the line of great showgirls.

Because there's a lot of overlap with these stars in these stories that we do.

Like, there's going to be a lot of reoccurring characters here that were in Clara Bow's life and I'm sure any other people we've covered from this era.

This movie, The Gaucho, premiered in November 1927, and it was a huge success.

Lupe received rave reviews, and she was poised to become the next big thing.

Hispanic actors and actresses were rising in prominence.

You have Lupe Velez, Dolores Del Rio, Ramon Navarro, who we've covered before.

Gilbert Rowland, who we talked about, and Clara Bow, and Rudolph Valentino, who was dubbed a Latin lover but was actually Italian.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or maybe go see a Clara Bow movie.

Uh-

Mm-hmm

... because in 1922, Clara Bow debuted in Beyond the Rainbow and s- kind of defined the flapper look.

Um, she had that hair bobbed.

She had a little bit of makeup on.

That sounds familiar

I guess she was method acting.

Louise Brooks had a brief encounter with superstardom in the late 20s, along with somebody who I think she considered to be a friend of Clara Bow, who really was the biggest star on the planet in the late 20s.

Louise Brooks starred in another Pabst movie called Diary of a Lost Girl.

She went on to star with Wallace Beery and Beggars of Life by William Wellman.

Before Pad Norris Boxe, She was in that and several other films.

But Pandora's Box is kind of like her it.

Like Clara Bow, her big movie was it.

And that's how her standout won.

Sure.

Clara Bow.

Clara Bow, the movie queen, ain't it? Don't win anything?

Look, friend, she was just here.

Clara? The girl

here.

Oh, isn't she Clara Bow?

Right, right, she ain't Clara.

Schulberg had once been the head of his own studio, Preferred Pictures, but the endeavor had gone under in 1925 when it was forced to file for bankruptcy.

During its run, though, Preferred had discovered some major talents, and some of their actors, like Clara Bow, were some of the biggest household names in motion pictures.

You'd think that, with theater-packing stars on their roster, Preferred Pictures would have had what it takes to go the long run, but it didn't.

And that was because Schulberg had a bit of a gambling problem, and by 1925, had driven Preferred Pictures into more than $800,000 of debt.

Soon, Paramount Pictures would start to feel the strain of his gambling losses as Schulberg started reaching into the coffers to deal with those increasing gambling losses.

By 1933, Paramount was in a slump, just as the rest of the country was, now in the throes of the Great Depression.

Clara Bow had left the studio in 1931 after a massive gambling scandal that involved the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe.

Motion pictures weren't doing as well.