To see the Elinor Glyn-inspired 'It,' or 'Wings,' the first film to win an Academy Award for best picture, today is to come into immediate contact with an astonishingly vital screen personality, someone whose energy and incandescent vivacity, not to mention what The New York Times called 'an elfin sensuousness,' still burn up the screen six decades later. While the reasons for the erstwhile popularity of many silent film stars often escape modern audiences, the basis of Bow's appeal is very much apparent. Scott Fitzgerald, who ought to know, 'someone to stir every pulse in the nation.' Yes, she was the 'It' Girl, the epitome of Jazz Age screen sexuality, but it was a title hard-earned and fairly won, the product of 37 movies in five years. In May of 1928 she received 33,727 fan letters, a record for any star, and presumably any member of the human race, up to that time. Often forgotten in this welter of innuendo is the fact that Bow was one of the biggest movie stars of her time, with an appeal that cut across all audience lines. She was the legendary Girl Who Couldn't Say No, the hard-living hoyden who - or so Kenneth Anger claimed in his gossipy 'Hollywood Babylon' - took on the entire USC football team without even breathing hard. If Clara Bow is remembered at all today, it is often for all the wrong reasons. Though its subtitle is 'Runnin' Wild,' it could just as well have been 'Woe Is Me.' Clara Bow, as David Stenn's biography takes pains to point out, is very much a case in point. It is one of the ironies of movie stardom that the price it exacts is invariably demanded of those least able to pay.

Clara bow runnin wild