Beautiful Clara Bow was one of the biggest stars of the 1920s, famous for being one of Hollywood’s first sex symbols. But by 1931, a series of scandalous rumors had erupted around the movie industry’s first It Girl, ruining her career and resigning her to a life of anonymity.
The rumors about Bow were shocking (and ludicrous) even by today’s standards. The Coast Reporter ran a three-week series about the actress’s private life claiming that poor Clara was an irremediable alcoholic, a drug abuser, and a gambler. She was supposedly the mistress of multiple men, had sex in public and threesomes with prostitutes, and would sleep with women when no men were available (or dogs when she couldn’t find a human). The biggest whopper was that she regularly held orgies for the USC football team and would sexually service every player there.
So where did these rumors come from? It all started in 1930 when Bow’s secretary Daisy DeVoe left the star in a fit of anger after an argument, taking piles of the actress’s personal documents with her. DeVoe tried to blackmail Bow, but the star called the police and took DeVoe to court, which ended up backfiring horribly. The trial ensured that all of Bow’s private dalliances became public knowledge, and the actress never had the cleanest record. Her dirty laundry was nowhere near as bad as the tabloids made out, but she did gamble, had taken multiple lovers without marrying them (still shocking in the 1920s), and was guilty of starting some sort of affair with an older married doctor, whose wife named Bow as a cause for “alienation of affection” in the couple’s divorce.
Ultimately, the rumors surrounding Bow were enough for Paramount to cancel her contract with them—the actress’s star was already fading, and it was hard work doing constant damage control on the many allegations surrounding her.
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