This is the second in my series of guides to vintage movie stars.  My first guide was about Jean Harlow, Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe.  We turn our attention to three very different icons of the silent screen in the 1920s.  This guide will help you, the buyer, make a more informed choice between sellers who use the names only as meaningless keywords and those sellers who use them, and their eras, correctly.   This guide is about:

• Mary Pickford (born 1893 - died 1979)
• Gloria Swanson (born 1897 - died 1983)
• Clara Bow (born 1905 - died 1965)

MARY PICKFORD (real name: Gladys Marie Smith)

Mary Pickford was the image of the post-Victorian golden-curled darling little girl-woman.  Dewy-eyed, feminine but spunky, the Toronto native was acting for theater impresario David Belasco by the time she was in her teens.  She began working on the screen for D.W. Griffith in 1909, but left in 1912 after appearing in seventy-five two-reelers.  (These shorts are named for the number of reels of film they were on, and for many years the early cinema consisted mainly of two-reelers.) 

Although her screen image was of a tiny girl with long golden ringlets and frilly dresses, in real life Pickford was a hard-nosed businesswoman who took full charge of her career from an early age.  She knew exactly what material suited her "Little Mary" character (Pickford was the first actress to be known as "America's Sweetheart," and also the first actress to be known by name in the movies--the policy up until then was to keep the players nameless!), and how to get very well paid for it.  She knew how to sell herself as a product, expert in both comedy and drama, and always "The Girl With The Curls", even as she neared her thirties. Each time she renegotiated her contract or changed studios, her salary soared.  And Pickford did all of her own negotiating.  In the last years of World War One, her popularity reached a peak when she toured America selling war bonds.

In 1919 with her husband, screen star Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin, she formed United Artists, a studio intended to distribute their work.  Her best work was done throughout the 1920s, and the camera work required to keep her looking like an adolescent produced significant advances in lighting.  Attempts by Pickford to portray older characters did badly at the box office, so she was stuck playing variations on "Little Mary."   She and Fairbanks were considered Hollywood royalty.  They lived in a huge mansion called "Pickfair."

With the coming of sound in 1929, Pickford made only a few more movies and retired.  She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1930 for Secrets.  After retirement, she was still one of the most successful businesswomen in Hollywood, and helped found the Motion Picture Actors Home.  Later her stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was briefly married to Joan Crawford.  (The couple had dinner at "Pickfair," and Crawford later confessed that she had been scared stiff.)

So if you want to look like Mary Pickford, think long, golden ringlets, fluffy ruffled dresses, knee-length skirts, light-colored tights, and of course Mary Jane shoes.

GLORIA SWANSON

It is ironic that one of the silent screen's greatest stars is best known as the wild-eyed, washed-up Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950).  This is a great performance by a talented actress, not a camera pointed at a crazy woman.   Not only did Swanson have to be aged with makeup to look older, she collaborated with famed designer Edith Head on her flamboyant costumes for the film.  Offscreen, Swanson was sophisticated, intelligent, and every inch a movie star. 

Even though she was extremely short, Swanson had tremendous presence.  She worked with Cecil B. DeMille in a series of six films, all with adult themes and imagery.  Only in her early twenties, she was dressed and made up to look older.  A few titles give you the idea: Don't Change Your Husband (1919); Male and Female (1919) and The Affairs of Anatol (1921).  Her image throughout the Roaring Twenties was the experienced woman of affairs, usually called "an adventuress" (code for "woman who sleeps around"), outrageously costumed, heavily made up.  Adept at both drama (her preference) and comedy, she was tremendously popular.   After several marriages (including one to the Marquis de la Falaise) she began an affair with Joseph Kennedy.  They attempted to produce a film, Queen Kelly (1928), directed by Erich Von Stroheim, but Swanson disowned the results. 

An interesting sidelight:  it is footage from Queen Kelly that Norma Desmond watches of her younger self in Sunset Boulevard.

Although Gloria Swanson had an excellent soprano voice and made several good "talkies," as sound pictures were first known, she retired in 1934, and was only sporadically seen onscreen after Sunset Boulevard. 

Like Pickford, Swanson was a successful businesswoman.  She was also a staunch advocate of "health food,"  crediting it for her youthful appearance.  Swanson designed fashions for Puritan/Young At Heart in the 1950s and 60s.

For that Swanson look, think temptress: plenty of make-up, fur, beads, fringe, everything over-the-top intentionally.  Beaded 20s dresses, high heels, velvet coats, everything that says "sensual."

CLARA BOW

Clara Bow was the spirit of the liberated 1920s in one frantic, jiggling, shimmying, curvy body.  Women were giving up corsets, rolling their stockings down around their knees, shortening their skirts and cutting their hair into short bobs.  These were all symbols of the post-World-War-One sexual revolution. Red-headed and hot-tempered, Bow was perhaps the first mass-marketed sex symbol.  Particularly after author Elinor Glynn announced in 1927 that Bow had "It" -- another name for sex appeal.  Bow became known as "The It Girl."

Her stardom was relatively short-lived.  She made films from 1922 from 1933.  But Clara Bow was worked mercilessly hard throughout her career, making more than fifty films during that time.

Onscreen she was a delightful flirt, always in motion, the embodiment of the modern "flapper."  In fact she tended toward emotional illness and found the burden of her stardom and persona hard to bear.  Her biggest hits were in the late 1920s, among them Rough House Rosie (1927), Red Hair (1928) and The Fleet's In! (1928).  The publicity still above is from Rough House Rosie.  Unlike Swanson's glamorous aristocratic persona, Bow had what was called "the common touch," her characters working in stores or offices.

Bow's career faltered in the early 1930s.  Her Brooklyn accent was a major problem.  She was treated badly by her home studio, Paramount, in favor of newcomers from the Broadway stage.  She did several successful talkies, even singing in one, and was reviewed well. However, Clara was sensitive about her voice, and developed a great fear of the mic.  Often her eyes would creep up to stare at it, ruining a take and making her feel even more insecure.  (The phenomenon was often referred to as "mike fright" as so many silent stars did not know how to speak correctly.) 

She was also plagued by public scandal, with many outrageous allegations made against her.  Clara Bow married cowboy star Rex Bell, and went into retirement, living in Nevada, and suffering frequently from emotional breakdowns.  It was a tragic end for an actress that given happiness and laughter to so many.

For Clara Bow's look, look for tighter, simpler 20s dresses, somewhat tailored, high heels, ankle socks, satin, and lots of lipstick.

copyright Elisa DeCarlo - use of this material is forbidden without written permission - many thanks to polkadotsandmotherboards for additional information about Clara Bow!