Born in urban poverty in Brooklyn, Clara Bow made her way to the silver screen, and even into the English language. Her career in films was relatively short, spanning all of nine years, but you’ll still hear her referenced in Hollywood by people who might not even know her name. Clara grew up a tomboy, by her own admission, preferring the company of boys to girls. But by the time she was a teenager and her peers started to see the differences between boys and girls as not so easily traversed, so she found herself without many close friends. Her mother died while Clara was a teenager, suffering from the strangely-worded malady “psychosis due to epilepsy”, after having been sent to an asylum following a psychotic episode where she held a knife to the throat of her daughter, who managed to fight her off. Clara’s father was supportive, if unlucky in establishing a steady career, and encouraged his daughter in life. At age 16, she entered a mail-in contest promoted in a number of mag...