Clara Bow rose to fame in the silent film era of film. After appearing in the 1927 film It, in which she played a “plucky” shopgirl, she earned the nickname ‘The It Girl’.
Throughout the Roaring Twenties, she was one of the decade’s most beloved and popular stars. She is often described as that era’s leading sex symbol.
Following the silent film era, Clara successfully managed to transition to talkies in 1929. In total, she appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including box-office hits like Mantrap in 1926 and Wings in 1927.
No stranger to controversy, Bow was once rumored to have slept with the entire University of Southern California football team. While Bow was certainly known for being promiscuous, many have called this accusation either exaggerated or entirely unfounded.
Join Facts Verse as we attempt to get to the truth of this persistent rumor. Was it merely an instance of Hollywood myth and legend, or did Bow really get down and dirty with that entire football team? Keep watching to see what we’ve discovered.
The Origin of the Rumor
Clara Bow was just as well-known for her risque off-screen antics as she was for her films. Throughout her time in the spotlight, she had several high-profile affairs with members of the Hollywood community. Ultimately these exploits led to her developing a rather salacious reputation.
Whenever someone gets famous enough, they’re going to have their fair share of haters and detractors. One of Bow’s former secretaries, who was stricken with jealousy who was named Daisy DeVoe decided to take advantage of the Bow’s rocky reputation with the public by publishing an unauthorized biography about her that outlined a number of blatant lies involving the world-famous actress.
The most significant and controversial of these claims was that Bow, who was allegedly a big fan of the USC football team and was said to have frequently invited members of the team over to home for parties, had actually partook in an orgy with them.
The public, always eager for a nice juicy scandal, took DeVoe’s bait hook line and sinker. This rumor would follow Bow for the remainder of her life and possibly even contributed to her decision to retire from the film industry.
Bow would fight back against the lies laid out in the book by taking DeVoe to court. We’ll get to that in a bit more detail in just moment.
In reality, Bow’s relationship with the USC football team was pretty innocuous. It’s true that she would hold parties for them, but these shindigs would consist mainly of harmless dancing and late-night dips in her pool.
She did once go out on a date with the teams Quarterback, Morley Drury, but nothing came of it. Drury himself even attested to that fact.
In the end, stories like these and other details about Bow’s personal life during the court proceedings over DeVoe’s book led Clara to suffer from several mental breakdowns.
Enjoying this video so far? If so, give it a like and subscribe to the Facts Verse channel. Keep watching to see why DeVoe felt so bitter about Clara in the first place.
Daisy Devoe Was Falsly Convicted Of Grand Theft
One of the downsides of being a rising star in Hollywood is constantly being surrounded by predatory individuals who merely want to capitalize upon your success.
This is a sad reality that Clara Bow knew all too well. It’s said that at the peak of her success, Clara was being robbed blind by her business associates, manager, household staff, and even her relatives. On top of that, Paramount had her under a pretty brutal contract that had her working to death while lining their bank accounts.
In early 1929, Bow was on the verge of bankruptcy and losing her house when she hired Daisy DeVoe as her personal secretary to help manage her finances. Bow then opened up a separate bank account in which her paycheck would be deposited. DeVoe would use this account to pay Clara’s various bills.
A little under two years after hiring her, Clara had managed to achieve financial security. And since DeVoe had deposited half of Clara’s salary into a special trust account, she had nearly a quarter-million in savings – which was quite a bit back in those days.
DeVoe was fired, however, in November of 1930 after she lost a power struggle over Bow’s finances that involved Bow’s then-boyfriend and future husband, Rex Bell.
Rex had strongly suspected that Daisy was stealing from Bow. When she was let go, DeVoe had requested that she be given a severance package. Bow interpreted this as an attempt at blackmail. When DeVoe tried to explain to her that she didn’t want anything but her jab back, Bell promptly called the police.
LA District Attorney Burn Fitts was in-good with Paramount studio execs. Upon their request, DeVoe was arrested on the 6th of November, 1930, and ended up being interrogated reportedly for 27 hours straight – all the while consistently denying that she hadn’t done anything illicit. She also refused to sign a confession stating that she had stolen cash from Bow.
DeVoe was jailed despite the fact that she hadn’t officially been charged with anything. She was also denied the right to contact her lawyer. Shockingly, Fitts even illegally raided DeVoe’s safety deposit box without obtaining a warrant in an attempt at finding some kind of incriminating evidence to pin against her.
After she was released, DeVoe filed a false imprisonment lawsuit against Fitts. Firing back at her in retaliation, Fitts convinced a Grand Jury to indict her on 35 counts of grand theft – each one of these potentially carried up to a ten-year sentence if she was convicted.
DeVoe’s trial began in mid-January 1931. The atmosphere surrounding the LA County Courthouse was described in news reports as being like a carnival, as thousands of people had shown up to witness the spectacle. The trial likewise got international media attention.
While LA assistant DA David Clark tried to paint DeVoe as a villain, he couldn’t manage to produce any proof that she had done anything wrong throughout the trial.
Three days after the trial had commenced, the jurors found DeVoe not guilty on 34 out of the 35 charges. It’s rather strange, though, that they still found her guilty on that one last charge as the so-called evidence presented was spurious at best. Regardless, the judge showed DeVoe little mercy as he was also quite chummy with the executives over at Paramount. DeVoe was sentenced to a lengthy 18-month prison sentence.
Unflattering Details Came To Light At Trial
Clara Bow’s personal life was laid out for all the world to see at the trial. Numerous revelations related to scandals that she had been involved in previously were publicisized during the court proceedings.
Bow’s success as a public figure relied heavily on the public’s perception of her. So, While DeVoe was sent to prison, Bow arguably suffered just as greatly as she did. After the trial, Bow had a handful of mental breakdowns, and despite her vulnerable condition, Paramount insisted upon her returning to work to finish up a film that she had already been in.
After that film flopped, Paramount became convinced that Bow was no longer a profitable asset. They also felt like her scandals had made her more of a liability to them. Without DeVoe to help her out when she was in a bind, Clara was conned out of another 60 grand when Paramount suddenly terminated her contract in summer of 1931. So just like that, just half a year after DeVoe’s trial, Clara Bow was no longer a film star.
She managed to make a bit of comeback the following year, but after appearing in two modestly successful films, Bow left show business for good at 28. Ironically, when she retired, she made good use of that ‘trust account’ and the savings in it that DeVoe had set up for her.
Daisy Devoe’s Curse
After DeVoe had been wrongfully convicted, she confronted her prosecutors David Clark and Burn Fitts and told them ominously that both of them would meet a ‘bad end’ because of what they had done to her.
Daisy’s biting words ended up coming true, as four months after she had been sent to jail. Clark was charged with double murder. In 1973, Fitts committed suicide.
After being released from prison, DeVoe married and started working in the aircraft industry. She later retired in 1968. While she might not have exploited Clara Bow in the way that was alleged at trial, she never quite got over how things had transpired. Her previously unauthorized biography about Bow, while being full of factual inaccuracies, certainly made a discernible impact on how the public perceived the ‘It Girl’ for years to come.
Clara Bow’s Retirement And Death
After marrying Rex Bell and retiring from the world of cinema in 1933, Bow and her husband opened a restaurant called The ‘It’ Cafe in the Hollywood Plaza Hotel in 1937. After it shut down in 1943, Bow made very few public appearances. She did, however, make one brief appearance on the radio game show Truth or Consequences in 1947.
In 1944, while her husband was running for the US House of Representatives, Bow attempted suicide. Clara had written a suicide note that said that she preferred death to a publicized life.
In 1949, Bow checked herself into a psychiatric hospital called the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut where she received shock treatment in an attempt to treat her chronic insomnia, depression, and abdominal pain that was determined to be delusional. After leaving the institution, Bow did not return to live with her husband and two sons. Instead, she lived the remainder of her life in seclusion.
Bow died of a heart attack in 1965 in Culver City, California. She was 60 years old.
Both Clara Bow’s and Daisy DeVoe’s stories are rather tragic. Bow faced mental anguish after being overworked by a money-hungry industry that didn’t care in the least bit about her well-being, while DeVoe was falsely convicted of crimes that she likely did not commit.
Has learning about Bow and DeVoe’s plights made you question the supposed glamour of being a Hollywood star? And do you think that Clara Bow intentionally tried to ruin her former-secretary’s life? Let us know in the comments.
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