For this month’s Palace Sunday Silent, the quintessential on-screen flapper, Clara Bow lights up the screen in the definitive Jazz Age romcom as a salesgirl with plenty of “it” pursuing a handsome playboy; in a chase from Coney Island to the Ritz, this is one modern gal hell-bent on getting her man! As if this weren’t treat enough, the inimitable Lillian Henley will provide brilliant live piano accompaniment.
Betty Lou Spence (Clara Bow) is a department store salesgirl working on the lingerie counter (of course), who sets her sights on the store’s handsome manager and soon-to-be owner Cyrus Waltham Jr (Antonio Moreno). What might have been a quick dose of ‘it’ resulting in a ring on her finger is tangled by a ton of the complications of modern life, but fortunately Betty Lou is never short of the kind of pep that no-one can resist.
In the late 1920s, Clara Bow was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, shining in Mantrap (1926), Wings (1927), It (1927) and The Wild Party (1929) which all brought huge box-office success; after ‘It’, she became the ‘It girl’ who, in the opinion of F. Scott Fitzgerald, was “someone to stir every pulse in the nation.”
The film was based on the novel by English journalist/novelist/actor/screenwriter Elinor Glyn, who in a single sparkling syllable encapsulated the spirit of the free-thinking and acting youth of Prohibition-era America. Look out for Elinor in a cameo role in a swanky party scene and also for a young Gary Cooper in his fifth ever screen role as a reporter.
