{"id":21716,"date":"2016-07-09T11:34:49","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T18:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=21716"},"modified":"2016-07-09T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T20:19:50","slug":"1932-blogathon-clara-bow-is-pure-dynamite-in-call-her-savage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/1932-blogathon-clara-bow-is-pure-dynamite-in-call-her-savage\/","title":{"rendered":"1932 Blogathon: Clara Bow Is Pure Dynamite in \u2018Call Her Savage\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hot-bothered-blogathon-call-her-savage\"<\/a>It\u2019s hard to imagine that 1932\u2019s Call Her Savage<\/em> was the \u201ccomeback\u201d film for Clara Bow. Why on earth does a 26-year-old actress at the top of her game need<\/em> a comeback? While it\u2019s true that Clara Bow\u2019s spectacular career had reached its zenith during the silent era in such films as Mantrap<\/em>, It<\/em>, and Wings<\/em> (the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar), Bow had survived the transition to talkies much better than most of her contemporaries. Yes, her Brooklyn accent was fairly pronounced, but her public didn\u2019t mind one bit \u2014 it seemed perfect for the rough-and-tumble flapper characters she usually portrayed.<\/p>\n

\"clara11\"<\/a>But as the years ticked by and Bow\u2019s popularity\u00a0continued to grow, a perfect storm was brewing that would make her want to chuck it all. Her unbridled fame (at one point she received about 45,000 fan letters a month) was becoming more of a burden to her than a joy, especially as the studio put her in film after film her to try and get the biggest bang for their buck. As someone whose emotional health was often quite fragile, that kind of attention, hysteria, and overwork was not exactly what the doctor ordered. Clara had also spent her most successful years in Hollywood partying hard \u2014 really hard. She was as committed to having a good time as many of her hedonistic movie characters and you can only carry on that way for so long. And an exhausting lawsuit against\u00a0her private secretary whom she accused of embezzlement revealed salacious details of Clara’s\u00a0social life which the former “It” Girl\u00a0found quite humiliating. By mid-1931, with a few years left on her Paramount contract, she and her employers agreed to call it quits. Later that year, Clara married actor Rex Bell and moved to his large ranch in Nevada where her husband would eventually enter politics and become that state\u2019s Lieutenant Governor.<\/p>\n

\"clarabow-comeback\"<\/a>But Hollywood couldn\u2019t accept the vivacious Bow\u2019s absence for long. In 1932, Fox Studios lured her back with a two-picture deal in what would turn out to be the final two films of her career. Clara\u00a0later claimed that she returned to Hollywood \u201cfor the sole purpose of making enough money to stay out of it.\u201d Those last\u00a0two films were Call Her Savage,<\/em> directed by John Francis Dillon, and Hoop-La<\/em>, directed by Richard Lloyd. While many critics thought Hoop-La<\/em> was the better film, I much prefer the tawdry and delicious Call Her Savage<\/em>, based on the novel\u00a0by author Tiffany Thayer. While Thayer\u2019s books were quite\u00a0popular with the public, he was not exactly held in high esteem by the literary elites. In The New Yorker<\/em>, Dorothy Parker wrote about Thayer\u2019s work, saying that \u201che is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one is missing.\u201d Yikes. But Call Her Savage<\/em>, the sensational and lurid story of Nasa \u201cDynamite\u201d Springer, the \u201chalf-breed\u201d daughter of the wealthiest man in Texas, was tailor-made for Clara Bow and she gave\u00a0it her all.<\/p>\n

Although no one in the film industry could have known in 1932\u00a0that they were in the middle of a brief period that would later be called Pre-Code Hollywood, a movie like Call Her Savage<\/em> would have been completely impossible to produce just two years later when the censorship sledgehammer of the Motion Picture Production Code came down with a vengeance.\u00a0I\u2019m not saying Call Her Savage<\/em> was single-handedly responsible for this crackdown, but it\u2019s definitely a Pre-Code dream!<\/p>\n

\"clara-gilbert1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Following a long prologue in which we see how the adulterous actions of Nasa\u2019s grandfather and mother would cause their \u201csins\u201d to be passed down to her, Clara\u2019s entrance in the film is theatrical and utterly fabulous: She is first seen riding her horse with wild and, dare I say, sexual abandon, savagely beating a rattlesnake to death with her riding crop, and then whipping her half-Indian friend Moonglow (Gilbert Roland). The fact that Moonglow doesn\u2019t even flinch as Nasa attacks him seems to be quite a turn-on for the young woman. When her horrified\u00a0father encounters this episode, he confronts his daughter, shouting, \u201cWhy were you whipping him?\u201d Nasa responds provocatively, \u201cI was practicing in case I ever get married!\u201d Oh boy.<\/p>\n