A modern woman
Clara lit up the screen in her first role, 1922’s Beyond the Rainbow, but her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Undeterred, she made her way to Hollywood, where she was taken under the wing of B. P. Schulberg, one of the most powerful producers in the 1920s. But Schulberg used Clara sexually and financially.
Despite this unhappy arrangement, Clara became a superstar, and the very first Hollywood sex symbol. With her big brown eyes and mischievous grin, she exuded sex appeal. Her characters cut their dresses to be sexier, drank and smoked, and danced all night. They also portrayed sex as being fun. As shop girl Betty Lou in 1927’s It, and in other films like The Plastic Age (1925) and Wings (1927), Clara’s…
