Call Her Savage (1932)

Wild child Nasa (Clara Bow) leads an eventful life. So did Clara, come to think of it.

The film begins as a terrible western. A wagon train is led by a man who is spending time with his girlfriend rather than his wife and family. They are attacked by Indians and their bad luck is blamed on his wicked ways. The worst part is that his behavior will cause his young daughter to also be wicked. It’s in the bible, you can look it up.

Clara Bow became a huge star after 1927’s It and lived a wild Hollywood lifestyle. Things started to fall apart with the advent of sound cinema and the press taking a more moralistic stance on her behavior. She took some time off for a well deserved nervous breakdown and returned with Call Her Savage. It was a critical and box office success and completed her return to Hollywood royalty. She would appear in one more film before retiring.

Bow’s former lover and matinee idol Gilbert Roland appears as Moonglow, a half Indian. Thelma Todd plays Nasa’s romantic rival. Pretty, charming, and funny, she is best remembered as appearing in other people’s films, most notably the Marx Brothers. Her star was on the rise when she was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning at age 29. Ruled a suicide but was it murder?

Call Her Savage is Bow thumbing her nose at her detractors. Heralded a triumph in its day, it is merely watchable now, mostly because of its "pre-code" elements. Filmmakers initially struggled making dialog sound natural in the early talkie era, and this is on full display here. Also, Bow’s acting style was stuck in the silent era. I’m curious how she would have evolved had she stuck around another ten years. AMRU 3.

Wings (1927)

Two men, one from a rich family, vie for the affection of a woman (not Clara Bow). When duty calls, they both sign up as pilots for the Great War.

Clara received top billing despite not being the lead. Having made a huge splash earlier in the year with It, the twenty two year old’s star power was at an all-time high. The studio capitalized on her fame, giving her a “topless” scene. She would go on to appear in nothing else of interest. She didn’t transition to talkies very well or to thirty at all. Clara married a cowboy star and retired to a comfortable life of mental illness. She would die at the ripe old age of sixty. And so it goes.

Gary Cooper appears in a very short scene, one of his earliest credited roles. It was enough to kick start his career into lead roles. The real leads are Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen as Jack and David, whose relationship begins as rivals but evolves throughout the film. Arlen would actually marry the object of his affection in real life.

Some state of the art visual effects trickery was employed to show the leads flying the airplanes. What the filmmakers did was to strap a camera to the front of an old airplane and tell the actors to fly it. This technique worked surprisingly well.

Wings is a lavish, expansive, and expensive film. The 2016 restoration, which reunited it with the original score, is breathtaking. A two and a half hour silent film is a tough sell and I would be lying if I said it didn’t occasionally drag, but it is amazingly engaging. Hand painted frames highlighted the flames of crashing planes and the flash of the gunfire. It is quite the spectacle. AMRU 4.

It (1927)

This is the Clara Bow silent film. Let's not confuse It with the Stephen King work or the 1966 Roddy McDowall horror film. The title does lend Itself to the horror genre, ala Them! and The Thing. In this case, It's a story of a poor salesgirl with "that special something".

And she does. Clara Bow is hot. Elinor Glyn wrote a book called "It", where she describes this special quality some people posses. This story is not an adaptation of the book. It's a story about people who read the book and then go mad for Clara. Glyn actually appears as herself.

Silent movies are weird, what with the exaggerated reactions and all. The story isn't much. Business upper-muck reads about "It", identifies the quality in Clara (and, mistakenly, himself), and tries to woo her. His dashing friend is too preoccupied to notice, falls for her, hard feelings, comic mischief, misunderstandings, bla bla bla, you know the drill.

I long knew that Clara Bow was the "It" girl long before I knew what the hell that meant. It's good to see the film that started It all off, but I don't need to see It again. AMRU 3.