The Unsteady Screen-Flapper Throne (1924) 🇺🇸
None of the rising young screen favorites wants to be pigeonholed as a flapper, and this article shows why.
by Caroline Bell
Considering the winsomeness and piquancy of her, one feels a momentary regret that Clara Bow, who achieved notice for her work in Down to the Sea in Ships, should be hailed as “a flapper discovery.” Clara is too new to this business to realize that the flapper throne is the most unstable in movieland. No one has thought to tell her of the many who have traveled from a brief burst of publicity to quick oblivion along the path upon which her eager feet are dancing an overture. It is a path of disillusionment, of heartache.
The short reign of the flapper is partly due to competition, but mostly, I think, to the senseless exaggeration of the type. Each of the flotilla of flappers has had to suffer, in her turn, because of the movie’s habit of emphasizing characteristic points of certain types unnaturally. In order to conform to the conventionalized ingénue pattern, girls have been played up in publicity as sweet, dear, innocent creatures who would be scared if a boy looked at them — whereas, in real life, far from being so utterly inane, they are vigorous, self-reliant youngsters.
They can hold their own in this world’s battles of wits, can these screen flappers, when not flapping professionally. Most of them are girls whom I like just lots, but — well, they aren’t innocent, or helpless. Sophisticated, worldly-wise, many; some have had stage experience, at least in the merry-merry, and cleverly assume an ingénuish veneer which conceals shrewd little brains. A few have come to the screen direct from home and school and they, like Clara Bow, lack such hardening experiences. But none of them, in real life, conforms to the innocuous screen pattern.
The movie ingénue, I admit, is one of my pet abominations. She is such a perfect little Elsie Dinsmore heroine — too utterly pure and innocent to be human. The ordinary girl had more brains the day she was born than her screen prototype possesses at an apparent eighteen — it’s presumably about that age that the film flapper begins to wonder what life is all about. In real life she doesn’t wonder; she knows. Mostly, she is decent, because she was brought up that way and because, beneath her independence and individuality, she’s a good sort; but she’s a wise one.
At a girls’ party recently, when we all sat around on the floor and played games and acted the fool, I compared these girls with the types they often must play for the camera. They’re a wholesome bunch, indeed, Helen [Helen Ferguson?] and Mid and Pat, Laura [Laura La Plante] and Clara and Vola [Vola Vale] and Carmel, and the others. They’re real, right, regular girls, doing their work well, helping to support their mothers and younger brothers and sisters. Every one of them is, I’d wager, what the world calls “good.” But they, like the ordinary girl of to-day in any home, in any town, are not Elsie Dinsmore heroines. The competition they face is developing their self-reliance, their judgment. They know what they want — and they are going to have it. Upon that point they evince a determination like steel.
That point was illustrated when we had our fortunes told, each making a wish while the wise one read the cards. Of all those fervent wishes, only two or three were sentimental ones. Professional wishes, mostly, demanding success in their work. These girls, mayhap, will welcome romance when it comes to them; but they know that there are other things in this world and, in keeping with girlhood everywhere, they are reaching out confident, “gimme” hands.
And yet on the screen they have to play such vapid, silly heroines! The film ingénue is archaic, impossible. They dress her body in the clothes of the season, but make her wear still the same soul and mentality, with the old repertoire of expressions, not realizing that she, too, must progress, as types in real life change. It’s really inexplicable, for surely the public must have wearied of that moth-eaten illusion that girls are made to cling and act like simpletons. And therein lies the main reason, I think, for the failure of so many of our screen flappers — the cinematic habit of stamping them into patterns instead of permitting them to play in the shadows their own diversified individualities.
Cast your memory backward over the last year or two, recall the hosts of flappers upon whom the spotlight has been focused only to fade after a little to the obscurity of “fill-in-the-gap” rôles.
Truly, Viola Dana deserves an endurance medal from the flapper league for preserving upon the screen so long an illusion of that ingénuish glory. But Vi is, and I think always will be, a kid at heart. Slightly hard boiled, blandly herself, but irrepressible, of an electric, bubbling personality, she’s the sort of impetuous kid to whom age means nothing, for it makes no mark upon the inside feelings of her, though it may in time impress itself upon her outward countenance. Perhaps she realizes this impending and inescapable advent of the years’ imprint, or mayhap it’s because of the changing trend of the screen and the demise of the program star; anyway, Vi is attempting a new and deeper type of characterization in Revelation.
Studding the prize flapper’s reign have been a legion whose glory was short — Bessie Love, Lucille Ricksen, Pauline Garon, others. A wave of “flapper publicity” — the spotlight’s glow — and then either they stepped into acting, dramatic rôles, as did Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen, with such promise, or else they became mere “supporting leads.”
Edith Roberts flapped in more or less silly, inconsequential rôles — though the fire and impetuosity of her temperament could not completely be blanketed even in those frightful Universal plays. But now one hears little of Edith. Gladys Walton failed utterly except in one or two pictures which showed her pretty much as herself — a rather zippy, brittle young person.
Even Carmel Myers, who this season is winning new prominence in demi-vamp rôles, has had her share of flapping, until in sheer exasperation she took the reins in her own capable hands and stamped her feet and shook off the suffocation of type. Carmel’s is a personality of color and individualism; but her gray-green eyes view, rather shrewdly, this world and its goods. Carmel knows where she’s headed — and she’ll get there.
A year ago Pauline Garon basked in the spotlight’s refulgent glow. Heralded by “flapper publicity,” Pauline did exceptionally well in Adam’s Rib for the reason that she played her own volatile, charming self, a rather sophisticated bit of pretty girlhood, absolutely sure of herself. But since that one unusual hit, she has been playing inconspicuous, vapid rôles.
Of a colorful personality, Pauline showed promise. But directors wouldn’t let her continue being herself; her effervescence was pressed into the cinematic pattern. She is not exactly hard boiled, but she’s no longer a kitten in its first nine days of life. Her brain works amazingly clear of the Elsie Dinsmore cobwebs; calculating, competent, I have a hunch that Pauline may yet wake up to the reason for her backsliding and redeem her promise.
Next came Vera Reynolds, who did so well her bit in Gloria Swanson’s Prodigal Daughters that it attracted immediate attention. That poignant moment of dramatic acting suggested a splendid future for Vera as a character juvenile. But the powers that be pigeonholed her into an ingénue of typical vapidity. I still have hopes for Vera, for I believe in that small body burns a flame and some day, if Vera has spunk enough, she is going to throw off the mantle of flapperhood and come into her own along the lines which Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen have so capably pioneered for the young girls of ability.
Eileen Percy was captivating and refreshing in Children of Jazz, but Eileen is beyond the flapper age, and we might have known she wouldn’t be permitted to continue her zestful portrayals of the headstrong, explosive girlhood of to-day. Clara Horton rather surprised me in personal acquaintance. I had at times thought her quite impossible on the screen — the usual procedure, smiles, pouts, baby eyes, all that. Clara, the girl, is a regular girl, of unexpected personality, with facets of light and charm. Why can’t she have a chance to be a real girl on the screen? Patsy Ruth Miller is one of the few whom the camera hasn’t succeeded in denaturing, because her temperament is so volatile that they can’t obliterate the sparkle of her no matter how many innocuous rôles they may give her, and they have given her quite a few.
Ethel Shannon has been lukewarmly publicized as a flapper. They admit Ethel is twenty. I think she is a few years older. Her eyes are those of a young woman with a stupendous will power; they have shrewd gleams in them, mingled with their kindliness. Ethel is likely to get whatever she wants, I’ll warrant. In Maytime she was miscast in a sweet, girlish rôle. The bit in The Hero in which she played a cabaret girl, superbly aggressive, zippy, a bit brazen, is the sort of thing which fits her like a glove.
This digression brings us to the newest suppliant for flapper film fame, Clara Bow. At first, I was inclined to doubt that Clara was but eighteen and imagined her a trifle older and wiser than was implied. Wherefore I was pleasantly surprised when chance meetings, carrying no possibility of affectation, impressed upon me that Clara indeed is youthful and immature, impetuous. I don’t think there’s enough guile in her to dictate a pose. Her eyes and her lips say pretty much what Clara thinks. She’s refreshingly spontaneous.
Possibly it’s because she hasn’t been in the game long enough to get hard, as some of the mercenary, cold-blooded, little gold diggers prove to be away from the camera. Going from an obscure home, a quite ordinary childhood and girlhood, to pose for artists and eventually to reach the screen, this sudden wealth — the couple of hundred a week that she draws of mammoth proportions in her eyes — coupled with this playing in the movies, is all quite exciting. She is still a bit dazzled.
She bears no apparent relationship to the sweet and simple damsels she’s hoping won’t be her portion on the screen. She doesn’t belong at a church ice-cream festival, giggling and self-conscious in white ruffles. She’s a bit too harum-scarum for that — it’s just a natural, ebullient spirit that makes a saucy grimace at restrictions. Her buoyancy is a vibrant thing; somehow I don’t believe they’ll ever quite standardize her. Capricious, willful, with an infectious grin — a sprite in whom the diablerie flames bewitchingly. A saucy, upturning nose, roguish eyes, full, childish lips, petulant or provocative, as her mood may be. Surely, a creature of impulse.
“Tea… cake… sandwiches… Want everything on the menu!” she ordered breathlessly one afternoon at tea. “Got to get fat. Dad says I run it off fast as I get it… Last night at a ball I danced forty-two million numbers. Honest! Wore a pirate’s costume, umm, nifty, jangling earrings, fierce knife to carve folks’ ears off!” Snap went her fingers, flashing were her eyes, the whole of her aquiver with kid spirits, as her chatter, mostly inconsequential, bubbled on.
She is without a doubt the most magnetic of the younger novitiates of the season. Clad in a sport skirt, brown sweater with a huge yellow ruff encasing her pert little face, brown stocking cap pulled jauntily over her reddish-brown bobbed hair, there was a gamin quality about her.
The next day I saw her in action. Verily, I’ll say action! A careless motorist had run over her pet pup, yclept Impie, and Impie was no more. Tearing down the street, a veritable little tornado of fire, hair flying, eyes blazing, Clara. “Lemme at him, just you lemme! I’ll scratch his eyes out!” The cause of her wrath having hastily departed, there she sat in the middle of the street, a dead puppy cuddled in her arms, convulsive sobs shaking her thin, little shoulders.
Clara is not an actress in the sense of training, has had little time for the assimilation of technique. What she has is feeling, impulse and a lack of restraint which makes possible her expression of imaginative make-believe. The whirlwind excitement of her screen advent beginning to subside in her small circle, she is starting to figure things out. Just now Clara is halfway between the extremes of the blindfolded and of shrewd calculation.
Having completed a flapper rôle in Black Oxen, she is now playing a little French gamin girl in Schulberg’s [B. P. Schulberg] Poisoned Paradise. It has color, flame, individuality. rôles like this, bringing out her growing ability, are likely to take her on a rising crescendo to a place of importance. Typical rôles will snuff her out in a wink. Perhaps, for a time at least, she will escape the eternal blanketing of rôles of inane sentimentality, for the thing that she has isn’t going to be easily stifled.
“Want to be my own self on the screen,” is the extent of her observation regarding her work. “Don’t want to play silly white-frosting girls. Want to be me.”
Her father admits at times he is bewildered by this job of raising a motherless daughter, a bit fearful of her future, of her headstrong youth. She is all impulse, feeling. It’s rather futile to predict what may become of Clara, lacking a managerial mother, to whose good driving and pulling power half the girls on the screen to-day owe their success.
So far it has been rather hit-or-miss with Clara. Yet one feels that she is either going to make her personality felt in pictures — or else she will drop out altogether. One just can’t vision her occupying the fill-in-the-gap rôles into which the flapper discoveries of yester-month have effaced themselves.
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One cannot imagine volatile little Clara Bow effacing herself in a fill-in-the-gap rôle.
Photo by: White
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Gladys Walton has retired from the screen after several failures as a sweet ingénue, and but few successes in zippy, brittle rôles that were suited to her.
Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)
Patsy Ruth Miller slid out of innocuous rôles and into the big, dramatic opportunities of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and she doesn’t intend to go back.
Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)
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Marshall Neilan and The Rendezvous rescued Lucille Ricksen from uninspiring rôles.
Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)
In sheer exasperation over being cast in ingénue rôles, Carmel Myers refused parts until she was allowed to try her hand at vamping.
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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1924