Clara Bow Quotes

1. (asked for her thoughts on Marilyn Monroe after Monroe's death) A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered.


2. (on passing the torch) I slip my old crown of "It" Girl not to Taylor or Bardot, but to Monroe.

3. Rehearsals sap my pep. Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it.

4. I'm a curiosity in Hollywood. I'm a big freak, because I'm myself!

5. (on the death of her grandfather when she was five) The first night, as he lay in his coffin in the dining room, I crept out of my bed and lay down on the floor beside him because I had the feeling that he might be lonely. My father found me there in the morning, almost frozen. I said: "Hush, you mustn't wake grandfather. He's sleeping."


6. All the time the flapper is laughing and dancing, there's a feeling of tragedy underneath. She's unhappy and disillusioned, and that's what people sense.

7. The more I see of men, the more I like dogs.







8. (on retirement) I've had enough…I don't want to be remembered as somebody who couldn't do nothin' but take her clothes off.

9. (on her poverty-stricken childhood in Brooklyn) No one wanted me in the first place. Often I was lonesome, frightened and miserable. I never had a doll in my life. I never had any clothes, and lots of times didn't have anything to eat. We just lived, and that'a about all. Girls shunned me because I was so poorly dressed - the worst looking kid on the street. I decided that girls weren't any good, and being lonely and needing child friends, cast my lot with the neighborhood boys. I became a regular tomboy - played baseball, football and learned to box.

10. It was easy for me to cry. All I had to do was think of home.


11. My life in Hollywood contained plenty of uproar. I'm sorry for a lot of it, but not awfully sorry. I never did anything to hurt anyone else. I made a place for myself on the screen and you can't do that by being Mrs. Louisa May Alcott's idea of a "Little Woman".

12. We had individuality. We did as we pleased. We stayed up late. We dressed the way we wanted. I used to whiz down Sunset Boulevard in my open Kissel, with several red Chow dogs to match my hair. Today, they're sensible and end up with better health. But we had more fun.

13. Even now I can't trust life. It did too many awful things to me as a kid.

14. (on feminism) Marriage ain't a woman's only job no more. A girl who's worked hard and earned her place ain't going to be satisfied as a wife. I know this: I wouldn't give up my work for a marriage. I think a modern girl's capable of keeping a job and a husband.

15. (on director Victor Fleming) Of all the men I've known, there was a man.

16. (on Gary Cooper) He's hung like a horse and can go all night.

17. When I decided to leave the screen, I told Ben Schulberg (producer B.P. Schulberg) I would not finish my contract or ever work again for anyone. He yelled and threatened to sue me and I said, "Go ahead, Ben, sue me. I've fought a thief and a blackmailer and, if after such heartaches I am forced to fight you and the studio, so be it".


18. (when asked what "It" was, replying in her perfect Brooklyn accent) I ain't real sure.

19. People used to say that I had a feeling of closeness, a great warmth of loving everybody, that they could tell me their troubles.




20. I hate talkies, they're stiff and limiting. You lose a lot of your cuteness, because there's no chance for action, and action is the most important thing to me.

21. Marriage means the fulfillment of everything for me. This sounds like the bunk, I know, but I mean it, or else I wouldn't say it.  

22. I have learned that pictures take away more than they give. You spend all your youth and all your energy to attain the thing you thought you wanted more than anything else in the world, and when you get it, you find you don't want it. It not only doesn't bring you happiness, but you find it has robbed you of all the other things that might have given you happiness.


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