Clara Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) Bow was an American actress who rose to st

Clara Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in the silent film era of the 1920s. It was her appearance as a spunky shopgirl in the film “It” that brought her global fame and the nickname “The It Girl”. Bow came to personify the roaring twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.Bow was born in a tenement in Brooklyn, New York, the only surviving child of a dysfunctional family afflicted with mental illness and dickensian poverty and physical and emotional abuse.In 1949 she checked in to The Institute of Living to be treated for her chronic insomnia and diffuse abdominal pains. Shock treatment was tried and numerous psychological tests performed. Bow’s IQ was measured “bright normal” (pp. 111–119), while others claimed she was unable to reason, had poor judgment and displayed inappropriate or even bizarre behavior. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The illness debut, or “onset”, as well as her insomnia, the analysts tied to the “butcher knife episode” back in 1922, but Bow rejected psychological explanations and left the Institute. Bow did not return to her family after leaving the institution. Bow lived alone in a bungalow, which she rarely left, until her death. Bow spent her last years in Culver City, Los Angeles under the constant care of a nurse, living off an estate worth about $500,000 at the time of her death. She died of a heart attack at the age of 60. -- source link

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