Before today I’d never even seen portions of It, the frothy 1927 comedy that catapulted Clara Bow into superstardom. It feels a bit musty and is certainly stocked with rube-level humor, but I enjoyed the spirited, screw-it-all attitude.
I was especially taken with the 26 year-old Gary Cooper, who plays a newspaper reporter. Coop doesn’t mouth so much as a single line of subtitled dialogue. Released in January of ’27, It was a silent film, of course. The Jazz Singer didn’t open until October of that year.
Blue-chip restoration guru Robert Harris is currently putting the finishing touches on an It restoration, and this spiffed-up, 99-year-old classic (“the first Hollywood romcom”) will screen sometime in late May or early June at the Bedford Playhouse.
“There seems to be no pattern, no purpose to her life. She swings from one emotion to another, but she gains nothing, stores up nothing for the future. She lives entirely in the present, not even for today, but in the moment. Clara is the total nonconformist. What she wants she gets, if she can. What she desires to do, she does. She has a big heart, a remarkable brain, and the most utter contempt for the world in general. Time doesn’t exist for her, except that she thinks it will stop tomorrow. She has real courage, because she lives boldly. Who are we, after all, to say she is wrong?” — Adela Rogers St. John on Clara Bow.
