The Silent Majority: Clara Bow and Louise Brooks

I had been wanting to do a semi-regular series on this blog featuring some of my favorite stars of the silent film era; the new interest of a friend in silents has led me to go ahead, as well as giving me a title (thanks, Elizabeth).  So here it is, ladies and gents, the first enstallment of a picture feature I'll call The Silent Majority.

(NSFW due to one instance of what I like to call tasteful nudity!)

Clara Bow is still remembered today by many as "The It Girl," while Louise Brooks was, until recently, often forgotten by all except film historians and a group of loyal, dedicated fans.  Clara and Louise were both influential as far as the "look" of the flappers and jazz babies of the 1920s.  Chances are, if you've seen a film set in the 1920s or 1930s and there are any pictures of then-popular film stars featured, then you've seen both of these ladies.

A very early portrait of Clara Bow.  She's probably about 14 years old here.

Clara in Down to the Sea in Ships (1922).

Clara in It (1927), the film which cemented her title "The It Girl".

Clara, colorized.

Louise Brooks was supposedly the first actress in Hollywood to sport the "Dutch Boy" bobbed hairstyle, though in reality, Colleen Moore had a similar cut several years earlier.

Louise in the late 1920s, rockin' a tux and a smoldering look.

An early nude portrait of Louise, probably taken during her days with the Ziegfeld Follies.

Perhaps the most famous extant portrait of Louise, profile with pearls, taken by Eugene Robert Richee in 1928.