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Clara Bow– Love Among The Millionaires (1930) (1:16)

“I’m a big freak, because I’m myself!”

Clara Bow had ‘It’, it being sex of course.  The same year she made It (the movie), she also made Wings, the first Best Picture winner.  A non-conformist, she was dogged by a savage press which accused her (among other things) of exhibitionism, incest, lesbianism, bestiality, drug addiction, alcoholism, and laying the entire 1927 USC Football Team no doubt accounting for their one tie (to Stanford) and subsequent loss of the 1928 Rose Bowl spot to those very same Cardinals (where was BCS when you needed it?).

Love Among The Millionaires is a talkie (she hated them) but otherwise quite typical of the roles she was offered.  Sixteen years after retiring from films she was institutionalized for chronic insomnia, diagnosed schizophrenic “despite experiencing neither sound nor vision hallucinations”, and subjected to electro-shock treatment.  She spent the rest of her life a recluse.