Film series: (You Look Like) Clara Bow

In honor of Silent Movie Month in Ithaca, Cornell Cinema is delighted to spotlight actress Clara Bow — the original "It Girl”  who soared back into our collective consciousness after Taylor Swift named a song after the actress on her 2024 album The Tortured Poets Department. 

While the track title has inspired critics and fans to note similarities between the musical powerhouse and movie star — namely, the intense public scrutiny of their personal lives and their status as powerful, ambitious, independent women — the song lyrics don't offer much about the life and career of Clara Bow, who was one of the biggest movies starts of the 1920s, so our Cornell Cinema series will.

Presented in collaboration with the Wharton Studio Museum, the series will include three films starring Clara Bow, including the first-ever Best Picture winner Wings (1927) and It (1927), Bow's break-out role which earned her recognition as the "It Girl." We are also delighted to present one of Clara Bow's earlier short films, The Pill Pounder (1923), which was recently rediscovered after an independent film collector unexpectedly found it on a film reel purchased at a yard sale. Long thought to be lost, this comical short has now been digitally restored in consultation with David Stenn, author of Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild, and is available for screenings thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Finally, the series will conclude with a free screening of Dancing Mothers (1926), which will take place at Cinemapolis on Monday, October 28 at 8pm.

It is always a pleasure to experience silent films with live music during Silent Movie Month in Ithaca, and we are thrilled that Philip Carli, one of the world's leading silent film accompanists, will perform a live score during a special, double bill of The Pill Pounder and It on Saturday, October 26.

Cosponsored by the Wharton Studio Museum and Cinemapolis in honor of Silent Movie Month in Ithaca.