Clara's own great-granddaughter has said that the family is thrilled about the song and that Clara herself would be happy, and that's good enough for me. https://www.tmz.com/2024/02/09/clara-bo ... rack-song/
But at the end of every rainbow is a pot of crap, and the pot of crap in this case is the new, head-scratching insistence on Twitter and elsewhere that Clara Bow was bisexual/queer. If there's one thing that really makes my eye twitch, it's seeing speculation actively spread as fact. Combine that with my interest in all things Clara Bow, and I just had to type up this post as a sort of... rant? Vent?
Searching Clara's name on Twitter brings up multiple threads where people are saying that she was bisexual, and to say otherwise is queer erasure. It isn't much better typing "clara bow" into the Reddit search bar. There's a handful of threads where some Swifties were repeating the same claim. So where are people reading this?
Clara was the subject of a lot of rumors during her career. Her various romantic relationships would get publicized in the press and these escapades meshed well with her sexpot screen image. Clara's promiscuity was put front and center, which made her ripe for the gossip mill. But her famous series of "engagements" were all to men. Where do women come in?
Enter Tui Lorraine, an actress from New Zealand who immigrated to the US and became Clara Bow's best friend. She was a lesbian, and that was not a secret in Hollywood. David Stenn interviewed Tui for his Runnin' Wild biography on Clara, so we have a first hand account from a lesbian woman who was Clara's best friend. According to Tui, she had a crush on Clara. She tells us that she was attracted to her. But Tui never told Clara about it, and the reason given is that she knew Clara eventually wanted to marry a man. So she never acted on her feelings.
Of interest to us is this anecdote Tui shares:
Now, this is helpful, because it's a hint that Tui's friendship with Clara led to some gossip in Hollywood. We're getting somewhere.When actor Nils Asther teased Tui about her “lovely friendship with Clara” with a “knowing, wicked grin,” Tui blushed and told the truth. “Clara adores men only,” she sighed. “Heterosexual to the core, you know.” [p 143]
In addition, we have another source related to Tui Lorraine: this PDF of notes on Tui's life compiled by Ian St George. We have newspaper clippings, lots of photographs, and the first chapter contains an interview from right before her death. The PDF states outright on page 71 that "they were almost certainly lovers." I'm going to throw up my hands here and say that I have no idea what that is based on, as there is no accompanying note I can find. Tui also doesn't speak of a romantic relationship with Clara in the 1993 interview in the PDFs first chapter; again, no clue.
We also know Tui wrote a memoir called The Mourning After: Memories of a Star-Crossed Spirit. She gave a copy to David Stenn, and another copy is at the Special Collections of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles. The Mourning After is also cited in the bibliography to Runnin' Wild, and I think if Tui had revealed a romantic relationship with Clara, it would've ended up in Stenn's book. You always need to be very careful and have a grain of salt handy when it comes to first hand sources (especially in old Hollywood), but I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of Tui's gaydar.
All that to say, Tui and Clara's relationship sowed one of the many seeds for a tabloid that popped up three years later called The Coast Reporter. In April 1931, The Coast Reporter published an article purporting to tell all about Clara Bow's love life. And it was nasty. The Coast Reporter claimed that Clara was a drug-addled degenerate who engaged in incest, bestiality, and had sex with women (Tui Lorraine is named) as well as men.
Before anyone jumps down my throat - I am not saying that gay/lesbian sex is morally equivalent to bestiality and incest. But keep in mind that in 1931, that was sadly the mentality. It was a homophobic era. With that context, The Coast Reporter publishing that Clara had sex with women was meant as a smear.
And Clara took it as a smear. When she was shown a copy of The Coast Reporter on the Paramount lot, she ran back to her dressing room to vomit. This is why I get a bad taste in my mouth when I see people insist that she was bisexual. Yes, she was reacting to the whole "package", so to say, not the lesbian sex detail in isolation. But the new claim that she was bisexual ultimately comes from a rumor that was published as a smear.
No, Clara never explicitly said, "I am heterosexual. I exclusively seek companionship and intimacy with men." But now we're choosing to make an argument from ignorance and assume that because we haven't proved once and for all that Clara was straight, she was definitely bisexual. At that point we're entering "making shit up" territory.
What we know for certain about her life: she had many romantic relationships with men; she seemed to have genuine feelings for these men; she ultimately wanted to settle down and marry a man and have children. Given how almost painfully heterosexual her love life was, I feel it's safe to assume that Clara Bow was a straight woman. If we ever get legitimate evidence to the contrary, well, buy me the hat and I'll gladly eat it.
This weird insistence I'm seeing from some people that she was actually bisexual and saying otherwise is historical queer erasure #sapphoandherfriends
is just peak wishful thinking from folks that skimmed her Wiki bio, saw the "In popular culture" section mentioning rumors, and ran with it. (Which, hey. I get it. Knowing that even with a time machine I'd have no chance sucks for me, too.)EDIT: ...and now people are saying that Clara had an affair with Dorothy Arzner. Oh, Internet, how I loathe thee.
I don't listen to Taylor Swift, either, but I feel that she is a powerful and positive force on the youth of today. I think it's great that silent film might be seeing a resurgence. (it would be weird if I didn't 
) Whenever silent film gets a reference in modern culture, it makes me happy. See: The Lumineers album cover Cleopatra 
Objectivity kind of gets lost in the wash. 
)
Dang, looking back at that, how could I have mistaken it as Clara. Well, anyway, it's a nice portrait of Tui, then.