Clara Bow was the “it” girl of Hollywood during the final decade of silent movies. She starred in six Paramount productions in 1927, including her seminal comedy “It” and the first Oscar-winning best film, “Wings.”
Whereas Bow was the epitome of the lively, devil-may-care flapper, delicate beauty Mary Philbin was much more the shy “child-woman” of the era. She was best known for her role as Christine in the Lon Chaney version of “The Phantom of the Opera.”
These actresses star in two recently preserved rarities that will be presented Monday at Linwood Dunn Theater by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in conjunction with the Mary Pickford Foundation.
The 1927 romantic comedy “Get Your Man,” starring Bow and Buddy Rogers, is a bubbly romantic comedy about a young woman in Paris who falls for a nobleman. The problem is he’s about to walk down the aisle in an arranged marriage. It’s up to Bow to discover how to get her man. The hit marked the third film directed by Dorothy Arzner; she and Bow would reunite two years later for the talkie “The Wild Party.”
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Circa 1915: American director David Wark Griffith, center in suit and tie, sits on a platform surrounded by crew members on the set of a film. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Circa 1923: Mildred Harris, a leading lady and first wife of Charlie Chaplin, applies makeup on the beach between shoots. (Edward Gooch / Getty Images )
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Circa 1925: Film comedian Harold Lloyd (1893-1971) puts a wind machine to good use to blow himself clean after rolling in the dust during a film sequence. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Circa 1930: Mary Ann Jackson and Wheezer, two of the child stars of Hal Roach’s “Our Gang” comedy team, share a kiss on the beach at Santa Monica during the making of a film. (Margaret Chute/Getty Images)
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Circa 1925: Actress Mary Pickford (1893-1979) holds a megaphone that’s much larger than that held by director William Beaudine (1892-1970) on the set of “Little Annie Rooney.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1927: American film director Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979) and Alfred Gilks, her cinematographer, survey a scene as they stand by a camera on the set of her film “Get Your Man.” Arzner was Hollywood’s only female director of the 1930s. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1967: John Wayne, with his son, on location in Mexico for the filming of “The War Wagon.” (Keystone/Getty Images)
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1928: Clown Harry Langdon (1884-1944) eats his favorite dish of avocado salad on the set of “The Chaser.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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January 1932: Greta Garbo (1905-1990) and John Barrymore (1882-1942) chat on the set of “Grand Hotel,” directed by Edmund Goulding. (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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December 1932: Actress Joan Crawford (1904-1977) reads on the set of “Today We Live.” (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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1928: “It” girl and actress Clara Bow gets a haircut during a break from filming “Red Hair” for Paramount. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1926: American heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney (1898-1978) has his makeup applied by his trainer, Scotty, on the set of director Spencer Gordon Bennet’s film “Fighting Marine” in Los Angeles. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Circa 1926: Brigitte Helm (1906-1996) addresses workers during the filming of “Metropolis.” Set in the year 2000, this silent film depicts the workers of a modern city who live and labor underground. The film was directed by Fritz Lang for UFA Erich Pommer. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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1930: Stan Laurel (1890-1965) and Oliver Hardy (1892-1957) play with giant building blocks in “Brats,” in which they play their own sons. (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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July 1929: Swedish American actress Greta Garbo (1905-1990), who plays Irene Guarry in “The Kiss,” chats on the set with French film director Jacques Feyder (1885-1948). “The Kiss” was the last silent film that MGM made. (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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Pilot Harold Bromley holds a compact 15-pound radio set. He took it with him on his plane in his attempt to cross the Pacific Ocean from Tacoma, Wash., to Tokyo in July 1929. (Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
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February 1932: Actress Norma Shearer (1902-1983) applies lipstick during the filming of “Strange Interlude,” directed by Robert Z. Leonard. (ohn Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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May 1928: An on-set portrait of actor Lon Chaney (1906-1973) and the cast of the movie “While the City Sleeps.” (John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
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November 1932: Clarence Brown, Warner Oland and an actress on the set of “La Fille du Soleil.” (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystine via Getty Images)
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1931: Actress Joan Crawford (1904-1977) sits next to Clark Gable (1901-1960) on the set of director Clarence Brown’s film, “Possessed.” (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Circa 1927: American swimmer Gertrude Ederle (1905-2003), the first woman to swim the English Channel, supervises actor Bebe Daniels (1901-1971), who is smeared with grease for her part in the Paramount production of “Swim Girl Swim,” directed by Clarence Badger (1880-1964), far left. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
For years, a few reels of “Get Your Man” survived in an incomplete print. But thanks to the Library of Congress and the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, Bow buffs can see a version that reflects the spirit of the original release.
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“The Library of Congress decided to put it back together,” said Randy Haberkamp, the academy’s managing director for programming, education and preservation. “We ended up having a full set of key book stills from the movie. Back in those days, they covered the films pretty extensively with still photography, so literally they would take stills of almost every scene and sometimes multiple shots from a scene.”
Using the surviving footage, the stills from the academy’s library and the shooting script as a guide, the Library of Congress pieced the film together.
Because “Get Your Man” features about 45 minutes of moving footage interspersed with still pictures, “you get a better sense of the story, what the action looked like, how it was paced and directed,” Haberkamp said. “It’s a fun movie. Clara Bow is somebody who is always fascinating, especially in her silent pictures because she is so full of life and just kind of leaps off the screen.”
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Released in 1921, the drama “The Blazing Trail” was a typical B-movie that Universal churned out during the silent era. The Academy Film Archive preserved the film from a 35-millimeter nitrate print from a 1927 reissue released to celebrate Philbin’s 25th birthday. “The Blazing Trail,” Philbin’s first film, is one of the few films she made at Universal that survive.
“It’s a fun program picture,” Haberkamp said. In fact, the reissue begins and ends “with a glance back at her early beginnings, and then at the end shows you scenes from her upcoming movies.” The way that the reissue was used to capitalize on Philbin’s new status as a star is “very interesting,” he said.
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‘Preservation Spotlight: “Get Your Man” and “The Blazing Trail”’
Where: Linwood Dunn Theater, 1313 Vine St., Hollywood
Susan King is a former entertainment writer at the Los Angeles Times who specialized in Classic Hollywood stories. She also wrote about independent, foreign and studio movies and occasionally TV and theater stories. Born in East Orange, N.J., she received her master’s degree in film history and criticism at USC. She worked for 10 years at the L.A. Herald Examiner and came to work at The Times in January 1990. She left in 2016.
