The original IT girl

About ten years ago they had a retrospective on the late great Clara Bow at Film Forum in NYC and I went to see almost every film of hers that they showed with my friend Chris Beneke, who more often than not would pull a raw cabbage or bunch of carrots out of his backpack and start crunching them right there in the theater (these he had grown in his garden in Red Hook, he was a rare back-to-earth-er Brooklynite) ... and we had ourselves a time.

Call Her Savage was the wildest, so raw and over the top, it's positively bizarre, but SO hilarious... If you've never seen a pre-code movie you have to go back and watch some, watch some of those Forbidden Hollywood classics, they are so much fun. They don't even make movies that risque THESE days. They were really pulling out all the stops, just seeing what they could get away with. My favorite is Babyface with Barbara Stanwyck. Best Dialogue EVER.

Anyway, I have always longed to watch Call Her Savage again. It's never been released, on video or dvd. For some reason tonight I was telling Jack that we had been planning on naming him Clara Bow if he had been a girl. It then occurred to me to check on Youtube for this lost film and YES!! They do have some clips from it. My favorite scene is her wrestling with the dog. It is just WRONG! This is definitely the film that was the straw that broke the camel's back, and the Legion for American Decency or whatever it was finally put their foot down.

So here you go, in all it's flagrant indecency! Call Her Savage... and I beg you, go watch some other Clara Bow too, she's just so CUTE and vivacious and funny, America's first jazz baby as they say...