Siren song: Taylor Swift pays tribute to 1920s 'It girl,' onetime Nevadan Clara Bow

LAS VEGAS — A song by pop megastar Taylor Swift has brought new attention to Clara Bow, a major Hollywood film siren in the 1920s who famously left Tinsel Town for southern Nevada to start a new life with with her cowboy actor husband, Rex Bell.

Swift’s “Clara Bow” released in February, focuses on the fleeting nature of fame for three generations of female performers — Bow, Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks from the 1970s and Swift herself today, according to Deirdre Clemente, associate director of the UNLV’s Reid Public History Institute.

In Bow’s case, the actress who appeared in more than 50 films, mostly during the Silent Era, was outspoken about her sexuality in the 1920s and 1930s and rebelled against her male Hollywood handlers while being revered as an icon by millions of women, Clemente said during an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“She had such an incredible impact on fashion and beauty culture at a pivotal point in American history, with the rise of consumerism and feminism,” Clemente said.

“Clara Bow has been the encapsulation of everything that happened then,” Clemente said. “And then she chose to leave to become a wife and mother in Nevada. She really did choose this on her own.”

Mark Hall-Patton, a local historian and retired former administrator for the Clark County Museum system, said that, thanks to Swift’s song, Bow “has come out of a certain level of obscurity that she doesn’t deserve.”

She had such an incredible impact on fashion and beauty culture at a pivotal point in American history, with the rise of consumerism and feminism.”

Deirdre Clemente, associate director of the UNLV’s Reid Public History Institute

Bow, pictured frequently in magazines and newspapers in the Roaring 20s, had her own sense of style and influenced American females in her choice of clothing — especially wearing pants and jodhpurs — as well as cosmetics and skin care products, and when people found out she had red hair, women all over the country used henna to color theirs red, Clemente said.

‘Not as sunshiny and rosy as people think’

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