No Limit (1931)

For Clara Bow the transition from silent movies to talkies was an uneasy period to say the least. By 1933 she had decided to call it a day. Countless explanations have been offered for this premature end to a glittering career, from chronic weight problems to nervousness in front of the microphone to mental illness. In fact her career fadeout had a great deal to do with the sound films she was offered. No Limit is a movie that could kill any star’s career.

Bow plays Helen O’Day (known to all as Bunny), a theatre usherette who is asked by a casual acquaintance to look after after his apartment while he’s at sea working in the merchant marine. Much to Bunny’s surprise the apartment turns out to be more like a palace than an apartment. There’s an even bigger surprise in store for her - the apartment is simply a front for a very high-stakes illegal gambling club. Bunny soon finds herself with a great deal of money but of course there are complications. For one thing, her handsome new boyfriend  Doug Thayer (Norman Foster) is really a gangster.



The basic setup could have provided the basis for a breezy romantic comedy but No Limit suffers from a problem that afflicts so many movies of the pre-code era - no-one involved in the project seemed to have the least idea what kind of picture they were trying to make. The movie shuttles back and forth between its romantic comedy plot and its gangster subplot. The sudden changes in mood occur without explanation and without any discernible reason. The problem is made considerably worse by lengthy and totally irrelevant comic relief interludes.

Even worse, the comedy parts of the movie are sadly lacking in laughs while the dramatic sections are equally lacking in drama. It gives the impression of several bad movies spliced together quite randomly.

The only member of the cast with any noticeable comedic skills is Bow herself. In fact she’s the only member of the cast with any acting ability of any variety. Had the movie remained focused on her it might have been bearable but the focus keeps shifting away from her.



Bow gives her rôle everything she’s got but given that her talents lay mostly in the area of comedy she’s far too often left high and dry by the overwhelming dullness of the script. She manages to make Bunny likeable enough but it’s not enough to keep an audience interested.

Director Frank Tuttle’s approach is competent but pedestrian and the pacing is far too slow. The 72-minute running time seems like an eternity.

The art deco sets are fabulous but they are really the only high points in the movie.



Like most of Bow’s talkies No Limit has never been given a decent DVD release. Perhaps that’s understandable in this case in view of the movie’s complete lack of  appeal.

Apart from the occasional mildly risque line there’s not much to distinguish this film as an example of pre-code cinema.

Clara Bow completists might be able to endure this movie but anyone else would be well advised to give it a big miss.

Love Among the Millionaires (1930)

Love Among the Millionaires is one of Clara Bow’s early talkies. For years the legend has persisted that Bow was unable to make the  transition to sound pictures. This movie clearly demonstrates that that was not the case.

There is no problem at all with Bow’s voice. She certainly suffered from nerves at first but she overcame the problem. It’s just that Paramount lacked confidence in her as a sound star and the material they offered her was of decidedly mixed quality.

Love Among the Millionaires is a musical comedy romance. Pepper Whipple (Bow) works at a cafe run by her father, a cafe frequented by railroad men, two of whom hope to marry her. Clicker Watson and Boots McGee have been locked in a friendly rivalry for her affections for quite some time but both find themselves out of the running when brakeman Jerry Hamilton arrives on the scene. It is love at first sight for both Jerry and Pepper.



What Pepper doesn’t know is that Jerry is no humble brakeman - he’s the son of the owner of the railroad. His father has put him into overalls to learn the business from the inside.

Jerry’s rich parents are not at all enthusiastic about the idea of his marrying a waitress, and Pepper’s father has a long-standing grudge against the railroad owner. True love will be facing an uphill battle in this story.



The plot is strictly routine, and Stanley Smith is an unexciting although adequate leading man. There’s some reasonably capable comic relief from Richard Gallager and Stuart Erwin as Clicker and Boots, and from Charles Sellon as Pepper’s father. Child vaudeville star Mitzi Green does her best to steal every scene she’s in.

Everything really hinges on the quality of Bow’s performance and on her undoubted screen charisma. Bow proves equal to the task.



The songs are less than memorable. Bow as a singer was capable enough but it’s easy to see why this was her only musical. She’s more comfortable with the comedy side of things than with the musical numbers.

Love Among the Millionaires is unusual among musicals of that era (when the backstage Broadway musical reigned supreme) in that the songs are integrated into the story, and fairly successfully so.



Frank Tuttle was a reliable journeyman director who did some good movies and it’s difficult to fault the job he does here.

Like all of Clara Bow’s talkies this one is difficult to find, and just about impossible to find in any kind of decent condition.

Love Among the Millionaires did little for Clara Bow’s career which was looking rather shaky at the time but it’s a reasonably entertaining if unassuming little picture and Bow’s performance is sufficient reason to make it worth a look.

It (1927)

Clara Bow is the girl with “It” in the 1927 movie It. “It” is that quality that makes the opposite sex go weak at the knees, and there’s no doubt that Clara Bow has lots and lots of it.

The plot is standard romantic comedy fare, but the movie has some interesting features. Bow’s character, Betty, doesn’t conform to either of the stereotypes that you’d expect in this type of movie. She’s not the sweet naïve girl who gets her man through sheer niceness, but nor is she the scheming gold digger who eventually realises that all she really wants is marriage and True Love. Right from the start it’s obvious that Betty wants a lot more. She’s very much the New Woman, a phenomenon much talked about in the 20s. She wants money certainly, and she wants love. She also wants fun, and very clearly she wants sex. When she first sets eyes on her handsome new boss, she practically drools.

Bow does a wonderful job of conveying a healthy and very enthusiastic sexuality. Betty is definitely out to get this man for herself, but she relies mostly on her own considerable charms rather than on manipulation.

An even more interesting, and pleasing, feature is that the two main male characters (the only significant male characters in the movie) are not especially threatened by the New Woman. They’re not particularly concerned with trying to “tame” her. They seem to find her refreshing, exciting and (even more pleasing) worthy of respect. It’s also interesting that being a single mother is presented as something that can involve great difficulties for a woman, but it’s certainly not presented as something shameful. This is a very modern movie in many ways.

The acting is a bit of a mixed bag. William Austin as her boss’s best friend is somewhat annoying, with the exaggerated acting style that gives silent movies a bad reputation in the eyes of many people (although in fact most silent movie acting isn’t like that at all). On the other hand his character, Monty, is likeable enough. Antonio Moreno as Betty’s boss, Cyrus, gives a much more naturalistic and much more satisfactory performance. Clara Bow is simply fantastic. So much energy, so much charisma. The old cliché about an actress lighting up the screen is no cliché in his case, it’s plain fact. She’s incandescent.

It is thoroughly entertaining, a charming and likeable romantic comedy and a fascinating view of the age of the flapper. The Kino DVD includes an excellent documentary on the career of Clara Bow.

Call Her Savage (1932)

Few Hollywood pre-code movies can match the notoriety of Call Her Savage, Clara Bow’s next-to-last motion picture. It included just about everything that could possibly arouse the wrath of moral crusaders in 1932 – fornication, adultery, homosexuality, inter-racial sex, prostitution, venereal disease, whipping, male escorts and attempted rape.

Clara Bow is Nasa Springer, the very wild daughter of a Texan railroad baron. Her temper has earned her the nickname Dynamite Springer. When her father tries to marry her off to a nice respectable young man she finds the most dissolute man in town and marries him instead. After a series of adventures and misadventures she finally discovers the secret of her wildness, her deep dark shameful secret.

Bow is superb – very wild, and very sexy. She’s very sexy by 1932 standards, and she’s very sexy by today’s standards. She simply oozes sex. She gets to do both comedy and some moments of serious acting in this one, and handles both with ease. The movie, rather typically for a pre-code film, stomps all over the moral codes of the day while both celebrating and condemning its own moral transgressions.

While the explanation for Nasa’s scandalous behaviour is something modern audiences with find outrageous and somewhat grotesque the movie doesn’t actually paint her as a villainess. Even in the very overheated sequence where she appears to pay in very conventional melodramatic terms for one of her sins the film’s sympathy very clearly remains with her, and her actions are shown as being not merely defensible but even noble and courageous. Monroe Owsley is delightfully debauched as Nasa’s husband Laurence, Thelma Todd is entertainingly bitchy as Nasa’s husband’s girlfriend, but Clara Bow dominates the film from beginning to end.

This is a bizarre but marvellously entertaining little film.

The Saturday Night Kid (1929)

The Saturday Night Kid was one of Clara Bow’s first talkies, a breezy and slightly naughty little romantic comedy released in 1929.

Her talkies are mostly very difficult to get hold of, which has encouraged the old legend that she was unable to make the transition from silent films to talking pictures. She did have problems at first, but no-one who has seen the brilliant Call Her Savage could doubt that she did eventually adapt extremely well to the new form. And in The Saturday Night Kid there are no apparent problems at all with her performance.

Clara Bow plays Mayme, who works in a department store with her sister Janie (Jean Arthur). Mayme is sweet on Bill, newly promoted to floor-walker, but Janie has her eye on him as well. Mayme is a bit wild but she always looks out for her sister; sadly the same cannot be said of Janie. Janie will stop at nothing to steal Mayme’s man, and she also gambles and steals money from the store’s benevolent fund. And then places the blame on Mayme!

The plot is fairly thin, but with Clara Bow and Jean Arthur both in sparkling form it doesn’t matter at all. They’re helped by some snappy (and on occasions incredibly risque) dialogue. Edna May Oliver has fun as the girls’ supervisor, the terrifying Miss Streeter.

The scene with all the employees attending the morning inspirational meeting at the department store is an outrageous highlight. The movie is fast, amusing and a little bit wicked, and it’s great fun. Jean Arthur is superb, but as good as she is she’s still overshadowed by the great Clara Bow. Bow is very sexy, totally adorable, funny and in complete control. Look out for Jean Harlow in a bit part.

Dangerous Curves (1929)

Let’s face it, if you’ve seen one circus movie, you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all, and Dangerous Curves is your basic stock-standard circus movie. It does have one big thing going for it, though, and that’s Clara Bow. And that’s enough. She’s Pat Delaney, daughter of a famous high-wire performer, and in love with the circus’s headliner, Larry Lee, also a high-wire artist. Trouble is, Larry’s in love with his current partner, Zara, and he doesn’t even notice poor Pat. And Zara is a no-good dame who’s two-timing him, and she’s bringing him to the brink of ruin. Will he realise in time that Pat is really the girl for him?

This 1929 comedy/romance (one of Bow’s first talkies) is about as corny as a movie can get, but it’s very corniness somehow pulls it through. If it had been a bit less corny, it wouldn’t have worked. And Clara Bow is sensational, as always. It’s a pity Paramount couldn’t have found her slightly better material, bit if you’re a fan this one is still worth seeing.