Histria Books is pleased to announce the release of Clara Bow: My Story by Clara Bow. This memoir is published by Histria A&E, the imprint dedicated to outstanding works in arts and entertainment. It is offered as a special deluxe hardcover companion volume to Elinor Glyn’s IT, the inaugural volume of our new Forgotten Classics series.
Clara Bow wasn’t supposed to survive, let alone reinvent Hollywood. In this long-lost memoir, published in a serialized version in Photoplay at the height of her fame and now collected in book form for the first time, the original “It Girl” finally gets to speak for herself.
On the page, Bow is nothing like the studio press releases. She’s sharp, furious, very funny, and heartbreakingly clear‑eyed about what it meant to rocket from a Brooklyn tenement to It, Wings, and the front lines of the Jazz Age. She writes about the studio bosses who tried to package her, the gossip that hunted her, the lovers and friendships that didn’t fit the script, and the private damage behind that fearless grin.
Complete with her full “My Life Story,” a later piece on motherhood, and a comprehensive, annotated filmography, this is not nostalgia. It’s the raw, inside account of the star who invented modern screen charisma, and the brutal system that almost destroyed her.
Clara Bow (1905–1965) was the incandescent star of late silent cinema and the woman who defined the Jazz Age on screen. Raised in Brooklyn poverty, she rocketed from a talent contest win to become Hollywood’s highest‑paid actress and the face of It, Wings, and the flapper era itself. Her instinctive, emotionally direct style helped invent modern screen acting, even as she battled trauma, studio control, and tabloid scandal behind the scenes. In My Life Story written at the peak of her fame, she did what almost no star of her time dared: she took back her story and told it herself.
