Urban Myths
The book, Hollywood Babylon, spread the contemporary legend that Bow's friendship with members of the 1927 University of Southern California football team included group sex with the entire team. In the 1980s Morley Drury commented that his team was "too damn innocent" to be anything else.
During her lifetime, Bow was the subject of wild rumors regarding her sex life; most of them were untrue. A tabloid called The Coast Reporter published lurid allegations about her in 1931, accusing her of exhibitionism, incest, lesbianism, bestiality, drug addiction, alcoholism, and having contracted venereal disease. The publisher of the tabloid then tried to blackmail Bow, offering to cease printing the stories for $25,000, which led to his arrest by federal agents and, later, an eight-year prison sentence.
Read more about this topic: Clara Bow
Famous quotes containing the words urban and/or myths:
“A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and and not by a but.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a useful expedient.... They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.”
—Strabo (c. 58 B.C.–c. 24 A.D., Greek geographer. Geographia, bk. 1, sct. 2, subsct. 8.