ponderous is the head that endure the " It Girl " tiara .
History has no famine of young women who burst onto the scene , beguile interview and artists likewise with their vim and vigour , only to collapse just as suddenly under the pressures of their newfound renown . From passing public and scandalous affairs to drug addiction to homelessness , It Girls through the age have been there , done that — and few have lived to enjoin the fib .
The Original “It Girl”
Hulton Archive / Stringer
The " It Girl" title was born with mum film champion Clara Bow . Bow , who exudate a glamorous air of scarce - conceal sexual voracity , became one of film ’s first gender symbol after being discovered while still in her teen , originate up in Coney Island . Bow ’s breakout role was in a plastic film unsurprisingly calledIt . Not , of course of study , the one about the shivery clown , but a 1926 silent film based generally on a provocative novella by present-day tastemaker Elinor Glyn . Just to clinch the title for their very bankable new star , Bow ’s studio apartment pay Glyn $ 50,000 to declare publicly that Clara Bow hadIt .
Bow ’s celebrity grew exponentially afterIt , and after Bow vehicle be given to deposit to a prescribed formula : Insert Bow into some plot about a poor girl trying to make her way in the reality and let her take off as much clothing as censors would let .
As Bow became the first literal sex symbol of silent motion picture , grandiloquent tales of her supposed intimate appetite outside of her moving-picture show piled up . The fledgling celebrity media followed with strict attention Bow ’s real extracurricular activities , which included public affairs with go man and a string of engagements . More salacious rumors churned around Bow , claiming she had a threesome with two Mexican prostitutes , bedded the entire start lineup of the 1927 USC Trojans football squad , and know both her Great Dane and pet koala bear on highly inner terms . And you call up TMZ was bad …
In Hollywood , Bow came to be deal as a sort of outcast — a unsportsmanlike - joke - telling , hard - drinking outsider with a duncical Brooklyn accent — but to the public following her exploits in the document , she was fascinating .
In truth , Bow ’s personal life , which began with a sour and unmanageable puerility , was unraveling quickly . She had been sexually misuse as a teenager by the father who later lived off and waste her earnings in Hollywood , and when she was a untried missy , her schizophrenic and sometime prostitute female parent had test to slit her throat . by and by , Bow found herself feel betrayed by friends and family likewise , from the full acquaintance who married her father to debar transportation to the cousin who lived with her and on a regular basis stole money from her . Under intense var. , Bow suffered a severe nervous breakdown in 1931 , causing her studio , Paramount , to fire her .
Out of the spotlight , Bow marry and had two youngster before beginning to expose house of genial illness . She became take back and develop severe depression and hypochondria . She try suicide in 1944 and checked into The Institute of Living , a residential psychiatric quickness in Hartford , Connecticut , in 1949 , where she underwent electro - electrical shock therapy and was diagnose with schizophrenia .
" A sex symbol is a sonorous load to carry when one is tired , hurt and bewildered,“ Bow wrote once , near the end of her living . She decease a solitary in 1965 , 32 yr after her last film appearance .
The Not-So-Lucky In Love Blonde Bombshell
Platinum blonde Jean Harlow come through Clara Bow as the atomic number 47 screen ’s intimate It ( and i d ) Girl .
endure in 1911 , Harlow run away her weird and controlling female parent , known as Mother Jean , by getting catch at age 16 and moving to Beverly Hills , only to feel that Mother Jean ’s own lifelong ambition to become an actress had followed her . Her female parent pressured her into finding work as an spear carrier in cinema and , soon after , Harlow starred in the peculiarly namedWhy Is a Plumber?Not long after , Harlow was discovered by producer and consummate weirdo Howard Hughes , who cast her in his filmHell ’s Angels . The purpose catapulted Harlow into the sex symbol stratosphere .
As befitting a sex symbol , particularly one scarce 19 years old , Harlow hit through a well - publicized series of married man , occasion , and unknown tragedies . Her second husband ( there were three in total ) , manufacturer and conductor Paul Bern , was found naked and idle in the lav of their Hollywood home plate in 1932 . A medical examiner ’s inquiry determined that he had shot himself in the head . At first , Harlow was widely mistrust of being responsible for or at least connected to his death . But , in the hopes of sidestepping what would sure be a scandal , MGM , Harlow ’s studio , spread the all unscandalous history that he had belt down himself because he was impotent .
In 1937 and at only 26 years old , Harlow died from nephritic failure after the onslaught of severe kidney disease . She was buried in the peignoir she ’d wear in the last pic she made , Saratoga .
The Ultimate Blonde Bombshell
Baron / Stringer
Before she pall , Clara Bow write to several chit-chat columnist to bequeath her It Girl crown to perhaps the best - know blond bombshell , Marilyn Monroe . conduct Norma Jeane Mortenson and christened Norma Jeane Baker , Monroe ’s childhood was first spent with her mentally inauspicious mother . After her female parent was commit , Monroe develop up in foster care and country homes , before marrying out of the organisation at age 16 .
While her untested husband was off serving as a Merchant Marine in World War II , Monroe get hold work as a modeling . That direct to a contract with a major studio , which led to a name change — Norma Jeane became Marilyn — and a divorcement from her first hubby , but no tangible film work . pocket-sized parts in sound and bad plastic film alike made her a recognizable face , but her real acclivity into stardom came with her 1953 office inNiagara . Monroe ’s now - classic film accompany : Gentlemen Prefer blonde , How to conjoin a Millionaire , The Seven - Year Itch .
Throughout , Monroe ’s personal life-time mirrored Bow ’s : She was often taken vantage of by those close to her , developed a series of high profile romances ( Joe DiMaggio , Arthur Miller ) , and developed a dependence on intoxicant and prescription drug . In addition , Monroe was rumored to be imply with the Cosa Nostra as well as the Kennedy family . By 1960 , Monroe was also no longer exclusively bankable as an actress — her last two finish cinema , allow ’s Make LoveandThe Misfits , were failures , and she was throw away from what would have been her final film , Something ’s Got ta Give , in 1962 after missing too many twenty-four hours of filming .
Not long after that , at the geezerhood of 36 , Monroe exit at dwelling house in her Los Angeles cottage , an empty bottle of log Z’s pills launch next to her consistence . While rumor circulate — and continue to circulate — that she was hit , the official opinion was of an overdose .
The Factory Girl
As Warhol ’s muse du jour , Sedgwick also look in a number of his films , includingRestaurant , Kitchen , andPoor Little Rich Girl . The latter seemed to be an avant garde interpretation of Sedgwick ’s own living — in it , a sometimes out - of - focus Sedgwick wanders around her apartment and lecture about how she spent her hereditary pattern . Sedgwick was an actual heiress — she came from good Northeastern stock ( her great - grandpa was the Rev. Endicott Peabody , founder of the Groton School ) , was raise in California , and grew up take care private school . At the age of 21 , she had move to New York to become an actress and a model .
But her success did n’t last long . Warhol , who had a habit of make " superstars" out of attractive immature women and then replacing them after a little while , soon drop Sedgwick . By that time , her liveliness was unravel at the edges — drugs , eating disorder , and self - destructive relationship propelled her through stays in psychiatric cellblock and hospitals and to her eventual death . Sedgwick died of an overdose—“acute barbitual intoxication,“ the Santa Barbara Coroner ’s Office declared — at 28 years of age .
Interestingly , Edie Sedgwick ’s full cousin is Kyra Sedgwick , who is married to Kevin Bacon , thereby proving that the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is indeed evangel .
The Rolling Stones' Muse
Stephan C Archetti/ Stringer
Marianne Faithfull was still in school day — a convent , actually — when she met the Rolling Stones ' manager Andrew Loog Oldham at a company in 1964 . Faithfull was an draw a bead on Isaac M. Singer - songwriter with genuine natural endowment , and with Oldham ’s assistant , as well as a little from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards , her first hit , " As snag Go By,“ made a tidy exhibit on both the American and British charts . Of naturally , at the fourth dimension , Oldham , Jagger and possibly even Richards seemed a bit more interested in Faithfull ’s 17 - class - sometime knocker than her medicine — accord to one story , Jagger really poured a glass of Champagne-Ardenne between them to get the girl ’s attention .
But while her career seemed to have a bright trajectory , tale of sex and drug began to dominate those of rock candy ' n ' roll . Though she marry in 1965 and had a child about six month after that , she quickly returned to the London sway , kinsfolk , and drug scene , overlook her son off with her mother in a bit of very extended daycare . By 1966 , she was divorced and Jagger ’s fulltime lady — think that well-nigh everything she did ended up in the papers . She made newspaper headline in 1967 , for model , when Richards ' London base was bust by the cops during a dark of partying . Faithfull was found stark naked under a fur , which she conveniently have fall as soon as the bull split in . Both Jagger and Richards were arrested , but the verdict was later rescind , reinforcing the gang ’s sensory faculty of indomitability .
Time passed , more drug were consumed , and Faithfull became pregnant with Jagger ’s child . When she had a stillbirth — one day before Yoko Ono , hold John Lennon ’s baby , also fail — both she and Jagger were destroyed . She start using drugs with a vengeance . Before , it had been recreational , but now it was personal . The summer of 1969 , Faithfull swallowed a bottle full of barbiturates in a self-annihilation attempt that left her in a coma for six day .
Their relationship staggered on for another class or so , and Faithfull did too , salute , throwing herself wholeheartedly into the pursuit of a mystify drug addiction : From pass by out face - first into bowl of soup at the homes of English gentry to arrests for drunken and disorderly conduct at Amerindic eating place , Faithfull was in rough shape . Bouts of homelessness and hospital care ruled the better part of the ' seventy for her , until her transcendent 1979 toughie - inspired record album , Broken English , seemed to put her back on the map .
Still , it took the dependable part of another X before Faithfull could kick her drug habit for dear . Faithfull has really managed to reclaim from the swinging sixty ( and seventies and eighties , really ) , although her career has n’t exactly strike the same heights of notoriety as it did when she was political party - hopping with Mick Jagger . As the surviving matriarch of the ' 60s sway - drug - sept view , Faithfull continues to make musical genre - press music as well as routine , in picture show likeMarie Antoinetteand Gus Van Sant’sParis , I love you .
