Tinseltown days recalled

Press, 12 June 1987, Page 11

Tinseltown days recalled

By

ROBERT LOWE

NZPA staff correspondent ; Brisbane • “They don’t make ’em ; like they used to” is a common complaint of jmany a moviegoer who ’.has lived through the ■ golden age of Hollywood, and a New Zealander, Tui Bow, shares that senti..ment

- “Real motion pictures ‘have been dead for the last 30 years,” she.says. “Hollywood is now rub•bish.”

Mrs Bow can probably argue the case with greater authority than most. Stepmother of the silent era star, Clara Bow, she lived and worked in Hollywood during the 1920 s and 19305. The Hawera-born actress left New Zealand for the movie capital as a teenager in 1924. Her experiences in Tinseltown are included in a 130,000-word autobiographical manuscript entitled “The Mourning

After,” which is awaiting a publisher. Mrs Bow, now 80 and living in Brisbane, remembers her Hollywood years with nostalgia. She caught the show business bug from her mother, Frances Espagne, who caused a scandal in the family by running away to join a circus. In California, she married Robert Bow, and says she and Clara became “buddies”. “I .was 10,000 miles from home and her mother had died tragically,” she says. “She said, *1 need a mother and you need a daughter’.” During her 17 years in Hollywood, Mrs Bow worked for both Universal and Paramount studios. Her credits, which began with circus films, later included. “Never the Twain Shall Meet,” with Leslie Howard, and “Naughty Marietta,” with

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. “The height of real movies was in the silent era,” said Mrs Bow. “Films were raised to the level of an art form. There was a second golden era with M.G.M. in the 19305.” Mrs Bow left Hollywood in 1941 to see her mother in Australia. Because of the war and illness, she never made it back. Although she left New Zealand more than 60 years ago, she has continued to make the occasional visit, the last in 1981 to see relatives in Hamilton. “It is a darling little place,” she says of New Zealand. “But I felt claustrophobic there.” Mrs Bow still Continues in show business. She has been working on a script and can be seen in a guest role in the film “Frenchman’s Farm,” which is due for release in Australia.