Bow was originally billed as the "Brooklyn Bonfire," then as the "Hottest Jazz Baby in Films," but in 1927 she became, and would forevermore remain, the "It Girl." "It" was first a two-part article and then a novel by a flame-haired English novelist named Elinor Glyn, who was known for writing juicy romances in which the main characters did a lot of undulating {"she undulated round and all over him, twined about him like a serpent"} and for being the mistress for some years of Lord Curzon, former viceroy of India. "It," as Glyn explained, "is that quality possessed by some few persons which draws all others with its magnetic life force. With it you win all men if you are a woman-and all women if you are a man." Asked by a reporter to name some notable possessors of "It," Glyn cited Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, and Rex the Wonder Horse. Later she extended the list to include the doorman at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It the novel was a story in which the two principal characters-Ava and Larry, both dripping with "It"-look at each other with "burning eyes" and "a fierce gleam" before getting together to "vibrate with passion." As Dorothy Parker summed up the book in The New Yorker, "It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam-launches.
( Bill Bryson )
[ One Summer: America, 1927 ]
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