USA 1927 | Director: Clarence Badger | Script: Hope Loring, Louis D. Lighton, Elinor Glyn | Camera: H. Kinley Martin | Editor: E. Lloyd Sheldon | Cast: Clara Bow, Antonio Moreno, William Austin, Jaqueline Gadsdon, Gary Cooper, Priscilla Gordon, Elinor Glyn | Production: Elinor Glyn, Clarence Badger, Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, Paramount Pictures Corp. | b/w | 35mm | 72 min | silent | amer. INT | Courtesy of Photoplay Productions © 2002 Photoplay Productions

Elinor Glyn had read Rudyard Kipling. The author who would later write "The Jungle Book" had published a short story in 1904 in which his protagonists rave about a widow who is not merely beautiful and not simply unforgettable. "Mrs Bathurst" was simply "It." Big I, little T.

Elinor Glyn, a pioneer of kitschy, erotic women's novels and a film scenario writer, transferred this "certain something" to a new world. The Roaring Twenties belonged to Hollywood. American women had fought for their right to vote, for jobs, and for knee-length skirts, and they went to movie palaces once a week. IT premiered on 15 February 1927 in the US. Plot provider Mrs Glyn couldn't resist playing herself in the movie, proclaiming the saucy shop girl Betty Lou, played by Clara Bow, to be the "It girl" of the screen. She claimed the girl had "inner magic" that attracted women as well as men; that she embodied sex appeal and innocence, mysteriousness and a happy-go-lucky nature. "She's just got It, that's all!"

The enterprising author demanded $50,000 for her IT concept. Clara Bow had been paid about the same amount for her previous seven films. And Clara Bow was not just anybody in the Roaring Twenties: F. Scott Fitzgerald thought she was "the real thing, someone to stir every pulse in the nation". For she was the ultimate flapper, self-determined and well-styled, cheeks rouged, red hair bobbed, who enjoyed her free time and her freedom. In 1927, 22-year-old Clara Bow was the first sex symbod and Hollywood's biggest star. Prior to starring in IT – believe it or not – she had already been in 35 movies. Yet this one finally made her into an icon, and she received 35,000 fan letters per month, often addressed only to "The It Girl, Hollywood, USA." (Kirsten Böttcher, Bayrischer Rundfunk)