Backgound* (for Background*)

Clara Bow was so ineffably, unutterably sexy, she was permanently dubbed "The It Girl" after starring in a 1927 silent movie entitled (wait for it...) It. It's own charms had long proved elusive as well until this "forgotten" film was eventually rediscovered in Prague during the 1960s. Bow's almost frighteningly carnal appeal culminated in a "sex scandal" of football-team-sized proportions; the fact that it wasn't actually true scarcely seemed to matter. As a result, writes Wikipedia, a "tabloid called The Coast Reporter published lurid allegations about her in 1931, accusing her of exhibitionism, incest, lesbianism, bestiality, drug addiction, and having contracted venereal disease." (Well, I guess that pretty much covers It!) The publisher then attempted to blackmail Bow, promising to cut it out for a mere $25,000, which happily led to his arrest and an eight-year prison sentence. Adding to this sort of sexual harassment, Clara Bow had also had a difficult and painful background and struggled with mental health issues all of her life. In any event, she knew how to rock a backless gown, a flaming red bob, and a boatload of talent. Clearly her fans loved her, even if they didn't always know quite how to take her. Having blogged about Backround*once here already, we decided to go with the correspondingly off-by-one Backgound* today instead. This typo turned up 31 times in OhioLINK, and 725 times in WorldCat.

(Clara Bow, half-length portrait, standing, facing right, in backless costume, ca. 1922-1935, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Girl* + Gril (for Girl, etc.)

Personal computers had not yet been invented in the 1920s, but telephones had been, and Brooklyn-born Clara Bow was the recipient of a great many calls and letters: she was the notorious IT Girl of her day. Based on a Cosmopolitan story by Elinor Glyn in 1927, "It" was a bit more nuanced than you might think, being "that strange magnetism which attracts both sexes ... a purely virile quality ... belonging to a strong character ... full of self-confidence ... indifferent to the effect ... uninfluenced by others." "Beauty is unnecessary," continues Glyn. "Conceit or self-consciousness," however, "destroys 'It' immediately." Despite an impoverished and difficult childhood and a youthful career filled with exploitation and ridiculous innuendo, Clara proved to be both tough and rebellious; she had what "It" took to survive. There were five cases of today's compound typo in OhioLINK and 36 in WorldCat.

(Picture of Clara Bow at age 16, taken after she won a movie magazine contest in 1921, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

Calss* (for Class* or Calls*)

The British Board of Film Classification (known before 1985 as the British Board of Film Censors) was founded on January 1, 1913. Much like the Motion Picture Production Code in Hollywood (established in 1930 and "strictly enforced" as of 1934), the BBFC was deemed necessary by the industry in order to avoid actual censorship by the government. One movie thereby made verboten in England was the seasonally (if apparently not socially) appropriate Red Hot Mamma starring Betty Boop. Wikipedia describes the plot perfectly, so I shall simply quote their summary here: "It's a snowy winter's night, and a shivering Betty is trying to sleep. Shutting all the windows isn't enough, so she lights a roaring fire in the fireplace and falls asleep on the hearthplace rug. The heat of the flames soon turns two roosting chickens into roasted chickens, and causes Betty to dream that her fireplace has become the gate to Hell itself. Betty explores the underworld, and sings 'Hell's Bells' for Satan and his minions. When Satan tries to put the moves on Betty, she fixes him with a (literally) icy stare, freezing him and all of Hell. When she falls through a hole and onto an icy surface below, Betty wakes up to find the fire out with the windows open and her bed frozen, and she goes to bed, this time under a pile of warm quilts." The cold-hearted censors banned this charming cartoon for depicting the underworld in a facetious and "blasphemous" manner. Six different actresses played Betty during the 1930s; the last of these, Bonnie Poe, was the voice of "Red Hot Mamma." Originally conceived as an "anthropomorphic French poodle" in Dizzy Dishes), Betty Boop is often thought to have been based on Clara Bow, though she was actually a caricature of the singer Helen Kane. Her signature look was once described in a 1934 court case as one combining "the childish with the sophisticated—a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable." I made a self-confident little bust myself today when I picked up eighteen cases of Calss* (for class*) in OhioLINK, and (Boop-oop-a-doop!) a whopping 1,077 in WorldCat. Which classifies our little typo here as one of "high probability" on the Ballard list.

(Betty Boop patent figure, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid