In The Plastic Age (1925), Clara Bow played Cynthia Day, a spirited college student whose modern ways unsettle the more traditional world of a university campus. Directed by Wesley Ruggles, the film was one of the first to make Bow a genuine star, and it showed audiences a new kind of screen heroine: young, confident and unwilling to be merely decorative.
Cynthia is the centre of campus life, and Bow plays her with a lively, natural energy that suited the story’s Jazz Age setting. The film’s college scenes, its dances and its romantic complications all turn on her charm, and she carries them without seeming to try. It was a performance that spoke directly to young audiences of the mid-1920s.
The Plastic Age matters in Bow’s story because it was a breakthrough. After it, she was no longer just a promising newcomer; she was a name that could draw audiences, on the way to It and Wings.