Clara Bow

Legendary silent film star Clara Bow was so seductive that her on-screen sex appeal didn’t even require her to speak. And though we know better than to judge a woman based on appearances only, guys in Bow’s era didn’t have much of a choice. Appearing in dozens of silent standards like Mantrap, Wings, and Dancing Mothers—which now sound like foreign films—Bow epitomized the flapper woman of the 1920s: Short hair, shorter skirt, lavish lingerie, and plenty of bare skin. She’s still America’s first, and finest sex symbol, impossible to forget thanks to her enduring body—of work, that is.