She is making headlines again for two reasons: A lost silent film of hers was recently discovered at the bottom of a box of movies that sold for $20 at an auction in Nebraska. It will be shown at a film festival next week.

Also, pop star Taylor Swift announced at the Grammy Awards that she was releasing a new album. One of the tracks is named Clara Bow.

The lyrics of Swift’s song won’t be released until April 19, but fans are already drawing comparisons between Swift and Bow, the Brooklyn-born silent film actress, as both women found great fame at an early age and also have been the subject of tabloid rumor feasts over their romantic relationships.

Bow was the first on-screen actress to show that women could lead independent lives, said Bow biographer David Stenn.

“Her characters always had a career, and for a generation of women who had never seen anything like this before, it changed their lives,” Stenn said. “She felt real to people.”

Bow’s lost film was found in October by filmmaker Gary Huggins, who had no idea he’d purchased the silent movie when he picked up a box of old reels for $20 at an auction in Nebraska.

After he got home, he sat down to watch one of the black-and-white silent movie reels when he saw a familiar face.

The woman featured in the 12-minute master print of “The Pill Pounder” had dark curly hair and a cupid’s bow mouth, and she was wearing a cloche-style hat.

Huggins immediately recognized Bow.

“The Pill Pounder” from 1923 features Bow when she was a teenager and not yet famous, in a small role as the girlfriend of an annoying pharmacy customer.

The obscure clip found by Huggins is slated to premiere at the 27th annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival on April 11 with another Bow movie, “Dancing Mothers.”

“It’s going to be surreal watching a film whose survival was unknown just six months ago,” said Huggins, 56. “It’s such a charming little comedy that I hope audiences everywhere will get a chance to see it.”

When Huggins watched “The Pill Pounder” on his home projector in Kansas City last year, he said he didn’t realize its significance. He ended up with the film print only because he had to buy an entire bin of 20 old reels to get a cartoon he’d spotted at the top of the stack.

Huggins said he had driven to Omaha on a hunch he might find a few old films he could resell to pay for a trip to Japan this spring for a showing of his own film, “Kick Me.”

An Omaha auction house was clearing out a bunch of old items acquired by a defunct local film distributor, and Huggins thought $20 was a bargain for a box of mystery reels.

“It was a horribly hot day, with the sun beating down on the parking lot where thousands of reels were being sold,” he said. “By sheer chance, the can at the bottom of my stack turned out to contain ‘The Pill Pounder.’”

Huggins had never heard of the film, and he said he couldn’t find anything about it online.

“It took me a few weeks to realize what I’d found,” he said. “I began to suspect that it might be a lost film.” Omaha’s 6 News first reported about his rare discovery last month.

One of Huggins’ friends mentioned the find to David Stenn, a writer and producer from New York City who wrote a book about the legendary silent film star, “Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild.”

“I asked Gary to send me a quick film grab — a magnification of one of the frames — and my eyes bulged,” said Stenn. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: 17-year-old Clara Bow, still unknown in her third film, shot in a small studio in Queens.”

“I had always thought ‘The Pill Pounder’ was a lost film,” he said. “Of all the old stories I’ve discovered, this one is the most miraculous. For it to show up in such perfect condition is unheard of.”

Stenn bought the short film from Huggins for an undisclosed price and paid to have it restored so it could be shown on the big screen, 101 years after its original premiere. Stenn is now on the hunt for eight minutes of the movie that were apparently cut from the print Huggins found.

“The original would have been 20 minutes, so we have a little more than half,” Stenn said. “I’ve been calling everyone I can think of to see if someone might have bought the rest of it at the auction in Omaha.”

Even without those eight minutes, the film reveals why Clara Bow would soon become the most famous female star of her day in Hollywood, he said.

“She was the first American sex symbol,” Stenn said. “Women wanted to be her, and men wanted to be with her. She had a warmth and vulnerability that was appealing to everyone.”

At the height of Bow’s fame, the U.S. population was 119 million, and about 80 million movie tickets were sold every week, he said, noting that Bow made 57 films.

“About a dozen of those were talking pictures, after sound came in,” Stenn said, referring to the first movie to incorporate synchronized sound in 1927.

“Clara Bow had a nervous stammer and a Brooklyn accent, so she was nervous about it,” he said. “Suddenly, she felt inferior and insecure, and the experience of working was very different.”

Bow grew up poor with a mother who suffered from mental illness. Her big break came when she was 16 and won a movie magazine’s “fame and fortune” contest in 1921. By 1928 and 1929, she was the No. 1 box office star, Stenn said, but her acting career ended in 1931 after she had an emotional breakdown. Bow was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and lived in Los Angeles until her death from a heart attack in 1965 at age 60.

About a third of Bow’s films are now gone, Stenn said. The Library of Congress estimates that about 70 percent of all silent films have been lost due to time, improper storage and the flammable chemicals used to make them.

“Now we have a wonderful opportunity to see Clara Bow in ‘The Pill Pounder’ on the big screen,” Stenn said. “She’s a genius on the level of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and nobody who is breathing right now would have seen this film before.”

Huggins said he is excited for opening night in San Francisco.

“For me, the most thrilling part of both filmmaking and digging up forgotten films is that moment of first contact, when the audience confronts something totally new,” he said. “To be a very small part of it, and add even just a footnote to the history of silent film, is a dream come true.”