Jean Harlow

In the1930s she was an original.  Some say Mae West came close and I say that's an insult to Harlow.  West was about as sexy as a bag of cement and she couldn't act her way out of a paper sack.  Unquestionably Harlow first became famous for her hair, an electric, very white, platinum blonde which enhanced her sexy demeanor.  She would in time become known as a good comedic actress.  


Of all the studios to hire such a personality, MGM was the most unlikely.  It was a studio that practically denied sex and a pastel glaze dripped over most of its productions.  Nonetheless, there she was at MGM not only rubbing elbows with Garbo, Powell, Loy, Gable, Shearer, Crawford, Tracy, Taylor and Stewart but she would work with most of them in her brief career.

Her screen persona was always a bit in conflict with the real Jean.  On the screen she was usually tough, frequently unreasonable and willful, with a harsh-sounding voice.  One got the impression she substituted textbooks for peroxide.  She would make six films with Clark Gable and it's not a stretch to understand why.  They were the male and female of the same wise-cracking type.  They spent 80-90 minutes trading barbs in every film... it's what the public expected and it's what they got.  Both gave as good as they got.  They made MGM a tidy sum throughout the 30s.

I was never particularly drawn to her in dramas.  Her look was as harsh as her voice which tended to grate on me after a half hour or so.  She had a knack for comedy... she could be wacky or as cool as a cucumber.  Comedy also brought out a softer side to her.  Had her career lasted longer, it is possible she would have gone on to greater heights, expanding her gifts.  She was hampered by the notion that she always thought she was rather second-rate.

What I could never deny is that she had a fame that many more skilled actresses would have killed for.  Her style and manner would one day be copied by Marilyn Monroe, who idolized Harlow (and Gable).   Of course, her fame has ebbed some today (although sadly a number of generations that came after mine seem to neglect their history... and certainly movie history) but she is by no means forgotten.  If ever any actor defined a decade, Harlow did so for the 1930s.

She was quite different in real life.  She did a bit of playing around but not as much as some of her contemporaries.  She always said her dream was to be a wife and a mother and have a happy home.  It's just that movies got in the way.  She was warm and friendly and generally approachable.  Her manner, in stark contrast to her generally brassy screen characters, was childlike.  In some ways, perhaps too childlike but it was how she was trained.

With that, it's time to introduce her mother. the woman who always treated her like a child and would always refer to her The Baby.  Mama suffocated The Baby who was always too powerless to stand up to her.  Their lives would always been dramatically intertwined.

The Baby with her formidable mama

Let's start with the fact that the only one who was truly Jean Harlow was Mama.  She was always called Mama Jean and her maiden name was Harlow.  Her only child, born in 1911 Kansas City, Missouri, was named Harlean Carpenter.  Mama was as typical a stage mother as Shirley Temple's mother or Ginger Rogers' mother would be and of course part of that meant they all wanted to be actresses themselves.  

Mama divorced Carpenter shortly after Jean's birth and headed out west and into the bowels of Hollywood.  The surroundings were low but the hopes were high.  Mama Jean just knew one of them was going to be a movie star.

Mama was always a tough cookie whose persona her platinum blonde daughter would emulate up on that silver screen.  In real life things were done the way Mama Jean wanted.  She would one day marry an opportunist but she pushed him around as well.  He performed the services he needed to perform and collected his allowance, much of which eventually came from his movie star stepdaughter.  Mama insisted upon it.

Christian Science was huge in Mama Jean's life and her reluctance to embrace the medical world posed problems for her daughter who was ill throughout most of her young years.  She contracted meningitis at age five and at 15 had a serious bout with scarlet fever.   Since nothing was materializing in the movie capital as they had hoped, mother and daughter pulled up stakes and headed for Chicago.

Jean quit school at 14 and worked here and there at odd jobs but had much free time with her mother and they became involved in so many shouting matches that at 16 Jean, trying to show some backbone, ran away from home and rather quickly married a wealthy 23-year old.  She kept squawking about wanting to be in the movies so they moved to Los Angeles.  This time she was determined she would succeed.

They were living the lives of young Beverly Hills socialites and rubbing up against so much money for the first time made Jean fiercely determined to see her Hollywood dreams come true.  She made the rounds of agents and casting directors but it was through accompanying a friend to 20th Century Fox that ignited her career.  She was noticed and told she should consider a career in the movies.  How funny.  That's just what she was thinking.

Soon she was divorced-- with Mama back in California to look after things-- and appearing in one flick after another, mostly walk-on roles.  She paid close attention to how Hollywood operated and she determined that she needed a look.  She and her favorite hairdresser came up with the platinum blonde look.  In those days it was a mix of peroxide, ammonia, Clorox and Lux flakes.  She shaved her eyebrows and then penciled on a thin line.  She began a blitz of news coverage that breathlessly detailed how she lived and included such earthy tidbits as she never wore undergarments but slept in the nude and iced her nipples before shooting a scene.

Well, let's get real... this kind of talk quickly attracted the attention of randy, independent producer, Howard Hughes, who just as quickly put her under contract.  The breakthrough role she was seeking came when he signed her for the war drama, Hell's Angels (1930).  She may have taken a back seat to the aerial hijinx but when she spoke the line would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable her future seemed guaranteed.

Hughes loaned Harlow to Warner Bros to appear as a moll in The Public Enemy (1931), a brutal look about war among gangsters.  Its plot points, dialogue and acting gave a new sheen to the gangster flick and of course WB was just the studio to get the job done.  It provided a whole new career for James Cagney... this is the film where he famously pushes a grapefruit into the face of his surprised girlfriend.  Harlow got uniformly negative reviews for her weak acting.

All that would change for her next one... the one that lifted her to Hollywood sex siren status... Platinum Blonde (1931).  It was originally to be called Gallagher (Loretta Young's character) but was changed to reflect on Harlow's hair color and the fact that her role was being rebuilt as production progressed .  It was the first time the expression, platinum blonde, was used, they say.  She plays a socialite whose life with her husband is less than perfect, chiefly due to another woman who loves her husband.  She was as good in this one as she was bad in Public Enemy and she knew it.  Everyone was talking about her. 

Harlow would find 1932 to be a year like none other, both professionally and personally.  Louis B. Mayer had been paying attention to her career and bought her contract from Hughes, who, frankly, wasn't paying much attention to her.  She was now an official MGM employee and in a very short time everyone loved her.  She was The Baby there as well, getting bossed around by those who saw her chiefly as a meal ticket.  She balked a little now and then but the truth is, she loved being a movie star and hoped she would become a good actress.

Her first role for the studio was in an unsympathetic part in The Beast of the City as a mobster's moll.  In these still pre-code days, it was amazing the things that came out of actors' mouths and Harlow could certainly sound like the baddest of bad girls.  She died her trademark platinum locks to red so she could play the title role in Red Headed Woman.  I suppose it was because of the presumed overt sexuality redheads were supposed to possess.  Harlow, of course, regardless of hair color, always put her sexuality right out there on the line.  Here she was a slut who pursues a married man.

Her big film of 1932 is clearly Red Dust.  It was her second pairing with Gable and if people had forgotten them for a time after their first film a year earlier, they would never forget them again after this one.  A rubber plantation owner falls for the wife of one of his employees while an old girlfriend circles them all, bringing plenty of her own lust.  It was all very hot and sticky with everyone fanning themselves in various states of undress.  Without any doubt it sent the Hollywood stuffed shirts into a Monday morning meeting to discuss how that censorship stuff was coming along.  Oddly Mary Astor plays the good girl role when she, in fact, was anything but that in her private life.  And here was Harlow, of course, playing her usual wayward woman and in real life she  usually spent her evenings curled up in her favorite chair with her favorite movie magazines or scripts.

If that wasn't always the case, then she was with a top-level exec at MGM, Paul Bern.  He had been a producer and director and was so well-liked around the studio that he got bumped up.  Harlow considered him one of the nicest people she worked with.  He watched out for The Baby at most every turn.  Their relationship didn't appear to be romantic to anyone.

Most of her friends and coworkers felt that Harlow was always looking for new ways to distance herself from her mother and stepfather (Bern said they were leeches) so that may be why she upped and married him in July, 1932.  A mere two months later, however, Bern was dead, a presumed suicide.  He left a note... Dearest dear, unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and wipe out my abject humiliation.  I love you.  Of course you know last night was only a comedy.

The headlines screamed, Harlow was sedated, Mama was nearby.  The general consensus was the poor chap wasn't a good match for the town's leading sex symbol. The following day a woman Bern had been dating before his marriage was found floating in the Sacramento River.  There was speculation that she took him out, concocted the phony note or brought forth an actual note that Bern had written her earlier in their relationship and then killed herself.  For those who found that improbable, there is always the nefarious goings-on at the studio, often arranged by head thug, Eddie Mannix (you may recall his story in the 2006 film, Hollywoodland).  Mannix and Bern didn't see eye-to-eye and the studio was worried about her marriage to Bern.

It was all very shady at the time and Harlow wanted to die from the unsavory things being bandied about.  Of course, there was Mama always efforting to right the ship.  In just about the same rushed manner that brought about her marriage to Bern, in 1933 she married her respected cinematographer on Red Dust, Hal Rosson, nearly 20 years her senior.  He was a nice guy but not for Harlow.  It's more likely she used him as a shield to ward off the demons. Whatever the reasons, the Harlow-Rosson union would only last eight months.

Arguably her most famous film is Dinner at Eight (1933), a picture of silky elegance, inspects the lives of some rich folks scheduled to attend a dinner party.  It has an episodic feel involving a large cast, the creme of MGM at the time, with so many bons mots that one can hardly keep up with them.  With that hair and her youth, Harlow certainly stands out as a rich, spoiled, lazy wife in a cast that includes such old-timers as Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery and John and Lionel Barrymore.

Also in 1933, she made Bombshell, a spoof on the life of former Hollywood It Girl, Clara Bow.  This was made at the tail-end of the pre-Code days and is quite the risque film with Harlow is sensational as the sexpot movie star.

By the time The Girl from Missouri (1934) was released the new Production Code was up and running Hollywood with decorum,  purity, lawfulness and righteousness.  The tale of a midwestern girl who heads for New York to locate and marry a millionaire while keeping her virtue in tack is pretty dated by today's standards but Harlow is luminescent in the role.

Missouri was the last of the five Harlow films in which Rosson was the cinematographer.  Shortly thereafter they were divorced.  And then something wonderful happened... William Powell put the moves on her.  They had known one another casually for a few years around the MGM lot but had not worked together or dated.  He was very attracted to her and soon they were heavily involved.  Everyone reported they'd never seen Harlow so happy and contented.  She herself said I've found him. I never thought this would happen to me.

Blissfully happy with William Powell

The two lovebirds filmed Reckless in 1935 about a musical-comedy queen loved by two men.  It starts out light and fluffy and morphs into a darker drama.  The public rushed to it so they could see them together and most everyone agreed they were a delightful team, playing off one another to perfection.  There was great hope that they might become a screen team, as he had with Myrna Loy and she had with Gable.  While her singing voice is dubbed, it is fun watching Harlow perform musical numbers.

China Seas (1935) had a most improbable plot (she's out to seize the ship of her sea captain boyfriend when he has eyes for a lady.  Harlow's character, of course, is anything but a lady and she's back to her coarse demeanor and barking voice.  The public flocked to see another Harlow-Gable film.

She once again enjoyed a productive year in 1936.  Suzy saw her signature hair color altered to a honey blonde as she plays another chorus girl, this time one who is stranded in Europe during WWI.  I didn't find much to recommend in it except the kick in seeing her perform opposite Cary Grant.  Then she made two of my three favorites of her films (Dinner at Eight being the third), Wife v.s. Secretary and Libeled Lady, both with Loy, but we'll discuss them in more detail later.

It was inevitable that Hollywood's #1 sexpot would make a film with MGM's most handsome star, Robert Taylor.  In Personal Property (1937) he plays a man who falls for his employer, a wealthy widow, who unbeknownst to him, is the fiance of his brother.  It is a delightful little comedy and Harlow and Taylor are good on the orbs.

In 1937, she began filming Saratoga, a comedy-drama tale of the  horsey set, her sixth outing with her pal Gable.  When about 90% of the film was completed, Harlow collapsed on the set and shockingly died a week later.  Powell, with his nuptials set, was inconsolable.  Gable, too, was distraught, as was her good pal, Loy, and countless others, especially at MGM.  Obviously Mama Jean was among the most upset.

Rumors swirled around her sudden death at age 26.  Of course they would.  How could it have happened?  The speculation began immediately and would continue for decades.  The immediate gossip was that no matter what the cause, it had to be exacerbated by her mother's Christian Science practices and Mama Jean took some serious hits.  In more recent times this rumor has been  refuted but often is accompanied by the reasoning that Mama Jean's religion took a back seat to the fact that her meal ticket was in harm's way.

Harlow's cause of death was listed as cerebral edema, brought on by renal failure.  It was said that her kidneys were possibly complicated by the scarlet fever that she had at age 15.  As Hollywood mourned, Louis B. Mayer closed his studio on the day of her funeral, which he made certain was a spectacle.

Interest in her was revived in 1965 when not one but two films were released on her life or at least highly fictional versions of it.  The odd thing is that both films were entitled Harlow and released only a month apart.  One was cheesy and exploitative, designed more to establish Carroll Baker as a sex goddess than as a tribute to Harlow.  The other starred Carol Lynley in one of the worst movies I've ever seen.  Someone should make a decent film about Jean Harlow.  In her day, there was no one like her.

As late as 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Jean Harlow #22 of all-time legendary actresses.




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