Unfortunately, for Jean “The Baby” Harlow, her mother’s way of dealing with the situation was to divorce her husband at the first opportunity and sever Jean’s connection so thoroughly that she almost never saw her father again after primary school.Jean Harlow, the original “Blonde Bombshell,” became one of the premiere starlets of the 1930s but her tragically short life turned into a cautionary tale. Many of the struggles she dealt with portended the litany of issues that famous, beautiful young women would deal with for decades to come. Regrettably, her life reads like an ab lib of problems stemming from her upbringing and abusive studio executives that ring more true today than ever.
Her father Mont Clair Carpenter came from humble beginnings and worked a dentist
However, despite her many difficulties, Harlow managed to become the inspiration for Catwoman, the first actress on the cover of Time magazine, and one of the beloved figures in Hollywood. She managed all that before she turned 26! Here’s to one of the country’s first sex symbols and the very first “Platinum Blonde.”
Marylin Monroe looked up to Harlow as a hero. amazon
Tough Start
Today, overbearing Hollywood parents are almost a cliché but back in the ‘30s the phrase “momager” meant nothing. Poor Jean suffered from her mother’s unrelenting presence, which undoubtedly came from her own marital woes. Mama Jean, as she was called, was forced into an arranged marriage that she never wanted.
Jean Harlow and Clark Gable in Wife vs Secretary. (Iwlies)
Helicopter Mother
After Mama Harlow obtained her freedom from her husband, she followed her dreams of becoming a star with young Jean in tow. When studio executives dashed that dream, she then transferred that dream to Jean.
Later, when the older Harlow was asked about her daughter’s legions of fans, she responded with “She was always all mine!” Mama Harlow also signed nearly all of Harlow’s fanmail. Consequently, obtaining any autograph signed by the real Jean Harlow is worth a fortune!
All of her male costars fell in love, in some way, with Harlow.
A Reluctant Star
Ironically, young Harlow never wanted anything to do with fame and fortune. She married too early as a freshman in high school to a handsome 19-year-old trust fund baby, Chuck McGrew. Together, they moved to Beverly Hills and lived like any obscenely rich teenagers would: drinking nonstop and attending every party in sight.
It wasn’t until her actress friend Rosalie Roy actually bet Harlow she wouldn’t go through a real audition, that she reluctantly tried her hand at the limelight. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, casting agents went buck wild, fighting tooth and nail to cast her. Harlow never planned to go through with any of them until she finally relented under endless pressure from her mother.
Harlow with Howard Hughes. filmstarfacts
Fighting For Love
Harlow signed her first contract with Hal Roach studios but after three months begged to be released from her contract. As she tearfully declared, “It’s breaking up my marriage, what can I do?” In response, Roach angrily tore up her contract in front of her. Sadly, her way-too-soon marriage still ended in divorce before her teenage years were over. Nevertheless, her big break was right around the corner.
At the her peak, tongues wagged about how Harlow only slept in the nude and rather presciently that she never wore underwear.
Howard Hughes Finds His Star
The iconoclast Hughes knew a star when he saw one and cast her in his incredibly expensive and popular film, “Hell’s Angels.” Hughes spared no expense to highlight Harlow’s beauty and set the stage for her run as the original “Blonde Bombshell.”
Harlow’s famous line, “Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” sent reverberations through the loins of men across America and instantly made her a star. Despite her precocious age, Harlow knew the score. As she said, “Men like me because I don’t wear a brassiere. Women like me because I don’t look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.”
Co star Jimmy Stewart revealed how a director “made us repeat the scene about half a dozen times…I botched it up on purpose. That Jean Harlow sure was a good kisser. I realized that until then, I had never been really kissed.â€britannica
Belle Of The Ball
Hughes even set up an elaborate publicity stunt called the “platinum blonde club.” He challenged the hairdressers of America to match Harlow’s hair color for a prize. Amusingly, Harlow’s hair color was in fact fake, thanks to weekly dyes of ammonia, Clorox, and Lux soap flakes that terribly damaged her naturally ash-blonde locks. Nevertheless, no one was up to the task, which only grew the legend of the first platinum blonde.
While many critics lambasted Harlow for a lack of acting talent writing, “Her technique was a gangster’s technique—she toted a breast like a man totes a gun”. More measured magazines understood the appeal. As Variety wrote, “It doesn’t matter what degree of talent she possesses…nobody ever starves possessing what she’s got.” Batman creator Bob Kane said she “seemed to personify feminine pulchritude at its most sensuous” and in part based Catwoman off her mesmerizing beauty.
Harlow was born on March 3, 1911 and immediately dubbed “The Baby,â€
A Tragic End
Tragically, after a run of success in the ‘30s, it all went pear-shaped so quickly for Harlow. Her second husband, MGM executive Paul Bern, supposedly killed himself. He left a cryptic suicide note reading:
“Dearest Dear, Unfortunately [sic] this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love [sic] you. Paul, You understand that last night was only a comedy.”
Amateur sleuths have puzzled over its meaning for years. Things became even more muddied when it was rumored that notorious fixer Eddie Mannix altered the crime scene. Others, including one of his biographers, believed Bern was actually killed by ex-lover Dorothy Millette. That seemed to be confirmed when Millette killed herself a short while later.
As if that wasn’t enough, Harlow herself experienced kidney failure but no one paid attention to the signs. As she worked tirelessly through her illness, attempting to appease executives, her health rapidly deteriorated and she passed seemingly before anyone knew she was really ill at the early age of 26. As one MGM writer put it, “The day Baby died…there wasn’t one sound in the commissary for three hours.”
