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| Home > actresses > Jean Harlow > Full Biography | |||||||||||||
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Jean Harlow Biography |
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| Jean Harlow (March 3, 1911 - June 7, 1937), was an US film actress who became known as the "original blonde bombshell", predating Marilyn Monroe as a blonde sex symbol. Jean was the first blonde to be cast in 'bad girl roles'. Before her, bad girls in movies were always dark-haired and exotic looking. She made over thirty films during a career that lasted only ten years, and had a talent for comedy as well as drama that is still recognized today by record numbers of fans and film critics alike. She was born Harlean Carpenter at 3344 Olive Street in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Mont Clair Carpenter, a dentist, and his wife, Jean Poe Harlow. Her given name (Harlean) was invented from parts of her mother's maiden name, Jean Harlow, which she adopted as a stage name and then, in 1935, legally. Mother Jean, as she was known, divorced Harlean's father and moved to Hollywood with hopes of becoming an actress herself. Shortly afterward she remarried and moved to Chicago, where Jean attended a private girl's academy in the wealthy suburb of Lake Forest called Ferry Hall School. At the age of 16, Jean eloped with Charles McGrew 2nd, a wealthy young stockbroker, and the couple moved to Los Angeles, California. They divorced two years later. Jean wanted only to be a wife and mother, but to please Mother Jean she looked for work as an extra in films, in which she made a day. In the beginning Jean landed bit parts in silent films such as Why is a Plumber? (1927), Moran of the Marines (1928), and The Love Parade (1929). She has a more substantial role in Laurel and Hardy's short Double Whoopee (1929). She got her first major role when producer Howard Hughes cast her in the World War I film Hell's Angels (1930). In 1931, Harlow began to gain popularity when she appeared in The Public Enemy, Goldie, The Secret Six, with Clark Gable, and Platinum Blonde. In 1932 she had bigger roles in Red-Headed Woman, for which she got a salary of ,250/week, and Red Dust, her second film with Clark Gable. Harlow and Gable worked well together, and starred in a total of six films together. It was during the making of Red Dust that Harlow's second husband, MGM producer Paul Bern (né Paul Levy) died in an incident that remains mysterious to this day: He was found nude, in his wife's bedroom, shot in the head, and drenched in his wife's perfume. Years later, it was suggested by screenwriter Ben Hecht that Bern was murdered by an unbalanced former lover, Dorothy Millette, who did actually commit suicide the next day. (Years later, the Bern-Harlow house became the home of Jay Sebring and his lover, Sharon Tate, who were both murdered by Charles Manson and his followers.) By 1933, Jean was becoming a superstar. She had a great comedic part in Dinner at Eight, and later that year she starred in Bombshell. Because of Harlow's indiscreet affair with boxer Max Baer, Mrs. Baer threatened divorce proceedings naming Harlow as a co-defendent for "alienation of affection," then the common term for adultery. MGM diffused the situation by arranging a quick marriage between Harlow and cinematographer Harold Rosson. Still feeling the aftershocks of the mysterious Bern death, the studio didn't want another Harlow scandal on its hands. Rosson and Harlow were friends, and the cameraman went along with the plan. They divorced quietly seven months later. Jean then starred in two more films with Clark Gable, China Seas (1935), and Wife vs. Secretary (1936). Other co-stars included Spencer Tracy, Robert Taylor and William Powell. Critics praised Harlow's beauty but panned her sometimes clumsy acting in the standard '30s gangster potboilers and romantic melodramas. After seeing her in Bombshell, many started revising their opinions of Harlow upward, and MGM discovered Harlow's strong suit: comedy. Her performance in Dinner at Eight cemented her reputation as a expert comedienne, not just a sex symbol. Following the end of her third marriage she met MGM star William Powell. They reportedly were engaged for two years, but differences kept them from marrying swiftly (she wanted children, he did not). Harlow also said that studio head Louis B. Mayer would never allow them to wed. Harlow fell ill with influenza during the early part of 1937, although she recovered, the attack weakend her body from the onslaught of a more serious illness that was just beginning to take hold: kidney failure. In a retrospective analysis, Harlow's kidneys may have been slowly failing for the last ten years since contracting scarlet fever while in her early teens. In the days before kidney dialysis and transplants, this condition was fatal. While filming Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable, she was hospitalized with uremic poisoning. She died shortly afterward at the age of 26, and is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California. William Powell paid for her tomb, which bears the simple inscription "Our Baby." | |||||||||||||
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