Published: Sunday, March 06, 2011, 8:00 AM
Once Hollywood invented itself, it began to invent archetypes. William S. Hart was the Good Bad Man. Rudolph Valentino was the Latin Lover. Gary Cooper was the Quiet American.
And Jean Harlow was, simply, the Blonde, the woman who wasn?t as dumb as she looked (or any better than she had to be), the kind who was willing to take a man as he was (or maybe just take him) ? a laughing, brassy, no-regrets bombshell.
The 100th birthday of Hollywood sex symbol Jean Harlow, who died at age 26 in 1937, is being marked next month.
She would have been 100 this month, and there are a few tributes. Warner Home Video has another one of its best-buy boxed sets, a collection of four of her films. And cable?s Turner Classic Movies will be featuring her movies every Tuesday evening.
It?s a modest salute, perhaps, for an archetype. But Harlow?s last film was released almost 75 years ago ? and her career, at its height, lasted barely half a decade. She was here, and then she was gone.
But then Jean Harlow was always in a hurry.
Born Harlean Carpenter in Kansas City, Mo., she was the daughter of a successful dentist and a would-be actress who had dreams of Hollywood and a film career. Little Harlean ? ?Baby,? to everyone in the family ? had her own plans, and at 16 eloped with a rich boy.
They moved to Los Angeles, where their life was full of good-looking people and Prohibition-be-damned parties. But then her mother joined them and began pushing her daughter to audition.
It was the most obvious of vicarious daydreams ? Harlean even used her mother?s maiden name, ?Jean Harlow,? when she registered at Central Casting ? but it came true. Baby Jean began picking up extra work. She got parts in a few Laurel and Hardy shorts.
She also broke up with her husband, ending their marriage of two years, and moved in with her mother.
Her big break, though, came with the sudden end of the silents. Howard Hughes had just finished his dogfight epic ?Hell?s Angels? with Norwegian actress Greta Nissen when sound came in. With dubbing still in its infancy, all of Nissen?s scenes would have to be reshot. Harlow auditioned to replace her, and got the job.
That she would make her entr�e into movies based on the thickness of another performer?s accent was a good joke. Harlow?s nasal, Midwestern vowels were her least attractive trademark; they would permanently typecast her (despite her background of pleasant homes and private schools) as a hardheaded mistress, a good-hearted floozy, a tough dame.
But it wasn?t her voice that Hughes ? or movie fans ? was really focusing on.
With hair the color of white gold, an impish smile and a figure that was made for satin sheaths, Harlow radiated sex. But unlike silent sirens such as Theda Bara or Louise Brooks, or contemporary stars such as Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, Harlow?s passionate promises came without worries, without cares, without some awful ultimate price.
FEW INHIBITIONS
?Would you be shocked,? she asked famously in ?Hell?s Angels,? ?if I put on something more comfortable?? But it was sex itself that Harlow made look comfortable on screen. She didn?t present it as a joke, the way Mae West did, but she sure made it look like fun, for women as well as men. Her characters had no illusions, and few inhibitions.
Neither did Harlow.
?Men like me because I don?t wear a brassiere,? she observed once, trying to explain her appeal. ?Women like me because I don?t look like a girl who would steal a husband. At least not for long.?
After her own hit in ?Platinum Blonde,? studio executive Paul Bern signed her to MGM. It was a curious choice. Metro was known for elegance and sometimes stifling good taste; its executives were known for directing their stars? lives as strictly as they directed their pictures. And by 21, Harlow was already a rebel in a cocktail dress.
She dated mobsters, and was godmother to Bugsy Siegel?s daughter. She partied all night at a brewery to celebrate the end of Prohibition (and christened the first trucks to leave with a bottle of suds). There were even nude photos of her ? taken at 17 in Griffith Park ? greeting the dawn like some peroxided ?September Morn.?
No, this was more star than MGM knew what to do with.
But they knew enough not to argue with success. ?Red Headed Woman,? with Harlow?s go-to-bed-to-get-ahead secretary, drew protests from censors in 1932, but her confident sexuality (?When I kiss ?em, they stay kissed?) grabbed the audience?s attention; in the same year?s ?Red Dust,? star Clark Gable finally found a leading lady who could match him in lusty, guiltless insolence.
Harlow was no dumb blonde, either, no matter what she played on-screen. She avoided becoming a joke by laughing at herself first, giddily burlesquing her own image as a chocolate-nibbling bimbo in ?Dinner at Eight?; she kept female fans on her side by occasionally playing wronged women, such as the misunderstood assistant in ?Wife vs. Secretary.? Her star at MGM rose ever higher.
Meanwhile, her personal life plummeted.
She had married Bern in ?32, soon after her arrival at MGM; two months after their marriage, he was found shot to death in their home. Studio ?fixers? were on the scene even before the police, working to conceal any damaging evidence. But the final line of a leaked suicide note ? ?You understand that last night was only a comedy? ? only gave rise to more gossip.
There were, given Harlow?s image, the most scandalous of suppositions. The most common theory ? repeated as fact in the almost completely fictionalized 1965 biopic, ?Harlow? ? was that the note referred to Bern?s impotence (a failing that one of Bern?s previous girlfriends strongly denied). Others said that the note itself was a fake and that Bern had been murdered by a mad ex-lover.
Harlow herself never spoke of any of it. But the idea of a man dying over her only added to the image of a seducer who, in Graham Greene?s words, used her body the way a gangster used a gun.
It was, to some extent, only an image; Harlow was genuinely liked on the lot, from the prop men to the producers. Her leading men had nothing but praise for her. Gable ? with whom she made six films ? fondly called her ?Sis.? The no-nonsense Spencer Tracy pronounced her ?a square shooter if there ever was one.?
But for someone who supposedly loved nothing better than curling up with a good book, Harlow still had a knack for headlines ? such as getting named in an alienation-of-affections suit brought by boxer Max Baer?s wife. The studio quickly arranged a marriage for her to deflect the gossip, choosing one of the studio?s loyal cinematographers (the couple parted as friends, eight months later). But nothing seemed to stop the hits ? ?Bombshell,? ?China Seas,? ?Libeled Lady.?
By the mid-?30s, the star had a serious boyfriend in William Powell ? and, for the first time, seemed genuinely happy. The older, often detached actor seemed invigorated on-screen; the sex symbol took on a gentler look, even letting her hair take back its natural soft blond. By 1937, the affair had gone on for two years, and Powell had presented her with a 150-carat sapphire ring.
But, as always, Harlow was living her life at a breakneck pace, and time was running out.
She had never been robust, but lately her health had gotten worse. A promotional tour was sidetracked by influenza; a simple dental operation left her perilously weak. Shooting ?Saratoga? with her in 1937, Gable grew deeply worried ? the usually slim star looked bloated, her skin sweaty and gray, her breath tainted with a faint, sour smell.
Gable insisted they call in the studio doctor; the studio doctor insisted she rest. Protesting, but too weak to fight them, Harlow went home. Within 10 days, she was dead.
?She didn?t die of pneumonia,? Red Buttons declares at the end of the ludicrous ?Harlow.? ?She died of life.?
Well, no. But the same sort of fevered rumors that surrounded her husband?s death soon surrounded her, too. She had died from a botched abortion. She had died from the chemicals used to bleach her hair. She had died because her mother, a devout Christian Scientist, turned the doctors away.
DEAD AT 26
You can find versions of all these stories still, in quickie books and on internet chatboards, where old gossip lives eternal.
In fact, Harlow?s medical records are quite clear; her kidneys were failing and had been for a while, possibly the side effect of a childhood bout of scarlet fever. In the end, they simply shut down, poisoning her from within. Even if her mother had rushed her to the hospital sooner, there would have been little the doctors could have done.
She was 26.
Powell, devoted to the end, quietly bought her a massive crypt at Forest Lawn, slipped a note into her coffin reading ?Goodnight, my dearest darling? and then nearly collapsed at the funeral; her fans, as if acting out a scene from that year?s ?A Star is Born,? ran riot, stripping the church of the flower arrangements to take home as souvenirs.
Mayer, meanwhile, ever the businessman, wondered what to do with ?Saratoga,? which still had a week?s worth of shooting. He decided to finish it using Harlow?s double. Gable bitterly complained it was like acting ?in the arms of a ghost,? but, released months after Harlow?s death, it was the biggest hit of the year.
Current DVD sets and TCM programming notwithstanding, Harlow has never attracted the posthumous attention her contemporaries did. She remains, to too many, not much more than a rag, a bone and a hank of hair ? or, more literally, a silvery satin sheath, a beauty mark and that white-hot platinum ?do.
But she was, in her own way, a pivotal figure, making the silent-screen vamps look like silly caricatures, demystifying physical passion until it seemed merely like normal, healthy fun. Laughing (often at herself), loving (but always on her own terms), she was not only the movies? first modern sex symbol; she was their first modern woman.
IF YOU?RE INTERESTED:
???TCM Greatest Classic Legends: Jean Harlow? contains ?Dinner at Eight,? ?Libeled Lady,? ?China Seas? and ?Wife vs. Secretary? on two DVDs for $27.92.
??Turner Classic Movies begins a Harlow quintuple feature with ?Red Headed Woman,? Tuesday at 8 p.m.
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