Jean Harlow

I was born as "Harlean Carpenter", (March 3, 1911 - June 7, 1937), and became known as the "original blonde bombshell", predating Marilyn Monroe as a blonde sex symbol. I was the first blonde to be cast in 'bad girl roles'. Before me, bad girls in movies were always dark-haired and exotic looking. I made over 36 films during a career that lasted only 10 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. My birth name was an anagram of my mother's maiden name, Jean Harlow, which I adopted as a stage name and then, in 1935, legally.
I was born at 3344 Olive Street in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Mont Clair Carpenter, a dentist, and his wife, Jean Harlow Carpenter. Mother Jean, as she was called, divorced my father and moved to Hollywood with hopes of becoming an actress herself. Shortly afterward she remarried and moved to Chicago, where I attended a private girl's academy in the wealthy suburb of Lake Forest called Ferry Hall School. At the age of 16, I eloped with Charles McGrew 2nd, a wealthy young stockbroker, and we moved to Los Angeles, California. We divorced two years later.
I wanted only to be a wife and mother, but to please Mother Jean I looked for work as an extra in films. In the beginning I landed bit parts in silent films such as Why is a Plumber? (1927), Moran of the Marines (1928), and The Love Parade (1929). I had a more substantial role in Laurel and Hardy's short Double Whoopee (1929). I got my first major role when producer Howard Hughes cast me in the World War I film Hell's Angels (1930). Realising my potential, Hughes based much of the publicity for the film around me, before selling my contract on to MGM for $60,000.
My next films cemented my image as a sex siren, and I famously claimed in interviews never to wear underwear and to sleep in the nude. In 1931, I began to gain popularity when I appeared in The Public Enemy, Goldie, The Secret Six, with Clark Gable, and Platinum Blonde. My brassy, lively humour and starlet looks made me a strong box-office success, prompting a brief salary strike in 1934, when my wages failed to keep pace.In 1932 I had bigger roles in Red-Headed Woman, for which I got a salary of $1,250/week, and Red Dust, my second film with Clark Gable. Gable and I worked well together, and starred in a total of six films together. It was during the making of Red Dust that my second husband, MGM producer Paul Bern (n Paul Levy) died in an episode that remains mysterious to this day: He was found nude, in our bedroom, shot in the head, and drenched in my 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, I was becoming a superstar. I had a great comedic part in Dinner at Eight, and later that year I starred in Bombshell. After an affair with boxer Max Baer, I married in 1933 to cinematographer Harold Rosson; we divorced seven months later. I then starred in two more films with Clark Gable, China Seas (1935), and Wife vs. Secretary (1936).The disapproval of the Hayes Office and the adoption of Hollywood's Production Code forced MGM to tone down the saucier (and more predatory) aspects of my on-screen persona, and a brief attempt at musicals was regarded as a mistake.
Following the end of my third marriage I met MGM star William Powell. We were engaged for two years, but differences kept us from marrying swiftly (I wanted children, he did not). Studio head Louis B. Mayer would never allow us to wed. While filming Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable, I was hospitalized with uremic poisoning and kidney failure, a result from scarlet fever I suffered from during childhood. The film was completed, using a body double Mary Dees in long shots, and released to great commercial success.
*********
Jean Harlow died shortly afterward at the age of 26, and is buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Los Angeles, California. Powell paid for her tomb.
With her chequered romantic history, strong screen image and early death, Harlow became the architype of the American screen sex-symbol and the blue-print that many, including Marilyn Monroe, would later try to emulate.
Scroll down for photos.

.. ..