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    The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943: Vol III, Jean Harlow
    The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943: Vol III, Jean Harlow
    The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943: Vol III, Jean Harlow
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    The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943: Vol III, Jean Harlow

    By James R Ashley

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    Jean Harlow was widely considered as the reigning sexpot of the golden age of Hollywood filmmaking. She usually played the part either of a tough-talking moll or a prostitute and was every man’s fantasy date. The reality, however, was far different. Although Jean engaged in sex from time to time, she was not possessed by it like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Mae West. In fact, one of the men she married, Paul Bern, was seemingly incapable of physically satisfying any woman, and this did not seem to particularly matter to Jean. Her sexual appetite seemed, if anything, below average, as she preferred older “daddy-like” men, whose sexual needs were probably no where near what her comparable age male counterpart might have been. The normal behavior we would have expected from a sexpot seems greatly overblown in Jean’s case.

    In the same vein, Jean’s looks were rally nothing special. Her face was cute in an odd sort of way, but not beautiful. She had a high forehead and a weak chin, which actually offset one another and made each flaw less noticeable. Her lips were thin and her nose a bit large, but when she smiled, her face took on a merriment that made you want to smile with her. Jean was very photogenic and expressive and was a photographer’s dream come true.

    Jean’s body was thin but she thought her hips to wide and her legs not well shaped, and for this reason she never wore shorts. Her breasts, which were more often commented on than any other actress, were small, only 33,” and her so-called cleavage was actually virtually non-existent. Jean’ sexual trademark, her platinum blonde hair, largely came from a bleach bottle and had been steadily falling out and it appeared by the time of her last film that she was going bald. Her movements were not sexually explosive, like Mae West, for instance, but were more bubbly and light-hearted. She wanted to be a comedienne, which she had some talent for, but only at the end of her career did she begin moving in this direction.

    In reality, Jean was pretty much of an airhead, but she came by it honestly. She came from a wealthy family and was raised by an airhead mother, who spoiled her rotten. She was given anything she wanted without having to work for it, so there was never any connection for her of hard work and achievement. As a result, she just did what it took to get by and saw no necessity to exert herself any further. Her mother made sure that she only associated with the right people of her own ilk, so she never was exposed to anything while growing up outside of her limited environment. To her credit, however, Jean made her own way in the world once she hit Hollywood, despite all her handicaps. She tried hard and under the circumstances she did as well as could be expected, having had developed little common sense while growing up and having to drag around the anchors of Mama Jean and Belo, who constantly took advantage of her naivete.

    This is a sad but touching story about a fun-loving girl who was swept along in a current she was powerless to break free from. We must marvel at what she had achieved with so few tools at her disposal. Although she lived the dream, it wasn’t her dream. So turn the page and see how Joan Harlow made her mark as one of the greatest sexpots of movie history

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames R Ashley
    Release dateAug 15, 2013
    ISBN9781301114825
    The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943: Vol III, Jean Harlow

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      Book preview

      The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies 1931-1943 - James R Ashley

      The Golden Age of Hollywood Movies, 1931-1943

      Vol IV: Jean Harlow

      James R Ashley

      Copyright 2015 James R. Ashley

      Smashwords edition

      Table of Contents

      Introduction

      The Early Years

      Family

      Persona

      Love Life

      Film Career

      Films

      The Saturday Night Kid (1929)

      New York Nights (1929)

      Hell's Angels (1930)

      The Secret Six (1931)

      Platinum Blonde (1931)

      The Public Enemy (1931)

      Beast in the City (1932)

      Red-Headed Woman (1932)

      Red Dust (1932)

      King Kong (1933)

      Bombshell (1933)

      Hold Your Man (1933)

      Dinner at Eight (1933)

      The Girl From Missouri (1934)

      China Seas (1935)

      Libeled Lady (1936)

      Wife vs Secretary (1936)

      Personal Property (1937)

      Saratoga (1937)

      Death

      Funeral

      Estate

      Biblography

      Introduction

      Jean Harlow was widely considered as the reigning sexpot of the golden age of Hollywood filmmaking. She usually played the part of either a tough-talking moll or a prostitute and was every man’s fantasy date. The reality, however, was far different. Although Jean engaged in sex from time to time, she was not possessed by it, like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Mae West. In fact, one of the men she married, Paul Bern, was seemingly incapable of physically satisfying any woman, and this did not seem to particularly matter to Jean. Her sexual appetite seemed, if anything, below average, as she preferred older daddy-like men, whose sexual needs were probably no where near what her comparable age male counterpart might have been. The normal behavior we would have expected from a sexpot seems greatly overblown in Jean’s case.

      In the same vein, Jean’s looks were rally nothing special. Her face was cute in an odd sort of way, but not beautiful. She had a high forehead and a weak chin, which actually offset one another and made each flaw less noticeable. Her lips were thin and her nose a bit large, but when she smiled, her face lit up and made you want to smile with her. Jean was very photogenic and expressive and was a photographer’s dream come true.

      Jean’s body was thin but she thought her hips to wide and her legs not well shaped, and for this reason she never wore shorts. Her breasts, which were more often commented on than any other actress, were small, only 33", and her so-called cleavage was actually virtually non-existent. Jean’ sexual trademark, her platinum blonde hair, largely came from a bleach bottle and had been steadily falling out and it appeared by the time of her last film that she was going bald. Her movements were not sexually explosive, like Mae West, for instance, but were more bubbly and light-hearted. She wanted to be a comedienne, which she was shown to have excelled in, but only at the end of her career did she begin moving in this direction.

      In reality, Jean was pretty much of an airhead, but she came by it honestly. She came from a wealthy family and was raised by an airhead mother, who spoiled her rotten. She was given anything she wanted without having to work for it, so there was never any connection for her of hard work and achievement. As a result, she just did what it took to get by and saw no necessity to exert herself any further. Her mother made sure that she only associated with the right people of her own ilk, so she never was exposed to anything while growing up outside of her limited environment. To her credit, however, Jean made her own way in the world once she hit Hollywood, despite all her handicaps. She tried hard and under the circumstances she did as well as could be expected, having had developed little common sense while growing up and having to drag around the anchors of Mama Jean and Belo, who constantly took advantage of her naiveté.

      This is a sad but touching story about a fun-loving girl who was swept along in a current she was powerless to break free from. We must marvel at what she had achieved with so few tools at her disposal. Although she lived the dream, it wasn’t her dream. So turn the page and see how Joan Harlow made her mark as one of the greatest sexpots of movie history

      The Early Years

      Jean was born Harlean Carpenter on March 3, 1911. Her father, Mont Clair Carpenter, was a dentist and her mother, Jean Poe Harlow, a talentless air-head. The marriage proved to be a bad one, as when Mama Jean did not get her own way, she either went on a crying jag or threw a temper tantrum, and her constant whining was more than Mont Clair could take.

      Jean’s family was wealthy, with the result that she was raised in a 24-room mansion overlooking a river, and it was staffed with a nurse, a nanny, 2 house maids, 1 house-man, and a chauffeur. Her overly-protective mother did not allow her to associate with normal children, only with upper-class children, and when she came of age, only allowed her to date socially-acceptable boys. With her mother choosing all her acquaintances and having everything provided to her without having to work for it, Jean became an airhead like her mother, never developing any common sense. When Jean went to school, she did just enough to get by, basically getting a free ride out of life in her early years.

      On September 29, 1922, after almost 14 years of marriage, Mama Jean was granted a divorce from Mont Carpenter, who did not contest it. Mama Jean got sole custody of Jean and from then on Jean rarely saw her father. Soon after the divorce, Mama Jean took Jean to Los Angeles with her, in order to pursue her dream of being an actress. Mama Jean was big-boned and coarse looking and at the age of 34, was roughly a decade too old to be an actress. But since he had little sense, she went ahead and gave it a try anyway.

      Jean attended the Hollywood School for Girls, where she basically leaned to smoke, shimmy, and mimic the mannerisms of movie stars she admired. In 1922 Mama Jean married an oily Italian named Marino Belo, who was an unemployable bum who liked to hang out with gangsters. He was, however, handsome and a snappy dresser and this was enough for Mama Jean to fall for him. In late 1925, with neither Mama Jean or Belo having found any work suited to their non-existent talent, they returned to the Midwest, and Jean was enrolled at the Lake Forest Academy’s Ferry Hall.

      In 1927 Jean would meet and marry Chuck McGrew. They would move to Los Angeles, California, and live a carefree life suited to their newfound wealth of Chuck’s inheritance. When that began to play out however, Jean moved into acting to support them and the marriage broke up over financial strains neither of them had been equipped to deal with. Mama Jean and her worthless husband Belo followed Jean out to California and when she

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