ok... this could be pretty long, so sit down.
Jean Harlow was your typical hollywood story, you can be sure of that. Her mother was the worst you can think of, and more. It's all true what the article say about Jean (mom) selling out Baby (daughter) to everyone who could advance her and her career, her mother tried to live trough her daughter. It's very funny and bitter to think 'Baby Harlean' as they called her, got to be famous with her mother's maiden name,
Jean Harlow. It shows you who really was the one who wanted to get out there.
What I find misleading in the article originally posted is that
Jean Harlow is pictured as a 'sexy/bombshell kind of girl in her real life as well. The 'she didn't wear a bra' thing..... but she was far from that. Baby or Harlean, the one who lived off screen, was a girl who didn't know where she was going, what she wanted from life. She had no idea, and let others believe the easiest assumptions. She played with the sexual image, but truth is that she probably not even enjoyed sex that much, because she wasn't 'free' enough to allow herself to feel sexual pleasure. Sex was money to her, something to buy things you need to, to go on in life and career. All of her love stories show that, she had a romantic vision of what love would be like, and you'd think her a girl who had just read a bunch of novels and expected these novel to happen in real life as well. Harlean had also a penchant for writing, she wrote poems as a girl and then a book called
Today is tonight. The main female character in
Today is Tonight is an ordinary girl, who works her butt off to please her husband when he has an accident that leaves him blind. There's nothing in this character that reminds of you the sassy females that made
Jean Harlow famous, and Harlean thought that being the ordinary house wife would be fab. The only time she managed to choose a script for herself, it was a disastrous sad movie about poor families and workers striking. She was completely mesmerized by the fact that her character, Hattie, was a brunette.
Also something totally wrong stated in the article is that her step father, Marino Bello, was a gangster. No way, really no way. Marino was a shallow human being, fitting the stereotype of Italian Americans, the worst stereotype possible. He embarked in a series of economic enterprises with no future, all of these with harlow's money. In 1936 he got LOTS of money from Harlow to invest in a 'mine'. Not Jean nor her mother were bright enough to check on him, but Bill Powell was. He had an investigation on Bello and as a result of this, Mama Jean and Marino were divorced. The investigation didn't give Harlow her money back though, and from that moment she and her mother had to drastically downplay their life styles, they also moved from a big white beverly hills mansion to a modest cottage with just one maid
Also another ridiculous no sense in the article is that the 'beating' from Bern left her permanent marks. First, Bern DID NOT beat her, this is a hollywood myth (on the subject besides Stenn's Bombshell, who is very accurate indeed, you can check what Irene Mayer Selznick, wife of David and good friend of both Jean and Bern has to say, with much frankness) and Jean's health problems started with an abortion at early age, but most especially when she got two wisdom teeth extracted, she nearly died on the operatory table, and there was indeed something wrong with the way her blood coagulated. That was when her kidney started deteriorating. In the year before her death she got sunburned more the once (a clear sign of her kidneys not working) and had an almost permanent flu/dizziness. Kidneys do deteriorate very slowly, and in 1937 no one had really the power to understand what was happening to her. She would have eventually died even if she had been taken care of at the right moment.
Dr Chapman who knew her exact medical history didn't visit her in the last year of her life, he had a over jealous wife who was totally convinced Harlow was having an affair with her husband. It was only when Mother Jean called Dr Chapman begging him to come over 'to see the baby' that he finally got to Harlow. As soon as he saw her he just said "Baby is dying". So it wasn't Gable nor Powell who 'rushed' Harlow to the hospital. An ambulance was called and the paramedics tried to re animate her,b but she was already in a coma. They brought her to the hospital just because Mama Jean though, and she was the only one, that baby could still be saved.
The image of Mama Jean crying, saying that her daughter was 'faking' her illness, rambling about her Christian Science faith, is pure hollywood myth. This never happened. The only concern that Mama Jean had was that the public might have discovered her Baby was an alcoholic. Harlow had totally devoted herself to booze in the last couple of years of her life, the relationship with Bill Powell was going nowhere ( she wanted marriage and kids, he wanted none, cause had already done all that and failed) her career wasn't really what she hoped her, and although being only in her mid 20s she felt the pressure of 'getting older'. Booze was her constant companion to forget the mess her life was, and her mother was totally afraid of this. Harlow was inclined to be violent and sarcastic when drunk, telling her mother that she had used her and lots of thing along these lines that she would never ever dared to say when sober.
Myrna Loy talks about this in her excellent autobiography called Being and Becoming
One last thing: David Bret writes pure trash. Both his Gable and Crawford biographies were full of the greatest inaccuracies, things that could have been resolved just by checking IMDB. He tends to dramatize events to make them appear more modern, more new hollywood if you know what I mean. I'm sorry to hear that such a complicated story as that of
Jean Harlow had to fall into his hands.
Again read David Stenn if you're interested in the real deal, he makes of Harlow not a saint nor a bitch, but the flawed, childish, unlucky but brilliant girl that she was
PS I'm sorry about my english, I'm italian so forgive me any mistakes
PS 2 She officially died by uremic poising, aka kidney failure
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