Jean Harlow

 

Young, gifted and ravishing, Jean Harlow seemed to have everything – striking platinum blonde hair, a curvaceous figure, natural sensuality and a sharp sense of humour. With all these weapons in her arsenal it is difficult to understand how her short life became so mired in controversy and tragedy.

 

‘Baby’ Jean

 

Jean Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter on 3 March 1911, to Jean Poe and Mont Clair Carpenter from Kansas, Missouri. Harlean’s mother Jean came from wealthy stock. She was the daughter of successful real-estate broker, Skip Harlow and his wife Ella. Skip and Ella had arranged their daughter’s marriage to Mont Clair, and Jean never forgave them for it. She was a dominant, charismatic and free-spirited woman who longed for independence. Consequently she was very unhappy in her marriage to Mont Clair, a suburban dentist with working class roots, so convinced was she that she deserved better.

This depression meant that Jean focused all her attention on the couple’s only child, Harlean. Mother and daughter became inseparable. Jean was a controlling and over-protective mother who encouraged her daughter to depend on her for absolutely everything. The entire family referred to pampered Harlean only as ‘Baby’, and Jean wanted to keep it that way, hence Harlean was five years old when she eventually discovered that her real name was actually Harlean and not in fact ‘Baby’.

 

A Broken Home

 

When Harlean began attending school, Jean Snr grew ever more frustrated with married life, divorcing Mont Clair in 1922, when Harlean was just ten years old. As a consequence of the separation Mother Jean was granted sole custody of her daughter. Harlean struggled to keep in contact with her father throughout the remaining years of her life.

Jean Snr harboured ambitions to become an actress, and moved herself and Harlean to Hollywood in order to pursue her dream. However, jobs were not forthcoming and so dwindling finances meant they were forced to return to Kansas city after just two years. Jean Snr gave up on the idea of having her own acting career and focused instead on attracting a wealthy husband. Her acting ambitions shifted to that of her daughter. It was largely thanks to the efforts of manager ‘Mama Jean’, that Harlean would go on to achieve everything her mother had ever wanted for herself and more.

 

Child-bride

 

At the age of 16, Harlean ran away from home to marry the wealthy 23-year-old Charles McGrew. ‘Mama Jean’ was now happily remarried to shyster Marino Bello and so the young newlyweds moved from the family’s home in Chicago to Berverly Hills. Harlean’s true aspiration in life was simply to be a devoted wife and mother. She was never particularly interested in making movies, but at the suggestion of Jean she began to pursue jobs as a film extra. Harlean’s obvious sex-appeal made her perfect for Hollywood, and her acting career slowly began to take off. Her marriage, however, was less successful. Harlean’s career put pressure on the couple’s relationship and before long she had filed for divorce. Little did Harlean know her big break was just around the corner.

 

Discovered

 

The story of Harlean’s discovery (and her subsequent reinvention as the sex goddess: Jean Harlow) reads like a Hollywood fairy tale, the like of which most struggling young actresses can only dream of. She

was spotted by actor, James Hall who was filming Howard Hughes World War I aviation epic Hells Angels. The movie mogul was in the process remaking

the originally silent Hells Angels as a talkie, but the lead actress Greta Nissen, had a thick Norse accent that simply would not work on screen, and so he was on the look out for a replacement. Baby Harlean fitted the bill. A few big movies and a publicity tour later, Jean Harlow’s star was firmly on the ascendant and thanks to her new boyfriend, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) big-wig Paul Bern, MGM were looking to buy her contract from Howard Hughes. On 3 March 1932, Jean’s 21st birthday, she received news from Bern that MGM had indeed purchased her contract from Hughes for a fee of $30,000 (an exorbitant amount of money at the time). Jean’s career was about to go truly stella.

 

MGM: the behemoth

 

In order to understand the events leading up to the scandal that followed, it is first important to examine the role of the studio system in Hollywood during the 1930s. A major economic depression had taken its toll on Hollywood, just as it had the rest of America. MGM was the only studio that continued to go from strength to strength despite widespread financial hardship. This was down to the consistently high-quality of their pictures and a number of clever decisions by the studio’s board of directors. MGM was therefore the most powerful film studio in America (and therefore the world), and in order to maintain their position they were forced to rule all aspects of the company with an iron fist. They controlled the lives of their actors and actresses, especially the stars such as Greta Garbo, who were their bread and butter. Jean Harlow was already used to being under the thumb, strictly controlled as she had been by her mother for so many years. MGM to her was just like another larger, richer parent figure – constantly pulling-strings and manipulating people and events around her in order to achieve their own objectives.

 

Doomed second marriage

 

Harlow married Paul Bern at the house of her mother, ‘Mama Jean’ Harlow, on 2 July 1932. It was an unlikely match to say the very least. Paul Bern had been heralded as a genius by his contemporaries in the industry. He was also known as Hollywood’s father confessor, because he was so caring and sensitive that people often went to him with their problems. For all this Bern was also 22 years older than Jean, small and insignificant in stature and physically fairly unattractive. Standing next to his sex-bomb wife they must have looked like the original odd-couple. Despite the apparent mismatch, Harlow seemed radiantly happy in the weeks following the wedding, and all seemed to be going swimmingly. Bern had bought the couple a luxurious house in Beverly Hills surrounded by five acres of ground which was to be the family home. Unfortunately Harlow disliked the house for some reason and wanted to sell it. The couple began arguing about this, and soon the tide changed. Bern began to look haggard and withdrawn, and Jean began spending more and more time at the home of her mother.

 

Bang Bang: My Baby Shot me Down

 

Jean was at her mother’s on 5 September 1932, when the couple’s butler found Paul Bern lying face-down on the floor of his wife’s all-white bedroom. He was completely naked and drenched in her perfume. A .38 caliber revolver lay at his side. His brains had been blown out. For reasons known only to him, the butler called not the police nor an ambulance, but the studio’s security chief. Within minutes he and two top MGM bosses, Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg were on their way to the Bern residence. The police were still not called. Mayer arrived at the house first, followed closely by Thalberg and the security chief WP ‘Whitey’ Hendry. They did not call the authorities until two hours later. What exactly happened during those lost minutes has never been revealed, but many believe that these men manipulated the evidence to suggest Bern had committed suicide. A supposed suicide note was found near the body. It read:

 

Dearest Dear,

Unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and wipe out my abject humiliation.

I love you

Paul

You realise that last night was only a comedy.

 

This was taken by many as evidence to support the rumour that Bern suffered from a physical disability (such as chronic impotence) that made it impossible for him to have intercourse with his bombshell wife. A condition such as this could certainly have given rise to feelings of abject humiliation – and explain the last line of the note, but was this the case? Upon his autopsy Bern’s personal physician supported the claim, stating that Bern suffered from a condition that would have rendered a healthy marital life impossible. However, the couple’s gardener later said that he did not believe the note was in his employer’s hand-writing, and this view was supported by expert handwriting analysts. Perhaps Mayer, Thalberg and Hendry faked the suicide note in order to shift suspicion onto the dead man himself and away from Harlow? They certainly had the abilities, the opportunity and the motive. Jean could not afford to get caught up with a murder enquiry, and her sex-bomb image would falter if it transpired that another lover had committed the murder, as it would imply to her audience that Jean Harlow could not keep a husband satisfied.

 

Curiouser and Curiouser

 

If things were not mysterious enough already, it soon transpired that Bern had for years kept a common law wife called Dorothy Millette. Dorothy, a struggling actress, had lived with Paul in New York and Toronto for a number of years and she often referred to herself as ‘Mrs Paul Bern’. Unfortunately, she began to suffer from severe mental illness and Paul was forced to have her institutionalised. He continued to provide generously for Dorothy’s care, but the romance was apparently over when he relocated to Los Angeles. The day after Bern’s death, Millette checked out of her room at the Plaza Hotel in San Franscisco and boarded a Sacramento River steamer called the Delta King. When the ship docked in Sacramento, Dorothy was no longer on board, but her coat and shoes were found on deck. Dorothy’s body was discovered by fishermen a few days later. It seemed that she had jumped overboard.

 

rumours

 

Today rumours continue to rage regarding Paul Bern’s mysterious death. Some believe that Jean Harlow discovered the truth about Dorothy and furiously murdered her husband; others think that Dorothy Millette became dangerously unhinged and dealt the fatal blow herself. Winifred Charmichael, the Bern’s cook was reported as saying that the household staff encountered a strange woman on the night of the murder. She heard an unfamiliar woman’s voice in the house and later found a woman’s wet swimsuit, as well as two used wine glasses out by the side of the pool. Did Dorothy swing-by for a visit on the day of her expartner’s death? Had this clandestine relationship ever actually ended? Was the Harlow-Bern marriage a sham from the beginning? All these questions remain unanswered. One thing is for sure though MGM had the power to manipulate the lives of the A-list’s elite, even to criminal ends.

 

An unhappy ending

 

Jean Harlow’s career did not suffer dreadfully in the days and months following the scandal, but her health certainly did. According to reports Jean attempted suicide shortly after her husband’s death, but although she survived, she did not do so for long. At the tender age of 26, whilst filming Saratoga with Clarke Gable, Jean began to suffer from kidney problems caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever. She postponed seeing her doctor because she was busy filming, but by the time her symptoms became serious it was too late. She died of cerebral edema and uremic poisoning caused by a build up of waste products in the blood. Some claimed that her mother, a christian scientist, had kept her from seeing a doctor because of her religious beliefs but this was untrue. It was Jean’s other parental influence – her studio who, through the pressures of filming, inadvertently caused her tragic death.