JEAN HARLOW - what was the appeal?

[quote] JEAN HARLOW - what was the appeal?

I can't imagine.

It's all about the tits hon.

She was the original platinum blonde. A sassy, brassy dame who didn't wear undergarments underneath those diaphanous gowns, and sometimes appeared nude in her pre-Code films. Gentlemen who grew up at the tale end of the Victorian era hadn't seen the likes of her outside of the bordellos and on French postcards.

She was hysterical in Dinner at Eight

The tale end??

What did Joan Crawford think of Harlow? It was always said (at least here) that MGM's 3 Queens were Garbo, Shearer and Crawford but it was Harlow that got some of the sexiest roles opposite King Clark Gable.

Did Joan ever comment on Jean? She seemed to talk about everyone else.

[quote] She was hysterical in Dinner at Eight

I was JUST about to type this. OP, if you only see her in dramas, you won't get it. She's an average, at best, dramatic actress and the style dims her natural charisma. But she was a very gifted comedienne and when performing in comedies it was readily apparent why she was a star.

[quote] It was always said (at least here) that MGM's 3 Queens were Garbo, Shearer and Crawford

Excuse me?

Funny you should write this, OP. I just saw her in Platinum Blonde a few days ago; it was the first time I'd seen her in decades, although I did see Dinner at Eight about 25 years ago.

I asked my friend who went to the movie with me the same question you did: remind me what the appeal was? She looked pretty ordinary (Loretta Young, who was also in Platinum Blonde, looked much lovelier -- but also more generic); the hair was a mess; her figure was fine, but she was thicker than Loretta Young; and I didn't get the star quality at all.

My friend said that she had a kind of natural appeal in spite of her bleached hair, and that she just seemed far more interesting than a generic beauty like Young.

Maybe it was as simple as that.

When she was at Columbia and Universal before she landed at MGM, she looked like hell. RED DUST (32) was her first great role. And she's fantastic. She finally got to reveal some great comedic skills. It's amazing how young she was at the height of her fame.

She died because of the hair bleach.

She's very good in "Wife vs Secretary ". Along with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy and a very young Jimmy Stewart.

R11 she got 4 wisdom teeth extracted and developed an infection. This was before antibiotics. Then her kidneys failed.

I think as the 1930s and the Depression wore on and audiences were embracing more down to earth female stars like Bette Davis, Jean Arthur and Barbara Stanwyck, the more extreme glamour personalities like Harlow, Hepburn, Dietrich and Garbo inevitably saw their popularity slide.

If Harlow had lived another year, she would have undoubtedly been on that Box Office Poison list like all of the other ladies. Tastes were rapidly changing and soon another blonde, Betty Grable would be #1 Box Office Star; but she couldn't have been more different from Harlow.

Harlow was definitely best in comedies, but even there she could be screechy (watch BOMBSHELL sometime and you'll know what I mean). The reason she's effective in DINNER AT EIGHT is that she's part of an ensemble so there's a bit less of her.

In the Howard Hughes-produced & directed HELL'S ANGELS from 1930, she actually plays an upper-class British woman. Or barely tries to. It was the most bizarre casting of her in any film.

She's also fantastic in Libeled Lady (1936) with Spencer Tracy, William Powell and Myrna Loy. The scene where she marries Powell, though she's really in love with Tracy (it's complicated) is uproariously hilarious. Danny Peary, in his book Alternate Oscars, picks her performance in this film for Best Actress of that year.

I played her in THE AVIATOR. It was just like bearding, only in real life.

Her best performance was by far in Dinner at Eight and that was because she had a smart director who really understood how to get the best out of her.

Most of her other directors were MGM company hacks. I wonder if Clark Gable, her frequent costar, was happier working with the hacks?

R9, where did you see a screening of platinum blonde?

In Vienna, r20. The Filmmuseum here is doing a feature on pre-code auteur filmmakers, and Platinum Blonde was included as a Frank Capra film.

One of my all-time favorite films, Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress, is also being shown. I hope I can make it to that one too.

I heard the studio used kidney failure as a cover story to hide that she actually died from a botched abortion.

I always thought she was ugly.

She was the blueprint for Marilyn Monroe, I think that is why she is remembered so fondly.

Except Marilyn was lovely, is forever lovely. Jean Harlow was hideous looking.

Bump

I also heard the botched abortion rumor.

She was sexy, even slutty, in an era when sexy, slutty women weren't given prominence. Other actresses played ingenues or good girls, or occasionally party girls who demanded marriage when a guy tried to get into their pants, but Harlow started out playing whores and mistresses and had an unabashed whorish sexiness. Of course there was much more to her career than that, she actually proved to have a talent for comedy and for bringing fun to the screen.

Really, the only other actress of her era who was as openly sexy was Marlene Dietrich, and she was German. There wasn't another American actress with the same sort of sex appeal until Marilyn Monroe came along.

Ive never seen her in a movie..........but I think she sort of had a Marilyn Monroe esque effect and women liked her as well as men. Her blond blond hair was part of the appeal I would think...........also, interesting, she was LOVED by everybody on the MGM lot from Louis B mayer down to the janitor. EVERYBODY loved her and wanted to protect her. She had a crazy mother who was a christian scientist and didnt believe in medicine or drs and it took several days after she left the studio very ill for people to practically break down the door to Harlows house with her mother blocking the way before she got medical attn. and it was too late and she died or peritonitis. Rumor had it, her first husband Paul Bern had beat her up pretty badly and injured her kidneys and that is when her medical problems started.............that ultimately lead to her death

Always preferred her to MM.

I don’t get Monroe at all.

TITTIES!

They sell. Straight men love them. I'm gay and love them too.

And as repeated above, she was great in comedies.

^ Nobody was looking at her hair.

[quote]I don’t get Monroe at all.

Other than "The Misfits", I really don't get MM either.

Franchot Tone to Harlow in Bombshell: "Your hair is like a field of silver daisies. I'd like to run barefoot through your hair!"

she looked like a girl who wouldnt say no. the ultra blonde white hair was exotic and glamorous, i cant place the accent but it sounded low class and nasally.

she was excellent in redheaded woman, red dust and dinner at 8, a scene stealer.

Aside from the platinum blonde locks, which was rare in those days, in pictures Jean was frequently in slinky gowns without any undergarments. And in some of her pre-Code films, a little bit of nipplage would slip in the shot. That was her appeal. It was all titillation and the straight men went nuts over her.

They didn't just go nuts over her because she was sexy, R36, but IMHO because she came across as both sexy and fun! She seemed to be the kind of girl who a straight man could be himself with, she wouldn't be offended by the mention of sex or the suggestion of laughing over a few beers. I should think all the good-natured straight men of the day were nuts about her.

It's amazing but women seemed to like her as well. Maybe it was because she had a sense of humor, maybe it was because she seemed to be universally liked in real life.

Marilyn Monroe's look was based on Harlow's, but they had quite different persona. Harlow was brassy and funny, while Marilyn played innocent sexpot. Harlow actually came from money and attended finishing school. Like a lot of early stars, her parents were divorced and her mother was a wannabe star who channeled her ambition into her daughter's career.

Lana Turner came to MGM to replace Harlow, since it was said the sex-bomb role was vacant. So if you want to link Monroe to Harlow, you might have to put Lana in between.

Died so young, poor thing. I'd like to read the book she wrote.

At the time of her death Harlow was MGM's most popular female star. I wonder if she could have sustained her popularity into the 40s.

I've neve seen her last film Saratoga. Apparently a double is used for some shots that had yet to be completed with Jean.

Harlow had the kind of appeal that expires at age 30. Also, times were changing as WWII grew closer. If Harlow had lived, her career would have been essentially over by Pearl Harbor.

When Jean Harlow attended a party given by the sharp-tongued English aristocrat Margot Asquith, the movie star presumptuously referred to the hostess by her first name, and she repeatedly mispronounced it as “MargoT" i.e., she pronounced a 'T' at the end of the name.

Eventually, Asquith responded with a squelcher: "No, no, Jean. The ‘T' is silent, as in Harlow."

And, R34, Lee Tracy says, referring to Tone's character, something like "He looks like an athlete. Probably has athlete's foot."

Harlow's brassy voice was part of her appeal, making her seem down to earth and undercutting the glamor in an almost subversive way. The platinum hair, shaved eyebrows replaced by penciled-in ones, and exaggerated pale makeup do look odd to us, but they were a Thirties thing. In some of Bette Davis' early films, they tried to make her look like Harlow, with mixed results.

I don't get her either. Was she attractive to straight men? Had star has declined however, while Monroe's just keeps on growing!

Harlow had a certain something but I'm not a huge fan.

Harlow's hair was destroyed by the terrible lighteners then in use. Remember Clairol wasn't even around until 1931.

They said at one point Marilyn hired Harlow's elderly colorist because she could achieve a pale blonde without the brassy, honey color. (Her secret was adding sodium hypochlorite, the ingredient in Clorox and pool cleaners.)

Eventually MM found a hair colorist who understood double-process platinum blonding--without destroying the hair.

I saw Saratoga but it was a long time ago. The double was used in a couple long shots as I recall, with her back turned. It didnt seem to affect the story but probably I'd be much more critical if I saw it today.

Some Dinner at Eight highlights.

I don't get it. Boring. Pass.

Jean's replacement in Saratoga. I now want to see the movie, and see how much effect it had on its continuity.

R51, in a lot of old movies, you can tell if you watch closely where a double was used, either for stunt work or some other reason. For example, in the Garbo film Romance, she plays an opera singer. We see a performance of Flotow's Martha from the perspective of the audience, all long shots, no closeups. That's not Garbo up there on stage. It's another actress (I forget her name). The voice, probably dubbed, is a high bright soprano, very different from Garbo's speaking voice. They didn't even bother to insert any shots of Garbo in the costume.

Her accent completely turns me off but of course I feel sorry for her because of her sad story.

She looks like a tranny, maybe she is one. Is that the appeal?

R3 There's only one OG.

Harlow embodies an era--in retrospect, because we've assigned her that role. She took a lot of her cues (and success) from Clara Bow, who had difficulty doing sound films. Harlow gave the illusion of sluttiness, without being an actual slut. And the audiences knew it. They knew she really wasn't a bad girl, which was something you couldn't say about Bow. I also read that her weird accent was her attempt to sound "common" and cover up her natural, upper class speaking voice which wouldn't fit with the image she wanted to convey. And I seriously doubt she would've had much of a career as she aged. She was too "type" and wouldn't have been allowed to age on film. Same problem with Marilyn.

She photographed well, but without makeup, quite plain and dull looking.

I think she had a really beautiful face, and would have been regarded as a real screen beauty if she hadn't worn that godawful exaggerated makeup with the inhuman drawn-on eyebrows and much-too-dark lipstick. She really did have lovely facial proportions, great bone structure, and glowing pale skin.

If I had photoshop skills, or actual Photoshop, I'd love to experiment with her face - see what she looked like with light, flattering makeup on.

She probably would've looked good for, at least, the next 20 years. Here she is with her mother, who looked attractive for her age.

They did the same thing to little Miss Alice Faye, r45.

Most of the actresses of the early 1930s suffered from being made up like Harlow, or Greta Garbo, and frankly the makeup from that era almost always looks harsh and inhuman.

Greta Garbo had incredible long natural eyelashes and arched brows, and her makeup was designed to emphasize the eyes... so every other actress of the period had to have her eyebrows shaved so that the arched brow could be drawn on, and false eyelashes. It never looked good on anyone but Garbo, and Harlow's characteristic dark lipstick and heavy eye makeup didn't even look good on her, much less her imitators. Really, the makeup artists of that era have a lot to answer for.

I remember a documentary (on TCM?) which speculated about how Harlow's career might have progressed, had she lived. It suggested that she might have thrown herself into WW2 war bond, canteen, etc. patriotic work, and become hugely popular as a result. But it's hard to imagine her, later, transitioning into roles as other actors' mothers or grandmothers.

An interesting thing about Harlow was that she married money while very young. She was a socialite who got into movies more or less as a lark, for the hell of it, because she was bored. The rather awful Hollywood biopic about her starring Carol Baker suggests that she was forced into the movies by her ambitious stage mother (played by Angela Lansbury) and that she started out in degrading roles. Not true.

Y’all are missing the point. The brassy voice was intentional to denote being a “bad” girl. Her look was “in” at the that time. Just like Brooke Shields popularized bushy eyebrows. She was very pretty without makeup and had a very nice body and a great rack. Saw a docu about her once and they spoke to old Hollywood studio workers who all said she was their favorite person to work with. No one had a bad word about her.

Here is a photo of her without makeup. I hope the link works.

The "Saratoga" scenes using a body double also used another actress to impersonate her voice.

I've seen "Saratoga"--and, yes, the use of doubles is pretty obvious--and it does affect the film. It's pretty clear that they didn't get that much footage of Harlow before she died. So, you get scenes of her character from the back or with her faced blocked by binoculars or veils. Places where you'd expect a close-up don't have them. She doesn't look well in the movie--bloated.

I think, if she'd lived, her career would have gone a while longer--she was hugely popular when she died and young--only 26. She wasn't a great actress, but her two types of roles: cheap blond floozy and rich blond not-so-floozy continued to be in demand. She could do comedy and she could have worked in film noir. I think she'd have been over somewhere in her early-to-mid thirties and, from the sounds of it, she'd have retired and done her thing--that's where her socialite/finishing school background would have kicked in. She knew how to be a lady-who-lunched. She was engaged to William Powell--though Wikipedia says, she wanted kids and he didn't, so that was holding things up--but she might have married him and been a Hollywood wife/hostess in later years.

Pre-code Harlow was a brassy, trampy, gold-digging good-time girl who used whatever tricks of the trade to shake some poor rich chump out of his financial earnings. Post-code Harlow toned down the brass and was generally the girl-next-door trapped in the body of a sexpot. This was closer to her real-life persona than the earlier incarnation as the town slut.

Seriously..I will never understand people who claim not to ' get ' Marilyn Monroe. Are you blind,deaf and dumb?

Louis B. Mayer didn't want to sign her to MGM because he hated her floozy image. After Thalberg bought out her contract the studio began publishing photos of Harlow doing charity work so as to change her image to an All American Girl.

If you look at her filmography you can see how her MGM career was short and also how they kept her working even in that brief time.

In terms of where her career might have gone, M-G-M purchased a novel, DARK DAME, by Wilson Collinson (who wrote the play RED DUST) specifically for Harlow. It probably would have followed SARATOGA, had she lived. The story was eventually filmed as MAISIE, with Ann Sothern , and it led to a series of B-movies featuring the same character.

She’s very good in “ Wife vs Secretary “ with Gable and Myrna Loy and even an early turn with Jimmy Stewart.

She plays it very toned down and not flashy at all.

r73 biascut, satin made of real silk, too glamorous for words

The 1940s had the most attractive looking makeup and hair styles for women.

Fuller looking eyebrows, soft, wavy hair and deep red lipstick but not much more makeup was worn (on the face). The 1930s and 20s were highly stylized with brittle looking, crimped hair and harsh makeup contours. That said, Harlow's deep almost black lipstick and white hair created an amazing contrast and the ultimate in cinematic glamour for that time and completely unflattering for Harlow's features.