Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Sunday, March 20, 2011



Harlow In Hollywood Is Here






There sometimes are books you don't want to end. One for me is Mark Vieira's newest, with Darrell Rooney, Harlow In Hollywood, just out for the actress' hundredth birthday and laying down a rarest and most dazzling array of JH images ever gathered between two covers. Vieira has written before on Garbo, Irving Thalberg, Golden Age horror, and precode. Each fit coffee tables and are visual treasure finds. What he and Rooney achieve via Harlow is a screen legend in day-to-day context with a gone Hollywood she'd briefly thrive in. JH was as much about places as persona, being habitué to glamour spots we associate with Hollywood in prime years. The authors tour us by luxury hotels, horse tracks, chic bars, sundry sighting along Deco boulevards since condo-converted and parking decked. I've never felt so close to events of Harlow's era. Vieira and Rooney make it vivid as something you might step into and experience now. If only!











There are revelations aplenty here. Seems Harlow had gangland assist getting early parts at Columbia, thanks to unsavory coupling with a Mob figure. I want to buy JH as good-hearted victim of studio and rapacious family scheming, but this was no babe in woods ... in some ways she was anyone's equal for cunning. I actually like Harlow's offscreen mix of saint and sinner, all of us human and being of such combine after all. She'd be a bore as mere naïf ground down by Mayer, Mother, and attendant pitiless system. Harlow played trollops too well to be so clueless of their nature as interviews implied. Trouble early on was parts defined by her hair. So long as it shone porcelain white, there'd be no casting beyond "sex vultures" she'd grow to despise. Maybe an industry laughed at Harlow because they felt threatened by her forthright allure. And yes, she seems to have been regarded a joke much like Clara Bow. You could put Harlow's mop on a clown and it would look no less unreal. Code enforcement extended her career for making MGM humanize Jean's persona, a switch-to-brownette ideally timed to an industry's Code-changed circumstance.








Natural looks would calm Harlow's approach. She'd seem less agitated and blend in easier with co-players. Wife vs. Secretary shows how things might have gone had Harlow lived. The Bombshell was all of a sudden serene, a welcome switch. Interaction with Gable is relaxed, both maybe knowing positions were secure by 1936, so why light Red Dust fireworks for a public to whom they'd become old friends? I think Harlow would have gone increasingly Carole Lombard's way given longer life. The latter calmed down too in dramatic roles/subtler comedy of Made For Each Other, To Be Or Not To Be sort before her own tragic and premature exit (for me, 20th Century/Lombard resembles Libelled Lady/Harlow --- way loud). Harlow was headed for image transition not unlike a Joan Crawford, though I'm less sure JH had JC's determined, if not ruthless, survival instincts. Surely there'd have been a move away from Metro --- what 30's actress survived their early 40's purge? --- maybe a switch to Warners or Fox. I picture Harlow doing easier-going comedies with Fred MacMurray at Paramount, maybe easing back to Metro for guest mom spots with Jane Powell, though a surviving Lombard is more readily imagined than a transitioning to middle-age Jean Harlow, that largely for CL's more stable life choices and avoidance of private life predators. There's something doomed about Jean Harlow's very countenance, as if there was just no way she'd make out it out of the thirties (or her twenties). Vieira and Rooney capture beautifully the glamour and ultimate sadness of a life excitingly, but shortly, lived.

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've always thought that, given her comedic talents, had she lived Harlow would have wound up on tv in the 50's and been a fine rival for the likes of Lucille Ball. (BTW I respectfully disagree with you on the merits Libeled Lady and 20th Century.)

StevenT

3:57 PM  
Blogger VP81955 said...

Intriguing what-ifs, particularly on the comparison to Lombard; she and Harlow were good friends in real life (and both were beloved by studio crews for their professionalism and lack of pretense on the set).

Might Carole and Jean done a "buddy comedy" somewhere along the line, perhaps playing sisters? Maybe they have in an alternate movie universe where each lived to a ripe old age and some other stars, whose identities we can only guess, were called to the afterlife sooner.

4:41 PM  
Blogger Mike Cline said...

Another coincidence...just last night I watched THE BEAST OF THE CITY, and she took one in the belly.

5:09 PM  
Blogger Aubyn said...

Wife vs Secretary was actually my first Jean Harlow movie and the scenes with her and Gable are so relaxed and chummy, I couldn't help wishing the movie would just ditch the titular tease and just follow their platonic adventures. Given the better role, Jean manages to steal the movie from Myrna Loy completely.

2:38 AM  
Anonymous Bob said...

Harlow is so-oooo wonderful. She steals pictures effortlessly. In Libeled Lady, we're supposed to be all aflutter over Loy, but anyone with any taste would take Harlow any day! (As co-star William Powell did in real life!)

1:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Harlow was the one and the only Platinum Blonde. She may not have made many films but the ones she made showed her talent for comedy. The book is a great tribute to her life in films.

5:46 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Harlow was here for the time she was, I don't want to imagine her in some future time, less than the Platinum Blonde icon we love and remember.

12:02 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024
  • April 2024
  • May 2024
  • June 2024
  • July 2024
  • August 2024
  • September 2024
  • October 2024