Jean harlow, p.1
Jean Harlow, page 1
JEAN HARLOW
Tarnished Angel
DAVID BRET
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: The Girl From Missouri
Chapter Two: Hell’s Angel
Chapter Three: Gangster’s Moll
Chapter Four: Platinum Blonde
Chapter Five: Who Killed Little Father Confessor?
Chapter Six: Dinner At Eight
Chapter Seven: The Prizefighter, The Lady And The Cameraman
Chapter Eight: Reckless
Chapter Nine: No Sad Songs For Me
Chapter Ten: Saratoga
Epilogue
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
Photo Insert
Copyright
This book is dedicated to Eartha Kitt and Yma Sumac and Les Enfants de Novembre.
N’oublie pas la vie sans c’est comme
Un jardin sans fleurs.
Acknowledgements
Writing this book would not have been possible had it not been for the inspiration, criticisms and love of that select group of individuals who, whether they be in this world or the next, I will always regard as my true family and autre coeur: Barbara, Irene Bevan, Marlene Dietrich, René Chevalier, Axel Dotti, Dorothy Squires and Roger Normand, que vous dormez en paix. Lucette Chevalier, Maria da Fé, Jacqueline Danno, Doris Day, Héléne Delavault, Tony Griffin, Betty and Gérard Garmain, Annick Roux, John and Anne Taylor, Terry Sanderson, Charley Marouani, David and Sally Bolt. Also a very special mention for Amália Rodrigues, Joey Stefano, those hiboux, fadistas and amis de foutre who happened along the way, and mes enfants perdus. Thanks too to Mikey Blatin and Theo Morgan. And where would I be without Jeremy Robson and the munificent team at JR Books? Likewise my agent Guy Rose and his lovely wife, Alex? Also to my wife, Jeanne, for putting up with my bad moods and for still being the keeper of my soul.
And finally a grand chapeau bas to Jean Harlow, for having lived.
David Bret
Introduction
Her lodestar was extinguished no sooner than it had ascended, yet her legacy has endured for more than 70 years. On the screen she epitomised the fun-loving, wise-cracking trollop. She was the original tart with the heart who drove men wild, and made wives jealous of their husbands’ thoughts—but unlike contemporaries such as Mae West, she conducted herself on and off the screen with such coarse innocence that rarely caused offence save to the stuffy National League of Decency and the Hays Office, in whose ‘Black Book’ virtually every Hollywood star eventually ended up, therefore minimalising the power of these moral fools. And yet away from the spotlight she was nothing like the public perceived her to be.
Throughout her short life she was cruelly manipulated by just about everyone who came into contact with her. Her megalo-maniac mother—obsessed by money and the religious cult she latched on to—failed to achieve anything in life, so she set out to make life hell for those around her, most especially the daughter she always referred to, even in adulthood, as ‘The Baby’. Her father was a weak man who could not have cared less—his one desire had been to get his troublesome wife out of his hair once and for all. Jean Harlow’s stepfather mixed with gangsters and low-life, and both mentally and sexually abused her while spending half of her salary on needless luxuries and a string of mistresses. Hypocritical movie moguls pretended to like her but only used her, paying her a pittance of what their other stars were earning while they were earning 10 times the amount she was for the same studio.
Considering her natural beauty and sparkling personality she could have had only the very best, yet her choice of men bordered on the amorously blind. She never showed the remotest interest in any of her handsome, matinee idol co-stars, not until William Powell came along, towards the end of her life—and only then because he slotted into the sophisticated older-man category she had become obsessed with, while searching for a father figure to offer her the spiritual comfort she had missed out on as a child.
When her first husband announced that he wanted her to settle down and have a family, her stepfather menaced him into granting her a divorce she did not want, and forced her to have the first of several abortions. His successor, a man who beat her mercilessly and almost certainly contributed to her death, was more than twice her age and subjected her to one of the messiest scandals in Hollywood history, a mystery which has never been properly solved to this day. Her third husband, also many years her senior, failed to keep up with the pace of being mere ‘Mr Harlow’. Between these spouses were mobster, bootlegger and drug-dealer lovers, a gay journalist who took her most closely guarded secrets to the grave, and the actor William Powell, who almost married her, unceremoniously dumped her, then came back to fork out $25,000—an enormous sum at the time—for her tomb.
Jean Harlow was an enigma, the original Blonde Bombshell, completely uninhibited. She made no secret of the fact that she never wore underwear, bleached her pubic hair to match that on her head—and was never afraid of showing this to journalists, if they asked. She answered the door to her dressing room in the nude, with such a lack of exhibitionism that most visitors did not blink. Most people thought her fearless, yet deep inside she was little more than a timid, confused child. Her first few films were nothing short of appalling because she was typecast as the heartless slut who uses men, and pays the price. Then all of a sudden her career spiralled when, having been given roles to suit her innate screwball talents, MGM realised that they had struck gold—not that this made the studio treat her with even a fraction of the respect she deserved.
Jean Harlow was the original monstre sacré. This is her story….
CHAPTER ONE
The Girl From Missouri
‘She filled the eye and imagination with the impact of her looks and personality. I never saw a star with more personal magnetism. Her stardom was of the immediate moment of her presence, of stunning good looks, of unbounded vitality which needed no grafted additions or embellishment.’
Jesse Lasky Jr
She was born a little before 8pm on 3 March 1911, at 3344 Olive Street, in one of Kansas City’s more opulent districts. Her mother was a handsome, 22-year-old society climber born Jean Harlow, who always insisted on being called Mama Jean—and who in most contemporary reports was noted as having wildly eccentric behaviour. Her father was Montclair Carpenter, who practised at the local dental college.
Later in life, the Jean Harlow everyone knew and loved would apply the dictum, ‘Fuck ’em and forget ’em’, to most of the men in her life. It was a trait she inherited from a hard-edged mother whose morals left much to be desired. And just as the future Jean Harlow would spend much of her life under her mother’s thumb, so Mama Jean lived in fear of her staunch Presbyterian father, Samuel, a wealthy property developer, largely because he was the one financing her schemes and foibles.
The Harlows lived in a huge, 24-room mansion overlooking the Skaw River, and it was Samuel (always known as Skip) who railroaded his daughter down the aisle at the end of 1908—having defined Montclair Carpenter of being of good breeding stock. Mama Jean entered the bridal suite with one thought in mind—having a child but not with him—and between then and what she later called ‘the immaculate conception’, she tolerated her new husband forcing himself upon her. Then, once the family doctor had confirmed the good news, Montclair was not just ousted from her bed, but from her life, though for the time being—so as not to displease Skip who was paying most of their bills—they still lived under the same roof.
As with some of the other great, yet controversial stars of this and the next generation—instinctively one thinks of Judy Garland and Elizabeth Taylor—Mama Jean Carpenter opted to live out her own failed aspirations through her daughter, almost always indiscriminately and with little thought of anyone but herself. There seems no denying that this martinet loved her daughter, but throughout her tragically short life Harlean, as she was baptised—an amalgamation of Mama Jean’s first and maiden names—would be treated like a chattel, not just by her immediate family but by just about everyone who came in close contact with her.
Yet in spite of this, Harlean’s was a privileged upbringing, to say the least. Soon after her birth, the Carpenters moved to a much bigger house at 4409 Robert Gillam Road—Montclair’s way of trying to hang on to his domineering wife, who demanded that she be provided with a personal maid, housekeeper, major-domo, and liveried chauffeur. Baby, as everyone called her—Harlean claimed that, until starting school, she had actually believed this to have been her real name—had her own nanny and private nurse. ‘Until I was five I spoke French almost exclusively, as I had a Parisian governess’, she later told her celebrity journalist friend, Ben Maddox—though this may have been another Harlow ‘tall tale’. She was confined beyond belief by her mother, who kept her away from other children but afforded her plenty of winged and four-legged playmates: the several acres of grounds were populated with pigs, ducks, chickens and lambs, while within the house Harlean had several dogs, cats and birds. Skip Harlow also bought his granddaughter a pony, but so as not to frighten the other animals, she was only permitted to ride it at his place.
Mama Jean was ultra-possessive, and prone to exaggeration. Theirs was the best house in town, hers was the lustiest husband—though by now she and Montclair were sleeping in separate rooms. Harlean was a sickly infant who seems to have contracted every childhood ailment. If any child in the neighbourhood fell ill, then whatever ailment laid Harlean low had to be more severe than t he others, if not life threatening. In 1916, Kansas City was hit by the influenza epidemic which would result in a bigger worldwide death-toll than all the casualties of World War 1. Harlean did not contract mere influenza, Mama Jean later declared—she almost died of spinal meningitis. This was refuted by relatives, speaking to biographer David Stenn (Bombshell, 1993)—though by this time, with all of the major characters in her story dead, there is no knowing whether this and other anecdotes recounted to Stenn were accurate. He simply repeated them as they had been told, perhaps at a time when memories may have been fading.
Harlean was not allowed to play with other local children. Occasionally she was escorted to a birthday party, but that is as far as it went. She was perpetually on display, clinging to her mother’s hand, wearing only the most expensive clothes, clutching the costliest dolls money could buy—a possession more than a child. Setting a precedent for the future, and to set her aside from every other youngster, Mama Jean dyed Harlean’s mousey hair not just blonde, but almost white. This, she declared, went well with her blue eyes. The situation between Mama Jean and Harlean brings to mind the later one between another less privileged Kansas City girl, Joan Crawford, and her adopted daughter, Christina—save that Jean Harlow would not repay her mother with an odious, mostly invented kiss-and-tell of their years together.
For the first 12 years of her life, as throughout much of her later career, Harlean Carpenter was hardly ever addressed by her first name—only as Baby. When she was six, her grandfather enrolled her at Barstow’s, a prestigious private academy for children from privileged backgrounds whose families hoped the experience would turn them into genteel young ladies. This coincided with Skip Harlow buying an 18-room mansion on the city’s opulent East 79th Street—not for himself, but for Mama Jean and Montclair, in the hope of getting them reunited not just for Harlean’s sake, but to stop the local gossips who saw Mama Jean as a harlot.
Mama Jean promised she would make a go of things, moved into the property—and promptly filed for divorce. Montclair could have contested the suit and triumphed in any courthouse by branding his wife a scarlet woman. What lies Mama Jean told the judge are not known—suffice to say, along with the $200 a month alimony, she was awarded sole custody of their daughter, and Harlean would hardly ever see her father again. The divorce was made final on 22 September 1922, whence Mama Jean announced that she was heading for Hollywood to seek her fortune—as if she was not rich enough! And naturally, Harlean would be going with her.
In 1923, when Mama Jean and Harlean arrived in Tinseltown, Hollywood’s marquee names were Rudolph Valentino, Pola Negri, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Clara Bow and Richard Barthelmess. Within a few years, the advent of sound would see some of these stars falling by the wayside, while Valentino would succumb to peritonitis, aged just 31. Mama Jean still had aspirations for her daughter, but she saw only herself working opposite the likes of Valentino and Richard Arlen, and even as a stooge for funnymen Harold Lloyd and Laurel & Hardy.
It mattered little to her that, now in her mid-thirties, most producers considered her far too old—the average age of a Hollywood leading lady then was just 20. If these vamps could make themselves look older, she declared, then with the right application of make-up she could reverse the process. She was told that maybe she could find work as an extra, in caricature or matronly parts—the undisputed queen of which was Marie Dressler—but for Mama Jean Carpenter, this was not good enough. She wanted to play Ibsen heroines, like the great Russian actress Alla Nazimova!
Mama Jean rented a small apartment, within a Sunset Boulevard mansion. Skip picked up the tab, but only because Mama Jean fulfilled his instruction to enrol his granddaughter at the Hollywood School For Girls. Despite its title, the pupils here included Mary Pickford’s son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Harlean later said that her first unrequited love was cowboy star Buck Jones (1889—1942), whose movies she would see every Saturday afternoon, unchaperoned, while her mother went off socialising in search of some well-heeled benefactor to help launch her movie career.
It was during one of these social jaunts—cynics have suggested for the want of something better to do—that Mama Jean discovered Christian Science, regarded by some sections of the Hollywood community as the latest fad. Mary Pickford, Conrad Nagel, Leatrice Joy—big stars of the day—and director King Vidor were all practitioners. The movement had been founded by Mary Baker Eddy (1821—1910), who although raised a Catholic had rejected the formal teachings of her faith because of ‘divine intervention’ during a series of illnesses and a spinal injury, from which she claimed she had ‘miraculously’ recovered without medical help.
Thrice married, and not the role model she made herself out to be, Eddy’s theory—which if introduced today would see her lampooned as a crank, but which in 1866 with medical knowledge limited was taken very seriously by gullible believers—was that ‘illness is but an illusion which can be healed through a clearer conception of God.’ As such, she had founded the Christian Science movement, whose edicts as detailed in her Science With A Key To The Scriptures, published in 1875, profess that since God is good and is a spirit, matter and evil are ultimately unreal. Suffice to say, no reputable publisher had wished to risk the scandal of taking on such a project, so Eddy had financed the first print run herself. It sold just 800 copies, but most of the ‘students’ who had bought it had moved around the country spreading the word, so by the time of Eddy’s death the movement had attracted many thousands of followers and had spawned several publications including The Christian Science Monitor, still going strong today. As a consequence, true followers of the religion still shy away from orthodox medical treatment, preferring to rely on healing which they believe is brought about by ‘operation of truth within the human conscience’.
Mama Jean Carpenter joined the movement chiefly for social advancement—she would only apply its edicts when this suited her, most disastrously some years later when her ‘beliefs’ would cost her daughter her life. What makes the movement hypocritical is that one of its laws ‘shuns the cult of celebrity’—not that this, like the cult of Scientology, has seen some stars accused of augmenting its ranks as a publicity exercise just to get themselves noticed. Three future recruits into Christian Science were Joan Crawford, Doris Day and Elizabeth Taylor.
Aside from a few Christian Science meetings and parties where Mama Jean flaunted herself in front of movie executives and talent scouts who showed no interest in her whatsoever, this particular sojourn in Hollywood did not prove fruitful. Aware that his daughter was up to no good, Skip Harlow cut Mama Jean’s weekly allowance, forcing her to ‘slum it’ in a cheaper apartment on North La Brea Avenue. She stuck this out until March 1925, then returned with Harlean to Kansas City. Here, there was a furious row with Skip, who accused Mama Jean of leading Harlean astray by having introduced her to all the wrong people in Hollywood. In an attempt to instil a little discipline into her life, not to mention a few morals, he enrolled Harlean at Notre Dame de Sion (despite his distrust of any other religion but his own), a strict convent boarding school. She lasted a single term before running home to her mother, who found her a place at Bigelow’s, a school within easy travelling distance of her home.
During that summer of 1925, in yet another attempt to separate Harlean from a mother who was preoccupied with socialising, Skip sent her to summer camp at Camp Cha-ton-ka, in Michigamme, Michigan. She would subsequently remember this as the worst experience of her life because, knowing nothing of country life, she had grabbed the first thing at hand to wipe her bottom during a field trip—poison oak leaves—and caught an infection. During the same trip she claimed she had also contracted scarlet fever, though she cannot have been too ill because she also found time to lose her virginity to a fellow camper called David Thornton Arnold. Years later, Thor, as he was popularly known, would dine out on his Jean Harlow stories and recall the event—which he nevertheless described as unexciting—in clinical detail.
The real reason for Harlean Carpenter being asked to leave Chaton-ka is unclear, though almost certainly it was on account of her wayward behaviour. Mama Jean collected her, and the two travelled back to Kansas via Chicago, where they stayed at the ultra plush Sherman Hotel. It was here that Marino Bello entered their lives. ‘He’s a phoney son of a bitch,’ Jean Harlow would later say, ‘I hate him as much as my mother loves him. His idea of heaven is his side of the bed.’
