INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

When Jean moved into a house on Club Drive in Beverly Hills her new neighbor was canine superstar Rin Tin Tin. Jean adored the dog and he became a regular guest at her home. In fact, Rin Tin Tin would later die cradled in her arms. Media reports at the time claimed "many men would have gladly traded places with that lucky dog!"

As a result of Jean's death, Saratoga (1937) became the biggest grossing film of that year.

In conjunction with the release of Dinner At Eight (1933) Jean was asked to place her hand and footprints in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. At the ceremony the block of cement was brought into the main theatre where Jean signed her name in front of a crowd of fans. As the cement block was being taken outside it was dropped and broke into several pieces. She agreed to return to the theatre a few days later to participate in a second ceremony to replace the broken block. This time the block of cement was kept safely outside. She added three pennies for good like. They were later stolen.

In 1935, Max Factor opened his new salon in Central Hollywood and 8,000 people showed up to watch Jean cut the ribbon to the "Blondes Only Room."

Her mother Jean fell ill on June 7, 1958, exactly twenty-one years to the day after Jean's death. She died four days later and was laid to rest next to her daughter at Forest Lawn.

The title of Jean's 1933 movie Bombshell started the popular term for a blonde sex-pot known as a "Bombshell."

While attending a football game, Harlow pointed to a husky member of a team and said to Bern, her then husband, "Daddy, buy me that!"

Her grandpa's present to her on her fifth birthday was an ermine bedspread.

Clark Gable called her "Sis," while almost everyone else at MGM called Jean "The Baby."

Between films she didn't worry about her hair or weight and allowed herself to get chubby. She'd have to diet drastically to get back into shape, eating mostly vegetables and salads.

Harlow always wittily joked that her three marriages had been "marriages of inconvenience."

Adela Rogers St. John felt that while many female stars had mothers who stood behind them or beside them, the most obsessed mother, one who stood in front of her daughter, was Jean Harlow's, contending that Mama Jean was an aggressive, domineering, cunning woman who let nothing stand in the way of her daughter's success.

Jean had a perfect body, but her aversion to wear underwear caused certain problems with the Hays Office. Beneath one costume, she was persuaded to try various brassieres, but still her nipples showed through, until a special bra was devised, one which had tips of fur-lined tin.

Longie Zwillman, one of the nation's top bootleggers, was obsessed with her and for years she wore a platinum bracelet he gave her, which was hung with tiny objects, including a pig to represent her eating habits. The bracelet was much admired by Harlow's friends and seems to have started the charm-bracelet craze.

Jean had a photographic memory. She never ran lines. She'd simply look over the script, come out of her dressing room and do it perfectly, take after take.

Photographer Hurrell found Harlow extremely photogenic but physically imperfect. He said "she was one star who never, ever believed her publicity."

Jean was known as a voracious reader. She loved to read, especially historical novels and detective stories.

To make her hair platinum blonde her hairdresser used peroxide, ammonia, Clorox, and Lux Flakes.

Watching Red Dust in a 5,400-seat theater, a New York Times critic noted "platinum blondes on all sides" studying their idol on-screen.

In what would become a custom on all Harlow movies from Red-Headed Woman onwards, each morning her maid would serve coffee and doughnuts to the entire crew.

Red-Headed Woman was banned in Britain, though King George kept a print at Buckingham palace.

After Paul Bern's death, she began drinking, which was not something Christian Science approved of. But she liked to drink; it was her escape from unhappiness.

Mayer withdrew Harlow from The Hollywood Revue of 1933 because she couldn't sing a lick, not even a tune covering a range of only six notes, composed especially for her in view of her total lack of musical talent.

Joan Crawford hated Harlow.  Crawford's then-husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., termed her attitude toward Harlow a "controlled detestation."

She suffered from a severe inferiority complex. If anyone did anything for her, she'd give them a present, expressing gratitude for practically nothing.

Director George Cukor admired her tremendous talent for comedy saying she "played comedy as naturally as a hen lays an egg."

When her rich grandfather, Skip Harlow, saw Double Whoopee, he despised it, and vowed to disinherit his granddaughter if she continued her career.

Her mother signed most documents and letters in her daughter's stead. Misidentified by fans and collectors, many are still sold today.

Though her line from Hell's Angels, "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?", would become a catchphrase, Harlow thought it the corniest line in movie history.

Started out in Silent Movies working in the Laurel and Hardy comedies when Howard Hughes discovered her and put her in Hell's Angels and she became a star.

Years after her death her mother was admitted to the same hospital and the same exact hospital room where Jean was when she was ill and in that room her mother died.

Died aged twenty-six from complications arising from a bladder infection. It is not true that her mother - a Christian Scientist -  kept her from a doctor because of her religious beliefs but the fact was that Jean wanted to finish the movie Saratoga (1937) with Clark Gable before going to a doctor but by that time it was too late and she died before completing the picture.  The picture was completed with a stand-in in some of her scenes.

Her husband, studio executive Paul Bern, was discovered with his brains blown out, immediately after their marriage. It was said he had undeveloped genitalia. Why had the world's most voraciously sexual female married a sexually inadequate man? Was the shooting suicide or murder? Rumours still persist.

The platinum hair tint was created for starlet Harlow by Max Factor. Within weeks, she became world famous, triggering a demand for platinum tresses throughout Hollywood and America.

Wrote a risque novel called Today Is Tonight and attempted to publish it. MGM studios destroyed all the copies.

Jean was at a dinner party and kept on addressing Margot Asquith (wife of prime minister Herbert Asquith) as 'Margott' stressing the final 't'. Margot finally had enough and said to her "The final 't' in my Christian name is silent, unlike your family name."

Had two famous superstitions: She always wore a "lucky" ankle chain on her left leg (visible in some films if you look closely), and had a "lucky" mirror in her dressing room. She wouldn't leave the room without first looking at it. Reportedly, her "lucky" ankle bracelet broke during the filming of Saratoga (1937). A sign of things to come maybe...