by Jackie Ganiy
On the way back from camp, they stopped in Chicago to dine at a posh restaurant. A suave man, sporting an Italian accent and gigolo-like manner, introduced himself as Marino Bello. It must have been love at first site for Mama Jean, for the penniless Bello became her new boy toy. Harlean was less impressed, but tolerated him for the way he made her mother smile (and smile and smile). Harlean herself was soon smiling, when she met Chuck McGrew—a boy with high social standing and a sizable inheritance in his future. She dropped out of her oppressive private high school and got married. Mama had already married Bello, eight months prior to Harlean’s wedding, without her daughter’s presence. Ouch.
Harlean now had money to play with, as her husband came into the first installment of his vast fortune just a few months after the wedding. Chuck loved Harlean, but had no use for her meddling, clingy mother and her Italian gigolo husband. So in 1928, he moved his new bride clear across the country to a lavish mansion in Beverly Hills. They lived like Zelda and Scott, in true Jazz Age decadence. Chuck loved booze as much, or more, than he loved his wife, and the ever-accommodating Harlean tried to keep him company in this regard. It was not pretty. They were seen drunk and carousing in all the fashionable nightclubs of the day, and their parties were legendary.
If Chuck thought a little thing like six-teen hundred miles could deter Mama from being with her baby, he was sorely mistaken. Within months, Mama and her gigolo were standing on Harlean and Chuck’s doorstep, suitcases in hand. Sigh.
When Mama learned that Harlean was noticed at Fox Studios while waiting for her actress friend, and had turned down extra work in the movies, she nearly had a heart attack. To top it off, Harlean had not used her real name at central casting, but that of her mother. There was no stopping Mama Jean after that, and Jean Harlow was born, or remade...however you want to look at it.
Mama immediately took the reigns and ordered Harlean to accept the next studio offer that came her way. Soon, she was appearing as an extra and in bit parts all over the place, and getting noticed by those with influence in the business. Colleen Moore recalls the first time she saw Jean on the set: “This beautiful girl with white hair and a white dress was just sitting there, nonchalantly. People were passing by to look at her and asking who she was.” With attention like that, it was not long before someone with real clout, Hal Roach, offered her a five-year contract at one hundred dollars a week. Mother was thrilled, husband Chuck less so, and a classic tug-of-war began.
Betcha can’t guess who won there? While in San Francisco, Harlean (now going by Jean) and Chuck had a violent argument over her career and her mother. He got drunk, trashed their hotel room, and she threatened divorce; a threat she eventually made good on, but not before she got pregnant, and got an abortion to save her career. Guess whose idea that was?
With Chuckie out of the way, Mama was free to pilot Jean’s career as she pleased, while her unemployed mooch of a husband tagged along and did as he was told. Jean broke her contract with Hal Roach, and worked as an extra again, being the sole breadwinner for her little family (Mama, Bello and herself). As she would later put it, “I turned to motion pictures because I had to work or starve.” Quite a come-down for the high society lady.
The Hell’s Angels Premiere, Grumman’s Chinese Theatre, Hollywood, CA, 1931.
Howard Hughes, wealthy playboy turned movie director, was making the big-budget war epic, Hell’s Angels, and cast Harlow as the female lead. This film made her a household name. Hell’s Angels had already been completed as a silent film, but Hughes knew the era of silents was over, so in 1929 he completely remade the picture with sound, and a new leading lady. He immediately recognized the gem he had, and signed her to an exclusive, five-year contract, at only one hundred dollars a week. The movie was full of stunning cinematography and cutting-edge special effects. Hughes had poured every last dime he had into it, and it showed. When the film premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, on May 27, 1929, the town went nuts. Fifty thousand people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the stars in their limousines, especially the young unknown, Jean Harlow, who managed to shock a bootleg-gin-soaked, depression-fearful audience in her barely-there satin dresses and come-hither banter. A squadron of real fighter planes screamed overhead, and one hundred and eighty-five arc lights lit up the boulevard.
The National Guard was called in to keep the peace. And there she was! She materialized amidst all this chaos, draped in white fox and diamonds, kissing the microphone as she thanked Howard Hughes for her stunning success, looking every inch the star she now was.
Hughes wasted no time in loaning his new ingénue out to every studio that asked. Like all smart producers of the day, he was paid thousands for her services, but paid her only a fraction of that, even though she did all the work. She suffered tremendously during the filming of Hell’s Angels, due largely to her inexperience. Her acting was considered subpar, and to salvage his investment in her, Hughes filmed a scene in a new colorized technique called Technicolor, to accentuate her stunning eyes, milky skin and white hair. The effect made Jean a sensation, but caused her to suffer from “burned eyeballs” from the harsh light she was forced to stand under for hours. Acting was not so fun anymore.
She was loaned out to one mediocre film after another, and her acting did not improve. She was often mocked by film critics for her stilted delivery, but they had to acknowledge that, although she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, she was so stunning no one really cared.
She met the fella that would become her second husband while the rushes for Hell’s Angels were still being previewed. He was MGM executive, Paul Bern. Paul was on the rebound from the untimely, drug-related death of his first love, The Girl Too Beautiful: Barbara La Marr. He became Jean’s friend and confidant, much to the alarm and disapproval of guess who?
You’re right! Mama Jean thought Paul was a weasel who just wanted to use Baby Jean for his own conniving, self-centered purposes. Pot calling the kettle black much? Mama still had her hands full, fending off Jean’s soon to be ex-husband, Chuck McGrew, who continued to petition for reconciliation with Baby Jean, who was still Harlean, as far as he was concerned. She really wanted to go back to the hubby and the domestic life, but Mama would have none of it, eventually managing to separate the two for good and ever. A nasty breakup scene occurred, with a very drunk McGrew calling Jean something vile, then slapping her so hard that her head snapped back. He left the house, never seeing his wife again. Jean remarked to her aunt, “Nothing on Earth is worth what I go through when I don’t let her dominate.”
With Bern in her corner, Jean was given the part of a true slut in the MGM gangster film, The Beast of the City. She wiggles, shimmies, and double entendres her way into the reluctant heart of a stiff-lipped police detective, much to the delight of the audience. Jean is at her free-spirited best in this film, touching herself seductively while dancing, messing up her hair, then throwing herself on her shocked suitor, all in an attempt to extort money for sex. It doesn’t get more pre-Hayes, office-risqué than that. Bern booked her on an East Coast promotional tour for the film, and every theater where she appeared sold out. MGM saw the light, and bought out her contract from Hughes.
Jean was soon paired with new hottie, Clark Gable. They became the new “it” couple, at least onscreen, and worked in more than five films together. They became fast friends offscreen as well, and rumors swirled of romance. Gable had that boy/man vibe, with eyes like a child, and a body that flung women over the edge. Maybe that’s why people were truly shocked when she up and married the balding, ordinary, middle-aged Bern in July of 1932, instead of the niftier, dreamier Gable.
That wedding night must have been fascinating, as Mr. Bern was allegedly hiding a little secret about himself, a wee, itty-bitty little secret. As Leatrice Joy Gilbert, ex-wife of John Gilbert, explained after she had seen Bern naked by accident in the house he shared with her husband, “His penis was no bigger than my pinky.” Bern was rumored to hav
e had a physical deformity resulting in permanent, hopeless impotence. But like a horny priest who lusts after the ladies in the confessional chamber, he was strangely obsessed with sex, concealing his lascivious, unfulfilled desire beneath a suave, controlled demeanor. Oh, the irony. This man, who was sex-obsessed yet unable to do anything about it, finds himself married to the very embodiment of sex, and still unable to do anything about it.
Jean and Paul outside the home where he later died.
Because of this defect, Bern became a bitter little man who belittled his sex goddess wife, putting her down in public as uneducated and stupid, even striking her occasionally, which makes what happened that fall seem like not such a bad thing after all. On the evening of September 4th, two months into this marriage which had not been, and would never be, consummated, Bern killed himself in the upstairs bedroom he shared with Harlow in their new Bavarian-style house in Benedict Canyon. He and Jean had argued, supposedly about Mama Jean and Bello, who were pressuring Jean to deed them her mansion and invest with them in a Mexican gold mine. Seriously? Could these two be any more clichéd? Jean stormed off home to mother, leaving him to his own, dark thoughts. At least that was one story. He stripped naked, doused himself in her most expensive perfume, and shot himself in front of a full-length mirror. Nice touch, the mirror, just to remind himself of why...
Husband and wife domestics, Winifred and John Carmichael, arrived at Eastman drive late the next morning, discovering Bern’s corpse. Did they call the police? No. Did they call an ambulance? No. Winifred called Mama Jean, who in turn, informed Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM. Did Mr. Mayer call the police? No. He called studio chief, Irving Thalberg, who told his wife, Norma Shearer, who then called producer, David O. Selznick. Mayer, Selznick, Thalberg and Shearer all headed over to Bern’s house. Had anyone bothered to inform the police at this point? No, but two official MGM photographers received orders to get over to the scene, as did MGM head of publicity, Howard Strickling. MGM party at Bern’s house! Last one to the suicide is a rotten egg!
Strickling and photographers arrived first, and had a blast contaminating evidence and jumping to conclusions. Strickling waffled through Paul’s address book, finding a hastily written suicide note on page 13. It read “Dearest dear; Unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I I’ve done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation. I love you. Paul P.S. You understand last night was only a comedy.” Hmm. Wonder what that last part could mean?
People would speculate about this for decades. If Mayer had his way, no one but he and Strickling would ever see the note; he intended to destroy it before the cops ever got there. Strickling talked him out of it, as its very existence cleared Jean of any wrongdoing. Makes you wonder what was destroyed. The three musketeers—Shearer, Thalberg and Selznick—arrived. Reporters gathered outside, and word of a coverup began to spread. Had anyone called the cops yet? Nope. That wouldn’t happen for another hour. Bern must have been getting pretty whiffy by then, but the studio hot shots needed time to concoct a believable story that would protect their investment (Harlow), and their company from scandal. Talk about balls.
When the story did break, the headlines exploded with the words “Paul Bern kills self in Jean Harlow’s bedroom. Bern Impotent!” Jean refused to confirm the impotent stories, even though they were true. She would not be a part of dragging poor dead Paul’s reputation through the mud.
Then another unpleasant fact came to light.
Paul Bern’s body.
The body of a woman was found floating in the Sacramento River, five days after Bern’s death. Her name was Dorothy Millette, and she had been Bern’s secret, common-law wife for ten years. Ooops. Yet another secret Mr. Bern kept from Jean before he married her. Millette was mentally unstable, and had been stalking Paul and harassing him over his marriage to Jean. He, on the other hand, had been supporting her financially and trying to keep her under wraps. That all went to hell on the night of Bern’s death, when Dorothy showed up at Eastman Drive, and was still there when Jean came home. This brings us to the second version of what happened that night.
This is probably what really happened. Dorothy wailed outside the house at Paul, who tried to calm her down and get her to leave, when Jean comes home. An awkward exchange among all three parties ensued, and ended when Jean told Bern to call her when he figured out to whom he was actually married, before storming out. Dorothy left shortly after Jean. All of this upset Bernsie enough to ice himself early the following morning, after spending an interesting night prancing around naked and putting on perfume. “You understand, last night was only a comedy.” Ah, now that makes more sense. Millette didn’t see the point of hanging around without her sugar daddy, so she bought a one-way ticket on a paddleboat, and jumped off into the Sacramento River, mid-trip. What’s that again, Mr. Mayer, about avoiding a scandal? Not a chance.
Paul Bern’s suicide note.
The hard-boiled streetwise little tramp became the wronged party in a tawdry love triangle she had no knowledge of. Jean came out smelling like roses in springtime after a pleasant afternoon shower. Mayer himself couldn’t have manipulated the public’s reaction better. And what better way to capitalize on the whole thing than to have Jean star in a movie that eerily resembled her real life tragedy? Gotta hand it the studio. They sure knew how to turn something ugly into a profit. The movie, Reckless, was a huge hit.
Harlow tried to put the whole thing behind her by throwing herself into her work. She entered her golden period, with movies such as Red Dust, Hold Your Man, China Seas and Wife vs. Secretary. Mayer forced her into a sham marriage with cinematographer Harold Rosson, just as she was about to be dragged into an alienation of affection suit by the wife of a man with whom she had a brief affair. The marriage was annulled seven months later. But then, she met William Powell, with whom she fell passionately in love, and remained so, until her death.
Jean had completed three important films between 1932 and 1934: Red Dust, Bombshell, and Dinner at Eight. In Red Dust she played another hooker who falls for Clark Gable, himself a rough-and-tumble entrepreneur trying to make a go of a rubber plantation in Indochina. Jean really shines as the trash-talking hussy who continually tries to shock the prim and proper Mary Astor with her potty mouth, while trying to win over Gable. In one scene, as a tropical storm is raging, she stands in a window, the wind blowing back her shock of white hair, her bow-mouth pursed like a pouting child’s, watching Gable carry her foe to an isolated cabin. She never looked more vulnerable or lovely.
Bombshell may as well have been a biography, it was that close to her real life situation. Her character is a movie star being worked to death while her moochy family lives in her mansion and spends all her money. Hey Bello, I’m looking at you.
Dinner At Eight surrounded her with the finest actors of the day—Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke and Wallace Berry—in a comedy of errors revolving around a high society dinner party. Jean not only held her own among the illustrious company, she stole the show. In the final scene, as she is slinking to dinner beside Marie Dressler, she remarks that she was reading a book. Marie, obviously shocked, stops dead in her tracks and turns to Jean, “A book?” Jean continues, “A nutty kind of a book. Did you know the guy says machinery is going to take the place of every profession?” Marie slowly looks Jean up and down, then tosses her head back, and says, “Oh my dear. That’s something you need never worry about.” Classic.
By the mid-1930s, Jean Harlow was the biggest star on the block. The depression raged, theaters went bankrupt and shut down, studios hemorrhaged money, but MGM stood alone in its profitability, due almost entirely to the Blonde Bombshell. Audiences couldn’t get enough of her. Her face graced the covers of countless magazines all over the world, and women went crazy trying to dye their hair the same distinctive platinum color that was her stock- in-trade. Her signature color was ice white, to emphasize her white hair, and she was a vision in white satin and whit
e fur, shimmering at movie premieres and on the screen. There had never been anything like her, and there never would be again. The party, however, was coming to an end.
The Legion of Decency, a Catholic organization intending to spoil all the pre-censorship Hollywood fun, forced studios to rethink their “loose moral values” in certain films, mostly the ones with Jean Harlow. Suddenly the sexually-charged blonde slut was out, and the good girl with discerning leanings was in. Jean had to make the switch, which, unbelievably, she was able to do with relative ease. In the film, The Girl from Missouri, she appears with her as a flirtatious tease who holds out until marriage.
She even made a smattering of films with her new brown tresses. This was supposed to be an improvement. Later, it would come out that her hair had actually fallen out during filming, due to over processing, and the only alternative was a nice brown rinse. That’s what happens when you mix peroxide with ammonia, girls.
Meanwhile, Jean and William Powell were burning up the sheets and tearing up the nightclubs together. He gave her an impressive, 98-carat star sapphire ring—in lieu of an actual engagement ring—in the hope that she would stop asking him to marry her. It didn’t work. She kept pestering him to distraction, and he kept politely refusing, then bedding her like the gentleman he was. The only time they ever stood before a justice of the peace was on film.
In 1937, Jean began work on what was to be her final film, Saratoga, at the pinnacle of her career. She had never been more popular with fans or critics, was with the man she loved, and she was being offered quality parts in quality pictures, for which she was well-paid. What should have been a happy, triumphant time was somehow miserable. Her one true love, William Powell, still refused to make an honest woman of her, and it ate her up inside. Another untidy fact, this one concerning her family, was also causing her anxiety. Her stepfather, Bello, had been skimming 25% of her salary, for what he said were investments. He was actually supporting his mistress south of the border. Sheeze! Someone arrest the guy! Mama Jean finally saw the light, and bought his absence from their lives for the tidy sum of twenty-two thousand dollars.