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Jean Harlow Profile
* Films in Bold air on TCM on 1/10
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Would our star of the day, Jean Harlow, be an icon today if she'd lived past the age of 26? It's something people have speculated about for years, not only about Harlow but also about several of the now-immortal stars who died very young. Would Rudolph Valentino remain the eternal embodiment of a smoldering Latin lover if the fates had let him live to be 50, 60, 70? (He was 31 at the time of his death.) Would James Dean, who died at 24, still be a symbol of youthful angst if he were living now, perhaps playing grandpas or frisky elders? (This year marks the 70th anniversary of Dean's birth.) If Harlow was still living today she'd be 90 (she was born March 3, 1911), she would also undoubtedly be hounded by photographers itching to show us what the passage of time can do to a once-famous sexpot. Harlow missed all that because of her untimely death but we missed something, too, namely all those delightful performances she might have given if fate hadn't cut off her life so quickly.
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One thing we'll be doing this month, with pride, is bringing you many of those Harlow performances that do exist. We'll be showing several of her films, including all of her most celebrated ones, such as Dinner at Eight, Red Dust and Libeled Lady. She's sensational in all of them, too, which makes it amazing that so many critics at the time gave her short shrift, following that old conjuncture that since she was blonde, beautiful, slightly brassy but enormously alluring, it was automatically decreed the girl couldn't possibly act. It's a theory we'll be disproving over and over again on August 11th. What's particularly amazing about Jean Harlow is the vivid impression she made in such a short time. She was a star for only seven years.
It was in 1930 that she rocketed into the public's consciousness in Howard Hughes' air epic Hell's Angels; by 1937, she was gone. In fact, her final film, Saratoga, is an especially fascinating movie to watch because of the tricks MGM used in order to include Harlow in scenes that weren't yet filmed at the time of her death. (Harlow's stand-in Mary Dees subbed for the star in several shots, her face hidden by a hat or a camera angle.) It can be said that Jean did pack a lot of living into those seven short years: she made an average of three-and-one-half films per year, including six with Clark Gable; she also worked with Spencer Tracy three times and alongside other giants like James Cagney, Cary Grant, James Stewart and Wallace Beery. She also lived a very public-private life which included living with a batch of relatives which sponged off her so blatantly, MGM used the situation as the basis for one of Harlow's own films (the delightful Bombshell).
She also had three husbands, one of whom mysteriously committed suicide and, eventually, there was also a much publicized romance with actor William Powell which, had she lived, might have changed the tone of her life dramatically. First and foremost, however, do join us for as many of those 15 Harlow features as your time allows. She was, indeed, a blonde, a bombshell, a comet and absolutely priceless.
by Robert Osborne
 
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31 Days of Oscar Highlights for Feb. 10
Richard Widmark gives an Oscar® nominated Best Supporting Actor Performance as one of the screen's scariest psychopaths in Kiss of Death (1947). We're also spotlighting Gypsy (1962), Of Mice and Men (1939) and 9 more Academy Award honorees.
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