A Day with Harlow

12 thoughts on “A Day with Harlow”

  1. How incredibly lucky to get to talk to SAG #2. 🙂 What an extraordinary experience! Thank you for sharing it with us. I love visiting places in Beverly Hills and Hollywood where the history we so worship was made — it makes me feel very fortunate to live in this town!

  2. Absolutely brilliant! Thanks so much for sharing your photos and your report of the day. I’m so jealous that you had the opportunity to spend the day immersed in Harlow’s world.

  3. How thrilling to tour the once home of Jean Harlow and meet Pauline Wagner! What a memorable opportunity. Thanks for sharing the photos. What is striking is that photo comparing the view as seen with Harlow and how it appears today! My, how the area has grown up.

  4. That is seriously amazing! I am so jealous! The house still looks spectacular. It must have been so surreal to be in a house where people like Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, and Irving Thalberg all have spent time in.

  5. Awesome! Though I’m happy in he east, I often wish I lived on the west coast so I could join all of these cool events. I’m sooo jealous.

    I also plan on trying the Jean Harlow cocktail. My friend is a bartender and I’ve already told him how to make it haha.

  6. Thank you so much for this wonderful week of Jean Harlow Centennial homages. When I was in my early teens — I just turned 60 — I had wolfed down my parents’ Edna Ferber novels, “Show boat,” “Giant,” “So Big” etc, and my wonderful father, who, like me, adored Hollywood’s golden age once again suggested — on a school night — that I stay up late to watch the film version of the Kaufman-Ferber “Dinner at Eight.” I loved Maried Dressler and Billie Burke but it was Jean Harlow who knocked my socks off — what a comic talent, and what beauty.
    Shortly thereafter came the disgusting and licentious tissue of lies that was Irving Shulman’s biography of Harlow, and in its wake came the Carroll Baker and Carol Linley film biopics, both ghastly. It has been observed this week that Carroll Baker, a great beauty and far better actress than the mousy Linley, might have done great things as Jean had she been better served by the script. I concur heartily! Baker, like Harlow, was an underrated actress despite several superb film appearances in rather thankless roles.
    As a makeup artist by profession, when i pore through my rather large collection of books on Hollywood’s golden Age, I am so appalled by Jean Harlow’s makeup, which, like Dietrich’s, undermined her beauty with the eyebrows shaven and then pencilled in a quarter of an inchhigher than the actress’s brow bone. How I have longed all these years to go back in time and redo Jean’s face with a more natural brow, and eye shadows that would better serve her deep-set eyes. As ravishing as she was, a less stylized maquillage might have revealed her staggering beauty more effectively.
    I have especially enjoyed the colourizations I have seen this week, though I think the hair colour was a tiny bit too coolly white for my imagings of what the lady looked life in real life. That is a minor quibble, as otherwise I found the colourizations perfect.
    I would also like to add that I was delighted by the Ann Dvorak tribute — her quirky beauty and intense acting have captivated me since, as a 12 year old,I stayed inside on a glorious summer day to watch Ann, with the divine Bette Davis and wise-cracking Joan Blondell, suffer beautifully as an adulterous cocaine addict. Thank you for reminding me how much I like this actress.

    1. Thanks for the comments, everyone! I wish every last one of you could have been there as well– it was something that anyone who has a fondness for classic Hollywood really deserved to be a part of!

  7. Just finished my followup post — I thought today was the last day! Anyway, it was lots of fun, especialy for you and the events you got to be part of!
    Thanks,
    Gene

  8. wow…what a day and how nice of you all to share the details…I first fell in love with Harlow in 1965 in the back of a white sports convertible watching Carroll Baker at a Hudson Valley Drive in…I was all of 8 years old and mesmerized by the Harlow like whiteness on the huge outdoor screen…In early University I researched the real Harlean…and fell in love all over again!Her china doll beauty and sassiness combined with a heart of gold was very transparent thru any movie screen…Im thrilled to see the recent interest in the special misunderstood gal who won many a heart…what a thrill to spend a day in her old home with with wonderful friends and hosts…thanks for sharing! Keith Nieto

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