Harlow

Carol Baker is stunning in 1960s hair and gowns. Unfortunately, the film takes place in the 1930s. The soundtrack also contains 1960s lounge and twist music. This film is mostly fictional and has nothing to do with Harlow's life, but it is fun.

My favorite line is when she turns down a tryst with a famous actor. She tells him she has a date for dinner and a film. The actor says, "I can't believe you're turning down a chance of "being" with me for a night of indigestion and a stiff neck." Harlow replies, "Aren't you offering the same thing?" LOL. Think about it.

It's hard to believe anybody involved in the production of this glossy nonsense ever actually saw any of the real Jean Harlow's movies (none of the titles of which have been used). And apart from Harlow herself (who was seven years younger when she died than Carroll Baker was when she made this movie) only Paul Bern - played by Peter Lawford, who looked nothing like him - hasn't had his name changed. (Having been dead for over thirty years he presumably had no living next of kin liable to sue.)

But it's a sign of how standards have plummeted since this was made that while this was laughed off screens and died at the boxoffice in 1965, forty years later Scorsese's equally phoney 'The Aviator' (in which Harlow is fleetingly impersonated by a brassy-looking Gwen Stefani) won a fistful of Oscars.

An all around lurid film about sex symbol and superstar, Jean Harlow. There's no real point to the film, other than to present star Baker as a sex symbol herself. Her performance is nothing like her "Baby Doll," and everyone else is either bored with the material or reduced to overacting.

In 1965, in yet another classic example of "Copycat Movie Making" Hollywood produced not one, but two film biographies of Jean Harlow, the 30s 'Blond Bombshell' whose tragic, short life was reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. One was a gaudy, ambitious big-budget production starring theater and film actress/sex symbol Carroll Baker; the other was a low-budget, experimental film starring television actress/sex 'kitten' Carol Lynley. Both films failed, both in capturing the essence of Jean Harlow, and as film biographies. While the Baker film, which I'll discuss here, had enough lurid titillation for three films, the sweet-natured girl who was loved by nearly everyone who knew her never makes an appearance.

The 'real' Harlow, born Harlean Carpenter, in 1911, arrived in Hollywood at 16, with an over-ambitious mother and newlywed husband in tow. Divorcing her husband, she appeared in 'bit' parts until Howard Hughes 'discovered' her, and cast her "Hell's Angels", in 1930. She was a sensation, despite possessing a tinny, twangy speaking voice (which voice coaches would work on, throughout her career.) Eventually signing with MGM, she would become a sensation, frequently co-starring with Clark Gable, and her off-screen life would be even more sensational; her second marriage, to producer Paul Bern, would last only two months, and he would soon commit suicide, fueling rumors of his inability to 'perform' his duties as a husband; a third marriage, to cameraman Harold Rosson, soon followed, only to last eight months. She finally found happiness with actor William (The Thin Man) Powell, but before they could marry, she developed uremic poisoning and kidney failure, dying in 1937, at 26.

Baker's "Harlow" dumped any references to Gable and Powell (Mike Connors, in an off-beat piece of casting, plays the character 'based' on Powell), created an agent who served as a confidant (Red Buttons), and showed a decline in Harlow's spirit, until she became as sleazy as some of the characters she occasionally played (which those who knew her best flatly denied; the sensational headlines did not 'cost' her a career, or her 'soul', they maintain). The film presents her finally 'cleaning up her act', but dying before she can share her new-found joy.

Jean Harlow was an optimist, self-reliant and resilient, with a ready laugh, and an often too-generous nature. She never took her sex appeal too seriously, and preferred 'being comfortable' to creating illusions. She was adored by her co-workers, and the grief everyone felt at her death was genuine, not staged.

If "Harlow" had gotten even a part of this right, it would have been a far better film!

It's big, it's expensive, it's colorful, and that's about it. The people behind "The Carpetbaggers," obviously hoping that lightning would strike twice, put together the high budget version of Irving Schulman's alleged biography of Jean Harlow the following year. This was a mistake. "Carpetbaggers" was trash, but it was enjoyable trash. "Harlow" doesn't even reach that level. Both the Schulman book and this movie were really more fiction than fact and many of those who knew and worked with Harlow, most of whom were still alive at the time, took serious issue with both. Then there are the performances. Even talented people like Angela Lansbury and Raf Vallone, as Jean's mother and stepfather, couldn't do much with this mess, and so compensated by going over the top. But for sheer miscasting, the real violator is not Carroll Baker's overripe Harlow, but Peter Lawford's Paul Bern. Here was the tall, handsome Lawford playing a man who was, by all accounts, short, bald, and, frankly, rather dumpy looking. It's a good thing everything and everybody else in this film other than Jean Harlow, her immediate family, and agent Arthur Landau, were cloaked under various pseudonyms. To have done otherwise would have left Joseph E. Levine and Paramount open to a world of trouble resulting from the libel suits alone.

In short, watching "Harlow," you'll gain nothing and lose 130 minutes you'll never get back again. It really isn't worth it.