Harlow
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Gordon Douglas
Carroll Baker
Martin Balsam
Red Buttons
Michael Connors
Hanna Landy
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Jean Harlow, an aspiring actress in Hollywood in the 1920's, supports her mother and lazy stepfather, Marino Bello, by taking bit parts in the movies. Agent Arthur Landau recognizes that the platinum blonde actress could become a new sex symbol. He gets Jean better roles, including some in slapstick comedy, until she is signed by Richard Manley, an independent producer. Jean needs more money to support her parents, and Landau tricks Manley into releasing Jean from her contract after her triumphant personal-appearance tour. She signs with Everett Redman, head of a major Hollywood studio. Though she has become Hollywood's leading sex symbol, Jean is still chaste and actually afraid of men. Both actor Jack Harrison and studio executive Paul Bern ask to marry Jean, and in an extravagant Hollywood wedding, she marries Bern but on their wedding night discovers he is impotent. After Bern commits suicide, Harlow starts drinking heavily. In her search for love she turns to Bello, Manley, and Harrison--all of whom reject her. Though she is at the height of her career, Jean starts picking up strangers in bars. Her drinking and promiscuity lead to her early death at the age of 26.
Director
Gordon Douglas
Cast
Carroll Baker
Martin Balsam
Red Buttons
Michael Connors
Hanna Landy
Angela Lansbury
Peter Lawford
Leslie Nielsen
Raf Vallone
Peter Hansen
Mary Murphy
Kipp Hamilton
Peter Leeds
Crew
Roland Anderson
Frank Bracht
Cliff Coleman
Douglas Cook
Ray Cossar
Kenneth Deland
Ray Evans
Charles Grenzbach
Sydney Guilaroff
John Michael Hayes
Edith Head
Neal Hefti
Stanley Jones
James Knott
Joseph E. Levine
Joseph E. Levine
Gene Liggett
Jay Livingston
Robert Magahay
Archie Marshek
Robert Mccrillis
Richard Mueller
James Payne
Hal Pereira
Frank Regula
William Reynolds
Joseph Ruttenberg
David Salven
Art Say
Ruth Stella
Darrell Turnmire
Wally Westmore
Sherry Wilson
Tim Zinnemann
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Harlow - Carroll Baker is HARLOW on DVD
A movie that takes a wrong turn at almost every opportunity is producer Joseph E. Levine's 1965 Harlow, directed by Gordon Douglas. Sizzling sex symbol Carroll Baker is a reasonably good physical fit for Jean Harlow, MGM's blonde bombshell of the early 1930s. Harlow created a new style in sexuality that went far beyond the image of a particular screen siren -- the girl with the natural figure (no underwear) became a new feminine ideal. Ms. Baker approximates Harlow's looks but not her personality. The real-life actress was reportedly fun loving and made friends easily, while the Harlow in John Michael Hayes' screenplay is unhappy and isolated. Levine's Harlow now seems not a study of the famous Platinum Blonde, but a reaction to the untimely death of Marilyn Monroe. In 1965 Harlow had been gone for thirty years and was no longer part of the current culture.
The biopic misrepresents many basic facts about Jean Harlow's life, reducing an interesting personality to a single pat irony: the sweet innocent who embodies sensual passion but is frustrated in her love life. The movie opens a year or so after Jean Harlow has become a working actress, skipping her first marriage and seemingly pretending that she's still a virgin. Mama Jean (Angela Lansbury) and Jean's stepfather Marino Bello (Raf Vallone) are presented as leeches living on the actress's meager paychecks. The real Mama Jean was a positive help at this stage of her daughter's career.
The movie ignores important people in Harlow's life: Howard Hughes, Clark Gable and William Powell do not appear. No mention is made of Jean's landmark films Hell's Angels, The Public Enemy or Red Dust. In their place is a simplified, generic rags to riches story. Jean is helped by the loyal, ambitious agent Arthur Landau (Red Buttons). When the playboy producer Richard Manley (Leslie Nielsen) expects her to hop into his bed, Jean walks out on him. Her popularity enhanced by public appearance tours, Harlow signs with "Majestic" pictures. Mogul Everett Redman (Martin Balsam) corresponds to MGM's Louis B. Mayer, but the only other major personality using a real name is producer Paul Bern (Peter Lawford). Proud that she's never been to the casting couch and eager to become a 'real woman', Jean expresses her desire to marry. She chooses Paul Bern over handsome actor Jack Harrison (Mike Connors), only to discover on her wedding night that Bern has cruelly hidden from her the fact that he's completely impotent. Jean is furious. When Bern commits suicide, she goes off the deep end, drinking and sleeping with any man she can find.
The movie invents a wholly false version of Harlow's tragic death at age 26. Moreover, the real Jean Harlow was not known to be promiscuous and was engaged to actor William Powell when she was struck down by renal failure, a then-untreatable condition unrelated to her lifestyle. The film tells us that Harlow 'gave love away but never found any for herself' but reduces this equation to the cheapest sexual terms. In a scene offensive to Harlow's memory, the drunken actress tries to seduce her own stepfather.
Joseph E. Levine's string of exploitative 1960s dramas began with The Carpetbaggers, a quasi-biography of Howard Hughes that's a better-made tale of sin and glamour. Carroll Baker plays a much wilder role, as "Jonas Cord's" tormented wife. Compared to that film Harlow looks cheap. These were the days before Bonnie & Clyde made audiences aware of period accuracy in movies, and Harlow is a parade of glaring anachronisms, from Edith Head's costumes to hairstyles to simple details of all kinds. We see a long-playing phonograph twenty years too soon, and the 1920s studio buildings are outfitted with small window air-conditioners. Composer Neal Hefti contributes a jazzy, bouncy modern soundtrack that could easily fit into a 60s TV sitcom. It rings false in every scene. In her public appearances, some of Jean Harlow's dance moves resemble Chubby Checker's The Twist.
The movie makes no note of the transition between silent and sound films. Jean was so arresting in person that she didn't have to struggle to get the attention of the studios. On casual visits to Hollywood lots she was spotted more than once by enthusiastic executives. Jean is shown acting almost exclusively in Mack Sennett slapstick comedies, and she indeed did play bit parts in several Laurel & Hardy short subjects. Once she hits the big time we see Harlow posing for many glamour photos -- cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg's best work in the otherwise visually undistinguished film -- but no scenes show her working on a sound stage. We instead see Jean in her studio bungalow dressing room, with its very modern-looking kitchen. Perhaps the most inappropriate set is the bedroom in Leslie Nielsen's swank bachelor pad. Doors, curtains, lights, a fountain and a fake rain forest are all cued by remote control. Devoid of a single element that belongs in the late 1920s, the love nest seems more suitable for Hugh Hefner, or a superspy like Matt Helm or Derek Flint.
Screenwriter John Michael Hayes penned a string of Alfred Hitchcock's big 1950s hits, starting with Rear Window. This script ignores proper character development to concentrate on its theme of "the good girl cheated out of a sex life". Carroll Baker hasn't Harlow's soft, rounded face but certainly looks glamorous enough; and she certainly communicates the star's frustration. Red Buttons is fine in his cliché role as the trustworthy agent, and Martin Balsam displays some gravity as the Mayer substitute. Almost everyone else makes little impact or seems to have wandered in from a TV movie. Mike Connors isn't charismatic enough to be a big star, while Peter Lawford's attempt to play a man with no sex function is woefully underdeveloped. Angela Lansbury and Raf Vallone contribute professional performances. Their parasitic characters never really change, but the movie eventually decides that they're benign influences anyway.
Competent director Gordon Douglas keeps the performance levels well matched but can do little with the thin, exploitative script. The main titles play over an extended montage of dress extras arriving on the lot and picking up their costumes, a drab sequence that pales before a similar one in Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command from 1927. The scenes are identical for content but couldn't be more different in execution. Further destroying any hint of period flavor, the end credits play over a ballad sung by 60s singer Bobby Vinton. Harlow was 'not recommended for children', but I can imagine that many adults exited theaters in confusion. Who is this Jean Harlow? Did she just pass away? Was she on Ed Sullivan last year?
Licensed from Paramount, Olive Films' DVD of Harlow is a good enhanced transfer with attractive colors and a clear soundtrack. Only a few viewers will be aware that a competing feature film also titled Harlow was released in the same year. Starring Carol Lynley, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Ginger Rogers, it was an early attempt to convert videotape to 35mm film in a process called "Electronovision". It didn't receive wide distribution.
For more information about Harlow, visit Olive Films. To order Harlow, go to TCM Shopping.
by Glenn Erickson
Harlow - Carroll Baker is HARLOW on DVD
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1965
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1965