Harlow, Jean

Harlow, Jean, professional name of Harlean Carpenter (1911-1937), American film actress known as the “Blonde Bombshell”. Harlow was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She started work in Hollywood as a film extra, achieved her first important acting role in The Saturday Night Kid (1929), and made her name in such films as Hell's Angels (1930), Platinum Blonde (1931), Red Dust (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), and Bombshell (1933), usually playing shrewd, independent women in contemporary settings.

Harlow's popularity survived in spite of objections to her frank portrayals of sexual desire and the scandal created in 1932 around her second marriage, to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio executive Paul Bern, which ended in his still-mysterious suicide. It was at the height of her fame when, while making Saratoga (1937), she died suddenly, on June 7, 1937. Like Marilyn Monroe and other film actors who have died relatively young, she has retained a cult following. Two unreliable films about her life, both called Harlow, were released in 1965.