Jean Harlow: The Original Hollywood Blonde Bombshell

Before Anna Nicole Smith, before Jayne Mansfield, and before Marilyn Monroe, there was Hollywood’s original Blonde Bombshell: Jean Harlow.

The leading sex symbol of the 1930s, Jean Harlow’s career skyrocketed nearly overnight, catapulting her to international fame as she acted in film after film alongside some of the biggest names of the time, enjoying the trappings of her unexpected success. At the age of only 26, the actress died on June 7, 1937 of kidney failure, in the middle of shooting Saratoga. What caused this young actress’s kidneys to fail? There is one theory that stands out as melancholically poetic: that the very chemical process used to transform her hair to that platinum hue that shot her to stardom also slowly poisoned her liver and killed her. How much truth is there to this rumour? What truly caused the tragic death of this promising, hardworking starlet?

Jean was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri on March 3, 1911, to her mother, Jean Poe Harlow Carpenter, and her father, Mont Clair Carpenter. When Harlean was 11, her parents divorced. Not longer afterwards, Jean, wanting to become an actress, moved with her daughter to Los Angeles. Fame would elude Jean, and she and Harlean moved back to Missouri after her ex-husband demanded it. It was soon after they returned that Harlean attended summer camp in Michigan, where she contracted scarlet fever at the age of 15. Antibiotics did not yet exist for those afflicted with this illness in the 1920s, and as a result, children often died or else suffered lifelong complications, including heart disease, arthritis, and/or kidney disease.

Harlean survived her bout of scarlet fever but would be plagued the rest of her life by various illnesses, presumably caused by a weakened immune system from the fever. It is possible that Harlean also, at different points, contracted meningitis, polio, pneumonia and multiple bouts of influenza. While this all likely played a part in her death, was her death hastened unnecessarily by the poisons from the chemicals that transformed her hair?

In 1927, Harlean married Charles McGrew, who was 20 years old and came from a wealthy family; after Charles turned 21 in 1928 and received part of his inheritance, the duo moved to Los Angeles. Young, financially set and with no professional obligations, the newlyweds enjoyed living the high life, which included alcohol consumption in excess at various parties and functions. With an already weakened system, Harlean’s infamous alcohol indulgences no doubt put added stress and strain on her kidneys and liver. It was in the same year that Harlean was accidentally “discovered” by a Fox Studios executive who connected her with Central Casting—but, she had no interest in acting, and had no intention of responding to subsequent calls for auditions.

However, after being both dared by an aspiring actress friend to try it, and pressured by her fame-desiring mother, Harlean relented, signing in at Central Casting under the name the world would soon know: Jean Harlow.

In 1929, the soon-to-be-star Jean was working on and off as an extra in various films. Meanwhile, the wealthy new filmmaker Howard Hughes needed a replacement actress for his film Hell’s Angels. Talkies were the new thing, and Hughes decided to reshoot the entirety of Hell’s Angels, which had been silent, in sound. The Texas millionaire (and eventual billionaire) would undertake this successful project at massive expense, but his role in Hollywood history is a topic for another time. Reshooting Hell’s Angels with sound meant replacing the silent version’s Norwegian actress Greta Nissen, as her speaking voice had an accent; Jean was selected for the role and was subsequently signed by Hughes to a five-year contract earning $100 (USD) per week.

Additionally—and crucially—Hughes had Jean’s hair lightened from its natural darker blonde to the shimmering platinum that became her calling card. No actress had had such a hair colour up until this point, and despite initial poor reviews for her acting abilities in Hell’s Angels, Jean—and her white-blonde hair—became an overnight, worldwide sensation.

Achieving this hue was no gentle feat. Years after Jean’s death, her hairstylist Alfred Pagano shared his process: he used peroxide, Clorox, ammonia, and Lux soap flakes on the actress’s hair every week to achieve and maintain the platinum colour. In 1935, Jean’s hair was so destroyed it began falling out, and that was reportedly the end of the bleaching routine: she began growing out her natural colour and simply wore platinum wigs while acting. This means that Jean’s scalp—and, consequently, her body—was absorbing this extreme combination of chemicals weekly for at least 5 years, from her breakout role in Hell’s Angels (1930) to around China Seas (1935).

Jean complained of feeling ill May 20, 1937 on the set of Saratoga, in which she starred alongside Clark Gable. By the 29th, Jean requested to leave the set and recover, calling for her fiancé (she had divorced her first and third husbands by now, with her second husband dying either by suicide or murder), William Powell, to accompany her. She had been sick on other films and required time off, and so the studio, MGM, was not too concerned with this latest bout of illness. However, Jean would never make it back to set. Powell, seemingly recognizing that his fiancée was extremely ill, summoned her mother to her bedside.

The actress was misdiagnosed by Dr. Fishbaugh with an inflamed gallbladder and her mother reported to MGM on June 3 that the actress was feeling better and would return to set June 7. Gable visited Jean and shared later that she was bloated with the smell of urine on her breath; these are signs of kidney failure. Another doctor, Dr. Chapman, was called for a second opinion; he correctly diagnosed Jean as suffering not from an inflamed gallbladder, but rather the final stages of kidney failure.

Jean fell into a coma at her home the evening of June 6, 1937, and died the following morning in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles at the age of 26. The cause of death was listed as cerebral edema due to kidney failure.

How much of a role did Jean’s toxic hair bleaching treatments play in her death? The answer will never be clear, but it seems probable that while not the primary cause, the years-long, weekly toxic combination of peroxide, Clorox, ammonia, and soap flakes passing through her system that was already damaged from scarlet fever, multiple other illnesses and excess alcohol consumption contributed to the destruction of her kidneys and liver. Without her platinum hair, she likely would not have achieved stardom, and so this begs the question: would she have lived longer without the weekly hair treatments, or was her system too damaged either way?

Of course, the reality was that she did bleach her hair and become a star, and in 1937, there was no cure for kidney failure; thus, even a proper diagnosis would not have changed the tragic outcome of the Silver Screen’s original Platinum Blonde; Hollywood’s first Blonde Bombshell, who shot to fame, burned very brightly and then burned out far too soon.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Harlow, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bern, https://twitter.com/harlowheaven/status/1224433608871440385?lang=en, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/the-original-blonde-bombshell-used-actual-bleach-on-her-head/273333/