Happy 100th, “Sis”!

“She never wanted to be famous. She wanted to be happy.”

Clark said this of Jean Harlow after her untimely death at age 26, and it appears to be true.

Jean Harlow was a sweet, good natured girl, someone who everybody liked. Affectionately called “The Baby” (by everyone but Clark, who called her “Sis”), she was far from the harlot she portrayed on screen in her early pictures. To understand Jean’s hectic life, her film “Bombshell” is pretty much it in a nutshell—relatives and friends hanging on like leeches, sucking away her money and fame for their own benefit; the press and studio pigeon-holing her into an image that really wasn’t who she was.

There will be a lot of blogs, articles and buzzing about Jean today, to mark her centennial, a lot of people weighing in on what they feel is her strongpoint, what they think her cultural significance is.

Although Jean tragically died so very young and we don’t have the privilege of seeing her career blossom, it is rather poetic that she is stuck forever in th 1930’s, an era so fitting to her–a decade she helped define. She will forever be the young, giddy, fast-talking, platinum babe with no bra. And there is nothing wrong with that!

One of my favorite articles on her, from 1935:

Happy Birthday, Baby!