Gossip Friday: On the “Saratoga” set

Since “Saratoga” is Movie of the Month and we’re celebrating Jean Harlow’s centennial…

From August 1937:

 On the “Saratoga” set, watching Clark Gable and Jean Harlow emote, the onlookers snicker when Gable does an impromptu imitation of the Harlow walk. Sitting on the sidelines, Peggy, Jean’s hairdresser, is wearing that super-colossal star sapphire ring. The scene is shot and lunch is called. Before she leaves for the commissary Peggy slips the ring off her finger and hands it to Jean, but Jean returns it. “Wear it to lunch, Peggy,” she says. “Maybe you’ll do yourself some good.” So Peggy rushes off to startle her friends, and Jean turns to us. “I’ll bet you didn’t know,” she says, “that we’re going steady.”

Just because she likes swing music, a lot of rumors have been popping up about Jean Harlow. She enjoys a hot trumpet and Bill Powell doesn’t, so she’s been dropping in on one of Hollywood’s better known swing salons with Don Friede, her literary agent. (Miss H., as you know, has written a book. It may not hurt the sale of “Gone with the Wind”, but still it’s a book, and a couple of studios are dickering for it.) To the tune of “Basin Street Blues”  Jean dreams her dreams and perhaps whips up an outline for her next novel. At any rate, she must have won her point, for one evening we dropped into the swing palace and found her there with agent who couldn’t have been anyone but Bill Powell.

Jean and Bill, incidentally, celebrated their third anniversary last month. It was the third anniversary of the day they first went out together, and three years of keeping steady company is something of a record in Hollywood. Personal to Miss H.: Why don’t you two get married?

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New this week:

TCM Listings have been updated through June (some rare stuff coming up!)

New article: “The New Romance in Clark Gable’s Life” in The Article Archive