Hollywood & Crime: What Happened to Jean Harlow’s Husband?
She was the original blonde bombshell. He was the producer twice her age. Their marriage never made sense. His death raised even more questions.
The fetishising of blonde hair has been with us for centuries, but the modern concept of the blonde bombshell, a vampy seductress who is charming and irresistible to all, originates with one woman: Harlean Harlow Carpenter, better known as Jean Harlow. In pre-Code Hollywood, she was a new kind of sex symbol, a woman of brazen sensuality who seemed to have been flung out of space. Her hair was unnaturally light, her form unconstrained by corsets or high necklines. While she played a few ditzes in her time, she was also a woman in control, the one who saw what she wanted and got it. Without her, there's no Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Madonna, or Sabrina Carpenter.
Her star shone bright and briefly, dying at the age of 26 from kidney failure. For many years, a rumour swirled that Harlow had been poisoned by her hair bleach, a combination of ammonia, Clorox bleach, and Lux soap flakes she applied without fail every weekend, but that wasn't true. She was a heavy drinker whose organs may have been weakened by that, but the true circumstances of her passing will probably never be known. It’s not the only strange death in the Harlow story that has inspired conspiracies and confusion for decades. Her second husband’s passing is the stuff of dark Hollywood lore.
Harlow hadn't wanted to be an actress. Her mother, the original Jean Harlow, had hoped to become a movie star but was told she was too old, at 32, to begin a career. The young Harlean had married in 1928, to Charles "Chuck" Fremont McGrew III, an heir with whom she enjoyed drinking and partying. Harlean had fallen into Hollywood, She had driven a friend to the Fox Studios lot for an appointment, and while waiting for her pal, was approached by Fox executives. She turned them down, but they persisted. Eventually, her friend told her to give it a go, and she signed up at Central Casting under her mother's name.
Soon, she was earning a few dollars a week with extra parts and small roles in comedies alongside Laurel and Hardy. It was fun, but she still had no real passion for it. But she chose acting over her husband and filed for divorce, possibly influenced by her mother. In 1929, she was cast in Hell's Angels, a wildly ambitious war drama directed by Howard Hughes. The heir turned mogul was both an aircraft obsessive and a control freak who wanted to buy his way into the movies. Hell's Angels was intended to be a silent movie, but when the talkies emerged, he decided to turn it into a sound film. That meant replacing his actress, Greta Nissen, whose thick Norwegian accent didn't fit her character. Harlow screen-tested for Hughes, and she got the part.
