by Anne Girard
Ah, the benefits of silent films to actresses like her and Clara Bow.
“I am,” she managed to mutter as her mouth went dry.
“Gee, you’re even lovelier in person than in the magazines. I’m sure you know my friend, Charlie,” Negri said, introducing her dancing partner, Charlie Chaplin.
For Harlean it was almost too much—her idol and a movie industry powerhouse both smiling at her, knowing who she was. It was a shining moment, one she would never forget, made that much sweeter since Pola Negri was as nice as Harlean once prayed she might be.
This moment redoubled Harlean’s intention to do the same thing, now that her own turn in the spotlight was growing brighter.
“We’ll have to get together for lunch one of these days,” Negri said.
“Sure, any time, Miss Negri, that’d be swell,” she exclaimed over the loud music as they all began to dance again.
Her idol’s dark eyes flashed as her smile broadened. “Oh, come now. I’m Pola, especially to my friends. Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
“Absolutely,” Chaplin concurred as he took her in his arms again in time to the music.
Pola Negri tossed Harlean one last glance over her shoulder before they whirled back into the crushing crowd of dancers. “I’ll give you a call real soon, okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Now that Jean and Marino were officially handling Harlean’s management, they took it on with a vengeance. Jean’s resolve was as firm and clear as it had always been. She intended to wake up the studio heads to her daughter’s soaring popularity, and thus garner a better deal than the one to which Howard Hughes was firmly holding her. Even now, he was charging $2,500 a week unapologetically, and still paying her a paltry $150 from it.
Hughes still balked at giving Harlean a comedy role, or even something meaty. Instead, he wanted to keep capitalizing on her sexy image, so he loaned her out for a film at Universal Studios where her part was similar to the gun moll she had last played, and not that far from the trampy Helen in Hell’s Angels. Harlean felt increasingly trapped.
Once shooting had wrapped, the Bellos organized another publicity tour where Harlean would sign autographs and meet more of her fans, particularly members of the Platinum Blonde Clubs. At least there would be good money coming in from that.
Harlean overslept on the day they were to leave Los Angeles but it was just as well, she thought. It was rare nowadays to get much sleep or solitude with her mother commanding the house with the precision of a military base. She propped herself up on her elbow as Oscar stood squealing near the door to be let outside. She called for Blanche but there was no answer.
The huge house was silent.
“I guess it’s up to me, hmm, little man?” She smiled at the dog as he yipped excitedly in response and began to wag his tail, knowing what lay ahead.
Harlean drew on an ivory silk dressing gown and matching slippers, then fluffed her hair as she shuffled toward the staircase, rushing after Oscar, who was down the stairs and now barking at the front door. No sooner did she turn the handle and draw it back, than Oscar dashed out and down the steep steps toward the street.
“Hey, wait a second!” she called out, still half-asleep, and tried not to trip on the many stone steps ahead as she chased after him.
In front of the house across the street, a menacing sable-colored German shepherd with coal-black eyes snapped and barked in warning. “Oscar, no!” she cried as she dashed after him.
“Rinty, heel!”
She heard the sharp command in a male voice rise above the barking of one dog and the warning growl of the other. In response the shepherd froze, then sat back on his haunches compliantly. He was silent and motionless as Harlean reached Oscar, who, less than half the shepherd’s size, still yipped and barked directly beneath the bigger dog’s nose.
“Oscar, that’s enough, for heaven’s sake!” she said, scooping him up into her arms. “Gee, I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly to the tall man in a gray dressing gown over pajama bottoms, holding his newspaper as he stood beside the dog.
“No harm done. Rinty is well trained. I take it you’re the new neighbor,” he said affably.
“Jean Harlow,” she said, extending her free hand to shake his, and feeling slightly embarrassed that her own dog was far less disciplined.
“Lee Duncan. And this is my boy. Around town they call him Rin Tin Tin.”
“Of course, the dog from the pictures!” Harlean said in recognition.
He was, in fact, the most famous dog in the world. Everyone knew their story. As an American soldier during the war, Duncan had rescued Rinty from the battlefield in France and brought him home. She had read the famous canine had nearly won the Academy Award in 1929 for best actor until they had decided to award the prize to a human. “I didn’t know you guys lived across the street.”
“We like to keep a low profile around here. Rinty works a lot,” he said with a smile. “I’m betting you feel the same way these days.”
Duncan had a friendly manner that quickly set her at ease. “I’m traveling quite a lot to promote my last picture.”
“Why don’t you set him down, see how they get along?” Duncan suggested. “Rinty will behave.”
“Are you sure? He’s awful big. He could probably eat Oscar in one bite.”
“He prefers filet mignon to little dogs,” Duncan chuckled. “He could use a friend in the neighborhood. We both could. Especially one who isn’t looking for anything from us.”
Harlean nodded in understanding. “The price of fame.”
“I’ve met your mother and her husband. How ’bout you all come to dinner here when you get back from your trip? I’m a fair chef, as it happens. I’ll whip you all up a home cooked meal, and we’ll let Rinty and Oscar get better acquainted.”
“I’d like that,” she said. “We both would.”
Harlean was making new friends, building a life for herself and beginning to do some of it on her own terms. She had begun to like this feeling of growing up and taking the world by storm. Well, at least Jean Harlow did.
* * *
The response to her appearances on the next publicity tour across the country to keep promoting her image and earn extra income exceeded the last one, and Harlean was not only overwhelmed but humbled by it. Squealing hordes of adoring girls waited in line, carrying bouquets of flowers and photographs, now along with devoted male fans, and she refused to disappoint them in spite of her lingering stage fright.
As Jean and Marino waited, usually in the wings with Blanche and Kay, she posed endlessly for pictures with all of them and patiently signed autographs until her hand cramped. And each day she began to feel a little more like Jean Harlow—the glamorous star in costly ivory-colored, fur-trimmed silk suits—and less like Harlean Carpenter, the bookish, Midwestern teenager.
When they arrived in Sante Fe, the last stop on the tour, Harlean was exhausted. In spite of the genuine smiles she was able to conjure with her fans, she needed a rest.
She went to the final press conference and autograph signing in what felt like a daze. All she wanted was to go home, see Oscar, Nip and Tuck, and sleep for a week.
Sitting at a long table in a smart beige suit with a fox-fur collar, and a fur-trimmed hat with the city’s mayor, dignitaries and the Platinum Blonde Sante Fe Fan Club president, she gazed out past the bright lights. She ignored the flashing bulbs, and tried to answer this new round of questions in ways that sounded fresh and sincere.
When it was over, her fans lined up to have their photographs and magazines autographed. Kay stood behind her, instructing the more zealous fans to keep moving. Blanche was over on the side of the room, holding Harlean’s handbag and her date book.
Halfway through the signing, Harlean looked up into the face of an adolescent girl with
short blond hair and wide bright blue eyes. As the girl offered up a publicity still of Jean Harlow, her hands trembled.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” Harlean asked as she poised the pen over the publicity photograph of herself.
“Lula, after my grandma.”
“Oh, I love that name. I’ve only ever heard that one other time,” Harlean exclaimed and as she did, she noticed the older woman standing behind the girl with hands on her shoulders. It was the kind face she remembered from her very first role as an extra.
“It’s lovely to see you again, Harlean.”
“You’ve met Miss Harlow before?” the girl said in wide-eyed awe.
“Just once, a few years ago, honey.”
“Come along, keep the line moving,” Kay interjected from behind Harlean.
“It’s all right, Kay.” She held up her hand. “Give us a moment. Mrs. Hanford and I are old friends. What on earth are you doing in Santa Fe, Lula?”
“Things worked out all right for me, after all. I live with my daughter and her family now. My lovely little granddaughter here is the light of my life.”
Harlean felt a genuine burst of delight renew her spirit. “You’re a beautiful young girl.”
“I wanna be an actress just like you when I grow up, Miss Harlow, and my grandma, of course. She was in pictures, too!”
“Yes, I know. We were in one together, actually. Your grandmother was the first person to be kind to me when I got to Hollywood.”
The girl’s face showed the awe that she remembered feeling herself as a girl when she had first seen Pola Negri. Harlean felt the power of amazement then at how things went around and came back around.
“Please now, we really need to keep things moving,” Kay repeated.
“If you ever get to Hollywood gimme a call,” Harlean said to the girl with stars in her eyes as she wrote.
To Lula, a lucky girl to share a name with someone you love. I know the feeling!
Best wishes, Jean Harlow
“I see you took my advice about expensive hats,” Lula Hanford said.
“I took all of your advice actually.”
“It’s really good to see you again, my dear.”
They shared a smile. “And you, Lula. I’m glad to know things turned out okay for you.”
“I was just about to say the same thing to you,” she said.
* * *
By the spring of 1932, Jean Harlow had worked for every major Hollywood studio, making films for Columbia, MGM, Universal and Fox Films, though the roles were largely the same: gun molls and sexy sirens. But even Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo had dyed their hair a similar shade of platinum blond. While imitation was, as they said, the sincerest form of flattery, Harlean would not sit back on her laurels. She was committed to continue learning and growing as an actress.
She took acting classes and voice lessons. She stumbled and then she tried again.
Even though her reviews often suffered, her popularity did not. Finally, Paul had prevailed and convinced MGM to buy out her contract from Howard Hughes. At last, she was living the life she wanted. She had grown up and into the role of a star, and she lived now in the manner the name Jean Harlow provoked around the world.
Then finally, it was time to break ground on a dream that was all of her own. The home they rented at Club View Drive had been someone else’s idea of success. The house at South Beverly Glen, where she long ago had bought a vacant lot, would be all hers.
Freshly blonde, late one Sunday afternoon as the sun began to set shimmering and crimson, she sat in the driver’s seat of her Sport Phaeton atop the steep hill and gazed at the first bit of framing the construction crew had erected just that Friday. She looked down at the open blueprints in her hands again, then folded them and tucked them in between the seats. It would be a magnificent place. All white, the walls, the carpets and the furniture.
Like the color of hair that had won her fame.
This place would mark a new beginning. This home she was building would represent the success she had worked so hard these past years to achieve.
A black taxi cab pulled up beside her car then, churning up a cloud of dust.
She glanced over as he got out and paid the driver. The years slipped away as the memories tumbled forward. The sweet ones pushed ahead of the bad and brought a small smile to her lips.
He looked good, she thought. A bit heavier, perhaps, but with that same boyish face, lightly dusted with freckles. His tousled copper hair was now tamed into short waves. It felt like such a long time to her now since they had been together. He slipped into the car next to her, closed the door and the cab pulled away back down the steep driveway.
“Hello, Chuck.”
“Hey there, doll,” he said with a nostalgic tone. “You look real swell—nothing like Harlean anymore, but still, real swell.”
“So do you, Chuck.”
“Thanks for agreeing to see me while I’m in town. I always did love the view from up here.” He turned away from her to take it all in.
“I’m so sorry about everything,” he said with a sigh.
There was a silence before their eyes met again. Harlean saw the sadness there. She knew it was bittersweet to him, too, since this place held their dreams for a future that was no longer meant to be.
“Me, too,” she softly said.
“I tried, ya know.”
“You did fine, Chuck. But we were awful young.”
“How come you wouldn’t take the money from our settlement? It was yours, you know.”
“That was yours from your parents. I couldn’t take that from you. After all, we did love each other once, didn’t we?”
He put a hand gently atop hers on her lap and gave it a tender squeeze before he drew away. “Most definitely, doll.”
“I always wished you had been able to let me in a little more to share with me about what happened with your mom and dad,” she dared to say. “I always thought you would have felt less sad if you did.”
“Less angry, you mean.”
“Yes, that, too.”
He paused before he said, “I just couldn’t, you know? To unravel that always felt like I would be unraveling myself. I really thought the grief was going to kill me. I guess a part of me thought it was my fault that I had lived and they both had died.”
“But you know that isn’t at all true, don’t you?”
“I’m getting there, at last, I think,” he said.
“You went through a lot as a kid, Chuck.”
“I think we both did. That was how we found each other.”
Harlean tried not to let sadness settle over her—a blanket of memories, guilt and things unanswered. It was long over—so were they. But what they’d shared would always matter to her.
“I finally went to the cemetery, and to my parents’ graves,” he confessed after a small silence. “It was as hard as I thought it would be, but I said goodbye.”
“You never did that before?”
“No, I never did. I know you wanted me to, though.”
“I just wanted you to be okay,” she explained. “It happened when it was meant to.”
It took her a moment to gather her thoughts for the cavalcade of things she was feeling, seeing him again, after how they had ended. “So, why did you wanna meet, Chuck?”
She watched his jaw tighten.
“I’m getting married,” he announced. “Strange to admit, especially to you.”
She felt her heart skip a beat, but she knew that was just nostalgia.
“She’s a society gal, real sweet. I just thought I should be the one to tell you since too often in the past we let other people do the talking for us.”
“I’m happy for you.”
&nb
sp; “So, you gonna marry Clark Gable? There are pictures of you two in all the magazines. That fella is a real looker.”
A cad and an incorrigible ladies’ man, too, she thought with a spark of humor because he’d been her costar twice now and he had also become a dear friend. They had amazing chemistry on-screen, too, but Gabe was always going on about William Powell’s new wife, Carole Lombard, ever since that night at the Cocoanut Grove, so he wasn’t interested in her like that. Besides, Harlean had decided she was going to marry Paul. His absolute devotion to her had softened her heart these past months and, in her way, she loved him. But she decided not to bring any of that up now, since she had not even accepted Paul’s proposal.
“Sake’s alive, no. Gabe’s got a string of gals to keep him plenty busy. He’s like a brother to me.”
“I did think all that stuff about you two was just gossip. You deserve the best, doll. You’ll be the biggest star in the world soon, I can feel it. No one will ever forget the name Jean Harlow.”
Against her will, tears filled her eyes.
“I guess I always knew that would happen. Stupid of me to fight it like I did. I should’ve known I couldn’t win that one.” In the silence, Chuck leaned over and very gently pressed a kiss onto her cheek. “For old times’ sake, hmm?”
“You brought me to Hollywood, Chuck. You helped me find that fate. No matter what our problems were, I owe you a lot for that.”
He again looked out at the vista before them then, and she did, too. “You’ll build a real palace here, I’ll bet.”
“I’m excited to try,” she said. “At least all of the ideas will be mine.”
It felt so good, and healing, just to be here with him, of all people.
“We’re both moving on with our lives, but I want you to know that I’ll never forget what we almost had together,” he said.
“What we did have, Chuck, we did—it wasn’t almost, not at all.”
He reached over to embrace her one final time, and she let him. She wanted that so dearly, too. They clung together tightly then before finally letting go—both at the same time.
