Actress Jean Harlow was born on this day in 1911 (prone to bouts of influenza at a time when penicillin was not yet widely available, she died of kidney failure at age 26 in 1937.) Let's start out with a few home movies:
Watching the above you might get the impression Harlow was a silent film star. In fact, she was a major star of early talkies, as well as a major sex symbol of early talkies. In this scene from 1932's Red Dust, she tries her best to break the ice by talking up dairy products with a major male sex symbol of early (as well as later) talkies, Clark Gable (speaking of which, Gable's behavior at one point probably wouldn't pass a present-day #MeToo test, but keep in mind it's not the present day but 92 years ago):
Red Dust was a drama, though the above scene was obviously one of the film's lighter moments. Now, while I won't pretend it was the first and foremost reason she or later blond bombshells as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield were such box office draws, Jean Harlow was in fact very good at comedy. Here's a comic scene from another movie that was otherwise dramatic, 1933's Dinner at Eight. I've shown it before (in a post about Marie Dressler, who also appears) and it never fails to make me chuckle:
Take that, Sam Altman!
