Blind Items Revealed #4 - Old Hollywood
June 10, 2016
The mother of this A/A+ list movie actress who died too young lived her entire life off the money she was paid by her daughter’s first husband who wanted to marry the underage actress and was willing to pay a lot and did.
Jean Harlow
OK according to what I just read, in Missouri the legal age to get married is 15 with one parent's consent. 18 with no consent. It says she lied and claimed to be 19 on her marriage license, which she didn't have to do if her mother had been bought off.
ReplyDeleteThat would put her at 16 when they married.
ReplyDeleteI like these Old Hollywood reveals
ReplyDeleteYes she was 16 and it lasted about 2 years
ReplyDeleteDid JH's first husband give her mother something, possible, but did he pay her enough to support her the rest of her life, highly unlikely. JH's mother and step father were notorious for spending JH's money.
ReplyDeleteI should add that JH, who was making $4K per week at MGM left an estate of only $41K (gross before considering $10-$15K in claims against her estate).
ReplyDelete@sandybrook, if you lie the marriage would not be legal,, so she likely was paid to agree to it.
ReplyDeleteHad he been in next year's Bangladesh, he should have not worried about her age, and consecuently saved a lot of dough. They are lowering it to 0 (zero) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4292062/New-Bangladesh-law-reduce-marriage-age-zero.html .
ReplyDeleteShe was engaged to William Powell ('Nick Charles' in The Thin Man movie series when she died... One husband committed suicide - his suicide note seemed to imply he couldn't sexually perform. Hollywood studio big names were crawling all iver the crine scene even before the police were called.
ReplyDeleteOops, sorry about typos!
ReplyDeleteI've read that she met him in the summer of 1926 and married 'by' 1927; she was born in March 1927, so she could have been as young as 15 if the marriage happened early in 1927.
ReplyDeleteAlso, from what I've read, they may have been married in Illinois, not Missouri. Currently the age of consent is 17 (not sure what it was in 1927).
She couldn't have been born in 1927 if she married him in 1927 otherwise God forbid if her mother sold an infant to be married off. Was she born in 1912? I'm too lazy to Google.
ReplyDeleteIf I could say here that one shouldn't paint Jean Harlow's mother as bad. Mother and daughter were extremely close! Jean Harlow died of kidney disease at the age 26. Her mother would have inherited her wealth, and, I believe, that Jean Harlow would have wanted her mother to have the money. To imply that the mother lived off of the money when she 'sold' her daughter does not bare true. Jean Harlow, making $4K a week would have left her mother wealthy. Both mother and daughter were devout Christian Scientists. It just doesn't bode true that they were at odds or animosity from some sort of 'selling her daughter'. They were close and shared a bond until separated by illness of the daughter.
ReplyDeletethe suicide of paul bern second husband according to an interview by john kobal with louise brooks was because he was still married to someone else, who "turned up" just then and he knew the story wld have ruined harlows career
ReplyDelete