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Jean Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter on the 3rd of March 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. She was born from a wealthy family and lived in a large house in Kansas City with her parents. An only child, she was close to her mother, Jean, who called her The Baby. In fact, she was so coddled that she only learned that her real name was Harlean when she started attending Miss Barstow’s Finnishing School for Girls at the age of five.

Mother and daughter had an unusual bonding that in 1922, when Jean was most of the time at school, her mother became so frustrated that she filed for divorced and sought sole custody of her Jean. The following year, she and her mother moved to Hollywood so that she can pursue her dreams of becoming an actress. In Hollywood, she trained at the Hollywood School for Girls but after two year, with no more money to spend and without any film prospects, they returned to Kansas.

Jean Harlow then attended the Ferry Hall School in 1925 where she met, heir to great fortune, Charles “Chuck” McGrew. They fell in love and got married in 1926, much to the disgust of her overprotective mother. But her mother also got married earlier that year and so Jean finally was released from her clutches. When Chuck came to his inheritance, the couple moved to Los Angeles where Jean Harlow met aspiring actress Rosalie Roy.

One time, Rosalie asked Jean Harlow to drive her to Fox Studio for an appointment. Jean obliged and while waiting for Rosalie, she was noticed by one of the studio’s executives. The executive gave her a letter for an audition in the studio’s Central Casting Bureau. With Rosalie’s encouragement by way of wager, and her mother’s additional motivation, Jean auditioned using her mother’s name: Jean Harlow.

Jean Harlow first appeared in minor roles but soon, she was seen in The Saturday Night Kid and a role in Double Whoopee. Her growing fame created pressures in her marriage that in the same year, she got separated from her husband. Still in 1929, she was hired by Howard Hughes for the film Hell’s Angels. The film was released in 1930 and she became the latest Hollywood sensation. The following year, her star further rose when she appeared on the films Goldie, The Public Enemy, Platinum Blonde and The Secret Six.

Then MGM brought her contract from Hughes at the insistence of her lover Paul Bern, one of MGM’s producers. At MGM, Jean Harlow became a star with the movies, Red-Headed Woman, Red Dust, Dinner at Eight and other major hits. At the age of 26, Jean Harlow died while shooting the film, Saratoga.