Harlow (1965)
by Gordon Douglas
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Product details
Actor: Angela Lansbury, Carroll Baker, Peter Lawford, Raf Vallone, Red ButtonsDirector: Gordon Douglas
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 125 minutes
Release Date: 1993-06-30
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount
VHS Movie Reviews of Harlow (1965)
Movie Review: Could be retitled Hollywood's Harlot
Summary: 2 Stars
Jean Harlow was an A picture star for MGM who filmed with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and William Powell. No mention of them in the film. Here, she's just a bitchy B picture star for Majestic Studios, holding her professional virginity from a B cowboy star played by Mike Connors and making her queer husband Paul Berns (Peter Lawford) impotent. The real Jean Harlow had more dignity in her pinky finger than the character Carroll Baker portrays with her usual display of hysterics granted by a trashy script.Movie Review: Acting and writing bring it up to *4* stars
Summary: 4 Stars
It was said that this film was rushed out to compete with the Made-For-TV (shot on videotape!) "Harlow" with Carol Lynley, from the same year.
Perhaps more thought would have gone into the Baker version: the 1965 music permeating the movie depicting 1935 may have been scrapped in favor of "period" music, the storyline adjusted to fit the "real" story, some of the bludgeoning soliliques removed - though the script is excellent, and I daresay strong enugh to be played on a Broadway stage at the time.
What the big-budget version has, most notably is consistently great performances. Carroll Baker is, to me, one of the best actresses on the silver screen, her acting is absolutely astonishing in this film: I strong believe she did an Oscar-worthy job. Red Buttons, as the Agent, also does well; Mike Connors, Leslie Nielson, Angela Lansbury, et. al., are exceptionally expressive for a movie considered now to be on the level of "The Oscar", or other huge productions of the '60s, which went awry artistically.
The screenplay, though as I mentioned above, is a bit over the top, especially as it injects 1965 historical observations into a very early period in movies, when movies with spoken dialogue were called "talkies", and there simply were not that many fallen idols to draw upon. There was no development of the theme of a 17 year old beauty, playing bit parts in frantic slapstick two-reelers, suddenly finding herself a (controversial) lead actress in features with sound.
Additionally, there is actually very little physical resemblance of Baker to Harlow: Baker is a "Classic" beauty while Harlow is attractive and possessing that "animal magnetism". Also, Baker is not "17" by any stretch - though she's more believable (visually) by the end of the movie, when Jean Harlow was in her mid 20s.
Cinematography, sets, are impressive; though chromatics are '60s, not '30s.
Movie Review: HARLOW producer Levine should have insured audiences against death by laughter.
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm not a person to them, I'm a thing; just hair and legs -- no face, no feelings." It sounds like an actress refreshingly wise to herself and Tinseltown, but nah, it's just Carroll Baker, waxing melancholic on what a drag it is being a love goddess, in producer Joseph E. Levine's bogus whitewash of Hollywood's platinum blonde Jean Harlow. Not that Baker got to learn first-hand about being the wet dream of millions, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Levine pulled out the publicity stops for his movie of THE CARPETBAGGERS, starring Baker as Harlowesque "Rina Marlowe," then, when the cash rolled in, he tried his luck again with HARLOW, one of two movies "inspired" by a trashy best-selling biography by Irving R. Schulman.
Playing one of the snappiest, raciest gals in movies, Baker radiates all the charisma of a crash test dummy as John Michael Hayes's Lonely-Actress-at-the-Top script staggers from cliche to cliche. You'll be hooting right form the moment Baker, in a bad wig amd Edith Head-designed padded dresses, tries scoring her big break without losing her virginity. "honey, you're no Sarah Bernhardt," advises a moviemaker. "You've got to make the most of what nature gave you."
It's no picnic at home, either, what with stepfather Marino (Raf Vallone) mooching off her and eyeing her like she's the blue plate special. Angela Lansbury, as Mom, isn't much help either, consoling her daughter with such wisdom as "Acting is hard." (Apparently, good acting is, under the circumstances, impossible.)
When top director Leslie Nielson gives Baker a guided tour of his bedroom, replete with round bed and Ziegfeld-like draperies, hold on to your corn nuts for the moment when she repulses his advances by screaming, "You're a dirty animal of a person!" to which he retorts (you guessed it), "You were nothing when I picked you up and you'll be even less when I drop you."
Things get weird after Baker weds effete producer Peter Lawford who -- considering his impotence on their wedding night -- must have been trying for irony when he had revealed, on meeting her, "You've made me a firm believer." Lawford shoots himself, and Baker hits the skids -- boozing, shacking up with studly greasers, behaving the lurid way you'd hoped she would in a movie like this. "Tell me truthfully, mama," she asks, chewing on a cigarette holder and most of the scenery, "is Marino that exciting?"
She never finds out for, just then, Baker up and expires! Nevermind that, in real life, Harlow's husband was a bigamist, that he may have beat her to a pulp, or that he may have been murdered. When Baker's agent, Red Buttons, claims, "She didn't die of pneumonia, she died of life," we wish they'd made THAT movie. If Levine had really wanted to come up with gimmicks to promote the hell out of HARLOW, he should have insured audiences against death by laughter.
Movie Review: Hollywood Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Alot of reviews I see are forgetting...This movie is based in 30's Hollywood time period...Yes it is "Hollywood" in parts and maybe the whole movie,but in the 30's, Actors and movies lived out The "Drama Queen" life style, it was almost expected. It was about Glamor,Drama,
Scandal,Tabloids,Hidden Life Styles,..Over The Top Acting..False Rumors for Publicity sake...Dont compare it to todays Movie Dramas...Back then Clevage was Sexually Bold!..Today we have Total Nudity,for Gratuitous and movie viewing for selling reasons alone...Dont be so hard on this movie, it was made and Directed to create a speciffic Time Period Of many years Long Gone.
Movie Review: Not the Real Harlow
Summary: 2 Stars
Jean Harlow was one of the most beloved stars of the 1930s, and her early death at 26 shocked Hollywood. This film is an attempt to cash in on her fame, and is therefore a curiosity to fans, but it is certainly no loving tribute.
The film starts out decently enough. Jean Harlow (Carroll Baker) haunts the studios looking for work, and getting very little of it. She wanders onto the set of a western one day at lunchtime, hoping to fall into a meal, and she meets agent Arthur Landau (Red Buttons). Landau is looking for a client to represent, and Harlow seems perfect, so despite having to take quite a few risks, he asks to represent her. Mogul Richard Manley (Leslie Nielson) takes an interest in her and gets her work in slapstick comedies, but drops her when she refuses to become another conquest on his wall.
But at least now she has her foot in the door. With her publicity as a wisecracking sex symbol, she becomes a big star, but there is something she is aching for despite her success. After a talk with Mama Jean (Angela Lansbury) about her love life with Latin lover Marino Bello (Raf Vallone), she decides that what she needs is to be seduced. She hopes to find passion with Paul Bern (Peter Lawford), but discovers on their wedding night that he is unable to perform. His suicide leads her to seek solace in any man's bed, and after a night of drinking and sex, Harlow sleeps on the beach. This gives her pnuemonia which causes her untimely death at 26.
How wrong can a movie get? Harlow began as a rich girl, with no need for fame, but her mother pushed her to become a star. Once famous, she became everyone's kid sister, the girl who everyone looked out for. She was married before she achieved fame, so she was by no means a virgin when she met Paul Bern. In fact, some people who believe that Bern was impotent claim that she knew about his shortcomings and married him for them to escape being pawed constantly. However, there are serious doubts about the impotence claims; Bern had a common law marriage for years before coming to Hollywood. And the idea that Harlow became sex-starved and that this affliction led to her death is preposterous! She died because of kidney failure due to uremic poisoning, a condition that was hard to detect in the middle 1930s. What is even more shocking is that this film suggests that Harlow's career was waning toward the end of her life, which couldn't be further from the truth. She was still the bright star that she was at the height of her fame, which is why her death rattled the world.
It is funny that it was not Harlow's own studio of MGM, but rival Paramount that made this film. Was there some underlying animosity there? Perhaps. What is clear is that someone somewhere involved had little regard for Harlow's memory and wasn't very disturbed by tarnishing her reputation. They also ignored the time period. Baker's hair is of a 1960s style, the music is anachronistic, and the money used is modern. This film is only worthy of seasoned Harlow fans who are just curious.
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