Harlow, la blonde platine

This film neglects to mention any of Jean Harlow's actual movies by name, or even that she was under contract to MGM (she works at the fictitious "Majestic Studios" in this account of her life). None of her real-life co-stars is named or depicted, nor are her unsuccessful first and third marriages mentioned. She is said in the film to have died from pneumonia, but, in actuality, it was uremic poisoning which killed her. The only characters given their real names are Harlow, her second husband Paul Bern, her agent (as well as the source of this movie), Arthur M. Landau, and her mother and stepfather. The fictitious studio boss "Everett Redman" is a fairly blatant caricature of Louis B. Mayer, who was also the obvious basis for the similar character the same actor, Martin Balsam, played the previous year in "The Carpetbaggers". This movie's claim that Paul Bern committed suicide because he was impotent has been widely questioned - some, such as his close friend, director Henry Hathaway, have suggested he was murdered by gangsters, and that the studio covered this up to avoid bad publicity. Another (highly feasible) explanation is that Bern was murdered by his former mistress Dorothy Millette, a woman with a history of mental illness who is known to have left Connecticut for Los Angeles two days before Bern's death, and who committed suicide two days after it.

Although all of Jean's earlier movie roles depicted here were in silent films, primitive microphones are always seen on sets and in one scene a musical number is even being rehearsed.

Featured in Mad Men: The Forecast (2015)