vamp usually had dark hair, while the “good” girl was blonde, but Harlow added a new dimension: Her platinum blonde hair was so unique and (for the 1930s) her gowns so low-cut that the expression “blonde bombshell” was coined to describe her. She was modern, vulgar, and wonderfully funny. Here was a woman who seemed to want sex as much as a man does. Harlow brought to the movies a healthy sex appeal that was both shocking and liberating in its time.
Born Harlean Carpenter to a middle-class family, she ran away from home to get married at 16. After the mar- riage failed, she went to Hollywood and worked as an extra, eventually winning a small part in Moran of the Marines (1928). Other tiny roles followed, most notably in The Love
Parade (1929).
Nothing came of her work until HOWARD HUGHESgot a
glimpse of her. Hughes wanted her for Hell’s Angels (1930), his epic air-war movie that had been two years in the making but had to be reshot because of the advent of sound. Hughes, always quick to spot a beauty, saw her potential and signed her to star in his film as the woman who comes between the two heroes.
Hell’s Angels was a big hit, partly because of the remark-
able aerial display in the movie and partly because Harlow was so sexy. Hughes had her under a long-term contract and proceeded to loan her to other studios for lead roles, notably to Warner Bros. for Public Enemy (1931). She was also loaned to Columbia, where she starred in FRANK CAPRA’s Platinum
Blonde (1931), a movie clearly titled to best take advantage of
her peculiar hair color.
Hughes finally sold her contract to MGM for $60,000. She appeared in two MGM films without causing much of a ripple until Red Dust (1932) with CLARK GABLE. The two stars ignited sexual fires, making the rather daring movie a
blockbuster hit. Harlow and Gable were a hot team; they were paired together a total of five times in just six years, and all of their films drew big crowds.
After Red Dust, Harlow was the Hollywood sex goddess, and, as such, she was a perfect foil for the purposefully stuffy cast in MGM’s all-star film Dinner at Eight (1933), just as she was the perfect victim in the aptly titled Bombshell (1933).
She could play tough (Riff Raff, 1935) or she could play funny (Suzy, 1936). But no matter what she played, the slinky star had one hit after another. There was no reason to believe she might not have an extremely long career. Tragedy struck, however, when Harlow was only 26 years old. She had been filming Saratoga (1937) when she fell ill and then suddenly died of uremic poisoning. The movie was finished with a double and went on to become a great hit precisely because it was the sexy star’s last movie.
See alsoSEX SYMBOLS: FEMALE.
Harris, Ed (1950– )
For most of his film career Ed Harris has not been a leading man, but in his secondary roles he has had outstanding success, having received two Oscar nominations as Best Supporting Actor. He was also nomi-nated for an Oscar as Best Actor in Pollock (2000), a film that he also directed, has also received an Obie, and has been nominated for a Tony for his theatrical performances. He has also won awards for his television work.
Born in Englewood, New Jersey, he enrolled at Colum- bia University but transferred to the University of Oklahoma when his family moved to that state. At Oklahoma he studied acting, and then he went to Los Angeles, where he attended the California Institute of the Arts. He made his film debut in Coma (1978) and has appeared in at least one film every year since then.
During the 1980s, he was in about 20 films, some of them made for television. Among the best were Under Fire and The
Right Stuff (both 1983) and Sweet Dreams (1985), the Patsy
Cline biopic, in which he played the singer’s husband. In the role, he was a hard-drinking womanizer who could not deal with his wife’s success.
In the 1990s his roles and his films improved dramati- cally. He played a detective in China Moon (1991) and in
Absolute Power (1997) and a sheriff in Needful Things (1993);
he played on the other side of the law in Just Cause (1994) as an incarcerated serial killer and State of Grace (1990) as a gang leader. He also had good roles in Nixon and Apollo 13 (both 1995), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), and The Firm (1993). In
The Rock (1996) he was a decorated general who leads some
of his former soldiers to capture Alcatraz; he was appropri- ately fanatic and vicious.
The Truman Show (1998) allowed him to exercise his
authoritarian skills in the role of Christof, the producer and director of the reality television show in which JIM CARREY
unwittingly stars. Because of the way he is photographed, he appears as a kind of god overseeing and controlling his own universe. For his performance, he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar and won a Golden Globe and the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actor. His leading roles during the decade were in Running Mates (1992) as a presidential candidate, replete with girlfriend, who has a past, and in Stepmom (1998), as a divorced dad with two kids.
HARRIS, ED
Jean Harlow was the sound era’s first major sex symbol. She brought an earthiness to the screen to which audiences responded—especially when she played her roles for laughs.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF THE SIEGEL COLLECTION)
Ed Harris (left) in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) (PHOTO COURTESY NEW LINE CINEMA)
In 2000, he produced and directed Pollock, a biopic about the painter Jackson Pollock, an alcoholic and tormented genius. In the film, Harris runs the gamut of emotions and expresses the self-destructive urges that led to Pollock’s death. He was again nominated for an Oscar, this time for Best Actor. In 2001, he played the imaginary federal agent of John Nash’s hallucinations in the award-winning A Beautiful
Mind and in 2003 was again nominated for Best Supporting
Actor Oscar and Golden Globe awards in the critically acclaimed The Hours (2002).