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Jean Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri in 1911. Her parents were unhappily married, and her mother devoted her entire life to her only child Harlean, whom she called "Baby". When she was 11, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to Hollywood, where her mother wanted to become an actress, but she had little success, and two years later they returned to Kansas City. In 1927, when Harlean was 16, she married an heir to a fortune who was two months under 21, the age when he would inherit the money. Once he did, they moved to Beverly Hills. Harlean was noticed by Fox executives and took a screen test under her mother's maiden name of Jean Harlow. She was given some bit parts, and then signed a contract with Hal Roach, and she was in three Laurel & Hardy movies, but then separated from her husband and left Roach, and moved in with her mother and mom's new husband. After some more minor roles, she was signed to play the female lead in Hell's Angels, which was already shot. But the movie had been made as a silent, and Howard Hughes made the decision to re-shoot the entire movie with sound, and since female star Greta Nissen, had a heavy Norwegian accent, she was replaced by Jean Harlow! Hell's Angels was a great success, and everyone noticed Harlow, especially in a color sequence where she wore a skimpy body hugging practically transparent dress! Harlow was under contract to Hughes, but after a major role in Platinum Blonde, she was signed by MGM, where she appeared in a series of romantic comedies, and some steamy sexy dramas, including Red Dust with Clark Gable. Harlow's personal life was a mess. She had gotten involved with MGM screenwriter Paul Bern, who was 22 years older than her. During the filming of Red Dust, Bern committed suicide, leaving a cryptic suicide note (or was he murdered?). Harlow soon married again, but that marriage was brief, and she had numerous affairs, most notably with William Powell. She also had to contend with numerous relatives who sponged off of her, most notably her mother, who was called Mama Jean. Harlow made a total of 16 movies at MGM between 1932 and 1937, and many of them are really excellent movies. One of her best roles was in the multi-star Dinner at Eight in 1933. Tragically, she became sick during the filming of Saratoga, and she died of kidney failure, at just 26 years of age! Harlow was the original blonde bombshell, and one of her movies was called "Bombshell" and was also released as "Blonde Bombshell". She exuded a combination of sexiness and innocence that no other female star ever did (at least until Marilyn Monroe came along two decades later). I highly recommend seeing her movies. She may not have been a great actress, but she is always very entertaining to watch!

Important Added Info: Note that this is a "studio-issued" negative. What is it? It was produced by the studio but is not the camera original. It is very high quality and was created in quantity by the studios and sent to media outlets or other places that had need of the very highest quality image for reproduction purposes (in newspapers, magazines, or elsewhere). We have put a scan of the negative that shows the "positive image" (in addition to an image of the negative image). REMEMBER THAT WHAT YOU RECEIVE WILL BE A PHOTOGRAPHIC NEGATIVE, NOT A POSITIVE IMAGE LIKE YOU ARE SEEING (however, the archive that owned this made an 8x10 positive print from it that will be included with the negative). However, we will provide the winning bidder of this auction that positive image scan that is both high quality and not watermarked (on request to the winning bidder, and only the winning bidder). The negative is in a plastic sleeve (but we removed it and scanned it, so that bidders could see just how high quality it is). It will be sent to the winner of the auction in its sleeve.

Note that this negative (and 96 others we are currently auctioning, in 97 separate auctions) has a wonderful provenance! From 1938 through the 1960s, movie fans would purchase photos of their favorite movie stars from a company in Brooklyn, New York, called "Movie Star News". This company, owned by Irving Klaw, sold a massive number of repro photos, because it became widely known to have some of the highest quality movie star images there were, as good or better than what the studios themselves produced. It turns out that Klaw had obtained the negatives that he made his photos from directly from the major studios, who apparently did not want to store negatives due to the fear of them being a fire hazard. He amassed an unmatched collection of over 20,000 negatives of all the top Hollywood stars, and over half of them were "camera originals", meaning they were the ones in the camera when the photographer took the image, and were hand retouched by the photographer (if retouching was necessary).

Irving Klaw died in 1966, and his nephew continued his business for many years, but he closed the business in 2012, and the archive of negatives passed through several hands before being acquired by a company that hired a professional archivist to spend over a year cataloging the negatives. The 97 negatives we are currently auctioning are from this amazing archive, and approximately half of them are camera originals, and half are "studio negatives" (created by the studio directly from the camera original). See above for which type of negative the one in this auction is. These include wonderful images of top Hollywood stars! This is an amazing opportunity to not only purchase ultra rare negatives, but also to obtain ones from one of the most legendary archives ever assembled!

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