Harlow | |
---|---|
Directed by | Gordon Douglas |
Written by | John Michael Hayes |
Based on | Harlow: An Intimate Biography by Irving Shulman |
Produced by | Joseph E. Levine |
Starring | Carroll Baker Martin Balsam Red Buttons Michael Connors Angela Lansbury Peter Lawford Raf Vallone |
Cinematography | Joseph Ruttenberg |
Edited by | Frank Bracht Archie Marshek |
Music by | Neal Hefti |
Production companies | Embassy Pictures Promethemus Enterprises Inc. |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 125 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2.5 million |
Box office | $3,400,000 (US/ Canada rentals) [1] $1 million |
Harlow is a 1965 American biographical drama film directed by Gordon Douglas about the life of film star Jean Harlow. It stars Carroll Baker in the title role and Raf Vallone, Red Buttons, Angela Lansbury, Peter Lawford, Mike Connors, Martin Balsam and Leslie Nielsen in supporting roles. Although the film failed commercially, it was successful in launching the hit song "Girl Talk" by Neal Hefti.
The picture was released by Paramount Pictures shortly after Magna had released a different film with the same title and subject, starring Carol Lynley.
The film opens with Harlow as a struggling extra and bit actress supporting a greedy stepfather Marino and a loving but oblivious mother "Mama Jean". With the help of agent Arthur Landau, she secures a contract at the studio of the Howard Hughes-inspired Richard Manley. The reception to her first film is disappointing, and at Manley's studio her career is stalled. When Manley attempts to add her to his list of seduced starlets, Harlow fights him off and tells him what she thinks of him. This scene turns out to be a ruse devised by her agent so that the now-furious Manley terminates her contract. Landau successfully pitches Harlow to Majestic Studios, and her career blossoms. Despite studio encouragement to marry another contract star, Harlow marries the apparently gentle and cultured Paul Bern, who is revealed to be impotent. Soon after, Bern commits suicide. His death, combined with the stress of her career, leads Harlow on an odyssey of failed relationships and alcoholism, culminating in her death of pneumonia at the age of 26.
The concept of depicting Jean Harlow on film had originated in the 1950s. Many actresses were reported to have been cast as Harlow in different biopics, such as Cleo Moore for Columbia and Jayne Mansfield for Fox, but both of these projects fell through. In 1962, Fox announced that Marilyn Monroe would play Harlow in a lavish biopic under her new contract. However, after Monroe's death, the project was sold to Paramount, which cast Carroll Baker in the title role. Based in part on Irving Shulman's pulp biography Harlow: An Intimate Biography, Paramount's Harlow is a melodramatic look at Harlow's life, focusing on her failed marriages. The widescreen Technicolor film, produced by Joseph E. Levine, was made on a $2.5 million budget, and was supported by a wide-reaching publicity campaign. The previous year, Carroll Baker had played a fictionalized version of Harlow dubbed "Rina Marlowe" in the smash-hit film The Carpetbaggers starring George Peppard and Alan Ladd, which had also been produced by Joseph E. Levine.
Director Gordon Douglas later said that during filming Baker "was very sick, physically and also mentally, I think. She was going through bad times. But she did a hell of a good job on the picture." [2]
On September 28, 2010, Olive Films released Harlow on Region 1 DVD in the United States.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury was a British and American actress. In a career spanning 80 years, she played various roles across film, stage, and television. Although based for much of her life in the United States, her work attracted international attention.
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Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.
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Gordon Douglas Brickner was an American film director and actor, who directed many different genres of films over the course of a five-decade career in motion pictures.
Joseph Edward Levine was an American film distributor, financier, and producer. At the time of his death, it was said he was involved in one or another capacity with 497 films. Levine was responsible for the U.S. releases of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Attila and Hercules, which helped revolutionize U.S. film marketing, and was founder and president of Embassy Pictures.
Paul Bern was a German-born American film director, screenwriter, and producer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he became the assistant to Irving Thalberg. He helped launch the career of Jean Harlow, whom he married in July 1932; two months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, leaving what appeared to be a suicide note. Various alternative theories of his death have been proposed. MGM writer and film producer Samuel Marx believed that he was killed by his ex-common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who jumped to her death from a ferry two days afterward.
Harlow is a town in Essex, England.
Today Is Tonight is a novel written by Hollywood actress Jean Harlow in the mid-1930s but not published until 1965.
Raffaele Vallone was an Italian actor and footballer. One of the top male Italian stars of the 1950s and '60s, he first became known for his association with the neorealist movement, and found success in several international productions. On stage, he was closely associated with the works of Arthur Miller. He played the role of Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge several times, notably in Sidney Lumet's 1962 film adaptation, for which he won the David di Donatello for Best Actor.
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The Carpetbaggers is a 1964 American drama film directed by Edward Dmytryk, based on the best-selling 1961 novel The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins and starring George Peppard as Jonas Cord, a character based loosely on Howard Hughes, and Alan Ladd in his last role as Nevada Smith, a former Western gunslinger turned actor. The supporting cast features Carroll Baker as a character extremely loosely based on Jean Harlow as well as Martha Hyer, Bob Cummings, Elizabeth Ashley, Lew Ayres, Ralph Taeger, Leif Erickson, Archie Moore and Tom Tully.
Harlow is a fictionalized 1965 Electronovision drama film based on the life of screen star Jean Harlow and directed by Alex Segal. It was Ginger Rogers' final film role.
Carroll Baker is an American actress of film, stage, and television. Spanning a career of fifty years, Baker appeared in 66 feature and television films, as well as 16 television appearances and over 15 stage credits, including 3 Broadway productions. Her most prolific role was in Elia Kazan's 1956 film Baby Doll, which earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Throughout her career, she became an established movie sex symbol.