Hollywood's Star-Crossed Blonde Bombshells: The Lives of Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Marilyn Monroe, and Jayne Mansfield
ISBN: 9781535022620
$9.99
*Includes pictures *Includes the actresses' quotes about their lives and careers *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents When the American Film Institute ranked its top 50 screen legends of the 20th century, many of the people named had careers spanning several decades, but one of them managed the feat despite living less than three decades. Ranked as the 22nd greatest actress of the 20th century, Jean Harlow was on the screen for less than 10 years, but in that time the “Blonde Bombshell” became the most popular actress of the 1930s, eclipsing superstars like Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer along the way. In fact, the platinum blonde accomplished that feat as a leading lady for just 5 years before her premature death of renal failure at just 26 years old. Although Harlow is remembered today more for her tragic fate than her career, she was influential well beyond the 1930s. Despite being so young, she managed to craft a persona as a seductive femme fatale that would critically shape how subsequent actresses approached similar roles, and of course, her platinum blonde hair served as a template for future blonde bombshells like Marilyn Monroe, who actually watched Harlow’s movies and studied her performances to model her own early career off the dead legend. On January 16, 1942, just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II, the nation suffered what were considered the first civilian deaths of the war when a plane crashed into the side of a mountain southwest of Las Vegas. Aboard the plane were 15 servicemen, but the plane was also carrying one of Hollywood’s biggest stars: actress Carole Lombard. Although Lombard’s death and her marriage to Gone With the Wind star Clark Gable have overshadowed her career, her untimely death in 1942 cut short the life of one of Hollywood’s most prominent stars at the time. In fact, Lombard’s platinum look and her unique mannerisms had helped her become the biggest star of the screwball genre by the end of the 1930s, and her movies were so successful that she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood by the start of the 1940s. Although Lombard has been memorialized in many fitting ways as an actress, one of her biggest contributions to Hollywood was the blond archetype that the film industry used successfully for decades in screwball comedies, paving the way for the success of women like Marilyn Monroe.