Garbo talks! Garbo returns! Garbo rules!
And so on.
Greta Garbo was a big deal when she was alive and her star ascendant. It’s difficult to really get a sense for someone’s popularity when it is read about historically and not something lived. How does someone growing up in the Beatles heyday communicate the zeitgeist of the period in a way that gets across the visceral feel?
I confess to knowing little about Jean Harlow beyond her name and her fame. I do know, however, that she was born March 3, 1911. That would be one hundred years ago.
If you do a little Google search, you’re sure to find fistfuls of tributes to the original platinum blonde.
I also know that before she was Jean Harlow, she was Harlean Harlow Carpenter and she was born in Kansas City. (Another confession? I have never heard of the name Harlean until now.)
Here is what I do know. Two movies I did not care much for, according to what I wrote about them, are Libeled Lady and Dinner at Eight. Both movies had something in common, though: Jean Harlow, and in both cases she was the one thing I did like. Imagine that.
In my review of Dinner at Eight, I wrote this: “It [the movie] does pick up however, especially when we finally get to meet Jean Harlow, who is a joy to watch. She brings a wonderful note of comedy to the film and infuses it with some badly needed energy.”
Happy birthday Jean! I now know what I have to do: track down more Jean Harlow movies and find out more about this woman so I don’t have to plead ignorance when her name comes up.
