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Jean Harlow - The Platinum Blonde

  • "Platinum Blonde" Jean Harlow Celeb Networth was an American actress and was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow No. 22 on their greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema list.
    The original “Blonde Bombshell, in the beginning of her career, attracted considerable attention with a small but memorable role in the Laurel and Hardy two-reeler Double Whoopee (1929), in which her legendary legs were revealed for the first time on-screen. After making her talking-picture debut in the Clara Bow vehicle The Saturday Night Kid (1929), she caught the eye of industrialist and erstwhile film producer Howard Hughes, who hired her to replace Norwegian actress Greta Nissen in the revised talkie version of his silent aviation epic Hell’s Angels (1930). After the release of Hell’s Angels, Hughes loaned Harlow out to other studios. She appeared in decorative but undemanding roles in such films as Warner Bros.’ The Public Enemy (1931) and Columbia’s Platinum Blonde (1931), after which Hughes sold her contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $60,000. It was not until she was cast in a role written by Anita Loos in Red-Headed Woman (1932) that MGM executives saw Harlow’s potential as a wisecracking comedian. Her popularity with filmgoers, critics, and colleagues alike grew with each successive film: Red Dust (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Hold Your Man (1933), and Bombshell (1933) were all box office smashes. Red Dust was one of the best of the movies in which Harlow starred with Clark Gable; the two also headlined in Hold Your Man, China Seas (1935), and Wife vs. Secretary (1936). After the censorious Motion Picture Production Code was strengthened in 1934, she counterbalanced the “racier” aspects of her screen image with a newly acquired sophistication and an appealing vulnerability. Her films from that period included Reckless (1935), Suzy (1936), and Libeled Lady (1936).