Hollywood Memorial

Harlow, platinum blonde predecessor to Marilyn Monroe, she appeared in forty-one movies, was voted to the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest actresses of the Golden Age and became the first movie actress to appear on the cover of Life Magazine. Her first feature film ‘Hell’s Angels’ drew an estimated crowd of 50,000 people at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre during its Premier. Her personal life was the substance that the tabloid media thrived upon: The suicide of her second husband, Paul Bern, her relationships with gangsters, nude photos at the age of 17, problems with a greedy stepfather and a supposed abortion. Jean was the product of an overbearing, divorced, failed actress mother who prodded, trained with encouragement toward show business. She was paired with Hollywood’s leading men, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and William Powell thus becoming the cinema’s chief female money maker. She suffered from scarlet fever at 15, which probably led to the kidney disease that tragically took her life in 1937 at the young age of 26. Jean Harlow was married three times with a fourth on the horizon with William Powell. Her funeral was an extravaganza staged at Forest Lawn, Glendale with her co-star of five movies, Clark Gable, acted as a pallbearer with Jeanette McDonald & Nelson Eddy singing at the ceremony, followed by a huge banquet. She was entombed in a private chamber of the Great Mausoleum in Forest Lawn Glendale where her individual crypt is simply marked ‘Our Baby’.