I hate the salacious Daily Mail/Atlantic articles that come up whenever I google anything Harlow related. I wish I could delete them, but I might just have to debunk them paragraph by paragraph.

My favorite is the whole “Harlow’s career was ending and she died with her hair falling out!” All the hair she had in 1937 was her own, beautiful, purely natural hair. Her bleach crisis happened two full years earlier and she had completely grown back her own hair.

She never went bald or came even close to balding. Her hair started to fall out, so bleach treatments were immediately stopped and Harlow’s damaged hair was left alone to grow out, which it did. She wore a wig in CHINA SEAS and RIFFRAFF while her locks recovered 1/2

2/2 as well as WIFE VS. SECRETARY. All 3 of these films were made in 1935 and very early 1936 alone. By SUZY, which went into production in March 1936, Harlow stopped wigs and debuted her new, shorter, darker hair. Every film she’s in thereafter uses her own locks.

The bleach crisis began on RECKLESS which I neglected to mention, but still some of her real hair was used. Her real hair appears in the storm scene in CHINA SEAS, since she obviously couldn’t be in a wet wig. Here she is, very far from bald.

Here’s Jean wearing one of her wigs in early 1935, during CHINA SEAS. This picture and others from its shoot are frequently mistaken to be from right before her death. This is due to LIFE featuring a portrait from this session on the cover of their May 1937 edition.

By early fall 1935, only about six months after the bleach crisis, Jean switches over to her new “brownette” color. The initial portraits are accomplished with a series of brownette wigs which Jean wears while still letting her hair grow out.

RIFFRAFF, filmed over the fall of 1935, was made entirely with these wigs. The film was released January 3, 1936.

Immediately after was WIFE VS. SECRETARY, filmed over the winter of 1935 and January 1936. A series of wigs was used to complete this role, as well. WIFE VS. SECRETARY was released in February 1936, only a month after RIFFRAFF.

By March 1936, publicity for SUZY had begun and Harlow started using her natural hair for the first time in about a year. You can see how much shorter and obviously more natural it is. Let me accentuate: THIS IS JEAN HARLOW’S 100% NATURAL HAIR. https://twitter.com/harlowheaven/status/1220121489124380672?s=21 https://twitter.com/harlowheaven/status/1220121489124380672

By June 1936, Harlow was comfortable and successful in her new coiffure. She and MGM experimented with different hairstyles, such as these cute rolls seen in LIBELED LADY. This publicity portrait for the film was made on June 28, 1936.

In August 1936, Jean suffered a second degree sunburn on Catalina Island during a break from LIBELED LADY and production was halted. Her best friend, Barbara Brown, described her as being in agony. A sunburn of this caliber would obviously weaken anyone’s immune system.

Jean didn’t start on THE MAN IN POSSESSION, which would become PERSONAL PROPERTY, until after Christmas. In the interim, she accompanied her beau Powell and Myrna Loy on location to San Francisco for AFTER THE THIN MAN. Here we can really sense how much that sunburn weakened her.

Unfortunately, Harlow had always been prone to ill health, and this becomes apparent after the sunburn which was a grand finale of sorts to a string of illnesses and colds over that year. All this while being worked like a horse, 1/2

2/2 Being terribly despondent over the lack of control in your life and doting on a man who doesn’t love you but keeps you around. Jean was drowning her sorrows over Powell in alcohol at this point, further weakening her.

Jean didn’t like to care of herself, either, innocently. She would throw herself into grueling work to stop thinking about her problems, such as returning to RED DUST only days after Paul Bern’s suicide. Harlow would throw herself into PERSONAL PROPERTY in January 1937 as well.

PERSONAL PROPERTY was completed under the direction of W.S. Van Dyke, who didn’t acquire the “One-Take Woody” moniker for nothing. The film was completed in only twenty two days. Jean has a coughing fit in one scene that isn’t even edited.

By PERSONAL PROPERTY, Jean has a completely new and very glamorous hairstyle, having grown out completely. It’s now a “soft honey blonde” as opposed to her brownette color from before — closer to her natural hair color, ash blonde.

Just after this awful twenty-two day shoot, Jean raced to Pasadena with Robert Taylor on January 23, 1937, to attend FDR’s Birthday Ball in Washington. She would catch a horrible flu on the trip while still making twenty-two personal appearances in two days.

Retakes of PERSONAL PROPERTY showed how the combined effects of several untreated illnesses. By mid March, Harlow was suffering from the consequences of never having her wisdom teeth out; three of them were impacted.

Now, here’s the best (worst) part. Harlow, even in her frail health, would have fared much better had this not happened. To avoid his patient going into shock, Jean’s dentist and regular doc Leroy Buckmiller suggested each wisdom tooth be removed individually on different days.

All four of them were actually impacted, excuse me. Jean’s mother refuted this, feeling that a string of hospital visits would be too detrimental to everyone involved. Jean needed to be back on the screen, so her mother ignored Buckmiller’s decree and hired two other doctors.

These two doctors did not practice dentistry, and yet, they went to work on removing all four of Harlow’s wisdom teeth simultaneously on the morning of March 24, 1937. After three were extracted, Jean’s heart stopped on the operating table and the surgery was abandoned.

Harlow stayed in the Good Samaritan hospital, the same in which she died, for nearly three weeks recovering from this. She wouldn’t be out until mid April, by which time she was thrown into SARATOGA.

These portraits of Jean were taken in April just in between PERSONAL PROPERTY and SARATOGA. We can see how exhausted she is, but she still manages to look beautiful. The second portrait from PHOTOPLAY is a more processed version of a real color portrait by James Doolittle.

We can obviously see here, a few months before her death, that she is neither platinum blonde nor balding. Bleach treatments certainly did not help her lifelong poor health, but they definitely weren’t a contributing reason and were a thing of Jean’s past by the time she died.

Let’s talk about that Sapphire ring from Bill Powell, too: it was never an engagement ring. Jean wore it on her right hand. Bill gave it to Jean as a present for Christmas 1936, and she was so ecstatic she wore it in PERSONAL PROPERTY. Bill thought the ring was “vulgar”.

Here’s Jean’s jeweler, John Gershgorn, in his words straight from the pages of BOMBSHELL:

“It was big, but it wasn’t gem quality. Powell didn’t know about quality, and he didn’t care. He was a tightwad.”

The quality is probably why this “special” ring still hasn’t turned up.

By SARATOGA, Jean was pretty done with Bill and had removed the sapphire from her hand. Her affections were now focused on editor Donald Friede, and once accidentally met actress Anne Shirley in his apartment. However, Bill was seeing his grip on Jean fade and pulled a stunt.

On the anniversary of their first date, in May 1937, Bill sent a cake with three candles to Jean’s door with the accompanying (weird) note: “To my three year old, from her Daddy.” Jean was so overwhelmed with happiness that he actually remembered her, she took the cake to work.

Jean then returned the sapphire ring to her hand, but was still spotted out and about with Donald Friede. On May 23, they made what would be her last public appearance. Here they are at dinner that night. This is Jean’s last public candid photo.

These portraits of Gable and Harlow were taken at a time she should have been resting. They were made by Clarence Bull on May 27, 1937, only two days before Jean collapsed during filming and was taken off the set.

This same day, a crew member discovered Jean doubled over in pain in her dressing room, her four wisdom teeth still infected. Barbara Brown tells us about how Jean never recovered from her oral surgery and would watched her drain pus pockets in her dressing room.

On May 29, 1937, Harlow ignored her health and came to work for what would be the very last time. SARATOGA’s assistant director begged Jean to go home and go to a hospital, but Jean refused, not wanting to slow production.

Jean ended up complaining of terrible cramps while leaning into Walter Pidgeon. He warned Jack Conway, who in turn sent Jean to rest. She left the studio thereafter and the majority of her friends would never see her again.

Jean’s mom just so happened to be on Catalina Island at the time, so after leaving the set and taking ill, Jean opted to rest at Bill Powell’s house instead while he worked on DOUBLE WEDDING. No one sought medical attention for her during this time.

Studio photographer Virgil Apger noted that Powell didn’t seem too worried when Jean left the set to rest at his house. He would not seek medical attention for her, thinking she had the flu, but called up Jean’s mom on Catalina May 30 to tell her Jean wasn’t improving.

Close friend and MGM publicity assistant Kay Mulvey says he waited because “no one thought her illness was serious”. Jean’s health delaying filming was a recent habit, so few extended extra concern this time around. Jean was moved back home on May 31, where a doctor attended her.

Jean was attended to by Dr. Ernest Fishbaugh and a team of nurses at her home starting that day, but kept growing worse. On June 2, Jean grew delirious from pain. More medical equipment and nurses were pumped into her home; a lack of medical attention is not what killed her.

What killed her is the fact that Dr. Fishbaugh misdiagnosed Harlow’s ailment as a gallbladder problem. He was the only doctor attending her until her symptoms became so bad a second opinion was called. In that time, Fishbaugh had been giving her fluids when she already had edema.

The whole legend of Christian Science comes from an overly controlling Jean Bello refusing entry to anyone who sought it, in a last ditch effort to control her daughter’s life. Her excuse for such was “Christian Science”, though doctors were actively in the home.

The second opinion in question was Dr. Leland Chapman, one of the signatures on Harlow’s death certificate. Chapman viewed Jean’s blood and urine levels and came to a quick and devastating conclusion: This was a classic case of acute nephritis, and she had been misdiagnosed.

By the time Chapman took over Harlow’s care, it was simply too late. Her condition had also been exacerbated by Dr. Fishbaugh’s dextrose injections, when she needed diuretics instead. On June 5, it was found that Harlow now had uremia.

All of this compounded by Harlow’s severe depression over Powell (who didn’t come to visit her until June 6) and anger at her mother. She simply did not have the will to live, which Dr. Chapman acknowledged. She had no fight left.

“I thought she looked wan, but that was all,” said Bill Powell hours before the horribly sick woman whose other friends said otherwise slipped into a coma and died. Harlow’s last words were in response to her aunt, who begged her to get better. “I don’t want to,” Jean responded.

Jean Harlow passed away at 11:38 AM on June 7, 1937 after hours of administered oxygen. It didn’t help. Her kidneys had been failing since her nearly deadly brush with scarlet fever at 15, helped along by every illness she got later. No bleach had touched her in over 2 years.

And that, my friends, is the lowdown on what really happened to Jean Harlow re: bleached hair, William Powell, and that stupid ring. I hope it helps. Feel free to spread & let me know if I forgot anything or if there’s any questions. Don’t forget to read BOMBSHELL if you haven’t.