I have myriads of favorite Harlow portraits, as we all do. This is one of them. Jean looks impossibly angelic as she’s candidly photographed with a bouquet of flowers on December 8, 1931. Image courtesy of the Kansas City Public Library.
On this day, Jean and her mother had been invited to lunch with some important Kansas City area officials and the city’s prestigious South Central Business Association. A portrait of Jean proclaiming her “THE PLATINUM BLONDE” hung on the wall.
This event took place inside the Wirthman Building, an imposing structure famous to aging native Kansas Citians which no longer stands. The Wirthman Building housed the Isis Theater and its cafeteria, where the group lunched and this portrait was taken.
This portrait highlights the young twenty year old Jean really was at the time of its creation. Can you believe she’d be making Red-Headed Woman not even half a year later?
Harlow Heaven 