89 years ago today, June 21, 1933: Jean Harlow, recently returned home to Kansas City, Missouri, to visit her grandparents, poses with neighborhood children on the porch of her grandparents’ home at 2304 N. 12th St. Harlow had just completed a visit to the ‘33 Chicago World’s Fair, “Century of Progress”.
These children were identified by Steve Crum, who once had a blog post up about this that has since been taken down. Still would like to extend him the credit. From left to right they are: Bernadine Frances Martin (the picture is on her FindAGrave page), Betty June Lobb, and Merle Kelly Arnold. The girls next to Harlow are Dorothy Rose Martin and Dorestine Martin.
According to Crum’s blog, these kids never forgot their experience sitting with one of the world’s foremost movie stars. Bernadine, a neighbor of Harlow’s grandparents whose uncle, a Kansas City reporter arranged to have this photo taken, recalled: “She came out wearing a white chiffon negligee with silver T-strapped high heels, no hose, and red nails.”
Harlow told the children to sit behind her on the step, and the rest is history. “All the kids would string up and down sidewalks to get a glimpse,” remembered Merle Arnold, whose other memory of Harlow this day is of riding in her car.
Something sad and a tad annoying about Bernadine Martin (later Pretz)’s childhood opportunity in meeting Jean Harlow is that she obtained an autograph from the star…which was later stolen from her. Martin had invited her friends to look through her scrapbook at a home gathering and later noticed ‘several pages of autographs had been torn out’ after everyone left. Some friends, if I don’t say so myself.
Harlow, meanwhile, suffered from having little to no privacy on her Chicago trip, and the fanfare followed her right to her grandparents’ home on 12th; her frustration, admirably, didn’t spill over to the visiting kiddies. Harlow said of her visit to Kansas City from the Los Angeles Times:
“After two or three narrow escapes from the mobs I decided to go on to Kansas City, where my grandmother lives. Her name is Harlow, too, you know, and people had the house spotted. At one time there were something like 200 gathered around the place. One evening I was in my room combing my hair when I heard voices outside saying, ‘She’s been combing her hair now for half an hour.’ Good heavens—I was about to take a bath! I turned out the lights and bathed in the dark, groping for soap and towels helplessly.”
Harlow Heaven 