Eleanor Roosevelt and Jean Harlow celebrating FDR’s fifty-fifth birthday inside the Wardman Park Hotel eighty-six years ago tonight, January 30, 1937. This was just one leg of the festivities, as previously mentioned; FDR’s fourth annual birthday ball was held in numerous hotels throughout D.C. and was being celebrated nationwide.
Harlow pairs a white ermine wrap with her iconic blue sapphire ring for this outing (worn over an altered copy of one of her Dolly Tree Personal Property dresses).
I love that Eleanor and Harlow exchanged signed portraits—Harlow’s personalized portrait lives on and is one of the many priceless effects on display in the Harlow Exhibit inside The Hollywood Museum. When I saw it a few years back, I was surprised at how large it was—the inscription is simple, reading “To Miss Jean Harlow with good wishes, Eleanor Roosevelt”.
Harlow also signed her name among the other guests of honor on presidential letterhead, which is kept by the FDR Presidential Library Archives. Eleanor wrote about that on February 1:
“I had a grand luncheon party yesterday, having invited to the White House the artists who had come to entertain at the different Birthday Balls here. They have taken long trips because of their interest in crippled children and their admiration for the President, and I am very grateful. After luncheon we became a sightseeing party and when we reached the President’s office one of the girls said: “Let’s write on a piece of paper ‘Happy Birthday to You’, for the President and all of us sign it.” So sitting in his chair they each of them signed their names:
Jean Harlow
Mitzi Green
Marsha Hunt
Maria Gambarelli
Robert Taylor
Frederick Jagel”
The digitized Eleanor Roosevelt papers are courtesy of the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, George Washington University.
Harlow Heaven 