93 years ago today in Harlow History, September 3, 1933: Jean Harlow squeezes the shapely bicep of boxer Primo Carnera behind the scenes of The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), which she was originally slated to star in with Clark Gable.
Ironically, Harlow’s attentions were on another prizefighter: she was already at the center of a brewing scandal involving Max Baer, the current star of the film, when this photo was taken (who could blame her?).
She’d marry summer beau Hal Rosson to offset the rumors as a recent widow, which had the secondhand effect of drawing more attention to Dinner at Eight and Bombshell (both 1933). In fact, Carnera is shown in Bombshell’s shimmering opening montage, a brow-raising allusion to Harlow’s illicit affair (even her marriage to Rosson is referenced in the frenzied headlines). Baer’s wife filed for divorce shortly thereafter; Harlow wasn’t named. He went on to remarry in June 1935, just after Harlow herself divorced Rosson.
Harlow herself made a direct reference to the ordeal in her thinly veiled 1933-34 novel Today Is Tonight, plainly related through her character Judy as “I had an affair with a prizefighter!”
Harlow Heaven 