100 years ago today in Harlow History, September 8, 1926: Jean Harlow, at this point still fifteen-year-old Harlean Carpenter from Kansas City, gets a letter of reference from the manager of Kline’s Department Store in the same city advocating for her mother’s financial standing before admittance to swanky Ferry Hall, a girl’s boarding school in Illinois. It’s addressed to the headmistress, Eloise Ruthven Tremain:
“Dear Madam:
I am in receipt of your letter of the 6th inquiring about the financial responsibility of Mrs. Jean Carpenter of 516 Knickerbocker, Kansas City, Missouri. I have known Mrs. Carpenter for some time and everything I know about her is favorable. Her father is very well to do and takes care of all her financial matters. She has had a very satisfactory account with us for a long time which her father has always paid and I know that her father will pay any obligations she may incur. I can recommend her from a personal acquaintance and also from a business acquaintance.Yours sincerely,
W.H. Clark
Manager of Kline’s”
That father of Mrs. Carpenter was Skip Harlow, Harlean’s doting grandpappy who had a brief conniption upon her half-dressed entry into films a few years later. Letter courtesy of the Lake Forest Academy archives (there is more correspondence where this came from.) Here’s the full letter, which you can view at the Illinois Digital Archives.
Here’s a rarer candid snapshot of Harlean Carpenter taken at Ferry Hall, allegedly when she was sixteen in June of 1927 (provided by a former classmate to Screen Book magazine in 1935.) Harlean wouldn’t graduate that summer, or any at all: she’d marry millionaire orphan “Chuck” McGrew and head west by December. Her semi-sheer drop-waist dress here reminds me of what was popular in high school in the mid-2010s. 😁
Harlow Heaven 