100 years ago today in Harlow History, October 1, 1926: As part of a series of back-and-forth communications providing information on future student Harlean Carpenter (AKA Jean Harlow), the headmistress of girl’s boarding school Ferry Hall, Eloise Ruthven Tremain, asks the fifteen-year-old’s doctor whether there was any truth behind her claim that she was forbidden by him from wearing flat shoes to protect her posture. Ha! Yes, even the famously good-natured Harlow was once a fibbing teen who didn’t want to follow dress code.
“My Dear Mr. Montgomery:
Thank you very much for your letter of September 28th relative to Miss Harlean Carpenter. As a matter of precaution we shall have her heart examined, but the result will probably be that she will take the required gymnasium work.
Your letter came just about the time that I was going to write to you about another matter. In order to protect the girls’ feet and to enforce sensible shoes, Ferry Hall has a regulation that girls shall wear oxfords during school hours and when they are out of doors. Miss Carpenter has made the remark to the member of the faculty who has this matter in charge, that the doctor has forbidden her to wear Oxfords. I should like to know whether this is true.
Harlean seems to be an interesting girl for whom a piece of work should be done. In several ways I think she is going to need a good deal of special attention and is going to feel that many of our regulations made with the desire to insist upon simplicity of living and careful chaperoning, are most irksome.
The child has almost immediately commanded our attention and we are hoping that the year at Ferry Hall will be a most worthwhile one for her. She seems to have ability and is always courteous and respectful.”
Harlean’s doctor didn’t keep her secret, but it wouldn’t matter: her “worthwhile year” at Ferry Hall ended not with pomp and circumstance, but with marriage to an up-and-coming millionaire. Hollywood, of course, ensued. Letter courtesy of the Lake Forest Academy archives.
📸: A natty fifteen-year-old Harlean back in Kansas City from her stint in Hollywood, where her cotton candy hair already made waves at school. A Ferry Hall classmate later sold her story of Harlean’s disdain for oxfords to a movie magazine in 1935.
