About Harlow Heaven

Harlow Heaven started off in 2017 as an Instagram fan page for Jean Harlow, where a teenage me with a fresh and passionate interest in the pre-Code era of classical Hollywood felt it would best be seen and appreciated by the other members of the younger classic film set. (‘Harlow Heaven’ was a rather thoughtless name decided upon after my first choice, ‘Harlowisms’, wasn’t available on social media. I’m still not entirely convinced I won’t switch over). After falling in love with David Stenn’s seminal Harlow biography, Bombshell, and researching and collecting on my own, I noticed there simply wasn’t a lot of talk on Harlow’s work in film circles that didn’t fall back on the same rehashed scandals.

Nor was there much of a nuanced discussion on the woman underneath the platinum, an issue which plagues many classical Hollywood actresses, perhaps most notably with successor Marilyn Monroe. My goal was (and is) to take a magnifying glass to the layers of Jean Harlow; life, career, personality, star persona and all, without relegating her to one end of the superficial Madonna-Whore dichotomy she’s often placed in: glamorous sex bomb whose life ended with a scandalous fizzle, or the helpless, sexless victim who only wished to be a wife and mother.

*Jean Harlow, wearing one of her ‘brownette’ wigs, and friend on the set of* Riffraff (1936), from my collection

As you can easily imagine, the breadth of my interest in Jean Harlow as a researcher and writer was too much for Instagram’s character limits, and the website was born in 2019–as a young working class woman with a limited amount of funds, it was imperative to me to create an easily accessible space for Jean Harlow, especially with the Stenn bio then being out of print (and pricy on eBay). At its core, Harlow Heaven strives to bring humanity and depth to Hollywood’s first ‘platinum blonde’ while highlighting the accomplishments that are often overshadowed by her untimely death.

About Sophia: Sophia D’Aurelio Adair is a writer and researcher on classical Hollywood cinema, with an affinity for silent film, the pre-Code era (1930-1934), and the obscure faces found within. She runs Vitaphone Zone, a film history publication; AdrienneDore.com; and a website dedicated to Jean Harlow, Harlow Heaven.