Harlow

JEAN HARLOW has been the subject of much fruitless speculation and an equal amount of specious analysis since her death in 1937, and there is no reason for me to try to pry any further. What the real Jean Harlow was no one will ever know; numerous self-style analysis have attempted to portray her as a sweet thing ruined by Hollywood immorality, ruthless producers, etc. The facts are that she was a star at eighteen and dead at twenty-six.

The most interesting feature of the juxtaposition of The Beard and Hold Your Man--one portraying Harlow, the other starring her--at the Orson Welles has little to do with Jean Harlow real or unreal; it is the discrepancy between the myth and the actual vision on the screen.

The "real" Jean Harlow, on-screen and off, was not anywhere near the level of prettiness she is credited with, but she had a certain vitality and saucy suggestiveness that count for much more than mere good looks. Hold Your Man (1933) relies much more on its screenplay (by Anita Loos) than it does on any astounding performances by its stars, Harlow and Clark Gable. The film destroys any notions one may have had of Hollywood's innocence; it was the forerunner of the kind of screwball comedy Peter Bogdanovich tried to emulate in his recent What's Up Doc? Roughly the first half of Hold Your Man takes place in the seamier side of New York society: not only do we have Eddie Hall, a cheap crook (Gable), running from the cops and bursting in on Ruby (Harlow) taking a bath, but also the cops bursting in on the now-dressed Ruby and finding Eddie taking a bath. The two establish a more-or-less infirm friendship which seems to end when Eddie takes to his heels again and Ruby, whose independent and loose style of living belies her 19 years, is sent to reform school. Society comes in for a number of good sharp digs especially in the second half of the film; among Ruby's roommates are a loquacious Communist and a sweet black girl as well as Gypsy, who has also had a fling with Eddie Hall. To cut a long, and hilarious, story short, Gypsy eventually overcomes her jealousy and persuades Eddie to return to Ruby. The two are married by the father of the black girls--who is, of course, a southern Baptist preacher.

THE PLAY, on the other hand, takes place in a vacuum; "eternity," McClure calls it. Billy the Kid (Rick Minichiello) and Jean Harlow (Jeannie Lindheim) confront (or "beard") each other alone, each striving to prove his own superiority, to maintain his own unassailable mysteriousness, yet each wants to be assailed.

Quite honestly. I went to this double-medium spectacle more for the movie than the play. A quick glance at the script of The Beard (by Michael McClure) convinced me that it was repetitive, boring, and pretentious. And so it might well have been, but for the two wonderful performances which kept the audience laughing almost to the end. Each time the actors manage to wring a new drop of meaning out of the words they have said before. In this production at least, it is the characters who are pretentious, not the playwright.

"Before you can pry into my secrets, you must first find the real me," challenges Jean. "Which one will you pursue?"

"What makes you think I want to pry into your secrets?" snorts Billy.

"Because I'm so beautiful," purrs Jean, changing the view in her hand mirror from right cheek to left.

The two stalk each other, circling warily, Jean writhing and swirling her enormous boa, Billy the Kid strutting with his hands in his pockets and his tongue on his lips. Each alternately entices and attacks his partner with a minimum of physical contact until Billy the kid bends Jean backwards over a table and, kneeling between her legs, pushes is head under her slinky black dress and gives her what she seems to want. As the breathing grows heavier the stage lights dim and Harlow cries out "Star! Star! Star!"

To use the play's own metaphor, the preliminary skirmishes are fine, but it takes too long to reach the climax: we are ready long before the end is anywhere in sight, and the rest is simply covering the same ground over and over again.

The Beard places two American myths in opposition: the Super-Stud versus the Super-Star. "We can do anything we want to do," says Billy. "There's nobody here."

"Just like grown-ups, huh?" Jean sneers. But what do they want? Who are they really? Yet all this analysis is tedious, and the play barely stands up to it. First produced in 1965, it gained acclaim and notoriety more for its "obscenity"--a liberal use of "fuck" and "cock"--that for any deep and penetrating analysis of American mythology. It is simply a good vehicle if you happen to have two goods actors, and the Orson Welles does. Unfortunately there's little apparent connection between the Harlow on the screen and the sultry narcissist of the Beard. Perhaps that says more than anything else ever could about the hideous transformations our collective unconscious can wreak upon a nice but naughty blonde.