‘Goodnight, my Dearest Darling’
Jean Harlow was making her last film Saratoga, costarring Clark Gable. One day she was out ill with what they said was a cold. William Powell took the afternoon off work to take care of her, bringing her chicken soup and ice cream. There are different reports of her final days.
“Only three weeks before she was stricken with the malady that was to end her life, she came to the studio carrying a cake with her. She was as pleased as a little girl with it.
”'This is our third anniversary cake,’ she said laughing at the three little candles decorating the top. 'Bill sent it because it was the anniversary of our first date.’“
– Louella O. Parsons article, The Milwaukee Sentinel, June 15, 1937
Later things took a turn for the worse. Violet Denoyer an MGM makeup artist and friend of Jean Harlow’s was applying the star’s make up for Saratoga. "Suddenly, Miss Denoyer said, Miss Harlow looked at her and said, 'You know, Violet I have a feeling I’m going away from here and never coming back.’
"Two hours later while she was on the set, she turned to Robert Golden a director and gasped, 'I’m terribly sick, Red. Call Bill.'
"She referred to William Powell, suave film star who had been her constant escort for more than a year. Since Christmas she had worn a huge star sapphire ring on the third finger of her right hand. It was a gift from Powell. He and a studio nurse took her home the day she became ill. Miss Harlow never returned. Powell was with her when she died."
– St. Petersburg Times, June 9, 1937
"This is the last photograph of the beautiful star
and was taken during the final scenes of Saratoga,
an M-G-M film in which she was starred with Clark Gable.”
– 1937 article about the funeral
She was doing Saratoga. We sat in the back of the car. Jean was on my left and she looked very fragile and she had the ring that Bill Powell had given her, it was a big star sapphire. It was on her finger and her hands looked almost too Newspaper accounts of her death talked of Powell’s being at her bedside.frail to lift that big ring.
“And I said, 'Jean you don’t look very well.’
"And she said 'I feel awful, just awful,’ she said. 'I don’t know if I can finish the picture.’"
– Maureen O'Sullivan was another big MGM star, a friend of Powell and Harlow. She appeared in The Thin Man to name just one of her many famous films. O'Sullivan is also the mother of actress Mia Farrow. Quote from Harlow Biography.
William Powell went to her home and was one of those instrumental in having her transferred to a hospital.
As said, there is debate as to whether they were engaged or not at the time of her death, there’s even debate as to whether or not they were still a couple. Not unusually with a romance like theirs and a big star dies young, different stories began circulating quickly. The press is eager for any news.
William Powell spoke in a very rare interview about Jean Harlow’s death. He seemed moved to respond in 1964-65 by a biography and films that were coming out. Powell said no one thought her illness was that serious. They thought she’d be back at work in a few days. He went to see her on Sunday. From the article….
"She startled me and said, 'You look fuzzy.'
”'I don’t, really?’ I joked. But I was suddenly worried. I held up my hand. 'How many fingers can you see?’ I asked her. She couldn’t see any. This was very disturbing.
“I called the doctor and asked him to come right away. In a matter of minutes he was there. He took one look at her and called for an ambulance.
"Mrs. Bello and I rode with her to The Good Samaritan Hospital where she was put immediately into an oxygen tent.
"We spent the night in the hospital, but Jean was in a coma and didn’t know we were there. In the morning, she died."
The date was June 7, 1937. After almost three decades, Bill’s voice broke and it was hard for him to go on.
His final gift to the girl he loved and admired was a $25,000 crypt at Forest Lawn Memorial Park for Jean and for the mother he adored when her time would come. They are there together in death, very close, as they were in their time on earth.
– The Miami News, January 10, 1965
A fire chief who’d come to the hospital was interviewed. Members of the city fire department inhalator squad called at the last minute to furnish oxygen for the declining star.
Some papers said that her final word was his name, and he had been too choked up to respond. Some articles at the time and years later said that she’d died in his arms. "But it was too late then,” Recalls Powell. “She was too far gone. She died in my arms. It was the saddest day of my life.”
– The Tuscaloosa News, December 13, 1964
Motion Picture Daily Magazine displayed an image
of Jean Harlow’s photograph and a grieving MGM lion.
Anything and everything was reported. Her half-hysterical mother urging her to keep fighting. Their friend, actor Warner Baxter paced outside her death chamber in the hall. And the inevitable, “Powell was wearing a sports suit and polo shirt without a necktie.”
What killed Jean Harlow? People began having theories immediately. Some wanted to place blame, talk of how it could have been prevented while those closest to her were in still in shock and grieving.
She died of uremic poisoning, better known as acute renal failure or kidney failure in June 1937, her age was just 26. This was a time before dialysis and kidney transplants.
Motion Picture Daily ran this note:
“Loew’s Spooner in the Bronx and Loew’s Astoria, Astoria, L.I. which are showing Personal Property in which Jean Harlow appears will stop the shows for one minute today. The shows will be halted at the time funeral services are to be held in Glendale, Cal."
Jean Harlow’s Funeral:
Guests were limited to 200-250 people. Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Carole Lombard, Warner Baxter, Una Merkel, Maureen O'Sullivan, W.S. Van Dyke, Robert Montgomery were there.
Clark Gable was a pall bearer. Nelson Eddy sang Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life and Jeannette MacDonald sang The Indian Love Call. Powell sat beside Jean’s mother at the funeral. His own mother sat on his other side.
Jean Harlow’s first and third husbands, Charles McGrew and Hal Rosson, were in attendance.
"Her second husband was Paul Bern, a film producer whose death a few months after their wedding is still somewhat mysterious, without full explanation of motives for suicide.”
– Gettysburg Times, June 9, 1937
The service was temporarily interrupted by the drone of aeroplanes overhead.“
Police guards were there to keep the crowds back, though fans got in after the services to take souvenirs such as flower petals.
"Barred from the funeral service yesterday a crowd waited for hours outside the cemetery hoping at least to see some of the 200 film notables inside.
"This they missed but after the brief service was finished and everybody was gone, they rushed through unlocked gates and scrambled for bits of the thousands of flowers.
"Some had to be content with tiny scraps of ferns. One little girl placed in her purse a few petals from a rose.”
– The Tuscaloosa News, June 10, 1937
Carole Lombard is reported to have said to Clark Gable, “Paw, don’t ever let them do this to me.” Gable and Lombard would marry in 1939. Tragically, Lombard, who helped Powell through his grieving for Jean Harlow, was killed in a plane crash only five years later in 1942.
Similarly, in 1958, Gable would tell wife, Kay Williams that he didn’t want to have a funeral like the large one given to actor Tyrone Power, who’d died of a heart attack. In November 1960, Clark Gable himself died of a heart attack. The wives of both Power and Gable were pregnant at the times of their husbands’ deaths.
Reports of Jean Harlow’s funeral said that “the services were simple, brief and unostentatious.” Others said that MGM boss, Louis B. Mayer had orchestrated something like a scene in a Hollywood film.
“As a special tribute, all film studios were observing one minute of silence at 9 o'clock."
There are photos of an anguished Powell wearing dark glasses. He helped Jean’s mother to her car. But other photos show his own mother, Mrs. Nettie Powell and Otis Wiles friend and studio attache on either side of him. Another friend, it’s said is behind him just in case.
Wee Kirk O’ the Heather
in Forest Lawn Memorial Park
The flower blanket made of 500 gardenias and 1500 lilies of the valley that covered the casket were from from Bill’s father William Powell, Sr., his mother and Jean Harlow’s mother.
One floral token, however went with the platinum blonde screen star to her resting place. Placed in her hand just before the casket was closed for the last time. It was a single gardenia, her favorite flower, with the inscription, 'Good-night my dearest darling.’ The card was unsigned but the handwriting was believed to be that of William Powell, constant escort of Miss Harlow of recent months, who was among the most obviously grief-stricken at the funeral."
– The Evening Independent, June 10, 1937
