""I’m not a person to them, I’m a thing; just hair and legs – no face, no feelings.” It sounds like an actress refreshingly wise to herself and Tinseltown, but nah, it’s just Carroll Baker, waxing melancholic on what a drag it is being a love goddess, in producer Joseph E Levine’s bogus whitewash of Hollywood’s platinum blonde, Jean Harlow …”
/ From the essential 1993 book Bad Movies We Love by Edward Margulies and Stephen Rebello /
Experience the 1965 biopic Harlow for yourself on Thursday 17 July when the FREE monthly Lobotomy Room cinema club (committed to Bad Movies for Bad People) presents this wildly inaccurate, delirious hot mess at Fontaine’s in Dalston! See leading lady Carroll Baker (pictured) in the performance that ended her Hollywood career (after Harlow, she fled to Italy and didn’t make another American movie until 1977)! See THIS distracting ultra-fake acrylic-looking wig in action (it’s styled by esteemed coiffeur-to-the-stars Sydney Guilaroff, so presumably it’s meant to be crooked?)! See Harlow seemingly invent the dance craze The Twist in a 1930s nightclub (I can’t explain it! The film’s sense of time and place is all over the place! It’s set in the 30s but looks and feels very early 60s and there’s Latin exotica and bossa nova music on the soundtrack). And hear cliched it’s-lonely-at-the-top showbiz platitudes like “Welcome to the velvet prison!”, “I was looking at my body in the mirror to see what’s so different about it that makes the public go crazy over it!” and “You were nothing when I picked you up and you’ll be even less when I drop you!” And yes, London will probably be in the grip of a heatwave next week but bear in mind that Fontaine’s serves frosty cocktails and is air-conditioned! Reserve a seat via [email protected] or go to. Full squalid details here.