Jean Harlow by David Bret

Author:David Bret
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MBI
Published: 2013-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Prizefighter, The Lady And The Cameraman

‘There’s only Loretta and the dogs that do a single thing for me. All the rest of you are just out for what you can get, and I’m getting pretty tired of being a golden goose, or whatever ya call it!’ Harlow, aka Lola Burns, to her grasping relatives in Bombshell

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1909, the heavyweight boxer Max Baer was the son of a Jewish hog butcher, something which never failed to tickle Harlow. He accredited his formidable strength and physique (6 feet 2 inches, 210 pounds) to his ‘training’ as a youth, when he had sledgehammer-slaughtered pigs and cattle to death with a single blow. Baer had turned professional in 1929, and the following year had lost his temper in the ring and KOd his opponent, Francisco Camilli, who died the following day. The incident had earned Baer a ‘killer’ reputation, and done much to further his career. In 1932 he had hit Ernie Schaaf after the bell, and five months later Schaaf had died after taking a jab from the great Primo Carnera—which the tabloids had attributed to Schaaf’s earlier beating from Baer. In fact, the actual cause of death was meningitis.

Baer had gone on to win 72 of his 84 fights, 53 by KO. His greatest triumph, however, came in 1933, just as the political climate was darkening in Europe. Baer’s opponent at the Yankee Stadium was Max Schmeling (1905—2005), Hitler’s favourite fighter and the symbol of all that was supposedly perfect of the Aryan race. Baer riled the German by sporting shorts emblazoned with the Star of David (though after the war it emerged that Schmeling had actually saved the lives of two Jewish children, while still serving his country), and pummelled him through 10 rounds until the referee stopped the fight. Henceforth, Baer would be known as ‘The Jews’ Boxer’.

Max Baer’s manager, Ancil Hoffman, wanted him to jump onto the bandwagon and become part of the Hollywood scene. Johnny Mack Brown had made a remarkably successful transition from the baseball pitch to action movies. Swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller had recently triumphed in the first of the Tarzan series. With this in mind, Hoffman negotiated a deal with Louis B. Mayer to make his acting debut in The Prizefighter And The Lady. There was no screen test, Baer was offered a non-negotiable $3,000 a week, and John Lee Mahin was hired to write the script centring around the boxer’s own life—or as near as Hollywood would allow, which turned out to be around 20 per cent factual. Asked to choose his own leading lady, Baer asked for his estranged actress wife, Dorothy Dunbar. Mayer deemed this unacceptable: Dunbar was a ‘society trollop’ who had worked her way through five husbands. The reason why she had not acted since 1927, he added, was because she was no good. Baer was asked to choose again, and picked Jean Harlow, then shooting Hold Your Man. When Arthur Landau requested that

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