Jean Harlow

Her big break came in 1930 with Howard Hughes' World War I epic Hell's Angels (1930), which was a smash hit. Hughes sold her contract to MGM for $60,000, and her career shot to unprecedented heights. Her appearance in Platinum Blonde (1931) cemented her as America's new sex symbol. The next year she was paired with Clark Gable in John Ford's Red Dust (1932), the second of six films she would make with Gable. It was while filming this picture, which took 44 days to complete at a cost of $408,000, that she received word that her new husband, MGM producer Paul Bern, had committed suicide. The film was released late in 1932 and was an instant hit. In MGM's all-star Dinner at Eight (1933), she was at her comedic best as the wife of a ruthless tycoon (Wallace Beery). Later that year she played Lola Burns in director Victor Fleming's hit Bombshell (1933), a Hollywood parody loosely based on Clara Bow's and Harlow's real-life experiences, right down to her greedy stepfather, nine-room Georgian-style home with mostly-white interiors, her numerous pet dogs, and re-shooting scenes from Red Dust (1932). In 1933 she married cinematographer Harold Rosson, a union that lasted only eight months. In 1935 she teamed with Gable again in China Seas (1935); her remaining two pictures with Gable were Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and Saratoga (1937). It was her films with Gable that created her lasting legacy.

Harlow was in the midst of making Saratoga when she complained of not feeling well. A few weeks later she died from uremic poisoning. Her binge drinking caused the uremic poisoning, a buildup of toxins in the body when the kidneys no longer filter toxins out through urination. Clark Gable, who was filming with her at the time, reportedly remarked that her breath smelled like urine, a common trait of the ailment. She also had scarlet fever as a teenager and contracted influenza about a year before she passed. MGM writer Harry Ruskin said, "The day 'the baby' died there wasn't one sound in the commissary for three hours—not one goddamn sound." The film was finished by long angle shots using a double; Gable said he felt like he was in the arms of a ghost during the final touches. Because of her death, the film was a hit, with record numbers of fans pouring into America's movie theaters. Other sex symbols and blonde bombshells have followed, but it is Jean Harlow who all others are measured against.