As a writer, the art of biography has always fascinated me. As a Jean Harlow fan, I've found the information published about her to be diverse and the "facts" often questionable. I was delighted to read Eve Golden's Platinum Girl: The Life and Legends of Jean Harlow (Abbeville Press, 1991) and found it to have a refreshing, straight-forward approach towards tackling the rumors that have surrounding Harlow's image for years.

For those of you who may not have had the opportunity to read Eve's book, following is a portion of the dust jacket notes that I think sums it up nicely:

In this, the first biography of Harlow since Irving Shulman's sensationalistic and often inaccurate 1964 book, Eve Golden explores the woman behind the legends and the scandals. The world evoked here is at once glamorous, nostalgic, poignant, and tragic. Yet, in its way, the brief life of Jean Harlow is a story of success, of a triumphal struggle with Hollywood and the consequences of rapid fame. Golden's deeply researched narrative is lavishly illustrated with rare film stills, posters, and exclusive photographs from family archives. Harlow emerges not as an oversexed mannequin, but as a vulnerable, hard-working, and tremendously likable woman who molded herself into a remarkable actress. This is an important book about one of Hollywood's most extraordinary personalities.

As a result of this book, I became an Eve Golden fan and wanted to gain more insight into her research and writing experiences in terms of the Harlow project. I recently had the good fortune to do just that when I interviewed her via telephone from her home in New York.

Eve is a journalist and film historian who has been interested in Jean Harlow and old movies in general since childhood. She remembers seeing her first Harlow film while attending a Philadelphia Jean Harlow Film Festival with her grandmother during the 1970's.

Probably best known for her humorous column in Movieline magazine, "The Bottom Shelf," Eve is also a regular contributor to publications such as Classic Images. She is also the author of another fine cinema biography, Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara (Emprise Publishing, 1996.)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Eve Golden....

EVE GOLDEN: Because nothing decent had ever been done on her. I remember when I was a kid and I first read the Irving Shulman book, I was horrified. I'd always found her interesting -- I'd been watching her films since I was pretty small -- and I kept thinking to myself "I wish somebody would write a book on her." I was working as an advertising copy writer at the time and thought "for goodness sake, why don't I do it?" Had somebody else been working on one at the time I just probably would have helped them and never written the book but no one else was.

PP: When you were doing your research did you run into sources that, due to the Shulman book, were reluctant to talk to you because they'd been burned before?

EG: Not really, I found quite the opposite -- that people were so desperate to tell the truth; that her friends and relatives were very anxious to get the truth out there.

PP: Was it easy to track down these sources?

EG: No, that's half the work right there, finding the sources. And it's always invariably after the book is published that somebody will pop up who you didn't know existed and that's infuriating. But people were delighted to help out and just sheerly by chance I located one of Jean's cousins who was really very helpful in getting her FBI records and getting her medical records declassified and things like that. He and I are still friends and it was a sheer coincidence because I wrote to the historical society where Jean's grandparents came from and the same day my letter arrived he had arrived to research family history. So it was just absolute coincidence that we ran into each other and he was a great help.

PP: Was this cousin your best source?

EG: He was one of them. He was good as far as background and family history. I also spoke to Gilbert Roland, Sam Marx, Irene Mayer Selznick, Olivia De Havilland. I was very, very angry that I didn't really find Anita Page until after the book was published because she had some great stories. Barbara Brown was Jean's stand-in, I spoke to her, and also Maureen O'Sullivan.

PP: When you were approaching publishers for this book, was it a hard sell?

EG: Oh gosh, yes! Any biography today is a hard sell unless it's Jackie or O.J. Publishers do not want to put the time and money into the advertising and promotion of biographies that aren't guaranteed best-sellers. So Jean Harlow was a kind of a hard sell but fortunately I found a good publisher. I was lucky.

PP: Your book did well, are you surprised to find that there are still so many Jean Harlow fans out there?

EG: Oh, no! I knew if I liked her, other people had to. I was kind of surprised at all the Theda Bara fans out there.

PP: Another wonderful biography as well!

EG: Thank you. But you can pick anybody, a person that you think nobody else in the entire world has ever even heard of, and you will find hordes of fans out there, it's amazing.

PP: What do you think is the one quality that Jean Harlow possessed that still makes her appealing to fans today?

EG: I think she comes across as just a genuinely nice person. There's a few people, like her and Marion Davies, that you can just tell by looking at them and watching them act. I mean Jean Harlow was not the greatest actress in Hollywood. She was a good comedienne and she was a so-so dramatic actress but there were other women that were prettier than her and there were other women who were more talented than her. But she comes across as just a really genuinely nice person.

PP: In talking with fans, what do you find was the biggest misconception that they had about Jean before they read your book?

EG: I think the way she died. I was fortunate in, that after almost two years of fighting with the hospital, getting her medical records declassified and finding out that she had constant medical treatment during her illness. Also, of course, all the nonsense that Shulman started about Paul Bern's death. And also the fact that in the last year or two of her life she was really starting to take charge of her life. She helped Mama Jean toss out Marino Bello, she was taking more of an interest in her career, things like that. She was starting to grow up in the last year and a half or so.

PP: With the film rights to your book optioned, who do you have in mind to be cast in the major roles?

EG: I don't have any Jean Harlows in mind but do you know who I would love to see play Mama Jean? Jean Smart. I just think she'd be a fabulous Mama Jean and I also think Jeff Bridges would be a great William Powell. Also, and this is an odd one, you know who I think would be a good Paul Bern? I don't know if you're familiar with him or not but he's a British comic named Rowan Atkinson. He's a very good actor and he looks like Paul Bern. This is completely off the top of my head, I don't know if any of these people are available or interested or affordable but it's my wishlist. I don't have any Jeans in mind at all though.

PP: It didn't seem to work casting a name actress in the lead role (Carroll Baker and Carol Lynley) for the two really bad 1965 films based on Shulman's book.

EG: Oh god, oh god, they were so awful. But you know there's almost never been a good movie biography made which is why I really think this has got to be done on television. I see this done as a two-part mini-series. Almost every single feature film biography bombed. I mean you go back to the 50's and you see the ones they did then and they were just horrendous.

PP: I would think that an unknown actress would be perfect to play Jean. The previous films were more like "Carroll Baker *is* Jean Harlow!" It takes away from who Jean really was.

EG: Well you know who physically resembles Jean Harlow a lot, I don't know if she'd be right for the role or not, is Emily Lloyd. Just facially she looks like her a lot but I have no idea if she'd be right for the role or whether she'd be available or not. But the woman who gets the role has to be able to play light comedy, that's very important.

PP: On a totally different topic, are you a collector of Harlow or other movie memorabilia?

EG: Not really, no. I have a three-drawer filing cabinet of articles, photographs and obituaries that I've been collecting literally since I was 10 years old. I'm not going to tell you how long ago that was. (Laughs) But I write for Classic Images, a monthly magazine on film history. They've been in business for about 30 years and I've been writing for them for about five years now. Almost every month I do a 1500-2000 word piece on an old movie star and I go to Lincoln Center and just xerox tons of original material on them and of course I keep all of that in the files. My dream is to be locked in Lincoln Center over a weekend and have unlimited access to the xerox machine, it's an incredible place. Theda Bara left her scrapbooks to Lincoln Center and those were just amazing to go through. It's so sad because they're falling to shreds and there's nothing they can do about it.

PP: A stylistic parallel between your biographies of Jean Harlow and Theda Bara -- and something that I appreciated reading -- is the fact that you actually admitted when certain records are no longer available to prove or disprove undocumented information.

EG: That is really important, I think, in a biography and it really annoys me when biographers pretend to know things that they can't possibly know. You have to give your readers credit for some intelligence. There are some things that you just don't know and what you have to do is place the best evidence before them and say this is what we do know, come to your own conclusions. And that's what I do because there's lots of things that I can never know. I'd like to write a book about Rudolph Valentino someday and then you have to get into the whole thing about "was he gay, was he straight, was he bi-sexual?" We don't know and people don't like to hear that. But at this late date in time there are certain things that will never be known and all you can do is say this is what we know, this is my best guess, come to your own conclusion. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that's really important not to try to fake your readers out and pretend to know something that you don't. It makes me feel like the biographer's trying to put something over on you. My rules for biographies are never quote conversations, never make up dialogue, never use exclamation marks -- exclamation marks have no place in non-fiction. Don't tell them something is exciting, make them feel it through what you're saying. As soon as I see a biography with invented dialogue I toss it across the room, I just can't read any further.

PP: Speaking of biographical novelization, I just picked up a copy of Patricia Hearst's "Murder At San Simeon"...

EG: (Moans) I will go on record as saying Patricia Hearst is the last person to be digging up family scandals. I really don't think this woman can afford to throw stones. She may take into mind that the major reason that Orson Welles' career failed in Hollywood was because he was mean to Marion Davies. You don't screw around with Marion Davies, everybody loved that woman.

PP: Along the lines of quotation, you attribute many direct quotes to Jean and Mama Jean. Were those from personal letters?

EG: Those are from letters and from interviews and it was easy with Jean to tell when she was being quoted accurately because she had a very specific speech pattern. In a lot of press releases and interviews you would see her using very flowery press agent-type language and you could tell right off the bat, so in that case I would say "Jean was quoted as saying" or "in article it said." But she had a very plain, flat-out, non-flowery speech so it was really very easy with her. Surprisingly enough, Louella Parsons was very good at quoting people accurately. She has a bad name but she really worked hard on her interviews. With Theda it was a lot harder because Theda really did speak like that. She was really tough to tell between the interviews and her real speech and in some cases I had to fudge it saying "well she was quoted as saying, we don't know whether she actually said it or not." But with Jean it was really pretty easy because after a while I really learned her speech pattern.

PP: Do you feel that fan magazines of that era were used as tools of the studio publicity machines? How reliable are they as sources?

EG: Oh gosh yes, of course they were. But on the other hand a lot of interviews were done in person. If Jean had said something horrendous, if she sat there and told a fan magazine writer "Oh yeah, I shot Paul Bern," they wouldn't have printed it (laughs) but if they asked her about her favorite color then your quote was probably pretty accurate. As a matter of fact I saw Esther Ralston and she said she did'nt ever remember being misquoted by a fan magazine.

PP: The tabloid mentality wasn't around back then.

EG: It wasn't really until the 50's. Well, they had the tabloid newspapers back then like The New York Graphic which did that sort of story but it wasn't really until the 50's and Confidential magazine that that thing really started and it really hasn't stopped since. And you know, I think people are really getting sick of it. On the other hand, I will say that if you are getting paid $12 million to do a movie you can damn well wave to the camera. We aren't paying Julia Roberts $12 million for her talent, we are paying her to be a movie star. And Sharon Stone is one of the few people who understands that. I love Sharon Stone because she understand the duties and responsibilities of being a movie star as well as being an actress and that's something that most people have forgotten nowadays.

PP: I didn't pay much attention to Sharon Stone until she hosted Turner's Harlow biography special but I did notice afterwards that she does seem to encompass that era on some levels. I was surprised at the inaccuracies of that special and how annoying it was that you could tell she was reading from cue cards.

EG: It could have been worse. She wrote me a lovely letter; I got in touch with her when I heard she was doing that and I sent her a copy of the book and said that I was obviously concerned about how it was going to be done. I don't know what she was shooting at the time but she wrote me a very nice letter saying that they'll try to be sure that it's as accurate as possible. It was nice of her to take time out to do that.

PP: That's nice, some celebrities might have ignored your letter.

EG: Just like Joan Crawford, always answer your fan mail!

PP: Speaking of Joan Crawford, what's the deal between her and Jean Harlow? I've heard stories about them feuding but became friends shortly before Jean's death.

EG: I don't really think they had time to feud, they were both very hard-working actresses and I've never heard that there was any kind of feud going on between them.

PP: I've received emails from fans who have visited the website who seem to believe that Joan was bitter towards her about Paul Bern.

EG: There's a fact I know that Joan was offered the part of "Red Dust" when Paul Bern died and she refused to take it because she thought that would be in poor taste, so that certainly doesn't indicate that. I think the only person that Jean detested and really did not get along with was Wallace Beery and nobody liked Wallace Beery.

PP: Have you read Jean's novel, "Today Is Tonight"?

EG: Oh gosh yes, it's pretty awful. But she really co-wrote it -- she and Carey Wilson. She certainly didn't write the whole thing by herself. The two of them kind of hashed it out together.

PP: I looked for a copy of that for years and finally found a paperback copy of it for a buck at a used bookstore, I was so excited! Then soon after that I found a copy of it reprinted in an old magazine in conjunction with the Carroll Baker film. Feast or famine!

EG: That's the same way I found it. A crummy old paperback. Well obviously, it was never published when she was alive because she knew it wasn't very good. The only reason it was ever published was to cash in on the whole Harlow craze of 1965. I think she'd turn over in her grave if she knew that thing went out as being written by her because she knew it was no good. She didn't want it published.

PP: I was impressed to learn that the novel existed and I know that you write in your book that she tried to hide her literary side.

EG: Well, you have to remember that she was still a baby when she died so you really can't tell what her interests were or how she would have gone on. She might have become a screenwriter, you never know. She was so young when she died.

PP: That brings me to the epilogue of your book, I really liked how you tried to imagine where life may have taken her.

EG: Oh, you can't not play that, you know. She was just so young. A lot of people -- Valentino and Marilyn Monroe -- you just have to think, "well gee, what would have happened to them?"

PP: Best case senario, what would you have liked to have seen happen?

EG: I think she would have gone into television comedy in the 50's kind of like Lucille Ball or Eve Arden. I don't think the William Powell thing would have worked out, even if they had married. I don't think it would have lasted. But I can definitely see her being very big in World War II. She was very patriotic and you know she would have joined the Stage Door Canteen, posed for pin-ups and all that sort of stuff. Then in the 50's when she was starting to enter middle-age I would see her going into television, maybe one of those Loretta Young Show type of things or maybe even producing.

PP: I imagine her in a comedy.

EG: Oh definitely. She was not that terrific a dramatic actress. Again, she was very young so she might have developed more as a dramatic actress but her forte really was for comedy.

PP: As a whole, you can see the growth in her as an actress.

EG: She sucked when she started out and she knew it.

PP: Speaking of that, "The Public Enemy" was on Turner Classic Movies this weekend, it was painful to watch.

EG: Wasn't she awful? I mean on one hand, her dialogue is terrible, they gave her a rotten script. You have to believe that the director just really didn't direct her, she was just so awful.

PP: I always feel terrible for her in that film and I know it's a movie but I still root for her and hope it's just not as bad as it was the last time I saw it.

EG: Yeah, maybe she'll be better this time. (Laughs) And that's another thing, you'll sometimes read biographies of people and according to the biographer they just can do no wrong. That just doesn't read well, you can't be such an obsessed fan that you can't recognize any flaws in this person's performance. I think Jean Harlow was not Claudette Colbert. If Claudette Colbert ever gave a bad performance, I've never seen it.

PP: That's what I liked about your book, I thought it was very balanced in that sense.

EG: I actually got accused in one English paper of doing a white-wash, that it was all "good Jean, good Jean." But I really looked for bad things to say about her and hoping to find something horrible because she was starting to come out to be almost too good to be believed. Had she had been an alcoholic slut, I would have written it, but the evidence that I found showed that she just wasn't. Her main fault that I could find was that she was a bit of a doormat and she'd do anything to avoid an argument. She'd let people take advantage of her and walk all over her. And she had horrendous taste in men. The worst taste in men imaginable. So she certainly was not without her flaws.

PP: Have you seen all of her movies? Which ones are your favorites? Any least favorites?

EG: Oh gosh, yes, even most of the silents. "Dinner At Eight," "Bombshell" and "Wife Vs. Secretary" -- which I think is her only really good dramatic performance -- those are probably among my favorites. I'm not that wild about "Libeled Lady" as most people are. I think it's a good movie but I think it drags a bit in points. And I think "Suzy" is probably the worst MGM film she did. The whole lot of them were caught in that horrendous plot and they didn't make any attempt at period costuming at all, you'd never know it was supposed to take place in World War I. And every time she marries someone, Benita Hume shows up and shoots him. I mean why don't you just invite her to the ceremonies? (Laughs)

PP: Do you have any favorite Harlow stories?

EG: Well most of them went into the book. Anita Page did tell me a few things that weren't in the book because I didn't meet her until afterward. When they were up at San Simeon together in 1936, Anita was in the ladies room combing her hair and she heard a voice behind her saying "Would you ever give 11 months of your life to a man?" And Anita, without looking up, said, "Honey, I wouldn't give 11 seconds of my life to a man." And she turned around and it was Jean. She was moaning about William Powell who was not treating her well. It was not working out and Jean was partially to blame for that because he did not want to marry her and he didn't want to break up with her. So I think really it was up to Jean to say, look, you know, if you're not going to marry me...well, there's a very vulgar expression for that. And basically that's what she should have said to him.

PP: Maybe if she had time, she would have.

EG: Yes. I mean, he gave her what had to be an engagement ring and yet he wouldn't marry her. A huge, monsterous ring, the size of an eyeball.

PP: If you were to do a revised edition of the book, what have you learned since publication that you would want to add?

EG: I would definitely add the Anita Page stories but not much else really. I don't really have anything more to say about her. I really haven't run across anything earth-shattering. A lot of people have gotten in touch with me after the book came out, but mostly it's just a lot of little stories that might be nice in the book but certainly not worth re-editing the whole thing. Had I found anything (earth-shattering) I would have put it in the book. Somebody asked me if I found a picture of Jean in her coffin would I have published it. No. I would have wanted to see it but I wouldn't have published it. But if I had found any kind of evidence or indication, for instance, that she had killed Paul Bern I would have published it. It's your duty as a biographer whether you like it or not.

PP: If you had the opportunity for the ultimate interview -- with Jean Harlow herself -- what would you want to ask her?

EG: Gee whiz, that's a poser. I would ask her more about her career than her life, about her acting. I think that's another thing that I really enjoy doing in my biographies, treating actresses as actresses not just as people who have lives and marry this person and that person. Of course I remember all my bad reviews and one of them said that I talked too much about her career as an actress. Excuse me? That's like writing a biography about Picasso and saying they talk too much his artwork. She was an actress and you have to treat her as an actress and talk about her individual performances. That's what I would ask her about. I would mention films to her and say "well, what did you think about your performance in this? What did you think of the film as a whole?" There's a wonderful book called Conversations With Crawford where the author in the 70's just threw out names of her films and she chatted about her opinions of films and I found that very interesting. Also understand, if I were interviewing Jean Harlow and I would say "what really happened with Paul Bern?" she would tell me "none of your damned business." Which is basically what she told people back then. I mean if I had Jean Harlow under truth serum that would be an entirely different thing.

PP: Same situation, what would you want to ask Mama Jean?

EG: I would ask her basically why she still lived with Jean. Mama Jean comes across as a villian sometimes and I don't think she was. I think she was a very well-meaning, not very bright woman. I don't think she ever did anything awful intentionally, she was just rather possessive and she loved Jean very much, it was her only child. If she was being cast in a movie back then I can see her being played by Billie Burke or Alice Brady, that type of character. But there's nothing evil about Mama Jean. I think the only people who come off not very well at all in this are Paul Bern and William Powell. And Marino Bello, of course. Oh, Marino was a horror. I've known Marino's. Now you know who I've thought has gotten a bum rap all these years is poor Dorothy Millette. It's very sad. She was treated very shabbily by Paul Bern.

PP: Again, you mention in your book that there is very little information known about her and her illness.

EG: No, I finally tracked down the asylum in Conneticut where she stayed for all those years and they said that the records were destroyed in the 1950's. So again, anybody who says they know exactly what was wrong with Dorothy Millette does not because the records do not exist. The term "dementia praecox," which was used back then, is completely meaningless.

PP: How did you come up with the title "Platinum Girl: The Life And Legends of Jean Harlow"?

EG: I didn't and I don't like it. I originally just called it "The Life And Legends of Jean Harlow," that was my title. My agent came up with "Platinum Girl" and to this day I hate that title, it's sounds like "Buffalo Gal" or something. So I always refer to it as "the Jean Harlow book" or something like that because to this day I can't work my way around it. (Laughs) That was a learning experience for me, I put my foot down with the Theda Bara book about certain things. Harlow was my first book and I just said yes to everything and I learned you don't do that. So I still don't like that title.

PP: The visual layout of the book is very appealing. The use of photographs throughout instead of chunked in the middle is great, and the cigarette cards at the beginning of each chapter is very artistic. Were these your ideas?

EG: I was lucky in finding Abbeville (Press) which is an arthouse publisher and they were able to use a lot of the photographs but the problem is that publishers no longer pay for photo publication rights. They used to about 20 years ago but since the photo stock houses started charging huge rates for these photographs, publishers leave that up to the author. Which means that I wind up paying a fortune for these things. I think photographs are so important. I think photographs are 50 per cent of the book. I feel really gypped when I read a biography and they chintz on the photographs. So I cough up the dough, and it's a lot of dough to pay for these things. Patti Fabricant was the art director and she was just terrific.

PP: How would you compare your biography of Jean Harlow to others that have been published?

EG: All I'll compare it to is the Irving Shulman book, which I think he was just basically trying to cash in and make a quick buck and he just did not care as a biographer at all. His Valentino book was the same way. He was not a biographer. I mean, I'm the last person to say I'm a terrific writer. I'm a reporter, that's what I consider myself, I don't think I'm a great writer. I could never write a novel. But I'm a good investigative reporter and what I do is I ferret out the facts and I arrange them attractively. (With) biography, non-fiction writing, you're basically reporting, that's what it's all about. On the other hand, I did try to keep it light, I wanted people to smile and laugh at parts of the book. I'm a humor writer by trade like in Movieline and I didn't want to give you this heavy, ponderous thing -- another thing that can kill a biography I think is if it comes off like a doctoral thesis. And I've read a few that I could not get through, it was like trudging through Siberia.

PP: I must tell you that the line in back of the Bara book that says your teachers used to tell you that you'd never get anywhere by watching old movies and being sarcastic, and that now you earn your living watching old movies and being sarcastic is classic. I loved it!

EG: (Big laugh) I was amazed that my publisher really put that in there.

PP: I think that some kid who's interested in writing is going to read that and be inspired.

EG: I hope so. I mean I really hope that in 10 or 20 years, some little 12 or 13 year-old kid interested in old movies runs into my book on sale for a dollar at a thrift shop and just runs all the way home with it. It's like a time machine is what I want it to be. I remember when I would read these things that this was the closest you could get to going back in time. In fact, when I was immersed in the scrapbooks in Lincoln Center it would be really startling to suddenly leave and be in the 1990's. I mean, I know all these songs and jokes and catch-phrases from the 1930's and the teens, and I sit here and I make inside jokes that nobody gets anymore.

PP: Are you in contact with fans and readers of your book? Do you attend many collectors shows?

EG: I did go to (the Syracuse) Cinefest with the Theda Bara book last year and I correspond a lot. I answer every piece of fan mail. You can tell people if they've written to me and I haven't replied, it's because I never received it. Because I'm like Joan Crawford, I answer every piece of fan mail that comes in. And some of the fans have become friends since then. There are a few nuts out there but most of them are very nice, normal people who have lives and love old movies like myself.

PP: What upcoming projects are you working on that we can look forward to?

EG: Oh, there are so many things I'm working on. Vestal Press will be coming out with a paperback collection of 35 of my Classic Images pieces next year. And that goes all the way back to the very beginning, people like Dorothy Gish, and goes all the way up to the 50's -- Jayne Mansfield, Ann Miller. And they are talking about possibly a second volume the following year. And I have a whole bunch of biography proposals out there, it's just a matter of lining up the right publisher. There's a lot of books I want to write. I'm hoping to do something on Valentino, I'd like to do one on Jayne Mansfield; also one on Mae Murray. The project I'm working on right now is updating the Cinemania 1998 CD-ROM for Microsoft.