Customer Reviews

Jean Harlow: Tarnished Angel

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1 star:		(8)

 

 

This unfortunate biography is another scurrilous slander-fest by the notorious David Bret, [...]

This book, "Tarnished Angel", is basically a copy-and-paste job from a fictionalized, borderline-pornographic tell all on Harlow written in the 1960s by Irving Shulman, called "Harlow". This is because all the information presented in Bret's book mirror the fallacies in the Shulman book.

Harlow was no slut, she had no filthy secrets to conceal. She was a caring, loving young woman, partial to fuzzy sweaters, golf and kittens, who died tragically of kidney failure. Her mother, known as "Mother Jean" (NEVER as "Mama Jean" as is presented in the Shulman/Bret books) never denied Harlow medical care. She received round-the-clock care on her deathbed.

In 1937, when Harlow died, there was no such thing as dialysis or a kidney transplant. Harlow was doomed. She was not doomed because her mother prevented her from medical care, as Bret foolishly states.

I shan't go on because I need not to; I need only inform you, the reader of this review, to skip this tarnished book and instead read the truth on Harlow - read "Bombshell" by David Stenn, a meticulously researched and accurate book on Harlow's life (and death).

In conclusion, what truly astounds me is not slandering Harlow, but slandering a woman who has been dead for 70+ years and whose small community of fans already know the truth on her, and will NOT be pleased by a book like this.

What did Bret hope to achieve by writing this book? What reaction/sales did his publisher expect to receive? None of the stars from Harlow's day are still with us. The small community of fans classic stars do have know the truth about their idols. Bret is only going to make more enemies by continuing to write these trashfests and more trees will be cut down to provide fodder for lies.

Please read this book for the truth on Jean Harlow: Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow

This book is just very bad. This book is full of major untruths, errors and spelling mistakes. Mr Bret gives Jean a 'grand chapeau bas to Jean Harlow, for having lived' in this book, but he seems not to be a fan of hers. This is pretty much a rehash of Irving Schulman's trashy and much discredited "Harlow: An Intimate Biography". What little reaserch was done can be seen in the rather skimpy bibliography. If you want to read a good biography of Jean Harlow, read Eve Golden's "Platinum Girl" or David Stenn's "Bombshell". Both of these books are excellent and well researched. The photographs are nice, but all are just scene stills we've all seen a thousand times before. There are no childhood or candid photographs at all. This book is just trashy. I haven't read any other of Mr. Bret's books, but after reading this one, I'll pass on his others.

I had such high hopes for this book. It actually started out pretty neutrally and seemed like a most promising biography of the beautiful star. Once it started getting into her early career, however, this book became more and more of an opinionated diatribe, usually disparaging, of Jean. While there is a bounty of information available about Miss Harlow, which generally follows along the same basic biographical lines, this book degenerates into a lambasting of Jean, her co-stars, her admittedly obnoxious family (Mama Jean and Mario Bello) taken to new heights--or lows--of distaste. So many things are stated as FACT with nothing to back it up--that one begins to take almost every statement with a decided grain of salt. Or, maybe a salt-shaker. It is stated as virtually a fact that Jean slept with her oily step-father. Nothing to back it up. Just the author's opinion. Also, the author made numerous distasteful references to Irving Thalberg's reaction to Paul Bern's death--implying that Thalberg's grief was purely staged. Of the many bios I have read regarding Thalberg, and other MGM stars and studio personnel of the 1930's, this does not ring true at all. The author freely intersperses his own opinions, usually unkind, on virtually ever person mentioned in the book. He states as fact many rumors that have certainly not proven to be true--often, over and over again...By the time you are finished this book, should you take the author's opinions as truth, you'll believe that every major leading man in Hollywood is at least bi-sexual, if not gay, and every major leading woman in Hollywood is lesbian.

One thing particularly distasteful is that in every single recap of Harlow's films, her character in the film is described as 'slutty,' 'whore' 'tramp' or worse...for a biography of an actor or actress, one would expect a more neutral recap of their major motion pictures.

Bret freely disparages and insults everyone mentioned equally--an equal opportunity insulter--whether it's L.B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Hedda Hopper, Howard Strickland, etc. ....All are accordingly disparaged and deprecated. The only cast member in this book who receives a halfway decent mention is William Powell.

All in all--this book is like a giant train-wreck...You are appalled as you read it, but have to follow thru til the very end....Based on that it gets 1 star. What a hugely disappointing bio of Jean Harlow. Bombshell, by David Stenn, is by far a much better biography of this beautiful young woman.

Readers would have thought that writers and authors were done--at least in part--of resorting to dreadfully written books from start to finish and that is only the spelling in it. (At least Bret spelled Jean Harlow right). 99.9% of the information in this book is erroneous. The few who read the book know that Bret copied Shulman's 'Harlow which has long been proven totally inaccurate even by Shulman himself; anyone who's vaguely interested in Jean Harlow knows that. Bret is lucky that Shulman is dead or else he might find himself sued over plagiarism.

It seems to matter little to Bret that all wrongful stories have been thoroughly discredited over the intervening years by true biographers who are more accustomed to research and seek the truth. The old, untruthful stereotypes are served up again. This makes for a very boring, one-dimensional biography. Bret never discovered and has ignored the human being and the brilliant actress/comedienne beneath the Harlow legend.

So there the readers have it; the author preferred to ignore first hand evidence. This book is without doubt the laziest, most shoddy piece I have ever read. If Amazon shoppers and readers note that all the reviews, except for the one Bret gave himself, (either Amazon deleted the review or Bret did it himself) are negative and the only one who is providing "not helpful" feedback is the writer himself. If Bret has to discredit other writers and Amazon reviewers then the problem lies with himself. Not even worth it for the paper it was written on. I revoke even the one star with the tittle.

Avoid at all costs.

I find this book garbage, too many misspellings and not a very accurate account of Jean Harlow's life. I feel Mr. Brett has not researched his book as well as he should have. This book is too much like the Shulman book Harlow written back in the 1960s. Anyone being a Jean Harlow fan should know the real truth as I do.

JMO
Herbert

I am sick of David Bret and his idea of a biography. It seems like his formula for his "literary" contributions is to collect all the lurid stories that have been circulated about his subject (aka VICTIM) and slap it all together and call it a biography. If his subject is male, the subject is going to invariably be gay or at the very least bisexual and very promiscuous. If the subject is female, the subject is going to be definitely promiscuous and probably bi, too. And all of his victims/subjects are DEAD. The dead can't sue.
TARNISHED ANGEL is a good title because that's all Bret does to Harlow......tarnish her memory. Relying on Irving Schulman's 'definitive' bio HARLOW (which when published in 1965 managed to postumously resurrect Harlow and sully her memory), Bret rehashes the same old and throws in a few more dingers to maintain his stellar rep as garbage monger. I'm not going into Bret's specifics because there is no reason to repeat lies.
Harlow should be remembered for who she really was and I suggest that you get the previously published Harlow bios by David Stenn or Eve Golden if you want to know the real Jean.

No, don't read this book for any truths about Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, or any other Hollywood figure. You won't get many actual facts. You will get what you got from Hollywood Babylon, delightfully hateful trashy gossip about old Hollywood and the people who made the movies that is mostly malicious rumor and lies, fun to read and believe while you are reading, but utter garbage otherwise. Anybody who sources Hollywood Babylon or the Schulberg hatchet job can't possibly be a serious historian. The author comes across as a catty hairdresser when telling the stories of these people, and everybody but everybody is gay in his world. While I have no real problems with that, the sheer numbers of gay people seems to be mathematically impossible to sustain the population of this planet. So read this if you like trashy shocking stories about people that are mostly not true or are slanted to make these stars seem like the most awful people who ever lived with the most hateful motives behind everything they did. Just don't believe a word of it!

A biography on a Hollywood star and everyone in it is either gay, lesbian or bisexual, sound familiar? It should, it sounds like Darwin Porter, but it can't be, or could it? The various mistakes made by Bret and Porter in their books are shockingly similar. Both are addicted to the idea that everyone had sex with everyone, and both get their dates, names, events, places and film plots all wrong. Could it be? Are Darwin Porter and David Bret one and the same?

I have always enjoyed David Bret's books because of their dishy nature. Although I did read them with a grain of salt. In this Harlow book I have just reached page 46, Mr. Bret attributes a quote about Wallace Beery to child star JACKIE GLEASON with whom he co-starred in "The Champ". Well as every American baby boomer knows, Jackie Gleason 1916 - 1987) was an entertainer known primarily for his television work, most notably "The Honeymooners" . New Yorkers know there is a statue in front of the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan of Jackie Gleason dressed as Ralph Kramden , the bus driver character he played on "The Honeymooners". On the other hand JACKIE COOPER 1922 - 2011) was the child actor who co-starred with Wallace Beery (1885 -1949) in " The Champ" and was also a successful adult actor that died earlier this year. That Mr. Bret and the publishers could make such a simple error, one that anybody with access to Wikipedia could dispute, is not only an error, but in a supposedly nonfiction book a downright lie. I begin to doubt whether Mr. Bret ever really was acquainted with Marlene Dietrich. I will be throwing this book away. Along with Darwin Porter (who I caught in a lie about an incident involving Cary Grant and Howard Hughes simply by purchasing Stewart Granger's autobiography). And also including the horrendously shoddy out- put by Charlatan Chandler, I purpose that a new genre be created called Fantasy Biography.