The Tragic Life and Death of Jean Harlow

She was one of Hollywood's first and only originals...and she was dead by 26. 

This is the story of Jean Harlow, one of Hollywood's most influential and controversial talents. The original platinum blonde, whose life was marked by failed marriages, suicide, abortions, and the Hollywood machine that would eventually consume her. 

Transcript

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Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Scandal Queens. It is me, EB, the D influencer you love or love to hate, and I am here solo today with a totally different episode from anything we have done so far. I'm talking season one, season two, all of it. Because, you see, I'm taking a little bit of a break today. I'm splitting off from the insanity of the Kardashians. Can't stand it, won't stand it, don't want to stand it. Uh, and giving my my brain a little breaky poopsy because that Kardashian DPI was gnarly and it was exhausting. But still, the Hollywood machine has to be deconstructed, right? Somebody's gotta do it, it's a dirty job, etc. etc. Uh, it doesn't take weeks off. So neither will I, not completely. So with all that being said, I figured there was a happy middle ground, a place where you and I could meet and I could kind of take my foot off the gas, but I could still talk to you about some juicy Hollywood scandals, and also show you that Hollywood has literally always been disgusting just like this. So I figured that the sweet spot was the golden age of Hollywood. That is right, the classic silver screen, the real age of drama, glitz, glamour, divas, drama, when the red carpets weren't just filled with filler, but instead with names like Greta Garbo, Rita Hayworth, Clara Bow, Betty Grable, and of course the infamous Eugene Harlow. See, a lot of people don't know this, but I love classic movies. Growing up as a kid, I used to watch them all the time, and still to this day, I find comfort in you know, transatlantic accents, soft shade, dramatic lighting, black and white movies. I also love Westerns. I'll throw my hands up and say, I That's not what you came to find out. What you came to find out about is Hollywood scandals. And you can't talk Hollywood scandals in the golden age of Hollywood without talking about the one and the only Gene Harlow, a stunner from the Midwest who took the West Coast by storm and inspired endless star lists from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna. Not even kidding. That's right, Gene Harlow, the original platinum blonde, literally the woman for which the term blonds have more fun was coined. She was one of a kind and surrounded by scandals and controversies as only a Hollywood superstar can be. And like so many superstars before and after her, she burned out far, far too soon. Yes, today I'm telling you the story of Jean Harlow, a Hollywood beauty surrounded by pain, tragedy, and a world of scandal that followed her right to the very grave. This is the tale of one of Hollywood's original Scandal Queen. But before we jump into the deep end on this twisted tale, let's get back into the flow. Let's get back into the pattern by bringing back my weekly Hollywood check-in. That's right, it's time for a temperature check. First up, Britney Spears arrest videos. Uh the police footage for Britney Spears' DUI arrest early this year was released to the public last week. And wow, um, for me it was tragic. It was, it was just tragedy from top to bottom. Uh the footage starts with Britney being pulled out, uh, pulled over, and telling the cops that she's scared of them. She doesn't understand what she did wrong. Uh, she realizes the situation is, you know, she's not gonna get out of it. She starts saying, I'm scared of you, uh, and and panicking, right? And so at this point, you can tell something's wrong. I'm not gonna play the clips here because they make my stomach turn. Uh, you can go and find them if you want to. Um, but you can tell that it uh the way Britney's talking, she starts talking like a baby kind of and and gets really frantic. So the officers ask her to get out of the car. She's increasingly disjointed with this like childlike voice and this kind of childlike behavior. She's begging officers to let her go. She tells them, My babies are coming over tonight. And she tells them, I'll cook you, lasagna, anything you want, I have a pool. I I'm literally, I'm not making fun of her. Like it's uh uh, it's just it's very, very sad. Um, and she just starts babbling more and more and more. But what's really interesting about these, and if you're gonna go and listen to them, the only one I really recommend listening to that I think is notable, um, and because it's the other stuff I think we can do without seeing it's it's horrible and it's sad. This stuff in the back of the cop car when they've got her in the back of the cop car is very, very important because the police officer is essentially saying, right, you have to take a blood test or give a breathalyzer because we suspect that something's going on. And if you refer refuse those, then we can arrest you or whatever he says. And then he says, Do you understand that? And as he's trying to ask her if she understands, she's babbling. She's just babbling through a bunch of random stuff. And then she says, My mom hit and killed a kid on a bike. Why didn't you guys take her to jail? My mom tried to kill me. Why didn't you guys take her to jail for that? Which is kind of a bombshell. I don't know how accurate these things are. I don't know what the thing is. I think this she said it's like an 11-year-old on a bike that her mom hit and killed, or 12-year-old. I can't remember which age it is, but it's uh pretty shocking, pretty, pretty, pretty shocking stuff. Um, it's painful to watch again. I would not recommend it if you're in a vulnerable or emotional place. But um in my mind, the biggest thing about these tapes is they orchestrate orchestrate to me that Britney is like really struggling, right? She's really, really struggling and she needs help. And I again, I always have to reiterate this. I'm not saying that's a conservatorship because I don't think she needs a conservatorship, as I've said time and time again, but I do think that Britney is in a position where she needs someone basically around the clock with her who can intervene when things take a life or death turn, right? Like, I don't care if she wants to spend her money on whatever she wants to spin around in the mirror and film herself and go to Mexico and you know, whatever, fine, fine. That's she's an adult. She has a right to do that. But you know, if she decides to get into a car drunk, you know, or she's gonna like light something on fire or do something physically harmful to herself and others, it would just be nice to know that there's someone around her who can prevent her from physically causing harm to herself. Uh again, overall it's disturbing to watch, it's heartbreaking. It leaves me just wanting her to get help. Um, and it also leaves me really fucking angry at the Free Britney movement. Um, and I hope that um if you are one of those people who was aggressively free Britney, like insanely free Britney, to the point that you would not listen to any conversation in the last like five, six years um about her potentially struggling. Um, I hope that you are getting your ass in gear and being just as aggressive about getting her help now. Again, not a conservatorship, just making sure that she gets whatever care it is that she needs. I hope you guys are being just as vocal about that as you are about free Britney, free Brittany, free Brittany, right? Um, and then also in this, uh for the same thing for the free Britney people. I hope you are all ready to give her children a huge fucking apology. Uh, because you've been horrible to her children. And I just want you to go and if you do go and listen to those tapes, I want you to imagine being raised by that person who is struggling to that extent. And and just think about how scary that would have been for a child, right? So maybe in the future we can all have a little bit more empathy for the children in these celebrity cases instead of treating them like they're like adult demons. Next up, oh so innocent, Erica Jane has stunned real housewives of Beverly Hills fans by settling her $25 million bankruptcy lawsuit just days before the trial was set to begin. Surprise, surprise, surprise. The settlement comes on the back of the discovery that Erica Jane spent more than $25 million, which was funneled into her quote unquote business, EJ Global, using money that was transferred via her disgraced husband, Tom Girardi's law firm, which I think is Girardi and Keys. The money was spent, according to trustees for Girardi's former firm on assistance, credit card bills, clothing, and a glam squad. Erica, of course, has protested her innocence against these charges since they were leveled against her in 2021. Uh, reminder this $25 million was siphoned off of burn victims, crash victims, people who had died, et cetera, et cetera. Um, this is what the uh trustees had to say from Girardi's former firm, as far as Erica protesting she was innocent. Erica signed all of her tax returns. She signed numerous credit card slips and was well aware of the money she spent on the debtor's credit cards and the debtor's payment of her personal expenses. Her feigned willful blindness and ostrich approach to these expenditures will do absolutely nothing to limit her liability. And the trustees, it seems, were right because here we stand in 2026 and she's scrambling to settle, which is cough cough guilt. Um yeah, so Erica Jane has settled the $25 million claim against her for an undisclosed amount. We will not probably ever know what that is, uh, unless she fails to pay, and then we will find out what it is, which is um something I'm definitely waiting for. Um, so yeah, I'm sure she'll be back on everybody's screens talking about how innocent she is soon, and she doesn't have to pretend to have empathy for the victims anymore. Oh, yeah, no, that's right. She didn't even know what empathy was. And last but not least, before we get into it today, Shia LaBeouf has finally been charged in that New Orleans brawl. That's right. He has finally been charged after that infamous and viral street brawl in New Orleans. Uh the Chronically Online, like myself, will remember the scenes of LaBeouf being wrestled to the ground outside of a New Orleans bar after uh allegedly calling the bartenders multiple homophobic slurs and headbutting someone. Um, so the New Orleans PD have now charged him for those events uh three counts of simple battery, which, of course, wouldn't you know it, misdemeanor charges, uh, all stemming from that same February 1st event. LaBoeuf's behavior over the events charged were documented extensively, for those who don't know, uh, by witnesses, including bartenders who saw LaBeuf head butt staff call them the F-word, uh, and be just becoming increasingly aggressive during the night. One bartender, when everything was going on, told police that LaBeouf had been, quote, terrorizing the city. So it wasn't just happening in one place, it was happening in a lot of different places. Uh, at this moment, it is unclear what fines or sentencing LaBoeuf may receive from the charter. All right, all right, it's that time. Time for the main event. The story of Gene Harlow, one of Hollywood's original scandal queen. Now, this may be uncharted territory for some of you, depending on how old you are. The name Gene Harlow may be an entirely foreign-sounding concoction, right? Gene Harlow, who the heck is that? Like, how did she get famous? Is that Instagram? Does she have why does she have a podcast episode about her? Well, if you don't know who Gene Harlow is, you genuinely, genuinely, genuinely should. She is one of the originals, which is something that can't be said too much about Hollywood, especially these days, uh, with all the plumped and pulled celebrities who seem to photocopy the same puffy Instagram face. Uh, before Mae West, before Marilyn, before Madonna or Anna Nicole, there was Gene Harlow. She was one of, if not the first, Hollywood bombshell, a woman who drew audiences not for being this pristine pearl, but for having an edge, you know, as for being a woman who could enjoy life. And she wasn't just a sex symbol either. She was funny, she was witty. Uh, she was like one of the first comedic actors that people really, really flooded uh theaters to see. She was young, she was raw, she was hated by critics. Gene Harlow paved a path that women across the world still follow right now in Hollywood to this day. But her story, like so many other women who come too early, is a tragic one. Uh, a story plagued by bad relationships, troubled family, and all the other million missing pieces that turn a life into a heartbreaking drama. This isn't just the story of Gene Harlow we're going to be telling today either. It's the story of the Hollywood machine and a blueprint still used by studios, stage moms, and the hopeful ingenue the world over. Now, like any other great character, if you want to see who Gene Harlow was, you have to start right back at the beginning of the story. No, not at the start of creation, just in the rolling hills of Missouri. Harleen Harlow Carpenter was born in 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri, to a couple who were in a state of misery. Her mother, Jean Poe Harlow, was the young, privileged daughter of a wealthy real estate magnet, Skip Harlow. Little Harleen's father, Monty Carpenter, was a well-respected dentist who had worked his way up from a hard scrabble working class background. The relationship between Harleen's mother and father, though, was a tense one from the very start. The wedding had been arranged by the wealthy Skip Harlow, Jean Poe's father, and the girl had been forced into it when she was only 17 years old. A lot of resentment built up, like built up after the marriage, which is understandable, right? Like you're 17 and your rich daddy forces you to marry this dentist from a completely different background who you know nothing about. Um, and as Jean Poe didn't think that Monty Carpenter, her new dentist husband, met the standards to which she was accustomed, she didn't, she didn't like it. So the young couple moved into a home provided by the wealthy Skip Harlow and forced their way through a marriage that just didn't work. In 1911, they welcomed their one and only child, Harleen Harlow Carpenter, who would one day be Jean Harlow. Um, and she was a beautiful baby girl, the spitting image of her mother. And the couple loved her. They did. Well, her mother did anyway. Uh, mama, Jean, as she would come to be called, doted on her only child and poured herself into little Harleen. In later years, people would describe their relationship as inseparable. Jean would later tell those closest to her that her mother told her things all the time, even when she was little, like everything you have, you owe to me, like throughout the whole of her life. So later, Mama Jean would even tell the media uh Harleen, Jean Harlow, was always all mine. She didn't belong to anybody else. So that was the environment in the carpenter home. Uh, it sounds deeply unpleasant and an unhappy one. It kind of sounds like mother and daughter, Mama Jean and little Harleen, were sequestered in their own universe, uh, separated from the father. One was never seen without the other, and little Harleen never so much as jumped without her mother's approval. Her mother called her baby as well. She didn't even know her name was Harleen until she was like five or six years old and she went to school because her mother just called her baby. Um, in today's terms, we would probably describe the relationship between Harleen, Jean Harlow, and her mother as codependent. And one might even go so far as to describe the connection between mother and daughter as somewhat emotionally incestuous. Like the relationship between uh Jean Poe and her husband, Monty Carpenter, was not a happy one. So it seems like all of the emotional weight went on to little Harleen. But that relationship is one that would never be severed, no matter how toxic it may have seemed at times, unlike the marriage of Jean Poe and her beleaguered dentist husband, Monty. In 1922, Harleen's mother filed for divorce from Monty Carpenter. The divorce was finalized the same year, and Harleen's father neither contested the divorce, uh, nor did he try to visit her after the divorce happened. I think they saw them, they saw each other maybe a handful of times over the rest of her life, but basically, you know, no contact, no interest. Mama Jean unsurprisingly got full and sole custody of little Harleen, and the divorce would mark the start of a grand new adventure, not just for the mother, but for the daughter as well. Finally free of her anchor of a husband, Jean Poe Carpenter was free to set out and pursue her grand, ambitious dreams once and for all. Because, as it turns out, this daughter of a wealthy real estate magnate only had one thing on her mind all those miserable and torturous years in Kansas City, the bright lights of Hollywood. That's right, Jean Carpenter had spent her life wanting only one thing from it to become a famous Hollywood siren of the silver screen. It was a dream that a lot of women had in the 1930s as movie stars increasingly during this time, because remember, this is this is the 1920s, it's not going to be long until we're in the 1930s, aka the Great Depression, right? So movie stars during this time are increasingly becoming these symbols for wealth, excess, and success. That's why freshly divorced and newly turned 32-year-old Jean Carpenter packed up her 12-year-old daughter Harlene in 1923 and headed for the bright lights of the West Coast. The plan was simple in Jean's mind. She was going to use her good looks because she was. She was a very, like you can go, if you go to Patreon, I've got pictures up, but if you just Google like Mama Jean or Jean Harlow's mom, you'll see her. She's very she's a very, very, very pretty woman and she was like handsome as she got older. Um, but their plan was simple. Jean was gonna use her good looks, which hadn't faded yet, to get herself into a film. There was an excess of confidence, okay? There was an excess very, very like Midwestern, I'm gonna go to New York City type of confidence, right? The kind of confidence that really only like the wealthy, spoiled child of a rich man can kind of summon. Um, but Harlene's mother wasn't gonna get what she wanted. Not this time. After endless tries to break into the industry, Jean Carpenter was told in no uncertain terms, uh, that she was too old. Studios said, Thanks, but no thanks. You're good looking, but you're old. Uh, which is it's awful, but that is what Hollywood has always been. Uh, none of the studios wanted to use her. They basically were like, hang it up, find something else to do. But she pushed for several years. Um, while she was pushing, trying to become an actress, she put her daughter, Harleen, still at the time, in the local school, which was called the Hollywood School for Girls. And she kept pushing it with her dreams, right? But by 1925, that was it. That was a wrap. She was running out of money, and Harlene had to drop out of the Hollywood School for Girls. So with her finances dwindling, Rich Daddy Skip Harlow, right? Which is Jean's Gene's dad, the the wealthy real estate magnate and the grandfather of Harleen slash Gene Harlow, uh, he comes back into the picture and he essentially says, Okay, okay, Gene, that's enough. It's time to get your ass home, or I'm gonna disinherit you. That's that's that that those are the demands. So, next thing you know, Mama Jean, she's back home, Kansas City, Missouri, or, you know, never have money again. Uh, it was clear that Skip Harlow had had enough of his daughter's expensive aspirations, but it also seems like he had had enough of her codependent relationship with her 14-year-old daughter because after she came home with her tail between her legs, he packed little Harleen off to a summer camp in Michigan. Uh, and I think that maybe it was because uh Jean might have already been running a little bit wild by this point. I remember before they had left Hollywood, she had dropped out of school at 14. So I think that she had had a lot of free time in Los Angeles and probably been exposed to some things because her mother, um, Jean Pooh, uh, was notorious for like throwing parties and wanting to like moving around society and always socializing and you know, drinking and all of those things. So um, I think that 14-year-old Harlene at this point might have been running a bit wild. So when she comes back to Kansas City, Missouri, Skip Harlow, her granddad, who's obviously trying to get the reins, like get control of the rains again, uh, he says, That's it. That's it. You're off. You're going to summer camp. You're going to this girl's summer camp in Michigan. This is really like the first time mother and daughter have ever been seriously parted, right? And it doesn't seem to go well. Um, because while she's there, Harleen catches scarlet fever and becomes deathly ill. And there's this notorious story that goes along with it that once her mother found out, she raced to Michigan and took a rowboat herself. Like she rowed herself in this little boat across this lake in a storm or something like that to get to the camp where Harleen was sick with scarlet fever, only to be turned away at the camp and refused access to her daughter. Um, Harleen was deathly sick. So there if that story is true, it's very likely that she was turned away. Um, and this was an illness that would follow Harleen through the rest of her life, well into becoming Jean Harlow and this big movie star and all that. And it could have, as you'll see, have contributed to her death in the end. Either way, she recovered from the scarlet fever and she and her mother were shortly uh were re-reunited shortly after that. Um, because uh Mama Jean, as it turned out, it it wasn't gonna be quite the same. Because even if the lake story's true, as it turns out, once Harleen comes back from summer camp, it turns out that Mama Jean's got a little love interest. So all of her focus is not entirely on Harleen anymore. Um, and that new love interest on the radar is none other than this Italian quote unquote entrepreneur uh named Marino Bello, a figure who is going to shape and reshape the lives of not just Mama Jean, uh, but little Harleen as well for the rest of their lives. So by 1926, you've got Harleen recovered. She's back with her mother, and she's registered in Fairy Hall School, which is now uh called Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. And what's really interesting about Harlene being put in that school in 1926 is it's not far away from where Merino Bello lives, right? It's not very far away. And and the hope and putting her in this school, other than being close to Merino Bello, is that the girl would get an education because that's something that Mama Jean didn't get to do. So she seems to kind of she's she's got high hopes, and she's trying to direct her daughter's life at this point in a better way while also herself seeking out her love interest. But the problem is that young, pretty, charismatic 16-year-old, well, 15, she's about to be 16-year-old, Harleen. Uh, she gets a big sister at this school who's a little bit older than her. And this big sister introduces little Harleen to the very handsome, very well-to-do, and four years older, uh, Charles Chuck McGrew III. Now, Charles is four years older than Harleen. They start dating really seriously um by 1926, right? So she's about 15, 14 to 15, 14 uh by this time. So you look, at least he was 19 when they started and not like 40. Okay. Let's just be grateful. They they they actually do seem to have been a good match and and not as not as weird as you might think, because um Chuck and Harlene, when they met, they kind of had this um this similar kind of shadow over them, this heartbreak, this darkness, these kinds of trauma, uh, these family wounds and issues, I think, that that kind of bonded them. Chuck, as it turns out, had lost both of his parents in a freak boating accident in 1923. And that had basically left him as an orphan, right? Um, but it had also left him extremely wealthy because when they died, it turns out they had left him with a large trust fund that he got access to at the age of 21. Now, Harleen herself, we know she's she's got divorced parents, she's moved back and forth across the country. She's almost died of scarlet fever, her mom has remarried or is about to remarry or is in a relationship with this guy, Marino Bello, who seems to be a bit shady. So Harlene's got her own family issues, and the two just seem to have clicked over that. Years and years and years later, uh, I wrote about this a little bit on Patreon, but years later, um, Chuck's daughter, which is obviously from a different marriage, uh, would end up telling people that they were just kids that fell in love and they genuinely did love each other because they had kind of bonded over these family wounds. So Chuck and Harleen, they they hit it off. They hit it off right away. She's 15, 16, he's 19, 20, uh, and they start dating. By 1928, they are very serious. They've been together two years and they're talking getting married. And this is kind of when we see some of the first cracks in in the relationship that Harlene has with her mother, Mama Jean. Because according to sources at the time, Mama Jean completely disapproved of Chuck's relationship with Harleen, even though he was wealthy. Um, not only did it echo shades of Mama Jean's own underage and arranged, if you'll remember, first marriage, but she also thought Chuck wasn't good enough for her daughter, who she already suspected was going to be a star. Because remember, she already had these Hollywood dreams, but she was told, not you, you're too old. So she's already kind of looking at her daughter this way. Mama Jean tried to dissuade Harlene from seeing Chuck, but it didn't work. The two youngsters eloped in the middle of the night in 1928, driving all over town until they found a priest who was willing to go through with the ceremony. Harlene lied about her age because the priest wouldn't have done it if he knew she was only 16 at the time. So she said she was 19, and people ended up finding the wedding certificates, so this is all verified. Um, and she and Chuck got their marriage licenses that night. Mama Jean, we can suspect, was pissed, uh, but it wouldn't matter for very long because just two months after Harleen and the handsome Chuck McGrew were married, Chuck inherited the first part of his trust fund, making him an extremely wealthy young man. So, what did he do? Just like the Beverly Hillbillies, packed himself up and moved him and his new wife to where else? That glittering, sparkling oasis that is Beverly Hills, California. Now, one of the things that's kind of frustrating about Jean Harlow is when you start digging into her life, you can sometimes, in some angles and areas, get a million different stories, right? But when you kind of look at her in this little interlude, this little section that we're about to talk about, the story is basically the same, no matter who you ask. Chuck McGraw, this new handsome young, wealthy husband, was apparently driven to irritation immediately, immediately after marrying Harlene by the constant intervention of her mother. Okay. So once he had his money in his pocket a couple months after their marriage, he packed up and moved out west in the hopes that he would be able to escape the prying claws of Mama Jane. That's how the story goes. That's what everybody says happened. Allegedly, he wanted them to have a fresh start together, right? And Harlene, allegedly at this time, also wanted the same thing. She wanted to escape the clutches of her mother. I mean, of course she did, right? She's a 16-year-old kid. Who what 16-year-old kid doesn't want to escape the clutches of their mother? And but, you know, this 16-year-old had a rich husband, right? A husband with an inheritance. So the newlyweds were able to set up a comfortable and beautiful life for themselves. Harleen quickly became a well-known socialite. She was mingling, and you could kind of, I guess she was kind of like uh Kathy Hilton if she was a Democrat. Because as we'll find out, uh Jean Harlow was a Democrat. She was a feminist. She was very like pro-women's rights. She was awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome in that respect. She like campaigned for FTR. Um, but she becomes this, this like cool, groovy young socialite and party girl, right? And McGrew fit right in with the influx of new uh entrepreneurs, people that were flooding in, these independently wealthy men that were flooding into Beverly Hills, Hollywood at the time. The two became legendary parties, right? With legendary drinking habits. They were both apparently incredibly heavy drinkers, which is again kind of makes me think, you know, if a 16-year-old can already be this like incredibly heavy drinker that's hanging out with 40 and 50 year olds that are just like pounding old fashions. Because that's the thing, as well, these people weren't drinking beer most of the time, right? They're drinking hard liquor. Hard liquor. Uh, and this is like prohibition and stuff going on. So it's like really, really intense stuff. So they're they this young, hot couple, legendary parties, uh, drinking habits known to everyone around them. Neither one of them worked during this time because they didn't have to. They just lived in a nice house. They had nice parties, they went to nice parties, they attended all the best social events. And for Harleen, it looks like she was setting out on this path to be a kept woman, which she wanted. She wanted. She apparently told all of her friends and things during this time that she was looking forward to just having this simple, happy life. And Clark Gable would say that about her as well. He would say, she never wanted to be famous, she wanted to be happy. There was someone else who's like, she talked about folding napkins and watching the kids in the backyard. That that was the dream that she had for most of her life. And unfortunately, it's one we'll get there. New ideal for her life was not gonna last for long because Mama Jean, now married to her love interest, Marino Bello, making her Mama Jean Bello, was hot on the heels of her daughter. By 1929, Mama Jean was back in Hollywood and back in her daughter's life. As a matter of fact, she became one of the main moving forces in her daughter's new budding career. Acting. And this is the funny thing. Harlene Carpenter, now McGrew in this moment, right? Because she's married to Chuck McGrew, was soon to become the world-famous Jean Harlow. But as I just said, that's never what she set out to be. Clark Gable, one of her closest friends and longtime co-stars, they starred in, I don't know, probably at least half a dozen movies together. I think it was like five or six movies they did together, said at the best. This is, I think this is it. He said she didn't want to be famous. She wanted to be happy. And you see that when you look at the start. This is it. This proves it. The start of her career. Because this is, if this isn't a fucking false start, a hesitant start, I don't know what is. So after her mother's arrival, which is like the end of 1928, start of 1929, we suddenly start to see this push for Harleen to get involved in acting. And this isn't something that exists before. Before her mother comes back to Hollywood, we never see, never see Harleen saying, I want to be an actress. I'm gonna call myself Gene Harlow and dye my hair blonde and all this stuff. Um, as like I said, we know that Harlene was content to live as a mother and a wife, which again, yes, she was young and her mind could change, but you know, we we have a mother who suddenly you you'll see, you'll see, you'll see. Um the life path that that Harleen wanted, just a quiet, kept woman life, doesn't seem to have suited Mama Jean, who seems to want to have vicariously lived through her daughter. And there's a reason that I'm using that word vicariously. In 1929, she started pushing Harlene to go into auditions. It was the right thing to do, she assured her daughter. And Harlen had all the looks and talent that she needed to make it where Mama Jean had failed. This quote from a that I found, this is from a 1935 article in Time magazine. And I think that this describes best uh Mama Jean's approach and what was kind of happening at this time uh with Harlene. On Mrs. Bellows' first trip to the coast, which is the first time they had come to Hollywood, she had learned that in Hollywood, it did not matter who you were, but who you seemed to be. Instead of an apartment or a bungalow, the Bellows lived in a house which had two floors. In it, they gave parties to which they invited the people Jean met on the sets. Unlike other extras, Jean drove to work with her mother in their own car. This was a limousine, old but well polished. At the wheel sat a smart driver whose trim clothes and foreign air helped confirm the impression that Jean was a rich society girl in pictures for a lark. Extras without car fare gaped at Miss Bello and Jean entering the lot in their fine conveyance. They might have opened their mouths for another purpose if they had known the identity of the trim driver. He was Mr. Marino Bello. That just kind of, I think, says everything about this time and this kind of like push behind Jean. Uh, Mama Jean already knew how the Hollywood machine worked, as it said right there in the article. She had been there once before, she had tried every angle and she had been denied. And she knew, she knew that if her daughter was gonna get in there, like she wanted her daughter to do, it was fake it till you make it, baby, and market your kids hard. And the trick worked. After being spotted on a lot in 1929, Harlene was contacted by Central Casting, who offered her several roles. Harlene rejected all of them, hesitating to get into an industry she wasn't certain she wanted to join. But after her mother's urging, she finally started accepting some roles as an extra, which is what they talked about in that little bit I just read you. Um, these extra roles paid her a respectable $7 a day, which is now $131, by the way, in today's money. And from there, things just started to snowball really quickly for Harlan. So Harleen, who is now going by her mother's former stage name, Jean Harlow, quickly gained popularity for her looks and demeanor. In 1929, she appeared in several small roles in Laurel and Hardy films and even got a five-year contract with Hal Roach Studios. But Harlow's career came at a cost. By March of 1929, her contract with Hal Roach Studios was being torn up. Why? Because Jean Harlow, as she was now called, her marriage was disintegrating. Chuck, as it turned out, had a big problem with his wife becoming a film star. And it's not hard to imagine that he probably had a problem with Mama June's involvement in it, her canoodling, as it were. It's breaking up my marriage, Harlow allegedly told executive Hal Roach. The couple couldn't overcome the challenge. By the end of 1929, Gene Harlow was landing her first speaking role in Clara Beau's The Saturday Night Kid, which was a huge deal. It was a big, big deal, and people started to recognize her from that role. But it was also by the end of 1929 that she was finalizing her divorce with husband Chuck McGrew and parting ways with him once and for all. Now, from this point in Gene Harlow's life, I personally think you see kind of like acceleration, the Hollywood escalation pattern. It all starts with a meteoric rise, followed by a stutter, then a stumble, then maybe a bit more rise, then a disastrous collapse. Gene Harlow's short life and career were both marred and marked by these stumbles, as well as a healthy, hefty, heaping dose of multiple tragedies. After her split from a grew, Gene Harlow was free to become the star her mother had always wanted her to become. And Mama Jean was there to facilitate every fucking second of it. Gene Harlow was spotted by Ben Lyon that same big year, 1929, after the divorce, and she was eventually cast in the Howard Hughes film Hell's Angels, which was a huge, huge, huge, huge deal being in a Howard Hughes film, let alone Hell's Angels. Um, it would be her big break and the film that would launch the superstar leg of the Gene Harlow career. Harlow signed a five-year contract with Howard Hughes, a contract that promised $100 a week instead of $7 a day. Um, or in today's money, that's $1,875 a week. That's a big get, right? Because again, this is 1929. The stock markets, I think, have crashed by this point, or they're just about to crash. So it's a big deal. It's a big get. And it like really moves the dial up for Gene Harlow and her mother, Mama Jean. Mama Jean begins appearing in public wearing luxurious fur coats and expensive jewelry, even though you know people are losing their jobs. Uh, when they appeared together, mother and daughter were a luxury designer's dream. Jean Harlow became one of the most popular actors of her time. From 1930 to 1937, she starred or appeared in 22 feature films. Those films including greats like Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Rosalind Russell, and Myrna Loy. I mean, just like unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. The movies she started, movies like The Secret Six, Public Enemy, Iron Man, made her a huge hit with the public. The public loved her. People streamed into movie theaters just to see the spunky blonde that no one could stop talking about. Critics, though, meanwhile, ripped Jean Harlow apart for her perceived lack of talent. I mean, they hated her. Anything she did, they hated her. But meanwhile, her personal life marched on in the direction of someone who is surrounded by excess and dysfunction. I mean, it's just train wreck after train wreck after scandal after scandal from this point, folks. Mama Jean and her husband, uh, Marino Bello took full charge of Jean's estate. Like every aspect of her life was seemingly managed by them by this point, like everything. The films she took, the money she made, even the color of her hair. They were swanning around town like these ritzy folks. People started talking about Merino being a gangster. Uh it's crazy. It's crazy. Even the color of her hair was decided by them, right? It's all managed by Mama Jean. And anything she didn't manage, the studio did. I don't think Jean had a lot of uh Gene Harlow had a lot of personal choice, which is maybe also why we see the mess we're about to see. So uh she's she's becoming this studio product, right? And that's why it's so interesting that while Jean Harlow was on this upward trajectory, right? She's being micromanaged, she's becoming this big money machine, basically. She suddenly found herself in bed, literally and figuratively, with the known, established Jersey gangster, Abner Zwilman. So Abner Zwilman was like just a consummate gangster, right? He started as this kid selling lottery ticket to housewives, and I think it was called Clinton Heights. Is that the name of the neighborhood in New Jersey or in Jersey? Uh, anyways, a few years later, he expands that business because he blows up selling these like underground lottery tickets and he ends up expanding into bootlegging, prostitution, and racketeering. He's got a couple of like legitimate, quote unquote, legitimate businesses, right? Which are like clubs and restaurants, but he's it's mostly bootlegging, prostitution, racketeering. And those underhanded businesses left Zwilman with both a criminal record and a huge, huge excess of cash. And it's that excess of cash that got him into the room with Gene Harlow, who's this huge movie star around 1931. And it was that same cash that bought Gene Harlow a beautiful red Cadillac and a very expensive jeweled bracelet that the press couldn't stop talking about. But that wasn't the only money that Zwilman was throwing around and willing to drop on Gene Harlow because he also, during their brief encounter together, paid out a $500,000 loan, okay, to Harry Cohn, who was the head of Columbia Pictures at the time. And Zwilman paid this loan to Harry Cohen, to Harry Kahn, uh, this 500k loan for a two-picture deal for his sweet new love interest, the the new ingenue Gene Harlow. So Gene Harlow took that. She took the two-picture deal with Columbia, uh, but she dumbed Zwilman soon after because Columbia did these covert recordings of him and they caught him saying some really horrific stuff to some of his buddies about her, like some really vulgar stuff about her. So Gene Harlow broke up with him, but it would not be the last time she she uh consorted with crime because as her fans would later find out, uh, she was also the godmother to Bugsy Siegel's eldest daughter, Millicent. Yeah, she was she was BFFs with Bugsy Siegel and his wife while the family was living in Los Angeles. Now, the years after the Columbia Pictures deal that Zwilman got her, they ended up being some of the most popular and constructive of Harlow's career. While there and working on a Frank Capper film, she went the equivalent of today's viral for her hair, um, which at that time was coined as platinum blonde. Women across the country went so crazy trying to dye their hair the same exact color as Gene Harlow that they started opening up competitions across the country, right? Um, there was even Howard Hughes, even it was so crazy. There was there were so many people doing it. It was such a spectacle that Howard Hughes started opening up platinum blonde clubs all around the country uh to capitalize on the popularity of these clubs that were basically themed around Gene Harlow's fucking trademarked hair. Absolutely unbelievable. But here's the kicker, and it might be really, really important to events that happen later. Gene Harlow's platinum blonde hair was the first time people had really seen this kind of like white, glistening blonde hair. Um, she got that by applying ammonia, Clorox bleach, and luxe soap flakes to her hair, which absolutely destroyed her hair. She had to wear wigs for a bunch of different movies. It destroyed her hair because she had this natural ash blonde colored hair, but that doesn't pick up great on black and white, right? So she was doing this extreme lightning and people went crazy for it. Blonde wannabes, though, weren't the only people going mad for Gene Harlow. Behind the scenes, a new romance was blooming for the now 20. Remember, she's only 20 by this point, the 20-year-old movie star. And this new romance was with a man named Paul Burns. And this is this is gonna be almost the undoing of her career. So Paul Burns was a producer at MGM, and after meeting Harlow at the end of the 20s, he became determined to grow her career. I mean, from the start, he met her very early and he was like, This girl is gonna be famous, and I'm gonna make sure she's famous. Burns becomes kind of the second push behind her. So you have Mama Jean, who's who's like twister the tornado behind her, and then you've got Howard Burns, which is just this like slow, steady, methodical push to get her in every movie he can get, which, you know, he's got a lot of pull because he is a producer from MGM, which means he's got money and connections. So Burns pushes her career, he gets her into as many high-caliber films as he can, and he finesses the press and sends her on press tours and all this kind of stuff. The two, somewhere along the line, become romantically involved, despite the fact that they have a 20-year age gap between them. So gross, so gross. And they eventually end up getting married in July of 1932. But tragically, the romance would not have a happy ending. Surprise, surprise, 20-year age different, right? Much like her mother's first marriage, Gene Harlow found her marriage to the 41-year-old Burns isolating. He lived out in Benedict Canyon, he had this very old Bavarian-style house. It was grim, it was quiet, it was dreary, it was just her and just him. And you can imagine a 20, 21-year-old not doing great, far removed from the hustle and bustle and glamour of Hollywood that she's become accustomed to. So, just two months into their marriage, Jean was already spending most nights away with her mother, who still lived in Beverly Hills. And it was during one of these stays, again, just two nights, two months after they got married, um, that Paul Byrne was discovered dead uh in the home they shared, quote unquote, uh, with a single gunshot wound to his head. He had a suicide note beside him that uh essentially said, My dear, I am so sorry. This is the only way I could think to release you from the great harm I've done you and the humiliation that I've done to myself. Very, very shady. Uh, this would be the scandal that followed Gene Harlow two. Her grave to her grave for weeks after Paul Burns' death. The media went mad with speculation. I mean, Jean Harlow was investigated, her mom was investigated, the studios were investigated, uh, her stepfather was investigated. And look, the there could be some dodgy circumstances. There was an ex-wife of Paul Burns that was involved in this who committed suicide the day after his death. There's a lot of shady things that go on around this. Uh, but everybody pointed their finger at 20-year-old, 21-year-old Gene Harlow at this time. They're like, you murdered him because you wanted to get out of it and you wanted to get money, and it was a whole thing, and the fixers and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. People were the media was talking about it, people were whispering, they were pointing. Uh, everybody blamed her for it. Now the coroner came out after a few weeks, after the autopsy was done, I think it was a couple weeks, and said, it's suicide. He killed himself. There was a the gun was under him, uh, he killed himself. This is 100% a suicide. But still, everyone wanted to blame the pretty blonde 21-year-old, right? Because that's way more fun. Gene was devastated by the death of Paul Byrd, and you can go and find the images. She looks like she can't even walk, getting out of the car to go to his funeral. Um, and because Paul Byrne had he had not only been her husband, he had been a longtime friend and supporter, right? Which is again, it's another one of these twisted things of like it's horrific that she got blamed because it's very, very obvious that the girl had nothing to do with what was going on. But anyway, all the same, she, Gene Harlow, again, just 21 years old at the time, did herself no favors when the roving eye of the media still hot upon her, she kicked up a very indiscreet affair with boxer Max Baer. Now, Baer at the time was one of the most successful and popular boxers of the time, like mega athlete, uh celebrity in his own right. And he also happened to be a very extremely married man. So when he and Harlow began a romantic affair only months after Byrne's death, yeah, it kicked up a stink. It kicked up a scandal around Hollywood gossip circles. And that gossip only got worse after Bear's wife went public, went to the media, and threatened to divorce him for alienation of affection, which was a charge at the time. That was basically adultery. That's what you called it at the time. And she named Gene Harlow in that when she was like, alienation of affection, he's cheating on me with Gene Harlow. The two did not stop even after this public humiliation, not immediately anyway, uh, because Harlow ended up getting pregnant. Getting pregnant. So the studio that she was with at the time, desperate to keep any scandal, any more scandal away, right? Because people were still blaming her for Burns' death at this point. Uh, they wanted to keep that scandal away from their golden girl. So they quickly arranged for Gene Harlow to have an abortion, which was carried out quietly, extremely, extremely quietly. Once she had recovered from the abortion, the studio let her know there was another big change on the way. Uh, she was getting married. She was getting married. Yeah. Uh, in their final bid to silence these ongoing scandals, the Max Bear scandal, the Paul Burns scandal, and in the hopes that no one's gonna find out about the abortion stuff. Uh, the the studio arranged a marriage to the studio cinematographer and Harlow's friend. Thankfully, he was friends with Gene Harlow, uh, a man named Harold Rawson. Right? The studio went right. Harold, you're friends with her. We need you guys to get married to just shut people up. Harold agreed. Gene Harlow agreed, and the scheme worked. The public celebrated the marriage, and after all the fuss died down, people soon stopped talking about Bear. They stopped talking about burns. Um, once everything quieted down, Harlow and Rawson quietly divorced. Quietly divorced. It's very, if you're a classic Hollywood person, it reminds you a lot of Rock Hudson's marriage when um all the stories about him being gay, which he was uh and the media back then was cruel. But when the stories about him being gay came out, he got uh the studio forced him to get married to his secretary, who was also his friend. And I think they eventually quietly divorced as well. But yeah, this is this is a con this is a very common studio thing, a very common thing. This is why I've talked about PR relationships in the past. This stuff does happen in Hollywood. Cough, cough, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey, cough, cough, wink, wink. Um, yeah, but she got married to her friend, quietly divorced, and that round of scandals quietly went away for a while. Quiet ending of her third marriage to Harold Rawson in 1934. Gene Harlow kept a steady hand on her work, but that doesn't mean she wasn't keeping an eye out for love. Because remember, she's 21, so her next big scandal was just around the corner. And it came that same year, 1934, in the shape of one William Powell, another actor at MGM, where Harlow was by this time. The two quickly fell in love and, according to legend, quickly became engaged in a secret engagement that would last two plus years. Unfortunately, Powell never went public with Gene Harlow, not really, not like saying, hey, we're engaged, we're really in love, we're gonna get married. Uh, and an issue, many claimed, stemmed from disagreements that the couple had over past marriages, presumably hers, um, and also pal's uncertainty over a future with Harlow, right? She's 21. There's already been a lot of really chaotic stuff in the background. It's a lot, right? She's moved really fast in the past and it's not gone well. Why would you also want to move fast? So remember, Mama Jean and her husband Maureen Obello were as ever present an irritation as ever, as well, at this time, butting into every aspect of Jean's life and commanding control over pretty much everything that she did and earned, right? So I can imagine that that was also maybe a deterrent for William Powell. In 1936, Harlow, who still wasn't public about her relationship with Powell, uh, she became pregnant. Yep, she became pregnant. And the studio, and presumably Jean's family at this time, who are closely in bed with the studio, they tried to get Powell, who was the father, to make good on his relationship with Harlow. They were like, All right, you guys, that's it. She's pregnant, you guys have to get married. But pal said no. He refused. He refuses to marry her. So, desperate not to kick off another Harlow scandal, MGM tasks Howard Strickland, who is the head of publicity at MGM at this time, uh, to arrange an abortion for Gene Harlow, to arrange her second abortion. And what's really sick is if you really want to go and get your hands dirty, Howard Strickland was known as the abortion fixer. Um, Gene Harlow was not the only person he did this for. This was kind of like one of his big jobs at MGM was to make sure their actresses could get abortions, back alley abortions. Just really like this is Hollywood has been disgusting forever. Um, Harlow checked into the Good Shepherd Hospital under the name Mrs. Gene Carpenter. And a short while later, she received her second abortion. Again, this is 1936. After recovering, she started Reckless, which was also with William Powell, and it was her first musical. And then she starred in Susie, which was a big deal because she actually got top billing in that over Carrie Grant. She was a bigger star than Carrie Grant by this point. At this point, time was running out for Gene Harlow by the end of 1936, but no one around her really knew that, least of all, Jean, right? They didn't realize that yet. She spent the start of 1937 out on the political trail, fundraising for Franklin D. Roosevelt in an organization that would become the March of Dimes, which is super fucking cool. Uh, but it was taxing, right? That that it was that January push for FDR's birthday, it was really, really, really hard for Gene Harlow, and she became seriously ill at the end of the month. So ill that she almost missed the 1937 Academy Awards at the start of February. Thankfully, she rallied in time and made her appearance on the arm of who else but William Powell. A couple of months later, filming on Harlow's next and final film, Saratoga, was due to start. The film co-starred Clark Gable, who Harlow had worked with for years by this point and had a close, friendly relationship with. Filming was delayed at the start of March after Harlow, who had just been sick in January, suddenly developed sepsis after getting some of her wisdom teeth removed. The infection was so bad, was so severe, the poisoning to her blood was so severe that Harlow ended up getting hospitalized, and filming wasn't able to start on Saratoga until she recovered at the end of April. By the end of May, Jean Harlow was halfway through filming Saratoga, but it was clear that something was going wrong. On May 20th, 1937, she went to the studio doctor complaining of fatigue, nausea, fluid retention, and abdominal pain. The doctor, which again, this is a studio doctor, uh, his main job is to make sure that the actors can keep working to make money for the studio. He examined her and decided she had a minor case of influenza and cholecystitis, not severe enough to stop working. So that's like inflammation of the colon, right? He says, You gotta sore tummy and influenza, you can keep working. Harlow, though, had not disclosed that the year previously, she had she had had a severe, severe, severe case of influenza, but she had also had a severe sunburn, which you can go and look up pictures of this. You can look up Jean Harlow's sunburn, and it's pretty crazy. I mean, it's black and white, which is why I think it's kind of crazy, because even though it's a black and white photo, you can tell how sunburned she is. Uh, and it turns out that that can be an early sign of kidney disease, which I didn't know. Uh, and obviously she didn't know either because she did not tell the doctor about this. So the doctor says, Oh, you got some influenza, go back to work. But what's interesting is while she's on set, so we're still at the end of May, we're around like May 20th, her co-star, Una Merkel, said that Harlow was gaining noticeable weight, said she was like really, really weirdly bloated. She was really swollen. Also said that her pallor on set was gray and her energy was extremely low. She was very, very fatigued. By May 29th, just nine days later, 1937, it's clear that Gene Harlow can't go on. In between takes, Clark Gable and her other co-stars are forced to hold her up because she had become too weak to stand on her own. Finally, in between one shot, Harlow was said to have looked up at Gable and said, I feel terrible. Get me back to my dressing room. Once there, she called William Powell, who she's so romantically involved with. They're supposedly secretly engaged to be married. Uh, and he immediately leaves. To his credit, Powell, who is off filming another movie, he immediately leaves the project, rushes to her side, sees that something's clearly wrong, takes her home. They pass that night, the 29th, wake up the next morning, he realizes Gene Harlow is not better. She's not better. So William Powell immediately calls a doctor and then he calls Mama Jean. Now, Mama Jean at the time was on a luxurious holiday with her husband, Marino Bello, surely, surely on her daughter's dime, right? Uh and allegedly, some stories say when William Powell called and said, Hey, Jean is very sick, you need to come home. Mama Jean couldn't be fucking bothered. She was like, She's fine, she's been sick before, just get the doctor there. It's not that serious. And allegedly it was Powell that had to say, Listen here, you end your vacation right now and you get your ass home to your daughter's side right now. So multiple doctors get called to Gene Harlow's side over the next days. The first makes a diagnosis of influenza. The second comes along and he thinks it's just an inflamed gallbladder. Eventually, they'll get to the third doctor who figures out what's going on, but by then it's gonna be too late. Okay. The 26-year-old platinum-haired movie star was dying of kidney failure. Still, Mama Jean contacts MGM on June 3rd and tells them, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She's fine. She's doing much better. She's gonna be back on set and filming for you guys by Monday, June 7th. And the papers, some of them are reporting that Gene Harlow is really, really sick, but a bunch of them pick up this story from Mama, Mama Jean and say, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, she's getting better. She's gonna be speedy recovery. She's coming back. Suspicious but hopeful, Clark Gable, somewhere around the 5th or this maybe the fourth or the 5th of June, he's like, I don't know if she's gonna be coming back to set to finish Saratoga. So he goes to visit Gene Harlow himself. According to what Clark Gable told people, was that when he got there, she was noticeably bloated, she was weak, she was in bed. But here's the big thing before he goes to leave, Clark Gable bends down to kiss Gene Harlow on the cheek, as he always does, and he said her breath stank of urine. Her breath stank of urine. On June 6, 1937, Gene Harlow loses her eyesight. She was transported to the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles that night, where shortly after she slipped into a coma. Gene Harlow died the next day, June 7th, 1937, at 1137 a.m. of cerebral edema, kidney failure, and uremia. She was just 26 years old. And that is the tragic and often scandalous story of Gene Harlow, one of Hollywood's few and only ever originals. It's a story that breaks your heart and one that at times you also can't help but to admire. At the same time, you can see the truth of it writ over, right? Like everywhere. A child making childish decisions, led to those decisions by a viper's nest of selfish and self-centered people. It's a story of chaos, of longing, of mistakes, of heartbreak, of upset. And Jean, I can't help but to see a pattern of codependence repeating, a pattern that was no doubt established in part by an emotionally immature mother and a father who couldn't bother to be around. And there's a million more angles you can look at this story from, right? Mama Jean, according to many stories, was almost like one of the first Chris Jenners, right? She's like the Chris Jenner of her day, the blueprint of Chris Jenner, a viciously ambitious woman who was willing to sacrifice her child if that's what it meant to have that glimmering life on the hill she always dreamed of. It's a story we've seen play out too many times, especially in the Hollywood Eye. And it's a story we'll no doubt see played over and over and over again in the celebrity machine in this age of child influencers. Because not only are the foundations of Hollywood built on women like Mama June and Chris Jenner, they're also built on the bent and broken backs of the hopeful and the curious, the innocent and the naive. They're children, their own children. And I think in many ways, especially in her earlier days, Jean Harlow, she that is what she is, right? She's this child who was like hoisted into the lion's den. And in a way, I think that's really what made her legacy last all these years, sadly. It's not just the blonde hair, it's not just her refusal to wear a bra or her courage to be witty and funny when women weren't supposed to be either of those things. I think for those who still chase that Harlow essence to this day, it's all about the humanity of her, the courage to be something different, to be imperfectly imperfect. In that, we can all aspire to Gene Harlow in some small way. And in that, maybe we should, because the world could use a few more people who aren't afraid to be themselves, even when that self isn't the most popular person in the room. And that's it for today's episode. We did it. We got through it. And it only took me an hour to break down the whole of Gene Harlow's life for you. Aren't you? I didn't. We we really we did broad strokes in this one. We did broad strokes. But thank you so much for being here and listening today. I hope you loved this episode. Uh, it was it was a lot. It was fun, it's sad, right? But it's um it does does paint a picture. Hollywood has always been this way. If you want a deeper look into the life of Gene Harlow or some of Hollywood's other biggest scandal queens, head over to patreon.com slash scandal queens for more deep dives, bonus episodes, early releases, and lots of juicy bonus content you can sink your teeth into while you deconstruct the cult of celebrity. But if you want to focus on the psychological side instead, head over to Substack, where I have a huge database of articles, essays, and guides on what makes humans tick. You can find that at the real ebjonson.substack.com. For everything else, make sure you're following me on social media at the real ebonson on everything, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Um, and if you love this episode, don't forget to leave me a quick five-star review on Apple or Spotify. It just helps the other deconstructors and weirdos find me. And it only takes you a few seconds and it costs you absolutely nothing. So please, please, please, if you've got a few seconds, go ahead and leave me a five-star review. For everyone else, thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another great episode. And this one, next week's episode, is gonna get back into the trenches. I think, I think you'll enjoy it. We're gonna get back into the trenches of the music industry. So make sure you're following along and you don't miss an episode. And that's it. That's it. That's gonna be all for today. I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, keep your secrets close and your receipts closer. Thanks, Candalous Queen. Bye bye.