The first celebrity car- crash life: Starlet Jean Harlow, the 1. By. Tony Rennell for Mail. Online. Updated. 0. BST, 1. 6 May 2. 00. Two years in the spotlight if you make it - and when that's over you're nothing but a has- been for the rest of your life'These words could have been written for the flickering 'stars' of fickle 2. Jades, Parises and Jordans attracted to the world of easy- come, easy- go fame. Not one of the three dozen films she starred in would figure in even the most arcane cinema buff's top 1. Sex bomb: Long- forgotten, but Jean Harlow was one of the first 'It' girls. Yet there was an era when she fought for pole position on the world stage with legendary divas such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead, and outsparked them all for sheer nerve and sexiness. As a turn- on, she even 'out It- ed' the 'It- girl' herself, her silent- screen contemporary Clara Bow. Disclaimer: You are leaving a Gizmodo Media Group, LLC website and going to a third party site, which is subject to its own privacy policy and terms of use. Is your diet working against your thyroid gland? Find out which foods interfere with healthy thyroid function and how to minimize your risk. HYPOTHYROIDISM 101. Chicken and turkey are generally thought of as a healthier alternative to red meat. While poultry can be leaner, certain cuts and cooking methods can make it just as. What mattered was that she had 'the most sensuous figure' seen in front of a camera for a long time. She was probably destined always to play the role of a man- eating trollop, he added, 'but nobody ever starved possessing what she's got'.
Brassy and brazen, she married early and often, consorted with gangsters, boxers, band- leaders and bisexuals and never, she maintained, ever wore knickers or a bra, on or off screen. And at the age of 2. There would. be no being a nobody 'for the rest of your life' for Jean Harlow. She. was dead. But what a life in the fast lane it had been - as a newly. Today's It- girls look shy and. Harlow's. stupendous bonfire. She epitomised the dark side of the Hollywood Babylon legend. She herself was often drunk, debauched and drawn to. Not knowing any of this but transfixed and shocked by her daring presence on screen, the public adored her. On the. very day she signed her first film contract in October 1. Wall. Street crashed and America and the world slipped into recession and. But, even as the dole queues lengthened, the soup. Hollywood's finest never faltered. Jean starred with such greats as James Cagney, in 1. The Public Enemy. Actors and actresses, directors and producers continued to party. Sunset. Boulevard. Strangely, outside in the real world, instead of disgust at. People lapped up every last titillating detail the gossip. What they were allowed to. The secrets of Tinseltown's immorality were concealed - and. Harlow. Sweetheart: Jean in the Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer production, Bombshell. She had been born, surprisingly, on the posh side of the. Kansas City, with a well- off father and an. Baby, even when she was a grown woman.'Mama Jean' had wanted to make. Hollywood herself but was too old, and all her desire for fame. Mama even offered herself on the casting couch for the pleasure of randy directors and producers to pave the way for Baby. Not that Baby was a child any more after losing her virginity when just 1. At 1. 6, she was married, to a local rich boy, but it wouldn't last. Mother was propelling her into the lower reaches of Hollywood. In one of these, she was a well- heeled woman climbing out of a taxi and walking into a plush hotel. The doorman - played by Stan Laurel - was supposed to slam the taxi door shut, catching her ankle- length dress and ripping it off so she enters the hotel in just her slip. But what was sensational was the revelation that Jean was a knicker- free zone. As the dress fell away, the powerful studio lights pierced through the slip and, to the delight of the crew, exposed the fact that it was not just the hair on her head that was bleached peroxide silver. To some special fans, she sent a cut- off silver curl or two as a keepsake. She built on this daring reputation by taking any opportunity to let her untethered breasts tumble out from her blouse, and enhanced their appearance by iceing her nipples so that they stood out prominently. Other stars would slip behind a screen but, to wolf whistles, she shed every stitch in full view before calling for her dresser to bring out her working clothes. It wouldn't have been allowed. But her sluttishness was soon her trademark and it brought in millions of box- office dollars for her unscrupulous studio bosses. She was consistently underpaid compared with other big stars.). Her in- your- face sexuality was matched by a mouth that also took no prisoners. One- liners spewed out of her in an unforgettable snarl, sprinkled liberally with four- letter curses. But for all the tough- girl image she presented, she was a wreck underneath and exploited by almost everyone she ever came into contact with. The worst was her stepfather, Marino Bello, a Sicilian with gangster connections who used her as a meal- ticket and beat up both her and her mother. He pestered her for sex, milked her for money and, whenever she tried to escape from his clutches, he kept her in line by threatening to make public pornographic photographs of her from her teens. Jean with her husband Paul Bern, noted producer, scenario writer and studio executive, who later committed suicide. Her second husband was MGM producer Paul Bern, who was twice her age, and by reputation a nice man. The word was that he had a genital abnormality and was a hermaphrodite - but that, in his frustration, he would lash out brutally with his fists and, on their wedding night, with a walking stick. The studio sent in its boys ahead of the police to clean up the scene and minimise the scandal, but they couldn't stop the rumour mill. What reason did he have to kill himself? Could it have been murder? Harlow was everyone's number one suspect for a while, though no action was ever taken against her. Whodunnit? There were others in the frame - Bello, for one, whose control over his cash- cow stepdaughter was jeopardised by her marriage; or Bern's first wife, who nobody knew even existed but who turned up with a grievance just before his death. Harlow's response to the loss of husband number two was to go completely off the rails. Dressed in tart's clothes, she kerb- crawled the red- light districts, offering to pay men to sleep with her. She gave an interview explaining that: 'He's no Apollo, but if you love a person the physical means nothing.'. When she saw the words in print she was appalled at the implication. It was tantamount to admitting that the sex siren - the image on which her entire career was built - was not interested in sex. She shared her bed with a handsome writer - but found she was sharing him too with his male lover, the beefcake actor and her co- star, Clark Gable. World heavyweight champion boxer Max Baer bedded her within hours of them meeting and then went back to his wife. Instead, it was her mother. Mama Jean was a member of the Christian Scientist sect, a believer in divine healing of human ailments. She opposed hospital treatment of any sort and insisted the same should go for Baby (though, oddly, she seems to have turned a blind eye to her daughter's three abortions). Glamour: She entranced a generation, but Jean's flame was fated to be brief. But Jean was constantly prone to illness. Her eyes were wrecked by strong studio lights, forcing her into dark glasses. The peroxide she doused her scalp in shredded her hair. Bouts of flu and pneumonia laid her low. She had appendicitis and badly impacted wisdom teeth. But then a worse condition emerged - her internal organs were showing signs of serious wear. It was also thought that the peroxide from her hair was working its way through her system. But author David Bret's view is that the beating she had taken from Bern's walking stick in 1. Her general health was also going downhill. Downhill. In the spring of 1. Her hair was also falling out. She managed to get through the next few weeks of shooting until, in one of the final scenes, the script called for Gable, her leading man, to pick her up. She went limp in his arms. It was a sign of a gall- bladder infection. Mama Jean took her Baby home to rest and to be prayed over, and she took the phone off the hook so that no one could interfere and change her mind. When they got to Jean's bedroom, they found her semi- conscious on the bed, extremely bloated and in great pain. The stench of urine from her breath was now overpowering. Jean, pictured with film- director Louis B. Mayer, began to look distinctly unwell. Over Mama Jean's protests, a doctor was called and said immediate surgery was needed. But Mama Jean refused point blank and screamed blue murder at two nurses who were summoned to look after the patient. Mama Jean told the Press camped on her doorstep that her daughter was fine, but in reality her face was swollen, she could not swallow properly and her kidneys were starting to fail. Unless her gall- bladder was removed at once, she was going to die. Her daughter, she screamed, was faking the illness just to make a fool out of her religious beliefs, and to force the studio into giving her a pay rise. All would be well, she shrieked, if a quartet of Christian Science believers she had sent for sat at her bedside reading from the Bible. The lover she called 'Poppy' arrived with an ambulance and rescued the sick girl. In hospital, she was given blood transfusions and placed in an oxygen tent to recover enough strength for an operation. Mama Jean and Powell sat with her through the night, glaring at each other across the sickbed. The next morning, she slipped into a coma, her lungs filled with fluid, and she slipped peacefully away. There is no doubt in Bret's mind that if the doctors had been allowed to do their job from the start, Jean Harlow, dead at 2. But it is hard to resist the conclusion that she was a victim. So many people - most notably her mother - had tried to live their lives through hers, to manipulate and control her, all in the pursuit of fame. In the end, sadly, it was the death of her. To order a copy at . I Tried a Medieval Diet, And I Didn't Even Get That Drunk. A kingly feast, from the Bayeux Tapestry. Eat vegetables and healthy proteins, avoid processed snack food, and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. This was not, however, the case in medieval times. The Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanumwas created, allegedly, by famous doctors for English royalty and disseminated in the form of a poem. It recommends, very specifically, red wine, fresh eggs, figs and grapes. It has little to say about vegetables. In many ways, it’s the antithesis of today’s health fads—it celebrates wheat, emphasizes meat, and involves two significant meals, with no mention of snacking. Water is looked on with suspicion, and juice is nowhere to be found. But from the 1. 20. Regimen was one of the most well known guides to health in Europe, at a time when the stakes of staying healthy were much higher than they are now. Getting sick could be a death sentence; this regimen promised to keep people well. Could we be ignoring some great advice? Is water really all that? I decided to test the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum out myself. For a week and a half, I followed, to the best of my ability, the advice of the doctors of Salerno. I drank diluted wine at dinner and sometimes at lunch; I ate bread at almost every meal; I sought out richly stewed meat whenever I could. The regimen was not just about what to eat, though, and I also followed its prescriptions for daily life. I felt like I was living the Game of Thrones life; some days, I felt I was living like a 1. Despite the amount of wine I was consuming, I never got drunk! In fact, I felt great. The Rules. The Salerno health regimen was based in the humoral theory of medicine, which is focused on keeping balance among the body’s four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Foods were thought to possess qualities that could help maintain that balance: each hot or cool, dry or moist. These ideas originated in the ancient Mediterranean world, most prominently with the Greek physician Galen, and were passed to doctors in the Arab world, before returning to Europe. Although medieval doctors legitimized their recommendations with these ideas about how the body worked, their medical advice wasn’t as random as it might seem. These doctors had one major disadvantage compared to modern doctors—they didn’t know about germs, so they didn’t know what caused sickness. But their ideas about how to keep healthy, particularly by controlling a person’s diet, weren’t so different from our ideas today. Public domain. The Regimen’s top line advice is simple and sensible. Don’t get stressed out—let go of “heavy cares” and “refrain from anger.” Don’t eat too much; don’t take afternoon naps. Don’t drink too much undiluted wine. To stay healthy, you just need “a joyful mind, rest, and a moderate diet.”The advice isn’t always so clear, though. One 1. 7th century commentary goes through each line of the poem and explains its intention. Why eat moderately, for instance? Fresh figs and grapes are good; apples, pears, and peaches less so, as they are “melancholic,” the humour associated with black bile. Wheat and all sorts of meat are “nourishing and fattening.” Fresh cheese is also “nourishing,” but aged cheese is out: it’s “cold, constipating, crude and hard.”The Regimen’s advice on vegetables is practical: garlic and radish are antidotes to poison, cabbage broth has laxative properties, and turnips cause both gas and urine. Peas, though, are “rather good.”Medieval bread baking. Public domain. The selection of vegetables in medieval Europe was relatively small, to begin with. It would not have included plants native to North or South America, which means no potatos, no corn, no tomatoes, no avocados, no peppers, and no beans (with the exception of fava beans). Spinach came from Persia, via Arab conquests of southern Europe, in the 8. Sugar first reached Europe in 1. Crusaders brought it back from their war, but it was a luxury product, with limited availability, for centuries. Coffee didn’t come regularly until the 1. I had to ignore). The poem has other advice to offer, but most of it is less prescriptive or is targeted to specific ailments. There is a whole section on bleeding—in the spring, blood should be taken from veins on the right side of the body. That, I will straight up ignore, because I want to believe that modern medicine has really truly proven that arbitrarily letting blood out of your body doesn’t do much. It’s not that we’re so much smarter about how we cleanse our insides, but compared to a blood- letting, a juice cleanse or enema looks tame. Day 1. I wake up in the morning, and start with Salerno’s steps for the morning routine. First, I wash my hands and face with cold water. I comb my hair and brush my teeth. I spend some time stretching. All this is supposed to “relax my brain.” Is my brain relaxed? I don’t know, but I am more awake than after my usual routine of spending 2. The greatest success of my first day is lunch: chicken with mushroom sauce, along with bread, grapes, and cheese. Having read too many medieval- influenced fantasy books as a kid, this is basically the simple lunch I have always dreamed of having at a town tavern. Salerno recommends ending the meal with cheese, which feels very civilized, probably because French people never forgot this advice. Day 2. One of the more mysterious pieces of advice Salerno gives is to wait to eat until the food has left your stomach. How do you know food has left your stomach? You’ll know, is basically what they tell you. Public domain. I spend a lot of time wondering: Am I hungry? Do I desire food now? Google informs me that it takes 4 to 5 hours for food to leave the stomach, so when my stomach starts rumbling 2ish hours after my last meal, I wait to eat. And wait, and wait, until I feel less specifically hungry and more lightheaded. Dinner is bread and cheese, which is apparently fine if you’re healthy (and poor). Day 4. By now, I have figured out how to eat more like a rich person. American cuisine has mostly abandoned the idea; the rich gravies we eat are likely to come from Thai or Indian restaurants or Central American spots and to be full of spicy peppers, tomatoes, or potatoes, all of which are off limits. Without cooking for myself, I find the best place to find rich gravies is at hot bars—Whole Foods makes a decent chicken fricassee—or hip bone broth joints. I get a chance to test the “don’t stress” part of the advice when I find out my car’s been towed. I can’t imagine that the upper class of Europe had to deal with New York Police Department bureaucracy. But probably their horses ran away? It does seem like a much better choice to shrug it off than to stew. I am somewhat successful. Day 5. One giant difference between diet advice of 1. Salerno never mentions losing weight or keeping skinny. In fact, all the foods Salerno smiles on, the poem describes as “fattening.” When you’re liable as not to face a famine or at least a food shortage at basically any time, fattening is good. A Flemish pig slaughter. Public domain. Pork meat, for example, is fattening, although it’s more complicated than that. Here’s what Salerno has to say about pork: “If you eat pork without wine, it is worse than mutton. If you add wine to pork, then it is food and medicine.”They’re right. My pork stew with red wine is great. I sleep 1. 0 hours. I feel great. I realize I am not drinking enough red wine. Day 8. Diluted wine is a revelation. It tastes a lot like a Vitamin water—fruity and sugary, in a cloudy, unspecific way—but alcoholic. Manageably alcoholic. I drank diluted wine for lunch and dinner. I was not drunk. I was not unable to work. I may have been unable to legally drive. I felt a bit light- headed and perhaps a bit less anxious than usual. French wine- making. Water is cooling and therefore bad for digestion. Wine is heating and helps digestion along. But it can be too hot. Mix wine and water together, and you have a balanced drink. Conveniently, wine’s antiseptic properties probably made the water safer. I never managed to drink quite the volume of wine that medieval people are reputed to, but I’m now convinced that most people were not drunk- drunk, just pleasantly buzzed. Considering the percentage of America’s population that’s regularly taking some mood- enhancing drug, we shouldn’t judge medieval people too harshly. Day 9. For a week and a half, I have been faithfully following Salerno’s morning regime. I have been following the advice to stand or walk around after meals. I have avoided afternoon naps. I have been eating bread, wine, grapes, cheese, and gravies. But there is one part of the medieval regime that I have been shirking. Back in the Middle Ages, breakfast was not exactly a thing, except for the weak, which included old people, kids, and sick people. Salerno doesn’t say anything explicit about how many meals one should eat. But it does hint that there are only two meals in the day. I really do. It is terrible. By noon, I am light- headed and starving. For lunch, I have bread, cheese, grapes, and chicken stewed with wine, prunes, and olives waiting for me. I have my diluted wine at the ready. But it feels gross to have the first thing I put in my mouth be chicken. I eat too much bread first. I eat the chicken too fast and am suddenly full. And then, it comes—the urge to nap. For the first time, I understand exactly why some of the advice in the poem is there. The Results. There’s a lot to be said for the Salerno regime. The morning routine is refreshing. Because it precludes sugar, many of the worst of our modern vices are eliminated. Because it doesn’t have anything spicy in it—the hottest foods in Europe at the time were mustard, horseradish, and imported black pepper—it’s easy on the stomach. Plus, you get to feel like a medieval lord, which is never a bad thing. How did it stack up from a modern point of view? I asked Andrea Grandson, a nutritional therapist who specializes in metabolic health, to go over the Salerno prescriptions with me.
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