Vanishing Acts

Since the beginning of cinema, becoming a movie star has been a singular symbol of success. In the 1930s and ‘40s, silver screen stardom was an aspiration that promised a life of adulation, glamour, and privilege – unlike the lives of everyday people.

But for some, the drive for stardom came at a high price. I’m looking at four top actresses of that scintillating era, glamorous ghosts who briefly burned white-hot and then disappeared – their lives either suddenly cut short or their careers halted due to painful personal tragedy prolonged for decades.

The Bombshell Defused
In the early 1930s, Jean Harlow exemplified the “blonde bombshell.” Volatile, electric, explosive. She was the original “platinum blonde” – a term created for her.

Discovered by Fox Studios (later 20^th Century Fox), Harlow made an auspicious early appearance in Howard Hughes’s big-budget film “Hell’s Angels” in the transitional year of 1930. The persona that evolved was that of the sexy, brash vixen. Female movie-goers saw her as a tough-talking best pal; guys loved the uninhibited gal with a heart of gold.

Harlow was never billed as a bad-girl type, but in the early ‘30s – before the more stringent production code that came into effect in Hollywood by 1934 – the studio could play up her frank sexuality. By the middle of the decade, however, the studio began to soften her image, even dimming her shimmering head of white-blonde hair to a light brown.

She was one of the biggest stars of the decade, exemplifying the glittering world of black and white cinema. She was at the height of her fame by 1937, but during the making of “Saratoga,” she became gravely ill. Her leading man Clark Gable knew something was wrong, but outside of a few other fellow actors, no one seemed to take her symptoms seriously.

Harlow went into the hospital with symptoms of kidney failure – and died there suddenly on June 7, 1937. She was only 26. Her fans were stunned that someone so vital could suddenly disappear so quickly. Eighty years hence, Jean Harlow remains frozen in time as a young, yearning figure draped in feathers and furs – awaiting her next take.

Side note: In 1932, after just two months of marriage, Harlow’s husband Paul Bern was found dead in their home – an alleged suicide. The actual circumstances of his death have never been determined, but the incident adds to her mystique.

Not to Be

Carole Lombard was the essence of what it meant to be a movie star in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Classier than Harlow, she was nonetheless an irresistible free spirit. She had a marvelous voice that could be gloriously comic or, when needed, pitched slightly lower to fit a dramatic scenario. She was a gorgeous dame with spunk and class.

Screwball comedy proved her niche. She had a knack for fast-paced dialogue delivery, sophisticated humor, and a physicality that counterbalanced her austere beauty. She co-starred with the biggest names of the day, from Gary Cooper to Cary Grant, Bing Crosby to Shirley Temple. She made four films with Fred MacMurray, and even co-starred with ex-husband William Powell in one of her biggest hits, "My Man Godfrey," in 1936.

By 1939, Lombard was married to Clark Gable in the biggest star romance of the era. And, she was trying new career territory, with a couple of straight dramas to test her acting mettle. Critics agreed she was more than just a screwball heroine. So in the daring anti-Nazi black comedy “To Be or Not to Be,” she combined both dramatic and comedic skills. At this time, she put her patriotism to work by leading a war bond drive that helped raise over $2,000,000 in one night. After that drive, on January 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother, and 19 servicemen boarded a plane in Indianapolis to head back to California.

But the plane mysteriously crashed into a Nevada mountain en route, killing everyone on board. Lombard was just 33. The death of this symbol of American life, freedom, and joy on a lonely mountainside – at the advent of a catastrophic world war – seemed to signal that the cinematic golden age she represented was slowly but surely nearing its end.

This Is Your Life

Hollywood has always been about fresh faces, and when Frances Farmer was discovered by Paramount Pictures in 1935, she was a new sensation. An aspiring stage actress born in Seattle and trained in New York, Farmer possessed a compelling combination of classic beauty and an earnest demeanor. She was sort of a Greta Garbo of the Pacific Northwest.

Farmer considered herself a serious actress, so it was an adjustment to appear as the love interest in a middling Bing Crosby musical shortly after arriving in Hollywood. A couple of B movies in, and she finally got a prestigious film based on the well-regarded novel “Come and Get It” in 1936. It garnered her great critical and popular attention, and she felt as though she was finally being appreciated for her talent.

Yet Farmer rebelled against nearly every facet of the Hollywood studio system, and her reputation for being argumentative, arrogant, and entitled grew. She was quickly relegated to one-dimensional supporting parts. But her downfall was motivated by more than just a rebellious spirit and reduced parts. In addition to a failed marriage and a scuttled affair with a famous playwright, Farmer was battling alcoholism. She became increasing abusive, both verbally and physically. In a burst of rage on one occasion, she even dislocated the jaw of a makeup woman.

Finally, with a highly publicized arrest in 1942, the studio had had enough, and Farmer’s career abruptly ended. She was 29. Repeated altercations with the police and well-publicized incidents of violent, erratic behavior due to paranoid schizophrenia led to eight years in and out of psychiatric wards and mental institutions. It was a harrowing period of shock treatments and even a claim of a lobotomy.

By 1950, with her once-splendid career behind her, Farmer entered a phase of quiet anonymity. She took various jobs that didn’t require a name: laundress, bookkeeper, hotel receptionist. A curious reporter wrote a magazine article about her, which led to renewed public interest. She was invited to make several TV appearances, including the unctuous Ralph Edwards-hosted “This is Your Life.”

The renewed where-is-she-now notoriety led to a few acting roles on television dramas, as well as a single, minor film role. Farmer then became the hostess of a daytime television program in Indianapolis (where Lombard boarded that fateful plane). Farmer had sporadic theater work throughout the 1960s and, although she seemed professionally content at this time, her personal demons were never really at bay. When she died of cancer in 1970 at 56, she was still a troubled woman – only a ghost of her former self.

Side note: That famous playwright with whom Farmer had a "scuttled affair" was Clifford Odets, who was married at the time to film star Luise Rainer – another infamous flame-out who I talked about here. In 1982, Jessica Lange portrayed Farmer in a controversial biography called "Frances." The veracity of some of the depictions of her mental breakdown have been questioned, including the purported lobotomy. But it remains a vivid recreation of the world she suffered within and against.

Hold That Blonde

When Connie Ockelman's family moved to Beverly Hills in the late 1930s, she was a pretty, diminutive teenager. Hollywood beckoned, and she became Veronica Lake.

A supporting part in 1941’s “I Wanted Wings” as a nightclub singer made her a hit overnight. A natural, unaffected style combined with that famous long blonde hair draped over one eye heralded a new look and presence for the war years of the 1940s.

A plum role in the Preston Sturges social comedy “Sullivan’s Travels” featured an impish quality and a wry, subtle humor. While 1942 was a bad year for Frances Farmer, it was a great one for Lake. She appeared for the first time opposite rising star Alan Ladd in the film noir “This Gun for Hire,” a big enough hit that it was followed quickly by a reteaming in “The Glass Key.” Two more films together later in the decade would cement Ladd and Lake as a legendary team emblematic of the smoky, mysterious, dream-like world of film noir.

A few more good parts for Lake during the war years led to a litany of forgettable comedies and musicals, including one called “Hold That Blonde.” But nothing seemed to hold Lake; burgeoning alcoholism and a terrible temperament made her unpopular with her fellow actors. A growing paranoia was holding her more than she was holding together life or career.

By her last studio film in 1951, when she was only 29, one hurdle after another had beset her. Multiple divorces, a miscarriage, bankruptcy, losing her home for back taxes, arrests and alcoholic dissolution sent Lake into obscurity. In 1959, she was discovered living at a women’s hotel in New York City, where she worked as a bartender.

As if parallel with Frances Farmer, hitting bottom for Lake became fodder for the tabloids. As a result, Lake found brief renewed interest. In the 1960s, she got a few stage parts – including playing the tragic Blanche DuBois in a British production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” – and, like Farmer, got a job hosting a local daytime TV show, this one in Baltimore.

She made one more movie, a bizarre, cheaply-made horror film in 1970 that was funded by the profits from her autobiography. When she died three years later of cirrhosis of the liver at age 50, she was a nearly forgotten curio of a brighter past. In a sad coda, there wasn’t enough money to pay for the removal of her ashes, so they remained locked away in a funeral home for many years.

Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars

Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Frances Farmer and Veronica Lake are all quite different women, with varying degrees of talent and staying power. Harlow is a symbol of 1930s Hollywood. Lombard practically invented the female presence in screwball comedy. Farmer, despite her notorious personal life, has not a single classic among her short filmography. Lake is emblematic of Tinsel Town of the 1940s, and several of her films with Ladd are classics of the film noir form.

Despite their differences, they share in common a singular style, beauty, personality, and presence – as well as uniquely tragic trajectories of fame. They all came to the ever-changing medium of the movies as luminous rockets, then disappeared – vanished ghosts of a vanished Hollywood.

Related: 

Joel McCrae: The Lake-Farmer Connection
The underrated leading man Joel McCrae co-starred opposite Veronica Lake in her best film, "Sullivan's Travels," in 1941. He was slated to be her leading man in "I Married a Witch" the following year, but he begged off, saying: "Life is too short for two films with Veronica Lake." 

Despite his disdain, they would make the western "Ramrod" together in 1947, at which point Lake's career was already in free-fall. Interestingly, McCrae was also Frances Farmer's leading man in her biggest success, "Come and Get It," in 1936.

The Lombard-Harlow Leading Man Timeline
Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow criss-crossed their leading men with great frequency:

- 1931: Lombard marries William Powell. Together, that year they make "Ladies' Man" and "Man of the World".
- 1932: Lombard makes "No Man of Her Own" with Clark Gable. Harlow makes "Red Dust" with Gable.
- 1933: Lombard divorces Powell. Harlow makes "Hold Your Man" with Gable.
- 1935: Harlow makes "Reckless" with Powell, and "China Seas" with Gable.
- 1936: Harlow makes "Libeled Lady" with Powell and "Suzy" with Cary Grant. Lombard makes "My Man Godfrey" with ex-husband Powell.
- 1937: Harlow makes "Wife vs. Secretary" with Gable and James Stewart, and starts, but does not finish, "Saratoga," also with Gable.
- 1939: Lombard marries Gable, and makes "In Name Only" with Grant and "Made for Each Other" with Stewart.