Comet Over Hollywood: Jean Harlow's last curtain call: Saratoga

Do you remember seeing “Brainstorm” in 1983?

You may have had an eerie feeling knowing that Natalie Wood wasn’t really in some of those shots. Wood drowned during the filming and a body double was used and shot from a distance for her remaining scenes.

This wasn’t the first time this was done.

Jean Harlow’s death in 1937 at the age of 26 of uremic poisoning brought on by acute nephritis. Her death came to a shock to many; particularly those working on her last film “Saratoga.”

Anita Loos described in her 1977 book “Cast of Thousands: A Pictorial Memoir of the Most Glittering Stars in Hollywood” waiting on the set with Clark Gable and other stars in the film for Jean Harlow to get out of the hospital.

Loos wrote the screenplay for “Saratoga” along with several other Jean Harlow, who celebrated her 102nd birthday last week, films like “Red Headed Woman.”

The stars were under the impression that Harlow would get well again, the film would be completed and they would continue on with their usual business. Loos said Harlow had been off the set for a few days and they continued shooting the scenes without her. When they received the phone call of her death they were shocked and close friend Clark Gable-who nicknamed her Sis-was devastated.
I saw “Saratoga” two summers ago and thought it was entertaining but rather disturbing. The film was incomplete when Harlow died, so several of her scenes had to be shot with her double Mary Dees and a voice double.

The scenes after Jean’s death are weird and uncomfortable to watch for a couple of reasons:

1. The fact that you know she is dead, even though you saw her before at the beginning of the movie
2. The covering of the face, the irritating fake voice and the thin scenes the double is in are disconcerting. The voice drives me up the wall and part of you is like “Turn around, I want to see Jean’s face” though you know it’s not her. The scenes with the double are so brief and fleeting that you can tell the crew was saying “Let’s wrap this up as quickly and painlessly as possible.”
3. The fact that Jean is in the last scene singing with Clark Gable on the train. I guess this scene was shot earlier, but you almost think “Oh there she is, she’s okay.”

Regardless of the double, the general plot of “Saratoga” is good and it has a strong cast including Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Frank Morgan and Lionel Barrymore. Clark Gable is his usual scoundrel, playing a gambler this time, who wins a ranch in a bet from Lionel Barrymore. Now that he’s won Barrymore’s ranch, Clark is now trying to win over his daughter Jean Harlow. This was Harlow and Clark’s sixth and last film together.