Jean Harlow, the original blonde bombshell, started the trend for bleaching hair in the 1930s. Before this it was very much just
prostitutes woman of ill-repute who coloured their hair, it certainly wasn’t something done by ‘nice girls’
When Harlow exploded onto the silver screen in the early 1930s her white blonde hair caused a real stir. Throughout the 1920s fashions had favoured dark-haired girls, and the movie stars of the 20s reflected this, jut think of the 20s style icons Louise Brooks, Clara Bow, Theda Bara etc. All ‘natural’ dark haired beauties.
But Harlow changed all this. Throughout her career she maintained that her hair colour was completely natural, but was ‘outed’ by her hairdresser who said he used a toxic mixture of peroxide, ammonia, Clorox (domestic liquid bleach) and Lux flakes to colour her hair.
Whether her hair colour was natural or not (it wasn’t) it started off a huge change in hair fashions. By the end of the 1930s pretty much every Hollywood star had blonde hair, even Bette Davis and Joan Crawford went platinum blonde for a while (see the gallery of 1930s platinum blondes below)!
On a more sinister note there’s a suggestion that Harlow’s drastic weekly hair bleaching contributed to her early death. She died in 1937 aged just 26 from kidney failure, by which time her hair had started to fall out and she was wearing a wig. The hair dye Harlow used really was toxic, if you mix together Ammonia and Clorax it creates hydrochloric acid, which when inhaled can cause kidney damage.
Who knows whether was her platinum blonde hair that ultimately killed her, or whether it was caused by one of the other rumoured contributing factors (which ranged from her party-lifestyle to alcoholism, to extreme-dieting, sunstroke, a botched abortion or various venereal diseases).
Either way, by the time of her tragic death, Jean Harlow had changed the way we think about hair colour forever. The platinum blonde was here to stay!
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