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The Jean Harlow Mural Website
Copyright 2009 by San Diego Bay Photos and Bill Lewis
All rights reserved
For information regarding the protection, purchase, or exhibition of the mural, please email bill@jeanharlowmural.net
Or call 619 504 0772
The Ultimate Hollywood Collectible
All rights reserved
For information regarding the protection, purchase, or exhibition of the mural, please email bill@jeanharlowmural.net
Or call 619 504 0772
The Ultimate Hollywood Collectible
So where has this painting been for the last 77 years?
Good question.
My grandfather was a house-painter and wallpaper hanger who lived in the Lincoln Heights section of Los Angeles. He frequently did work in Beverly Hills, and, according to the story my mother told me, Jean Harlow asked him to paint the interior of her house. She specifically asked that the mural be removed and disposed of. I was told that my grandfather asked her if he could remove the painting and keep it. Her response was, "I don't care what you do with it, just get rid of the thing".
If you read up on the tumultuous relationship between Paul Bern and Jean Harlow and his subsequent suicide, you will get a feel for the time period when this request was made.
Two other notes worth mentioning in regard to this. First, The artist's wife told me that he (the artist) had heard from the studio that Jean Harlow wanted to remove the mural and was making plans to retrieve it himself. Somehow, he was involved in an unrelated altercation in which he was wounded by gunfire, and due to his surgery and recovery time, he never made it back to the Death House to get the mural before my grandfather was hired to remove it. Ignatieff himself died in 1995.
Secondly, I have spoken to David Stenn, who wrote "Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow" (who I might add is a fantastic guy and has been a big help to me in putting together some of the historical pieces). He has a slightly different and possible theory. Jean Harlow may have never set foot in the Death House again after Bern's death, and sold it quickly to a woman named Carmelita Guest. It may have been Ms. Guest who hired my grandfather to remove the mural. I never heard Guest's name mentioned by my family, only Jean Harlow's, but it is a possibility. A long-time Jean Harlow collector who also happens to be a friend of Mr Stenn sent me the 1930's newspaper clipping (see picture, below) that mentions the "famous painting" but I have no idea which newspaper it came out of or the exact date.
My grandfather was a house-painter and wallpaper hanger who lived in the Lincoln Heights section of Los Angeles. He frequently did work in Beverly Hills, and, according to the story my mother told me, Jean Harlow asked him to paint the interior of her house. She specifically asked that the mural be removed and disposed of. I was told that my grandfather asked her if he could remove the painting and keep it. Her response was, "I don't care what you do with it, just get rid of the thing".
If you read up on the tumultuous relationship between Paul Bern and Jean Harlow and his subsequent suicide, you will get a feel for the time period when this request was made.
Two other notes worth mentioning in regard to this. First, The artist's wife told me that he (the artist) had heard from the studio that Jean Harlow wanted to remove the mural and was making plans to retrieve it himself. Somehow, he was involved in an unrelated altercation in which he was wounded by gunfire, and due to his surgery and recovery time, he never made it back to the Death House to get the mural before my grandfather was hired to remove it. Ignatieff himself died in 1995.
Secondly, I have spoken to David Stenn, who wrote "Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow" (who I might add is a fantastic guy and has been a big help to me in putting together some of the historical pieces). He has a slightly different and possible theory. Jean Harlow may have never set foot in the Death House again after Bern's death, and sold it quickly to a woman named Carmelita Guest. It may have been Ms. Guest who hired my grandfather to remove the mural. I never heard Guest's name mentioned by my family, only Jean Harlow's, but it is a possibility. A long-time Jean Harlow collector who also happens to be a friend of Mr Stenn sent me the 1930's newspaper clipping (see picture, below) that mentions the "famous painting" but I have no idea which newspaper it came out of or the exact date.
The clipping, from the collection of Darrell Rooney.
Original source unknown:
Original source unknown:
The mural as it hung in my grandfather's house, 1941
My grandfather is the one at the back of the table, my mother is the young girl on the left!
My grandfather is the one at the back of the table, my mother is the young girl on the left!
The same room, Thanksgiving dinner, 1963
That kid with the glasses is me at age 10! Dad and my grandfather on the right,
my sister and grandmother on the left. Mom was the one taking the picture.
That kid with the glasses is me at age 10! Dad and my grandfather on the right,
my sister and grandmother on the left. Mom was the one taking the picture.
At any rate, my grandfather removed the mural from the Bern/Harlow house, and installed it as wallpaper on one wall of his
dining room. My earliest memories as a child (I am now 55 years old) were of having holiday dinner's in my grandparent's
home, with the faces of these famous Hollywood personalities looking down at me.
In 1969, my grandfather was walking across the street in a crosswalk near 5-Points in Lincoln Heights when he was struck and killed by a car. After that, my grandmother moved to Whittier and my mother had the mural professionally removed from the house in Los Angeles. She brought it to Whittier and had it mounted on a masonite-backed frame. It has hung in her house there for 40 years, again a secret from the press and the public.
In 2004 my mother passed away and recently my father has asked me to find a new home for the Jean Harlow mural. It just seemed to be a good time to put the painting up for sale and let it be known again to the public. My father has looked at it every day for the last 40 years; maybe it's just time for a change of wallpaper!
In 1969, my grandfather was walking across the street in a crosswalk near 5-Points in Lincoln Heights when he was struck and killed by a car. After that, my grandmother moved to Whittier and my mother had the mural professionally removed from the house in Los Angeles. She brought it to Whittier and had it mounted on a masonite-backed frame. It has hung in her house there for 40 years, again a secret from the press and the public.
In 2004 my mother passed away and recently my father has asked me to find a new home for the Jean Harlow mural. It just seemed to be a good time to put the painting up for sale and let it be known again to the public. My father has looked at it every day for the last 40 years; maybe it's just time for a change of wallpaper!