17. Jean Harlow was the original blonde bombshell
Actress Jean Harlow was a scandalmonger’s dream, openly flaunting her sexuality on screen to the point that new censorship restrictions were written to curb her filmed allure. She created scandal by aborting a pregnancy in which the father was a leading man in one of her films, married to another (William Powell). She regularly and openly consorted with known gangsters, including Bugsy Siegel, and in response to her husband’s impotence (at least according to wagging tongues in Hollywood), she carried on an affair with Clark Gable, one which she thought belonged in the headlines of the local papers, much to his chagrin. After her husband responded to the affair by committing suicide (by gunshot, though according to the police he took the time to strip naked before shooting himself), the press speculated whether Jean had been involved in some manner or another.
In 1936, the wife of Max Baer, the former Heavyweight Champion of the World (and eventually the father of Max Baer Jr, who portrayed Jethro Bodine on The Beverly Hillbillies), named Jean as one of the women with whom her husband had been unfaithful to his marriage. Harlow seemed primed for another scandal but before it could become the talk of the town she died suddenly, at the age of 26, of kidney failure. Fittingly, Harlow’s Hollywood career had begun with her as a starlet under the wing of Howard Hughes. During her short career, she was linked romantically with Clark Gable, William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Hughes, Baer, Paul Bern, Louis B. Mayer, Franchot Tone, Lee Tracy, James Stewart, and others, including Talullah Bankhead, Clara Bow, and Joan Crawford. Needless to say, the tabloid press loved her.