The Platinum Blog Starring Jean Harlow

Stenn's 'Girl 27' has Sundance fest abuzz

Hollywood rape scandal documentary has US Sundance fest abuzz

by James Joseph, Agence France Presse (AFP News)
Fri Jan 26, 12:08 PM ET

One of the most notorious yet long-forgotten scandals in Hollywood history involving the brutal rape of a teenage chorus girl is back in the spotlight at the Sundance Film Festival.

US writer-director David Stenn's "Girl 27" lifts the lid on the rape of Patricia Douglas at a wild party organised by studio giants Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at a Los Angeles ranch in 1937.

Hobnobbing at Harlow's

Last night Walter and I were invited to a very special Jean Harlow Junkies mixer at 512 N. Palm in Beverly Hills, the last house she lived in before her untimely death in 1937.

Here we are sitting on the staircase just inside the front door.

If I didn't take photos I would have woken up this morning thinking it had all been a dream: To walk the hardwood floors that Jean herself once did, to stand inside the bedroom where she grew increasingly ill before being taken to Good Samaritan Hospital.  And to think of the happier times she hopefully spent inside those walls.

This is just a sneak preview to a full article I'm working on for The Platinum Page to be posted this weekend.  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, very special thanks to our hosts, Mark & Nancy Walsh (who just listed the house for sale this week) and my buddy Scott Michaels for making it all possible!

New Film by David Stenn

A Hollywood role she never asked for

'Girl 27' probes the 1937 rape of a studio extra, how it was hushed up and how it changed the victim forever.

By Robin Abcarian, LA Times Staff Writer
January 19, 2007

Momentous things happened the first week of June 1937. Jean Harlow, one of Hollywood's biggest stars, died suddenly and mysteriously at 26. The Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated his kingdom, married the woman he loved. And, though nobody would remember it, a 20-year-old dancer and extra named Patricia Douglas who'd been raped by an MGM salesman at a studio party futilely pressed for justice.

David Stenn, a 45-year-old Los Angeles biographer and TV writer, stumbled across her story when he was researching his 1993 book, "Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow." When his editor, Jackie Onassis, asked him what project he'd like to tackle next, he told her about the long-forgotten rape and the victim's harrowing legal battle against the studio.

Years of digging led to a Vanity Fair story by Stenn in 2003, and then to his directorial debut with "Girl 27," a self-financed documentary that will premiere Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. "Girl 27" is an uneven but strangely compelling documentary about a shocking and highly publicized event that disappeared into the mists of studio history.