Margot Asquith and Jean Harlow

Outram examines the famous story about Margot Asquith's encounter with Jean Harlow, the sexpot movie actress. Even if it is false the story still retains interest as a metaphor for aspects of twentieth-century Anglo-American cultural relations. One notes the contrasting ages of the two protagon...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Notes and queries 2012-09, Vol.59 (3), p.425-428
Main Author: Outram, Quentin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actors
Asquith, Margot (Countess of Oxford & Asquith)
Cultural relations
Harlow, Jean
Metaphor
Nobility
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Summary:Outram examines the famous story about Margot Asquith's encounter with Jean Harlow, the sexpot movie actress. Even if it is false the story still retains interest as a metaphor for aspects of twentieth-century Anglo-American cultural relations. One notes the contrasting ages of the two protagonists: Margot Asquith, from the old country, was 66 in 1930; Jean Harlow, from the new, was 19. The easy familiarity of Harlow was a manner rooted in traditions of democracy and equality; the insistence on formality by Asquith was rooted in the traditions of a class-divided society. The story is based on an assumption of a moral superiority by the British over supposedly materialistic Americans. It assumes that the rules of social intercourse between superiors and inferiors in Britain were, unlike those supposed to hold sway in the US, asymmetric so that the mispronunciation of a person's name by an inferior was to be treated as an unpardonable solecism while an ungrounded accusation of harlotry by a superior was, if delivered with wit, to be treated as a matter for applause.
ISSN:0029-3970
1471-6941
DOI:10.1093/notesj/gjs131