GUEST: I acquired it from a lifelong friend that passed away, and, and it was left to me by he and his widow.
APPRAISER: Do you know where he got it?
GUEST: I, I don't. Uh, he was a big collector of autographs, of movie star autographs, and I had admired this one through the years. And so when he passed, it, it, his widow saw that I got it.
APPRAISER: Yeah, and we're ignoring the, the signature in the room here, which is down there on the lower left.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: It reads, "To my darling Ruthie, don't forget me. So much love." One of the things that is, is pretty widely known is that her mother signed most of the photographs...
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: ...that we see out there in the market. Mama Jean, we call her, and she would...
GUEST: (laughs)
APPRAISER: When she would sign for fans, she wrote what fans would want to see, "Jean Harlow." One of the tells, as I think you've probably picked up on, is that Jean would just sign "Jean."
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And the signature does look good to me. She was born in 1911, and she died so tragically young, in 1937. Sadly, she'd only done a f, a few fil... Well, a few-- for the short time she had, she has quite a body of work. She was a sultry, the f, the original blonde bombshell...
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: Which, a lot of people think, Marilyn Monroe tried to...
GUEST: Yup.
APPRAISER: ...mirror herself off of Jean's career. Marilyn would have been 11 when she died, so she very well did look at her as someone she wished she could be or aspire to. This image is, uh, you know, at the peak and the height of her fame. It's, probably dates circa 1935.
GUEST: I understood that she bleached her hair out, and the bleach got into her blood system and went to her kidneys, and she died of kidney failure.
APPRAISER: So she, she actually did die of kidney failure. The issue is, it's the, it wasn't peroxide that killed her. She actually, as a child, suffered from scarlet fever.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: And she had a number of other health issues. And so what unfortunately happened is, when she started showing symptoms-- they also
suspect she may have had hypothyroidism-- these symptoms were masked because she was drinking pretty heavily.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: And so some of the, the bloating and the, the other symptoms that maybe would have been picked up on, they all thought was something else. And so it didn't go diagnosed until it was very late.
GUEST: Oh, I see.
APPRAISER: And to be honest, even if they had diagnosed kidney failure, they didn't invent kidney dialysis until years later.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: And they didn't do transplants until the '50s. So they probably couldn't have saved her anyway, which is just so tragic. But all of that
means that she signed very few photos in her lifetime. And so, although most Hollywood photos, unless you're the biggest stars, are worth a m, smaller amount of money, Jean Harlow photos like this, when they come up for sale, routinely sell usually in the $3,000 range at auction?
GUEST: Mm-hmm-- mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Now, the inscription reads, "To my darling Ruthie." We could, probably could do some research and determine who Ruthie is. Then you're looking at something that could be more like $5,000 to $7,000.
GUEST: I had always loved the photograph, and my friend that passed away, it was one of my, his favorite, so, uh, I was honored to, to have it.
