10 Things You Didn’t Know Actors Were BANNED From Doing

10. Jean Harlow Wasn't Allowed To Get Married

Hollywood was a very different place back in the 1930s.

Back then, performers were often restricted and controlled in the wake of signing contracts with certain studios, with some of these companies even forbidding their talent from doing something as normal as getting married.

It was heavily rumoured, and noted by the author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood book Anne Helen Petersen, that none other than the "Blonde Bombshell" herself Jean Harlow was banned from marrying her partner William Powell during this period. MGM, who she had signed a contract with at that time, "had written a clause into her contract forbidding her to marry." (via Vanity Fair.)

The reason? Because a "bombshell" just had to be single, right? 

The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine book written by E.J. Fleming also stated that Harlow ended up getting pregnant during that affair. And when she got in touch with MGM's Head of Publicity Howard Strickling after learning of the news, a "Mrs. Jean Carpenter" eventually made her way into Good Shepherd Hospital “to get some rest.”

Not suspicious at all.

The Hollywood "sex symbol" would then only be seen by private nurses and doctors during her time there.