In 1929, while filming Hell’s Angels—an early silent epic based on the events of the First World War—Hollywood starlet Jean Harlow met a 42-year-old MGM writer, producer, and director named Paul Bern.
On Bern’s recommendation, Harlow was taken on by MGM on her 21st birthday in 1932, on an impressive $30,000 contract. But by then, the couple had become romantically involved: Three months later, they announced their engagement, and they were wed on July 2, 1932.
Shortly afterward, Harlow was working on her next movie, Red Dust when tragedy struck. On the morning of September 5, Bern’s naked body was found by his butler in the couple’s bedroom.
Bern had shot himself, leaving a simple yet somewhat mysterious suicide note: “Dearest Dear, unfortunately this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you, and to wipe out my abject humiliation. I love you. Paul. You understand that last night was only a comedy.”
Bern’s death—just two months after his and Harlow’s wedding—shocked Hollywood. Despite rumors to the contrary, Harlow denied any knowledge of his death, and made a simple statement claiming that she “knew nothing” of what had happened to both the police and a grand jury. An investigation was launched, but Bern’s death was nevertheless registered as suicide, with no further inquiry necessary.
Initially fearing the bad press that would undoubtedly follow such a tumultuous event, producer Louis B Meyer fired Harlow from Red Dust as soon as the story had broken and offered the role to Tallulah Bankhead instead. But Harlow’s silence on the matter successfully kept her name out of the headlines, and when Bankhead turned down the role, Harlow was rehired.
(“To damn the radiant Jean for the misfortune of another,” Bankhead later recalled, “would be one of the shabbiest acts of all time [and] I told Mr. Mayer as much.”)
Despite the scandal, Red Dust was a huge hit, and Harlow went on to become one of the biggest stars of the 1930s—though sadly, she too later died in 1937, at the age of just 26.
Given the mysterious wording of Bern’s suicide note—and Harlow’s longstanding silence on the matter—rumors surrounding his death have continued to circulate in the years since.
And when it was later discovered that Bern’s former wife, Dorothy Millette, was found drowned in the Sacramento River just two days after his death, those rumors became ever more vicious. What precisely the circumstances surrounding his death were, however, will never be known.