Paul Bern

Case background and investigation

Paul Bern was born Paul Levy on December 3, 1889, in Wandsbek, now part of Hamburg, Germany, and came to the United States with his family as a child. After working in the theater he moved to Hollywood in the early 1920s, where he wrote and directed films before becoming a producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and an assistant to production chief Irving Thalberg. He was among those behind Grand Hotel, which was released days after his death.

Bern helped advance the career of actress Jean Harlow, and the two married on July 2, 1932. On September 5, 1932, he was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head at their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills. He was 42. Harlow had spent the night at her mother's house. Police found a short handwritten note at the scene, addressed to "Dearest Dear," in which the writer spoke of making good a wrong and of humiliation. Authorities treated it as a suicide note.

A coroner's jury found that Bern had taken his own life; according to Time magazine, the verdict described the motive as undetermined. Harlow told investigators she knew nothing that could explain the death. Bern's funeral was held on September 9, 1932, at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

Attention soon turned to Dorothy Millette, with whom Bern had lived in New York years earlier and who was described as his common-law wife. She had spent a long period in a sanitarium, and Bern had supported her financially. Millette traveled to California in 1932, and her body was recovered from the Sacramento River shortly after Bern's death. Her death was determined to be a suicide; she had been a passenger on the river steamer Delta King.

Questions about the official finding have persisted. In 1960 the writer Ben Hecht asserted in a magazine article that Bern had been murdered, prompting Los Angeles County District Attorney William B. McKesson to review the records; he closed the matter and characterized the claim as an unconfirmed rumor. In 1990, former MGM story editor Samuel Marx published a book stating that studio executives had reached the house before police were called, and arguing that Millette had shot Bern. Time, reviewing the book, noted that a key part of that account rested on a secondhand story attributed to a deceased studio security chief.

These theories have not been tested in any legal proceeding, and no one was ever charged. The official ruling of suicide stands.