| Paul Bern | |
|---|---|
| Born | Paul Levy December 3, 1889 Wandsbek, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany (now Hamburg, Germany) |
| Died | September 5, 1932 (aged 42) Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Screenwriter, director, producer |
| Years active | 1919–1932 |
| Spouse | Jean Harlow (m. 1932–1932) |
Paul Bern (December 3, 1889 – September 5, 1932) was a German-born American film director, screenwriter and producer for MGM.
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Bern was born Paul Levy to a Jewish family in Wandsbek, which was then a town in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein (now a district of the city of Hamburg). Bern's family immigrated to the United States in 1899 where they eventually settled in New York City.[1]
Bern pursued a career in acting on the stage and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[1] He later pursued other aspects of theater production. He eventually moved to Hollywood and worked as a writer and director for various, smaller film companies. This led to his working full-time as a producer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the major studio of the time.
The star-studded film Grand Hotel, released six days after Bern's death, won the Best Picture Academy Award for 1931–32. Bern and Irving Thalberg produced the film, although neither was listed in the film credits. (In the early 1930s MGM did not list their films' producers in their credits.) However, the prestigious award was presented solely to Thalberg and Bern was excluded.
Bern married film star Jean Harlow on July 2, 1932.[2] Two months later, on September 5, he was found dead, from a gunshot in the head, in their home on Easton Drive, Beverly Hills, California.[3] The coroner ruled his death a suicide.[4][4][5][5][6][6]
Police discovered a note at the scene that read as follows:
"Dearest Dear, Unfortuately [sic] this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love [sic] you.
Paul
You understand that last night was only a comedy"
Authorities viewed this as a suicide note signed by Bern.
To the police, and before a grand jury, Harlow's only statement was that she "knew nothing". Harlow never publicly spoke on the matter. She died in 1937.[7]
Bern is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery, in Inglewood, California.
In the November 1960 issue of Playboy, screenwriter Ben Hecht questioned the official verdict of Bern's death causing renewed interest in the case.[8] Hecht suggested that Bern was murdered by an unnamed woman, and that Bern's death investigation was a "suicide whitewash". Hecht went on to say that the explanation of Bern's suicide "would be less a black eye for their [MGM's] biggest movie making heroine. It might crimp her [Harlow's] box office allure to have her blazoned as a wife who couldn't hold her husband".[9] The article prompted Los Angeles County District Attorney William B. McKesson to reopen the case, but McKesson later closed it stating, "When I ordered the record check I assumed Hecht was still a responsible reporter. It now appears...that he apparently was peddling a wild and unconfirmed rumor as fact."[9]
In 1990, film producer Samuel Marx, a friend of both Bern and Irving Thalberg, published a book giving an alternate theory of Bern's death. Marx, at the time MGM's Story Editor (the head of the screenwriting department) had gone to Bern's house in the early morning of September 5, 1932, before the police were notified of the body's discovery, and had seen Thalberg tampering with the evidence. The next day, he had been among the studio executives who were told by Louis B. Mayer that the case would have to be ruled "suicide because of impotence" in order to avoid a scandal which would have finished Harlow's film career. Marx contended that Bern was murdered by his abandoned common law wife Dorothy Millette, who then committed suicide by drowning, jumping overboard from the Delta King on the way to Sacramento, California.[10]