Paul Bern helped launch the career of Jean Harlow, whom he married in July 1932; two months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, leaving what appeared to be a suicide note.
21 Facts About Paul Bern
2.
Paul Bern was one of six children of Julius and Henriette Levy, a Jewish couple.
3.
Paul Bern soon realized he had little aptitude for acting and pursued other aspects of theater production.
4.
Paul Bern worked as a stage manager for a time before moving to Hollywood in the early 1920s.
5.
Paul Bern was initially a film editor before he worked his way up to scenario writing and directing for United Artists and Paramount Pictures.
6.
Paul Bern eventually became the production assistant of Irving Thalberg and then a producer on the MGM lot in his own right.
7.
The award was presented solely to Thalberg since Paul Bern, being deceased, obviously could not accept it.
8.
Paul Bern did not reciprocate his feelings, but the two remained close friends and confidants.
9.
Paul Bern assisted her with her career, paid for her medical and funeral expenses, and was by her bedside when she died.
10.
Paul Bern was godfather to her son Don Gallery, and Jean Harlow was his godmother.
11.
However, a DNA test done by Gallery later proved that Paul Bern was not his father.
12.
Paul Bern financially supported Millette, who reportedly suffered from mental and emotional problems and ended up in a Connecticut sanatorium.
13.
Paul Bern's body was found in the Sacramento River two days after Bern's death.
14.
Paul Bern met actress Jean Harlow shortly before the premiere of Hell's Angels in 1930.
15.
Paul Bern was instrumental in helping Harlow's career, as he was the only person who took her seriously as an actress.
16.
Paul Bern died of renal failure in June 1937 at the age of 26.
17.
Two thousand people attended Paul Bern's funeral, held on September 9,1932, at the Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery.
18.
Paul Bern was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the Golden West Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery.
19.
Hecht suggested that Paul Bern was murdered by an unnamed woman and that the investigation into Paul Bern's death was a "suicide whitewash".
20.
In 1990, film producer Samuel Marx, a friend and MGM colleague of both Paul Bern and Irving Thalberg, published a book giving a different version of Paul Bern's death.
21.
Marx, after reviewing the evidence, concluded that Paul 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 from San Francisco to Sacramento, California.