Paul Bern was a writer, director, and producer at MGM. He was not classically handsome like the movie stars he was directing, but somehow he caught the eye and heart of Jean Harlow. Harlow was one of the biggest sex symbols of her day, known as the "Blonde Bombshell."
But getting the girl that most of the men in America wanted did not bring Bern happiness. Harlow's family was demanding, and they put a strain on the marriage. Two months after the marriage, Jean was spending the night with her mother and Paul Bern was found dead. He had apparently shot himself in the head.
I say apparently because the police were not called in until after the studio fixers had been on the scene. A note was found that apologized for the frightful wrong he had done her and that this was the only way to wipe out his "abject humiliation." It also said: "You understand that last night was only a comedy."
His doctor said he knew the reason for Bern killing himself, but wouldn't say what it was. The MGM studio fixers said it was because Paul was biologically unfit for marriage—coded language for having a small penis. There were other rumors that he was gay.
If he had some sort of sexual dysfunction, which almost everyone involved seemed to suggest—Jean refused to say anything at all on the subject, even at the coroner's inquiry—it didn't slow him down too much.
Not only had Bern been having a fling with his secretary, but he was already common law married to a woman named Dorothy Millette. That marriage had been as tragic as his marriage to Harlow's, if not more.
First, Bern's mother carried through on a threat to commit suicide over the relationship. Then Dorothy had some sort of illness and went to a sanitarium. While she was there, Bern moved to California—though he wrote her regularly and continued to support her financially. However, they were not together as man and wife, even though they were still legally married.
There are theories that Dorothy killed Bern and the studio covered it up to protect Harlow from scandal. I'm not sure being a bigamist who is murdered is more scandalous than committing suicide because you either have a little dick or you can't get it up, and her motive would be questionable.
Bern had recently changed his will to leave everything to Harlow. Since he had been Dorothy's sole source of income, the moment he died she became destitute. In fact, compounding the tragedy, the day after his death, Millette threw herself off a boat and followed her husband into oblivion.
Harlow moved on with her life. She continued working in movies and married again to Harold Rosson, but that was mostly to deflect from her scandalous affair with the married boxer Max Baer. Still, this sham marriage lasted eight months, four times longer than her genuine marriage to Bern. Jean also had a long relationship with William Powell, of Thin Man fame, but he refused to marry her.
Harlow suffered from some health issues, and fell ill while working on the movie Saratoga with Clark Gable in May 1937. After getting misdiagnosed for several days, it was finally found that she was in the final stages of kidney failure. She was 26 years old when she died.
She had been married three times, she was one of the biggest stars in the world, and she had even written a novel that was published after her death. Jean Harlow packed a lot of life into those 26 short years. Sharon Tate was also 26 when she died 32 years later in a much more horrific way. But that wasn't the only connection the two actresses had.
In the mid 60s Sharon Tate started dating hair stylist Jay Sebring. Jay owned a house that was owned by Harlow's husband Paul Bern. In fact, it was the house that Bern died in. It was the house that Paul Bern's ghost was said to haunt. One of the people who claimed to have seen Bern's ghost was Sharon Tate. She also saw a vision of Sebring tied up and bloody.
Tate and Sebring's romance came to an end and she married director Roman Polanski. But they remained friends, which was why he was at her house on August 8, 1969. Her house was about to become more infamous than the Paul Bern/Jean Harlow house that she and Sebring shared. Tate and Sebring were both murdered by members of the Manson Family that night, in one of the most well known murder cases of all time. Jay Sebring's body was discovered tied up and bloody, just how Sharon had seen him in her vision in the haunted house they had lived in previously.
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