"Deadly Illusions, Jean Harlow and the Murder of Paul Bern"

In 1932, MGM producer Paul Bern was found shot to death at his home, and the incident ignited a wave of scandalous headlines in light of Bern's bride of two months being the sensational Jean Harlow. The official verdict accepted for decades was Bern committed suicide in his humiliation of impotency to his sex symbol wife and a note substantiated this claim. Yet a mysterious aura surrounded Bern's death because suicide failed to make sense and too many questions were left unanswered. Samuel Marx and Joyce Vanderveen dug into the ancient case seeking the truth of the matter and the title "Deadly Illusions" (Random House, 271 pages) refers to the mistruths of Bern's death.

Marx was a friend of Bern's, present at the death scene and as MGM's story editor, privy to the inner circle of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Bern had been one of Thalberg's boys and Thalberg took the death of his close friend hard but bowed to the demands of Mayer. The MGM boss lacked sympathy for the loss of Bern and cared only for averting potential scandal blackening the studio's name and destroying its hottest property, Harlow. The MGM name and Harlow had to be protected at any cost especially since the revelation of a mystery woman visiting Bern that fatal night, and Mayer shuddered at the nightmare of Harlow being accused of murdering her husband. Mayer did not know or care if it was suicide or murder, but the suicide angle was a convenient way out of the mess. Any objections over Bern's so-called impotency and proof he was a known ladies' man were squelched by Mayer's heavy hand.