HOLLYWOOD SCANDALS: THE DEATH OF PAUL BERN

Before she died at the very young age of 26, actress Jean Harlow had already lived quite a life of scandal and intrigue. Her first marriage, which began when she was only 16, lasted just two short years. Her second marriage to MGM producer Paul Bern also ended in tragedy. Two months after marrying Jean Harlow, on September 5, Bern was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills, California.The coroner ruled his death a suicide.

Police discovered a note at the scene that read as follows:

"Dearest Dear,
Unfortuately  this is the only way to make good the frightful wrong I have done you and to wipe out my abject humiliation, I Love you.
Paul
You understand that last night was only a comedy"

Authorities viewed this as a suicide note signed by BernTo the police, and before a grand jury, Harlow's only statement was that she "knew nothing". Harlow was made an executor of her husband's estate by the Californian judge. Harlow never publicly spoke on the matter. She died of renal failure (caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever) in June 1937 at the age of 26.

Two thousand people attended Bern's funeral, held on September 9, 1932, at the Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery.Conrad Nagel delivered the eulogy. Bern was cremated, and his ashes were interred in the Golden West Mausoleum at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

In 1990, film producer Samuel Marx, a friend and MGM colleague of both Bern and Irving Thalberg, published a book giving a different version of Bern's death. Marx, at the time MGM's story editor (the head of the screenwriting department), said he 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, after reviewing the evidence, concluded 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 from San Francisco to Sacramento, California...

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD VALENTINE'S DAY

 No one showcased romance more than classic Hollywood. There are some great pictures of classic Hollywood celebrating February 14th. Here are just a few of them...

Betty Hutton

Jean Harlow, Clark Cable, Myrna Loy

Mary Carlisle

Marilyn Monroe

Mary Pickford

Cyd Charisse

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: STARS AND THEIR CARS

Nothing captures the essence of the 1930s and 1940s than classic Hollywood and classic cars. Both had so much style in those days. Like classic Hollywood, classic cars had so much character and individuality. Here are just a few pictures of the classic stars with their classic cars:


BING CROSBY AND HIS NEW CADILLAC IN 1947

KIM NOVAK WITH HER CADILLAC IN 1957

CLARA BOW ON A 1919 MOON IN 1926

JOAN CRAWFORD WITH HER NEW 1932 CADILLAC

SOPHIA LOREN ON HER MERCEDES IN THE LATE 1950s

JEAN HARLOW AND HER 1934 CADILLAC

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: SPENCER TRACY AND HIS LEADING LADIES

Without question Spencer Tracy is considered one of the greatest actors of all time. This past month was his birthday. He would have been 112 years young. Tracy has left behind some great cinema magic with some of the most beautiful co-stars of all time...

with BETTE DAVIS (1908-1989)

with JEANETTE MACDONALD (1903-1965)

with JEAN HARLOW (1911-1937)

with MYRNA LOY (1905-1993)

with KATHERINE HEPBURN (1907-2003)

with ELIZABETH TAYLOR (1932-2011)

SEX SYMBOLS OF THE CINEMA: ONES I MISSED

Any fellow blogger knows that there is only so much space to write your thoughts and ideas. With my series on the sex symbols of the cinema, I was only picking four actresses for each decade. That is not a lot, and there were stars that I missed and did not profile that I should have. Here are some of the great sex symbols that did not get recognized:

JEAN HARLOW (1911-1937)
Not putting Jean Harlow on the original list was the biggest mistake of the series. Harlow was sex on film in the 1930s. Unfortunately, Jean died way too young. She was more than a sex symbol though. Harlow was amazing to see in "Dinner At Eight" (1934), and every role she was in, she made the movie that much better. She not only had great sex appeal, she had great comedic timing.

CAROLE LOMBARD (1908-1942)
I always considered Carole Lombard a great comedic actress more than a sex symbol, but like Harlow I think she was both. Also like Jean Harlow, Carole died too young. Lombard made some great movies like "Made For Each Other" (1939) and "To Be Or Not To Be"(1942) - and even in corny movies like "We're Not Dressing" (1934), Lombard was funny and sexy as well.

JANE RUSSELL (1921-2011)
Jane Russell was basically the brunette answer to Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe. Russell made the bustline famous in movies, but despite being a sex symbol she was talented as well. Russell was a good singer as well and as an actress she easily could act alongside the likes of Bob Hope, Robert Mitchum, and Clark Gable.

BRIGITTE BARDOT (BORN 1934)
Even though I pride myself a movie fan, I have never seen a Brigitte Bardot movie. I only know her from seeing her animal activism in recent years, but she was a great beauty. She left the entertainment industry in 1973, but Bardot made over 40 films that really revolutionized how sex symbols were looked at. She took sex in the industry to a whole new level.

SOPHIA LOREN (BORN 1934)
Sophia Loren is one of the few women who can make being in her 70s sexy. Loren, like Bardot, started out at the beginning of the new sexual revolution in the film industry. Her first film was "Aida" (1953) and she went on to seduce audiences and co-stars like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, and Cary Grant. She remains one of the most beautiful active working classic actresses in the business.

Do you have any other sex symbols that we should have profiled? Who else did we miss? I would love to keep revisiting this topic from time to time on my blog. I want to thank everyone who read and commented on this series, and thank you to all of the movie sex symbols who made writing this series so easy...

REDISCOVERING CLASSIC STARS

REDISCOVERING PAST STARS ON DVD
BY BRUCE KIRKLAND

Hollywood movie stars: Can't live with them, can't live without them. Every generation has them. They haunt our dreams and shape our style and fashion. They inspire us to see the latest release. But, in a bitter irony that eludes most stars until the glitter is gone and it's too late, most are forgotten when the next wave hits.

That's why the age of digital and DVD releases creates unique possibilities. Thanks to catalogue releases and a parade of box sets devoted to individual stars and name directors, we can easily revive the movie stars from Hollywood Golden Era and re-examine why those stars of earlier eras made an impact.

OK, it's a challenge. I realize it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to make young audiences believe or care that Jean Harlow was as sexy and sensational in the 1930s as Angelina Jolie is today. Or that, for decades, Bette Davis carried even more gravitas than the sublime Meryl Streep does now. Or that Marlon Brando re-defined the art of acting in the 1950s. Or that Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller made the same impact playing the title character in Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932 as Chris Hemsworth is doing now as the title character in Thor. Or that Tracy & Hepburn remains one of the greatest and most complicated romances in Hollywood history.

Yet I am emboldened. When youths are open-minded enough to see the classics -- even those in black-and-white -- strange things happen. One young gal I know developed enormous crushes on both Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart while eagerly devouring their movies. Yummmm.

With that in mind, among others, I am recommending the Turner Classic Movies collections. There are several series, including the Greatest Classic Legends releases and the Greatest Classic Films series. They come in waves. There are always four titles offered on two discs in each box. Many are recycled releases available separately or in other collections (frustrating some collectors who want more obscure titles resuscitated). Meanwhile, not all titles live up to the "greatest" hype but they are all interesting and/or inspirational. The latest wave, in April, brought us the following:

- Greatest Classic Legends -- Bette Davis: Jezebel (1938), Dark Victory (1939), Now, Voyager (1942 and Old Acquaintance (1943).

- Greatest Classic Legends -- Marlon Brando: A Streetcar Named Desire: Original Director's Cut (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).

- Greatest Classic Films -- Tarzan: Volume One and Tarzan: Volume Two: Eight of the 12 Tarzan flicks Weissmuller starred in during the 1930s and '40s are here. Volume One leads off with the only one that could safely be called "classic" and only for adventure and exotic feel. By the time Weissmuller got to Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), the plot was running thin.

- Earlier waves in the Turner Classic Movies collections include sets featuring Jean Harlow (highly recommended), Errol Flynn (Hollywood's best swashbuckler before Johnny Depp teetered into Pirates of the Caribbean), John Ford Westerns (he was a grumpy genius) and a collection featuring four Lassie movies (Elizabeth Taylor was just 11 in the 1943 family classic, Lassie Come Home).

- Tracy & Hepburn: The Definitive Collection: This classy box set is a 10-disc offering with nine collaborations between one-time superstar Spencer Tracy and the real love of his life, Katharine Hepburn. This collection truly is definitive, from Woman of the Year in 1942 to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967. That was their final film together before Tracy died, just 17 days after shooting was completed. Their energy together is still thrilling throughout.

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JEAN HARLOW: BEAUTY AND BRAINS

Jean Harlow: Beauty and brains in equal measure
By Susan King

Probably the most iconic Jean Harlow moment comes at the end of the 1933 classic MGM comedy-drama "Dinner at Eight," when Kitty, Harlow's uber-sexy dumb blond wife of a self-made tycoon, is talking to Carlotta, a high-society woman played by Marie Dressler.

Kitty: "I was reading a book the other day."

Carlotta (dumbstruck): "Reading a book?"

Kitty: "Yes. It's all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?"

Carlotta: "Oh, my dear. That's something you need never worry about."

Harlow stole that picture from the likes of Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore and Billie Burke — and for the next four years, she was one of the biggest stars at MGM.

And even though she died at age 26 in 1937 of uremic poisoning because of kidney failure — a bout of scarlet fever as a teenager compromised her kidneys — Harlow remains one of the most influential stars of Hollywood's Golden Era.

She was the first blond bombshell, and without her success, there may not have been a Lana Turner, a Marilyn Monroe, a Jayne Mansfield or a Mamie Van Doren.

"She is not only the blond bombshell, she's the blond bombshell with the heart of gold," says Cari Beauchamp, a film historian ("Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood") and documentarian.

"And this is always key with me: She is a multidimensional bombshell. She is not wallpaper. She knew to give her characters layers. She gives them multidimensions."

"She definitely created the mold for that spectacular-looking blond who was sexy and humorous," says Darrell Rooney, who co-wrote (with Mark A. Vieira) "Harlow in Hollywood: The Blonde Bombshell in the Glamour Capital, 1928-1937," and supplied nearly all the evocative photographs and memorabilia in the new book. "She had a very winsome, childlike quality to her, a certain innocence that plays against the sexuality that is very unique and stops her from being one-note."

"I think of her and Carole Lombard, two gorgeous blonds who died way too young," says Beauchamp. "They were so good at what they did and brought such richness to their characters and also the intelligence beyond the eyes. There are times they are practically winking at the audience."

This year is the centenary for the platinum blond beauty who starred in such classic MGM comedies as 1932s "Red Dust" and "Red-Headed Woman" and 1936's "Libeled Lady." Never one to take herself too seriously on-screen, Harlow wasn't above poking fun at her image, as in 1933's Hollywood satire, "Bombshell."

Besides their book, Rooney and Vieira have joined with the Hollywood Museum for the exhibition "Harlow in Hollywood," which opened Thursday, which would have been the actress' 100th birthday. The exhibition features photographs, memorabilia and even her 1932 Packard Phaeton. The two will be at the Egyptian Theatre on Sunday to discuss Harlow and "Bombshell." And throughout March, Turner Classic Movies will be showcasing her films.

By all accounts, Harlow was one of the best-loved stars in Hollywood. "Everybody called her 'Baby,'" says Beauchamp. "The crews just adored her. They were so protective of her. That heart of gold she played on the screen was very real in the person that was Jean Harlow."

"We all heard that Jayne Mansfield had a genius IQ, but even when Harlow was playing a 'dumb character,' like in 'China Seas,' you know she is not a stupid woman," says Vieira. "She had this native intelligence, that innate wisdom and understanding of people. My big discovery in writing this is that she used to bring books to the sound stage to read, like 'The Forsyte Saga.' She was an autodidact."

But her short life was filled with sadness and drama, including an overbearing stage mother, Jean, to whom Harlow was slavishly devoted; three failed marriages — including to MGM executive Paul Bern, who committed suicide in 1932, two months after their wedding; and a highly publicized romance with fellow MGM star William Powell, who broke her heart because he wouldn't marry her.

Harlow died before completing the romantic comedy "Saratoga" with her frequent leading man, Clark Gable. Though MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer thought of scrapping all of Harlow's scenes and replacing her with another actress, her fans demanded to see her final film. Mary Dees, who was her stand-in, doubled in certain scenes shot from behind and wearing oversized hats. Actress Paula Winslowe supplied Harlow's voice.

Though the result is a mess — Harlow looks hollow-eyed and puffy — audiences turned out in droves when it opened in late July. "Saratoga" became one of the biggest box office hits of 1937.

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