HOLLYWOOD -- The new book 'Deadly Illusions' argues that legendary MGM kingpins Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg conspired to cover up the murder of Jean Harlow's husband in order to save her career.
The book's author, Sam Marx, was an executive at MGM at the time and an intimate of producer Paul Bern (Harlow's spouse) and a pal of Mayer and Thalberg.
In 'Deadly Illusions,' Marx postulates that Mayer and Thalberg hastily created a scenario that made it appear Bern committed suicide in 1932.
The filmmakers, Marx says, mistakenly thought Harlow had shot her husband to death when they reached Bern's house hours before the police. They quickly rigged the evidence and then claimed Bern had taken his own life.
Marx, who was at the scene in Benedict Canyon with Thalberg shortly after Bern's nude body was found, said Mayer had departed after the two men concocted a story that Bern shot himself in the head in humiliation only two months after his marriage to the famed platinum blonde because he was impotent.
According to Marx, a few days after Bern's death the two most exalted film moguls of the 1930s learned the murder was committed by Bern's secret common law wife, Dorothy Millette, but it was too late too change their story.
Marx, who was story editor at MGM, spells it out in 'Deadly Illusions,' which he co-authored with Joyce Vanderveen.
The book reads more like a murder mystery than a non-fiction account of a devious plot by MGM bigwigs who spent a fortune covering up the facts of Bern's death.
For decades Marx was convinced that the Mayer-Thalberg story of impotence and suicide was genuine, but co-author Vanderveen thought otherwise and their exhaustive research is fascinating if not altogether convincing.
'For almost 50 years I was caught up in the fiction that Mayer created,' Marx said during a poolside luncheon interview.
'I thoroughly believed the Mayer-Thalberg story, but not anymore. Harlow was a very valuable property and if murder was involved, it would have ruined her career forever.
'Even if it had come out that Dorothy Millette had committed the murder, Harlow would have been finished.
'Mayer was the prime mover and in those days his power was unbelievable. Thalberg went along with it. I was there every minute of it.'
Marx said only four men at MGM were in on the fake evidence -- moving the body, a message that could be interpreted as a suicide note and phony imputations.
In addition to Mayer and Thalberg, the studio's publicity director Howard Strickling and security chief Whitey Hendry knew what went on that Labor Day morning when Bern lay dead and the MGM brass invented their story.
'I was called by Al Cohn, a studio writer, who told me Paul was dead,' Marx recalled. 'I drove to the house to find Thalberg outside. He'd been there for hours and the police hadn't been called.
'I still love the memory of Thalberg. He was very good to me. Even so, I had more respect for Mayer who ran that studio with an iron hand.
'Paul was a dear friend, and I knew Harlow pretty well.'
Marx weaves a complex plot involving the changing testimony of Bern's servants, a bloody drinking glass, a neighbor who saw a mysterious limousine arrive at Bern's house after Harlow had left to spend the night with her mother.
The story is further complicated by a woman's shoe -- ostensibly Millette's -- and Millette's mysterious death a few days later when she fell, jumped or was pushed off a ferry boat between San Francisco and Sacramento.
The day after the body was discovered -- and before the inquest -- Mayer called together his top men, including Marx, and laid out the scenario as carefully as a film plot, exhorting his troops to go along.
'At the meeting L.B. said, 'Fellas, we're at the crossroads. If you don't go along, you ruin the studio as well as yourselves,'' Marx recalled.
'The motive was clear. They were convinced Harlow committed murder and they were protecting her. By the way, for the rest of her life, Jean never said a word against Paul Bern.'
Throughout the book such people as Harlow's mother, Strickling, Bern's servants and others hint broadly that there was more to Bern's death than ever was revealed or printed in the media.
Marx has written an interesting history of the period, building a case against Millette while casting shadows over MGM bigshots and the Los Angeles district attorney's office.NEWLN:
