Lavender Can Be Deadly
It was Labor Day weekend, 1932, and for MGM and its hundreds of employees, life was good. The Great Depression had increased the need for escapist, inexpensive entertainment, and crowds were lining up to see MGM pictures, which boasted "more stars than there are in heaven." Under the management of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg, the "boy wonder" this was no idle boast. Such luminaries as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, Clark Gable, William Powell, and Robert Montgomery adorned the silver screen, along with the newly signed "Platinum Blonde" Jean Harlow.

The two rival studio bosses, the fatherly Louis B. Mayer and the young Irving Thalberg had their little differences, as Mayer liked musicals and "family" entertainment, whereas Thalberg preferred steamy tales starring sexy divas constantly getting themselves in and out of passionate situations. These were the days before any meaningful censorship existed in Hollywood, known as "The Pre-Code Era" and situations were shown on the screen which would not be seen again until the 1970s. Audiences loved the titillation, and in consequence, Thalberg's point of view generally won out in the end. But, Mayer and Thalberg each had their own little coterie of "supervisors" (what we would nowadays call producers) who were loyal to either one man or the other. 

One of Thalberg's top supervisors was a German-born man of Jewish extraction called Paul Bern, who already had an Academy Award under his belt for producing "Grand Hotel," one of the first pictures to feature an all-star cast. He was a middle-aged, dumpy, effeminate sort of man, who seems to have inspired violent reactions in people. They either loved him or loathed him. Louis B. Mayer's daughter regarded him as her best friend. Gossip columnist Sydney Skolsky thought Bern was homosexual. He had an odd reputation for becoming involved with beautiful, mixed-up women such as alcoholic Lila Lee, unstable Joan Crawford, or morphine addict Barbara LaMarr, whose refusal of Bern's marriage proposal resulted in a plumber having to be called to the house Bern shared with actor John Gilbert, as Bern's attempt to drown himself in the commode resulted in his head becoming stuck in the toilet seat. After this fiasco, La Marr, known as "The Girl Who was Too Beautiful" (and who was soon to die of a drug overdose) confided in journalist Adela Rogers St. John. Exactly what she told St. John remains a mystery, but Paul Bern seems to either been a hermaphrodite or had a penis the size of a woman's little finger, depending upon what source you go to. St. John was adamant whenever discussing the Bern case that "Bern had no right to be married to any woman". However, on that holiday weekend in 1932, Bern was a newlywed, celebrating his two-month anniversary to 21 year old Jean Harlow, whose career he had rescued from the Hollywood garbage heap. He was, unfortunately, also a bigamist.                       Continue Reading...