Interestingly, when police recovered thirty-eight-year-old Millette’s belongings, they found a writing pad among her beaded slippers, expensive dresses, and perfumes. There was just one word on the page; it was backwards; and it looked like it might have been an imprint from another page. When held up to a mirror, the note read “JUSTIFICATION.”
So what really happened the night Paul Bern died? Many books and articles have been written supporting both theories. David Stenn, author of the Harlow book Bombshell (edited by Jacqueline Onassis) doesn’t believe Bern was murdered. “No way, there’s not a shred of evidence to suggest it…there’s abundant evidence of suicide.”
But the late co-author of Deadly Illusions, Samuel Marx, an M-G-M story editor who was actually at the scene of the crime (although not in the bedroom), wrote that it was indeed troubled Dorothy Millette who murdered Bern with a gun he was known to keep in plain view in his bedroom. Marx’s basis: an interview with a pal of the M-G-M security chief. Reportedly the security chief, shortly before he died, confessed he’d planted the gun on Bern to make it look like a suicide.
Historian Darrell Rooney, who maintains one of the world’s largest archives of Harlow memorabilia and is co-author of Harlow in Hollywood, says the true story of what happened will never be known, especially since key evidence was destroyed by M-G-M executives. But he does have his own theory—a third, credible explanation of what might have happened.
Rooney opines that Paul Bern killed himself, but not because he couldn’t sexually satisfy his wife, rather, because secrets in his life had caught up with him and were about to explode. Clearly, Dorothy Millette was no longer willing to be ignored; she considered herself to be Bern’s common-law wife. If word got out that Bern was a bigamist, the news could not only ruin him, but worse, it could ruin his beloved Harlow’s career.
“There was no good solution to this mess he’d created for himself and his unwitting new bride,” says Rooney. “This was the only ‘gentlemanly’ thing to do. That he might ruin the life of someone he loved so dearly, I think, was too much for him to resolve logically—hence, an irrational act.”
Harlow never revealed what she knew about the night her husband died. A few days after Bern’s death, she returned to the set of her movie, Red Dust (1932). The first and only time she spoke publicly about the incident she said, “I don’t know what the note means…I simply cannot talk about the tragic event. It’s inexplicable, unutterably sad. I am trying hard to concentrate on work. That is why I went back to the studio early; work has kept me from going mad.”
The platinum bombshell went on to marry again, her career intact. But there was one final act to this story the public never saw. When Harlow found out that Millette’s few belongings had been sold to pay for a funeral and there wasn’t enough money left over for a grave marker, the actress quietly paid for a headstone, which reads simply: Dorothy Millette Bern.
Sadly, Harlow’s own life story would end tragically, too. She died suddenly of renal failure at the age of twenty-six, just five years after Bern’s death.
Clark Fogg’s Analysis:
I doubt it was a suicide. An examination of the images taken of the crime scene strongly suggests another scenario. First, it’s unusual that an individual commits suicide in a hallway – usually it’s in a bathroom, bedroom, or living room. I have never, in all my years investigated a suicide in a hallway. I do believe he clearly didn’t want his personal life in the public eye. It could have destroyed Jean’s career, and it would have ruined his “creation.” No one wants to ruin their best work. My guess is he was the one who yelled, “Get out of my life.” Hence, an argument and struggle for the firearm ensued, and Dorothy Millett shot him accidentally.
The happy couple poses on their wedding day July 2, 1932.
Bern, often called “the best-loved man in Hollywood,” loved this photo.
Years later, Bern’s home was bought by Jay Sebring, a victim of the Manson murders.
“The note” – was it written just before he died?
One of Bern’s own guns was found in his hand.
Photographers were allowed inside the chapel at Paul Bern’s funeral.
Friends support Jean Harlow as she leaves the church.
A detective examines some of the belongings left behind by Dern’s shadow wife.
Dorothy Millette.
1933
The Sneaky Butler • Mysterious Burglary
Every two weeks like clockwork, Norman Philip, a wealthy, retired, dairy farm owner, opened a hidden wall safe to retrieve his checkbook so he could pay his staff. Imagine his surprise when he opened it up one night and saw a gaping space where his valuable bonds, worth almost one hundred thousand dollars used to be. The bonds were gone—poof, vanished, as if into thin air. It was a bona fide mystery and Philip immediately called police.
Officers were stymied; there was no sign of forced entry and no evidence that a crime had been committed. Clearly no one had tampered with the safe, and none of the other valuables in the home had been touched. Investigators questioned the two maids; they knew nothing. But they did mention that a butler, Steve Palinkas, used to work in the home. Police quickly dismissed him as a suspect. Not only was Palinkas an exemplary employee with squeaky-clean credentials, but he also hadn’t worked in the home for months—he’d moved to a new job in Cleveland, Ohio. In fact, Palinkas had just recently sent a postcard to Philip.
All that Norman Philip could do was place a stop order on the bonds. The case was ice cold—until four months later, when Philip received a phone call on a Friday from an attorney in Cleveland. Seems the attorney had a client in his office who bought some of the missing bonds, but when he tried to sell them, learned they were stolen. Would Philip take the loss and buy the bonds back for less? The two men agreed to speak again on Monday.
Philip alerted police. Detective Clinton Anderson was most curious and, on a hunch, decided to head to Cleveland himself to see just who this “client” was. Commercial aviation was still in its infancy, so the detective spent all day Saturday and most of Sunday on a Ford Tri-Motor airplane. The officer arrived just in time to be at the lawyer’s office Monday morning when the client walked in. Anderson got his handcuffs out. It was the former butler, Steve Palinkas.
After a few days in custody, the reluctant thief eventually caved and revealed the details of his ingenious caper: while vacuuming his boss’s bedroom rug, Palinkas found a tiny piece of paper lying underneath. It had a series of numbers written on it: the secret combination to the big safe. He copied the numbers, made a duplicate house key, and then quit his job. Weeks later, he hopped on a plane and made a covert trip back to Beverly Hills on a night when he knew his former boss was on vacation, and the house would be empty. Palinkas snuck into the home under cover of darkness, used his key and the combo to pull off the heist, then left town in a hurry. Now he was on his way back to Beverly Hills to a new home: jail.
Detective Anderson flew in a Ford Tri-Motor to Cleveland
1935
“Last Warning” Carved in Skin • Chilling Photo
A mysterious photo found in a brittle, yellowing police file was simply marked with the name “Leonard.” It was a mystery, this picture of a young blonde, clutching a handkerchief, lying face down and nude on a gurney. The covers were pulled down to reveal the words “Last Warning” scrawled in reverse on her back. Chilling. Were those bloody letters carved into her skin? Who was the demonic creep who’d left this cryptic message, making the case all the more terrifying? But most importantly, who was this woman?
An extensive search of 1935 police files and newspapers (there were several in competition back then, including the Los Angeles Evening Herald & Express, Examiner, Record, Daily News, and the Times) and finally, a few clues were found in the Beverly Hills Citizen about an alleged crime involving an actress by the name of Barbara Leonard. She wasn’t a big star; she’d been cast in bit parts in some hardly memorable films. No doubt she was
interested in a lead role.
She got one in real life, after claiming that two men had broken into her Canon Drive home to inform her she’d won first prize in a newspaper contest. When she let them in, she said the men pounced on her, tied her up and put a gag around her mouth. “I passed out and don’t remember anything after that,” she told reporters. Police issued Leonard and her husband a gun permit, and a photographer took a photo of the gun-wielding little lady. Newspapers across the country picked up the image. “Gun Warns Gangsters” announced the headlines. It was the most attention this bit-part actress ever had.
The following week, her husband, a piano teacher, reportedly came home to find her semiconscious in the bathtub, with those letters on her back. Leonard was taken to the hospital and treated for “hysteria,” a common medical term used to describe out-of-control women in the Thirties. She claimed the men had come back into her home and attacked her, leaving the message on her back because they were angry she’d talked to police.
Police were suspicious of her story; not much had been stolen from the house, she was a chorus girl, hardly a lucrative target for robbers, and she had barely a messed-up Marcel wave. But most telling, those letters—what robber would take the time to write backwards, and why?
A careful examination of the evidence by CSI experts today revealed this juicy tidbit: Barbara Leonard most likely wrote the letters herself. And while this stunt didn’t give her career a boost (in her last known film, she had a small role as an inmate in Women without Names (1940)), it did get her the attention she so desperately craved—some seventy-five years later, on the cover of a book about real crimes.
Clark Fogg’s Analysis:
After we enlarged the photo to examine it, it was clear that the words weren’t written in blood. And it was evident she had written the letters herself, perhaps taping an eyebrow pencil to a twelve-inch ruler, facing a mirror and spelling out the scary message that would be sure to attract attention. The lettering and words angle upward, indicating that they were written with one hand extending over the shoulder. The starting points on each letter should be the ending points when written normally.
The actress’s headshot
Barbara Leonard claimed she was bound and gagged by two men who stole five hundred dollars worth of jewelry and silver. The actress’ career hit a slump in the 1930s.
What officers at the time called a most unusual “threat note” is a mirror image of the words “LAST WARNING.”
1936
The Father Divine Cult Invades Mansion • Teenager Raped
When a rich and rotund thirty-three-year-old misfit moved into a mansion in Beverly Hills, neighbors were curious. When he started throwing ten thousand dollars in cash from his balcony for “friends” to gather up, they were very curious. And when he hosted noisy prayer meetings filled with exuberant chanting that lasted well into the night, neighbors were, well, furious.
Who was this crazy new resident and why were dozens of zealots making daily pilgrimages to his house to pray and chant? Nearby homeowners were livid, including the esteemed and usually very private actor Lionel Barrymore, who complained so vociferously that he made headlines: “Sounds Like a Riot from Morning ’til Night!”
Police launched an investigation, and a local district attorney even went undercover to join “the church” to see what was going on. What they found was frustrating and fascinating. Frustrating because they couldn’t stop the followers from “merely practicing our religion.” Fascinating because a wild story was unfolding.
Turns out the new mansion owner at 807 North Roxbury Drive was John Wuest Hunt, a trust-fund baby with too much time on his hands and no direction in life. The high school drop-out (expelled four times) had inherited a fortune from his father’s Cleveland, Ohio, lollipop-manufacturing empire. Married three times, Hunt finally found his real purpose in life after experiencing “vibrations” and meeting Father Divine, a colorful and controversial religious leader from Harlem who preached pacifism between blacks and whites—and who also claimed he was God.
Father Divine’s sermons mesmerized Hunt, especially the one called “You got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.” (That phrase was used as the title for a hit song written by Johnny Mercer after he attended a Father Divine sermon in New York.) Hunt was so inspired he became one of his new guru’s “angels” and opened a West Coast branch of the church, or a “heaven” as Father Divine liked to call his outposts. Hunt took over his widowed mother’s mansion (who also fell under the Divine spell) and invited followers to visit. At first, the chubby-cheeked Hunt was the perfect proselyte. Not only did he donate lots of money to help spread the word of the good Father, but he also built Divine an expensive ten-passenger “throne car” for an upcoming trip to Beverly Hills.
But before that trip would happen, Hunt got himself into serious legal trouble that caused the church great shame and embarrassment. He decided he was “Jesus the Christ” and he wanted to have his own twisted version of an Immaculate Conception, obviously blasphemizing the term. He talked a naive seventeen-year-old named Delight Jewett into coming to his mansion, aka The Temple, and he proceeded to rape her. When she ran away and called her parents, they immediately filed charges against “John the Revelator,” the new name he used in court.
The two-week trial was sensational; Hunt decided to tell all in an effort to cleanse his soul. “Details of his confession are unprintable,” wrote one newspaper reporter, also detailing lighter moments of the trial, like the time the jury had to contain their laughter when Hunt testified in all seriousness about how he had renamed his mother “Mary Bird Tree” and had “shaken” thousands of dollars from her. He also explained how spiritual vibrations struck him, turning him into “a soaring blimp.”
Hunt was sentenced to three years in prison, the judge stating for the record, “Your claim is to have had a vision. I do not think that a vision which encourages a mature man to degrade and debauch a girl in her teens is a true religious vision.”
Father Divine was in his seventies when he marries his twenty-one-year-old bride.
John Wuest Hunt takes the stand.
Hunt brought the “Throne Car” for Father Divine.
Newspapers said Delight Jewett “showed poise” as she testified how Hunt seduced her.
1939
The Case of the “Come Up And See Me” Scam • Works Every Time
Clever criminals were a dime a dozen in Beverly Hills, especially during the Depression years. But a sexy, leggy lawbreaker? Here’s the story of how one gorgeous gal— we’ll call her Lola—and dozens of others like her, found a clever way to pay their bills. Lola was not nearly as innocent as she looked. Her game plan was simple: hit up a handsome patsy at a local watering hole and catch his eye. She entered the bar, target in range. She shot the gentleman a sultry come-hither look, “Me?” he replied, incredulous that such a looker would be talking to him.
She nodded, letting her Veronica Lake, peek-a-boo hairdo fall seductively. He crossed the crowded barroom floor. They chatted. They drank. She cut to the chase, “How about we take this party to my place?”
He was happy to oblige the little lady, and he put his arm around the small of her waist, nuzzling her on the romantic moonlit walk to her apartment. When they got inside, the chitchat was over. Wild lovemaking ensued. “Care for a shower?” asked Lola. While he lathered up, Lola hopped into her clothes, grabbed Mr. Easy’s keys, wallet, and clothes, and disappeared into the night, never to be heard from again.
A nearly naked, towel-draped gentleman ran down the streets of Beverly Hills, hailing a patrol car as it drove by, and the officers exchanged knowing glances. They’d seen this scene before and pulled over to explain to Mr. What-just-happened how he’d just been duped. “But can’t we get her name from the rental agreement?” he cried.
“No,” the officers told the poor guy. Depression-era rental rates were so low that Lola (and all the other Lolas in town) paid a mer
e ten-dollar deposit on a furnished apartment she secured with a fake name. Case closed.
Gamblers and Gangsters
The 1940s
What a transformation. The quiet little hamlet of early Beverly Hills is barely recognizable now that it has blossomed into a real city. Commercial buildings are popping up like rabbits out of a magician’s hat. It’s hard to tell where Beverly Hills ends and Los Angeles begins.
World War II gets underway and the city’s star power proves to be surprisingly useful as a secret weapon: Actress Hedy Lamarr raises millions for war bonds by selling kisses on a nationwide tour. While she’s away, burglars hit up her home but are quickly arrested. Mary Pickford holds fundraisers at the Pickfair mansion, but without Douglas Fairbanks. (He doesn’t live there anymore; the couple’s storybook marriage collapsed after just a few years.) And funnyman Charlie Chaplin, motivated by his disdain for the Nazis, makes his first all-talking picture, The Great Dictator (1940), a classic spoof of the rise of Adolf Hitler.
The police department is activated as a civil defense center and staffed with a “Police Auxiliary Force” to help protect citizens. Clinton Anderson, a new chief of police who rose through the ranks, takes over for the retiring Charlie Blair in 1942. Chief Anderson is a solid six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound wall of trouble for criminals. His mission: keep Beverly Hills as crime-free as possible. Anderson quickly gains a reputation as a no-nonsense law enforcer, shutting down gambling joints that are so prolific in this era, and generally making life difficult for mobsters trying to infiltrate this rich little city. When three members of a New York City vice ring move in, the chief unwelcomes them with a personal visit. “I told them there wasn’t any action for them in this town.” Two hours later, the trio is off to Vegas. “Anderson’s Law” is in effect.
Beverly Hills Confidential : A Century of Stars, Scandals and Murders Page 5