Paul Bern was found shot two months after marrying Jean Harlow, his common-law wife Dorothy Millette drowned days later, and a judge made Harlow executor of his estate

Paul Bern, an MGM producer born Paul Levy, married Jean Harlow on 2 July 1932. His butler found him dead of a gunshot wound at their Beverly Hills house on 5 September 1932 (one account gives 4 September). Studio executives reached the house before the police, and biographer David Stenn wrote that what happened in that hour is unknown. A note apologized to Harlow for "the frightful wrong" and called the night before "only a comedy." A coroner's jury ruled suicide. Since about 1911 Bern had supported Dorothy Millette, born Adele Roddy, described as his common-law wife. She vanished from the riverboat Delta King after his death, and her body was recovered from the Sacramento River delta. Investigators ruled that she jumped. Harlow went to probate court, and Judge May Lahey appointed her executor. A 1932 newspaper report said the will left Harlow everything and nothing to Bern's brother Henry or his two sisters, and that a lawyer was trying to prove Millette had legally married Bern to found a claim for her heirs; the outcome of that claim is not confirmed^†. MGM's lawyer Mendel Silberberg reportedly told the coroner to bury Millette and send him the bill^†. The district attorney reopened the case in 1960 and kept the suicide verdict. Harlow died of kidney failure on 7 June 1937, aged 26. William Powell paid $25,000 for her marble room at Forest Lawn, and her mother was placed there in 1958.