The tangled tale of Jean Harlow, her dead husband and a woman found drowned in Sacramento

Dorothy Millette checked out of the Plaza Hotel in San Francisco shortly after she heard on the radio that Jean Harlow’s husband was dead.

She paid up her account — she’d been living at the hotel for four months — and booked a $3 stateroom on the Delta King riverboat. Riverboat officials would confirm Millette boarded later that day, Sept. 6, 1932.

She was seen a few times. A waiter remembered her at dinner, a pretty but exhausted woman who barely ate. At 2:30 a.m., a Walnut Creek man went for a constitutional on the top deck. There, he saw Millette, crying and gazing into the inky water. She didn’t seem to notice him.

Two hours later, a night watchman making the rounds found a woman’s coat and shoes on the deck. When the riverboat docked in the morning, Millette didn’t disembark. Delta King staff began searching for her.

In Beverly Hills, police at the home of Jean Harlow were also wondering where they could find Dorothy Millette. Harlow’s husband, MGM studio exec Paul Bern, was dead in the bathroom, a bullet in his head. In short order, police determined there was something strange about Bern’s personal history. It seemed Harlow wasn’t his only spouse.

His first wife, the woman he was still married to, was Dorothy Millette.

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No one understood what Jean Harlow saw in Paul Bern.

At 22, Harlow was one of the biggest film stars in the world. Her platinum blonde hair and salacious curves catapulted her to fame in the 1930 Howard Hughes classic “Hell’s Angels.” Around that time, Harlow met Bern, a 40-year-old German film executive with MGM. Bern was plain and serious, but he did have connections. He convinced MGM to sign Harlow and, more importantly to Harlow, he believed she could be a serious actor, not just eye candy.

After a short courtship, they married in July 1932.

Two months later, Bern was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

When Bern’s body was discovered by the household staff, the first call was not to the police — it was to MGM. The studio sent over its top fixers, who combed through the scene for two hours before police were summoned. They also informed Harlow her husband was dead; she’d spent the night of his suicide at her mother’s house.

While MGM went to work spinning the story to protect their star, police were seeking a paper trail.

They found it through George G. Clarken, Bern’s Los Angeles insurance advisor. Clarken admitted Bern had never divorced Millette; in fact, he’d set up a trust fund for Millette. A lawyer in New York confirmed Bern’s secret marriage. He said he’d drawn up a will for Millette over a decade ago.

“I was always under the impression that Dorothy was his wife. I believe there was some legal marriage ceremony performed,” he told the Associated Press. “I heard somewhere that Mrs. Bern had died in a sanitarium. Bern had not mentioned her for years.”

Reporters found Bern’s sister, who filled in the rest of the story. Bern had met Millette in Toronto, when both were working as actors in a theater company. They married and moved to New York City so Bern could pursue a career in stage management.

Then, something went wrong. Millette’s health took a turn and, according to newspaper accounts, she moved into a sanitarium. Whether by mutual decision or not, Bern left for California. Millette did not accompany him.

While Bern built up his career at MGM, he continued to support his wife back in New York. After her health recovered, she moved into the Algonquin Hotel. Bern sent her a monthly stipend of $350, over $5,000 in today’s money. They wrote each other often. Letters found in Millette’s handbag at the Plaza Hotel were on MGM stationary.

One of the letters was written a few months before Bern and Harlow’s wedding. In it, Bern responded to Millette’s plan to vacation in San Francisco. He recommended both the Plaza and Clift hotels (“quite fashionable and not very expensive”) and said he would fund her trip.

“If you do go,” Bern wrote, “I hope that it will be a happy change.”

He signed it: “My love and best wishes always.”

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On Sept. 14, two fishermen near Walnut Grove found a body floating in the Sacramento River. In the week since Millette disappeared from the Delta King, the press had taken to calling her the “ghost wife.” Many speculated she had faked her death. Rumors started that a mystery woman was seen with Bern the day before his suicide. Perhaps Millette, the spurned woman, had murdered Bern and gone on the run.

The truth, though we will never know for sure, is likely much more mundane — although just as tragic.

At a coroner’s inquest, Bern’s friends testified he’d long talked about suicide. Depression plagued his adult life, and the publicity since marrying one of Hollywood’s hottest sirens seems to have taken a toll as well. MGM fixers hinted Bern may have been biologically “unfitted for marriage,” a sordid rumor that cast blame away from Harlow and painted Bern as weak and unworthy of the siren.

At the inquest, Bern's personal doctor, Howard P. Jones, said he knew "exactly" what was at the root of his friend's suicidal ideations. Out of respect for Bern, Jones would not disclose it publicly, but, he assured, it had nothing to do with Dorothy Millette "or any other woman."

As for Millette, she didn’t fake her own death. She jumped from the Delta King that night and it was her body found a week later. She knew Bern had changed his will to make Harlow the beneficiary, making Millette instantly penniless with his death. She had lost her husband and her financial support. There is no sexy noir mystery about the despair she must have felt.

Although rumors occasionally resurfaced that Millette murdered Bern, there’s never been any proof. The timeline alone seems to rule it out: Millette would have had to go to Beverly Hills, kill Bern in the wee hours of the morning and return to San Francisco before noon in order to be seen checking out of the Plaza Hotel.

Harlow, never one for single life, married the year after Bern’s death. This marriage, her third, ended in divorce 12 months later.

Although just 26 in 1937, Harlow’s health was starting to fail. She fainted on the set of "Saratoga." It was initially thought she had the flu, but she presented other symptoms: bloating, vision loss, grey skin. A doctor brought in for a second opinion realized what was happening. Harlow was dying of kidney failure.

Less than week after the diagnosis, Harlow slipped into a coma and died. MGM, the industrious assembly line of movie studios, closed the day of her funeral.

She was not interred next to her dead husband Paul Bern in Inglewood. Instead, she was buried in a private vault, paid for by then-boyfriend William Powell, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. The marble mausoleum cost him $25,000 and had an additional space meant to house Powell one day.

When Powell died in 1984, he was buried instead next to his third wife.

Far from her loved ones lies Millette, at East Lawn Memorial Park in Walnut Grove. Her gravestone, etched with flowers, reads: Dorothy Millette Bern.

Katie Dowd is a senior digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: katie.dowd@sfgate.com.