He helped launch the career of Jean Harlow, whom he married in July 1932; two months later, he was found dead of a gunshot wound, leaving what appeared to be a suicide note.

MGM writer and film producer Samuel Marx believed that he was killed by his ex-common-law wife Dorothy Millette, who jumped to her death from a ferry two days afterward.

Bern soon realized he had little aptitude for acting and pursued other aspects of theater production, working as a stage manager on Broadway for a time before moving to Hollywood in the early 1920s.

[7] The star-studded film Grand Hotel, released six days after Bern's death, won the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1931–1932.

Bern and Thalberg produced the film, although neither was listed in the credits (which wasn't common practice for MGM pictures during the period).

[18] Two months after marrying Harlow, on September 5, 1932, Bern was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head in their home on Easton Drive in Beverly Hills, California.

[25] She never publicly spoke on the matter, and later died of renal failure (caused by a childhood bout of scarlet fever) in June 1937 at the age of 26.

[24] Two-thousand people attended Bern's funeral, held on September 9, at the Grace Chapel at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

[26] In the November 1960 issue of Playboy magazine, screenwriter Ben Hecht questioned the official verdict of Bern's death, causing renewed interest in the case.

Marx, at the time the head of MGM's screenwriting department, said he had gone to Bern's house in the early morning of September 5, before the police were notified of the body's discovery, and had seen Thalberg tampering with evidence.

The next day, he had been among the studio executives who were told by Louis B. Mayer that the case would have to be ruled "suicide because of impotence" in order to avoid a scandal which would have finished Harlow's film career.