Word: mayering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...skeletons as the Kremlin. Consider now the luxuriant scandal surrounding Paul Bern, an MGM producer who was found shot to death in 1932 shortly after his marriage to his prize star, Jean Harlow. A suicide note apologized for "the frightful wrong I have done you." MGM boss Louis B. Mayer tried to protect Harlow by spreading the word that Bern had been impotent and killed himself in shame. After a minimal investigation, the coroner's jury declared that Bern had committed suicide with "motive undetermined." End of scenario...
...famous Bern mystery, he is something more interesting: a witness. Tipped off by a friend, Marx got to Bern's house on the morning his body was found, hours before anyone called the police. He discovered MGM production chief Irving Thalberg already there, interrogating the servants and learned that Mayer had even earlier come and gone. He heard that some woman had visited Bern the night before (Harlow was away) and that there had been sounds of quarreling. ^ All this led Marx to believe Bern had committed suicide because Millette was threatening to expose him as a bigamist...
...death, suffered not from a coma but from acute schizophrenia. But nothing shook the finding of suicide until Marx met a minor comedian who had been a drinking pal of retired MGM security chief Whitey Hendry's. Hendry, shortly before his death, told this pal that he had accompanied Mayer to Bern's house that first morning, and it was obvious that Bern had been murdered. Mayer was terrified of scandal. So Hendry volunteered to plant the gun in Bern's hand, and the two of them concocted the fake suicide note. A few days after hearing this...
From then on, and despite headline-grabbing flirtations with John Gilbert and Leopold Stokowski, Garbo became in effect the indentured mistress of her movie studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This most galvanizing of actresses was the most passive of stars. At MGM's urging, the young Garbo slimmed down, had her teeth capped, adjusted her hairline. Her most enduring studio ally was her doting cinematographer, William Daniels. Garbo must have felt comfortable, surrounded by MGM's middlebrow high gloss. She may not have cared that its gentility suffocated her films, so long as she could breathe her artistry into them...
...White folks can't stand unhappy Negroes," veteran stage actress Wiletta Mayer tells newcomer John Nevins. "So we laugh...