Though she was America’s “Blonde Bombshell,” in many ways movie star Jean Harlow led a less-than-glamorous life.

She came from Midwestern roots, having been born Harlean Harlow Carpenter in Kansas City, Missouri in 1911. Her father, a dentist, and her mother, a homemaker, had an unhappy marriage and divorced when Harlean was 11 years old. An only child, Harlean was indulged by her overprotective mother, who pushed Harlean into show business after the elder woman failed to make her own mark in Hollywood.

As “Jean Harlow” (her mother’s maiden name), Harlean started with bit parts, then signed a contract with director Hal Roach, who cast Harlow as a “swanky blonde” in a Laurel and Hardy short. Harlow next signed a contract with director Howard Hughes, who featured her as a vamp in the 1930 film Hell’s Angels. She later appeared alongside James Cagney in director William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy, which became one of the top box office draws of 1931.

By July 1932, when Harlow married Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executive Paul Bern, her future in entertainment seemed as bright as the platinum-hued hair that had become her signature trait…until September of that year, when Bern died from a gunshot wound that, while officially ruled suicide, left many people wondering whether it had actually come at the gunpowder-streaked hands of a women who had loved him.

Harlow’s marriage to Bern had been the talk of Hollywood, mainly because of the odd coupling it produced. Bern, a native of Germany, was nearly twice the age of his 22-year-old bride and was as mild-mannered and unassuming as his wife was fun-loving and uninhibited. He was short and balding, with an average appearance, while Harlow’s hourglass figure, sparkling green eyes, and gleaming smile—not to mention the pale blonde hair that had women across the country rushing to beauty salons for a similar look—accounted for much of her on-screen success.

Still, what Bern lacked in aesthetic appeal he made up for with intelligence. He had a thriving career as a writer, director, and producer, and was so well-known for his kindness and intellect that he earned the nickname “Hollywood’s Father Confessor” (a marked contrast to his wife’s “Blonde Bombshell” persona). Bern and Harlow had been friends before they started dating, and Bern had convinced MGM executives to purchase Harlow’s contract from Hughes, a move that boosted her fame to even greater heights. The couple was engaged for only two days before their July 2 wedding. Tinseltown gossips attributed the union to Bern’s desire to marry an attractive ingénue and Harlow’s desire to use her husband’s connections to advance her already thriving career.

Whatever Bern’s and Harlow’s goals for their marriage, barely enough time passed for the newlyweds to achieve them. On September 5, 1932, less than 10 weeks after the wedding, Bern’s nude body was found by his butler in Bern’s and Harlow’s Beverly Hills home. A .38-caliber revolver, which had driven a bullet into Bern’s head, lay on the floor next to him. In what was common practice during Hollywood’s early years—when any hint of unpleasantness in the lives of its stars could mean disaster at the box office—the first phone call placed upon the discovery of Bern’s body wasn’t to the police but to MGM, whose executives rushed to the scene to assess the situation and conduct damage control if needed.

No one knows exactly what the studio brass did upon their arrival in the Bern/Harlow home, but it’s safe to assume they searched the premises for anything that could prove incriminating to the newly widowed Harlow. (Jean hadn’t been home when her husband’s body was discovered, nor, she would later state, was she there at the time of his death.) The police didn’t arrive until two hours after the MGM executives did, and by that time the scene they encountered had almost certainly been compromised. Eventually authorities became aware of a clue that indicated the possible cause of Bern’s fate: a suicide note that studio head Louis B. Mayer said he had found in the home and in which Bern told Harlow that his death was “the only way to make good the frightful wrong [he] had done” and to “wipe out [his] abject humiliation”.

What did these statements mean? During the inquest that investigated Bern’s death, it was alleged that Bern was impotent and that his embarrassment over the condition – made even more profound by his marriage to a beautiful starlet – had led him to end his life. Testimony from the butler who had found Bern’s body supported this theory, as the butler indicated that though Bern and Harlow had a loving marriage, Bern had talked about killing himself. The assumption that arose from this testimony was that Bern’s alleged inability to have intercourse with his wife had plunged him into a depression from which he saw death as the only release.

However, other evidence from the inquest contradicted this theory behind Bern’s death. The couple’s gardener said he had never heard Bern bring up the idea of suicide. The gardener also stated that Bern and Harlow had a less than affectionate marriage, not the fairy-tale relationship in which MGM and Harlow wanted the public to believe (and, by extension, over which Bern would have deemed it necessary to kill himself). In addition, Bern’s cook stated that on the night Bern died, she had seen an unknown woman – not Harlow – on the grounds of the home and that she had also found two empty glasses and a woman’s bathing suit, in a size other than Harlow’s, near the couple’s pool. If the cook’s testimony was to be believed, it would seem that Paul Bern hadn’t been alone on the night—and maybe even at the time—of his demise.

After reviewing the testimony, the inquest came back with an official cause of death: suicide. Yet while the matter was settled in the books, not everyone believed that Paul Bern had killed himself. A minority of skeptics believed that Harlow had killed Bern and that MGM executives’ visit to her home was an attempt to cover up the evidence of her crime.

A more commonly proposed suspect – assuming that Bern had not, in fact, killed himself – was Dorothy Millette, Bern’s former common-law wife. Though his relationship with Millette had ended upon her committal to a sanatorium in the early 1920s, Bern had stayed in touch with her and continued to support her financially after their separation. Was Millette the mystery woman whom Bern’s cook had seen on the night of his death? The fact that Millette drowned herself in California’s Sacramento River two days after Bern’s death added an element of believability to this theory. Proponents of the “Bern-was-murdered” hypothesis believe that the suicide letter had either been faked or was a letter Bern had written long before his death about a completely different topic. The skeptics’ assumption was that MGM executives believed it would look better for Harlow to be the widow of a husband who had committed suicide rather than the widow of a man whose former lover had killed him.

To defuse the scandal surrounding Bern’s death, MGM arranged a quick marriage for Harlow, to cinematographer Hal Rosson in 1933; the couple divorced eight months later. In the ensuing years, Harlow’s film career remained strong, but her health did not. She had struggled with medical issues throughout her life and fell seriously ill in 1937 during the filming of the movie Saratoga. Harlow died of kidney failure on June 7 of that year at the age of 26. To her dying day, she never spoke publicly about Paul Bern’s death.

In the early days of motion pictures, William Desmond Taylor was one of the most prominent directors in Hollywood. Not only was he prolific, having supervised the filming of 59 silent movies, he was also lauded by his peers as being a refined, cultured man who was courteous to and respectful of the people with whom he worked.

It was a shattering revelation, then, when houseman Henry Peavey entered Taylor’s home in the post-dawn hours of February 2, 1922 and found the 49-year-old director’s lifeless body sprawled in his living room. Taylor had been shot to death, and Hollywood was aghast. Who on earth would have reason to kill the talented director known for such innocuous fare as Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables?

Surprisingly, the list of suspects was as lengthy as Taylor’s filmography. Everyone from a disgruntled former employee to a spurned starlet was suspected of firing the fatal shot. In the end, no one was brought to justice for Taylor’s murder. Still, that hasn’t stopped nearly a century’s worth of armchair criminologists from dissecting the case and positing their own theories about the person—or persons—who killed one of the brightest stars of Hollywood’s early days.

The man whose death would serve as fodder for scores of Jazz Age gossip rags was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner in Ireland in 1872. After a falling out with his father, the teenaged Tanner made his way to America in 1890, working first at a Kansas dude ranch, then moving to New York, where he married a woman named Ethel May Hamilton. The couple had a daughter, Ethel Daisy, and Tanner ran an antiques shop to support his family.

Life as a husband and father didn’t suit Tanner, whose wanderlust hadn’t abated since his earlier journey across the Atlantic. Tanner deserted his family in 1908 and dabbled in mining and acting for a few years before arriving in California with a new moniker (William Desmond Taylor) and a new goal—to make a name for himself in the burgeoning motion picture industry.

Taylor first worked as an actor, then became a director. He took some time away from Hollywood in 1918 and 1919 to serve in the Canadian military, but quickly resumed his career upon his return to California. As his reputation grew, Taylor became an in-demand director who worked with such silent-film stars as Mary Pickford, Wallace Reid, and Mary Miles Minter. The latter, a teenage ingénue who fell madly in love with Taylor while starring in his 1919 film Anne of Green Gables, would become one of the many people suspected of his murder.

Taylor spent the last evening of his life—February 1, 1922—drinking and chatting with comedienne Mabel Normand in his Los Angeles bungalow. Normand left at about 7:45 p.m., and 15 minutes later, neighbors heard what they later told authorities was a sound similar to that of a car backfiring. This was notable because authorities determined that Taylor had been killed at about that time, a fact that indicated the backfiring car may have actually been a discharging gun.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that Taylor’s murder has never been solved, for when Peavey discovered the director’s body on the morning of February 2, the first entity notified about the crime wasn’t the police department, but rather Taylor’s employer, Paramount. The movie studio immediately sent representatives to search Taylor’s home for letters, illegal liquor, and other items that could prove incriminating to either the director or the studio’s stars. By the time the police showed up, papers had been removed and the crime scene was being cleaned. The investigation proceeded, but with so much physical evidence lost or compromised (not to mention allegations of corruption in the police force), there was little chance of solving the Taylor murder.

So who were the suspects? Some of the most frequently cited ones are:

Mary Miles Minter—aged 19 at the time of Taylor’s death, Minter had starred in his film Anne of Green Gables, and had fallen in love with him despite the fact that he was 30 years her senior. People who knew both Minter and Taylor said that the director tried to tactfully brush off Minter’s advances. Could a humiliated Minter have killed Taylor as payback?

Charlotte Selby—Minter’s mother Charlotte Selby has also been put forth as a suspect. A stereotypically domineering “stage mother,” Selby was said to have owned a gun similar to the one that killed Taylor. Was Selby possessive enough of her daughter to kill the man who had broken Minter’s heart?

Edward Sands—For a time, serial con artist Edward Sands worked as Taylor’s houseman. Ultimately, he stole $5,000 from Taylor and disappeared, though not without sending a mocking note to Taylor under the latter’s real name, William C. Deane-Tanner. A few days before his death, Taylor began receiving hang-up phone calls. Was Sands behind them, planning to return for more of Taylor’s wealth and using the calls as a means of determining when the director would be at home?

Margaret Gibson—Silent film actress Margaret Gibson was said to have confessed to Taylor’s murder on her deathbed in 1964. She had worked with Taylor on various films, but not much is known about their relationship (if, indeed, anything beyond a professional relationship existed between the two) or her alleged motive for the crime. Was she responsible for Taylor’s death, or was her confession either a fabrication or the faulty memories of a dying woman?

Drug dealers—Taylor didn’t do drugs, but his close friend Mabel Normand most certainly did. Her vice was cocaine. Seeing how the substance was affecting her professional and personal life, Taylor repeatedly urged her to beat her addiction and, shortly before his death, was said to have been seeking avenues to bring charges against Normand’s suppliers. Did vengeful drug dealers kill Taylor as a means of staying out of prison and keeping their clutches on Normand?