IT HAPPENED ON NIGHT AT MGM
by David Stenn
Vanity Fair, April 2003
"What," asked Jacqueline Onassis, "are we going to do next?" It was September 1993. She had just edited Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow, in which I solved the long-standing mystery of how Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer's beloved Blonde Bombshell died suddenly and inexplicably at 26. (Unbeknownst even to herself, Harlow had been suffering from kidney failure since she was 15.)
Now, over lunch at the Peninsula hotel in Manhattan, I told Jackie of an intriguing topic I'd stumbled onto in my Harlow research. A month before the star's death, in 1937, a dancer named Patricia Douglas had been raped at a wild MGM party thrown by Louis B. Mayer. Instead of bartering her silence for a studio contract or cash, Douglas went public with her story and filed a landmark lawsuit.
One person I interviewed told me, "They had her killed."
