Dailymail.
There were others in the frame - Bello, for one, whose control over his cash-cow stepdaughter was jeopardised by her marriage; or Bern's first wife, who nobody knew even existed but who turned up with a grievance just before his death. Harlow's response to the loss of husband number two was to go completely off the rails.
The Hollywood star went out on the pull, looking for sex. Dressed in tart's clothes, she kerb-crawled the red-light districts, offering to pay men to sleep with her.
A year after Bern's death, she married again - another older, balding middle-aged man. She gave an interview explaining that: 'He's no Apollo, but if you love a person the physical means nothing.'
When she saw the words in print she was appalled at the implication. It was tantamount to admitting that the sex siren - the image on which her entire career was built - was not interested in sex.
There were more men, more unfulfilling affairs. She shared her bed with a handsome writer - but found she was sharing him too with his male lover, the beefcake actor and her co-star, Clark Gable. World heavyweight champion boxer Max Baer bedded her within hours of them meeting and then went back to his wife.
One of the few men to treat her decently was actor William Powell, or 'Poppy', as she called him, a nickname that spoke volumes about their relationship.
In the end, though, it was not a man who let her down and caused her death. Instead, it was her mother. Mama Jean was a member of the Christian Scientist sect, a believer in divine healing of human ailments. She opposed hospital treatment of any sort and insisted the same should go for Baby (though, oddly, she seems to have turned a blind eye to her daughter's three abortions).
But Jean was constantly prone to illness. Her eyes were wrecked by strong studio lights, forcing her into dark glasses. The peroxide she doused her scalp in shredded her hair. Bouts of flu and pneumonia laid her low. She had appendicitis and badly impacted wisdom teeth. But then a worse condition emerged - her internal organs were showing signs of serious wear.
It could have been the large amounts of gin she was downing that were to blame, and they certainly wouldn't have helped. It was also thought that the peroxide from her hair was working its way through her system. But author David Bret's view is that the beating she had taken from Bern's walking stick in 1932 had left permanent, long-term damage.
She was getting more and more back pain - ascribed by the doctors at the studio to a muscle strain from playing too much golf. Her general health was also going downhill.
In the spring of 1937, shortly after her 26th birthday, she arrived on the set of her latest film looking distinctly unwell.
She was bloated, had piled on weight, was suffering from the shakes and having the occasional blackout. Her hair was also falling out. She managed to get through the next few weeks of shooting until, in one of the final scenes, the script called for Gable, her leading man, to pick her up. She went limp in his arms.
A doctor was called and smelled not gin on her breath as everyone expected but urine. It was a sign of a gall-bladder infection.
But her mother refused the medical advice to take her to hospital. Mama Jean took her Baby home to rest and to be prayed over, and she took the phone off the hook so that no one could interfere and change her mind.
Days later, when nothing had been heard from the Harlow household, an anxious Gable led a squad of studio heavies to force their way in. When they got to Jean's bedroom, they found her semi-conscious on the bed, extremely bloated and in great pain. The stench of urine from her breath was now overpowering.
Over Mama Jean's protests, a doctor was called and said immediate surgery was needed. But Mama Jean refused point blank and screamed blue murder at two nurses who were summoned to look after the patient.
Another two days went by - now Jean was in real trouble. Mama Jean told the Press camped on her doorstep that her daughter was fine, but in reality her face was swollen, she could not swallow properly and her kidneys were starting to fail. Unless her gall-bladder was removed at once, she was going to die.
But still the deranged Mama Jean would not budge. Her daughter, she screamed, was faking the illness just to make a fool out of her religious beliefs, and to force the studio into giving her a pay rise. All would be well, she shrieked, if a quartet of Christian Science believers she had sent for sat at her bedside reading from the Bible.
In the end it was William Powell who broke the deadlock. The lover she called 'Poppy' arrived with an ambulance and rescued the sick girl. In hospital, she was given blood transfusions and placed in an oxygen tent to recover enough strength for an operation. Mama Jean and Powell sat with her through the night, glaring at each other across the sickbed.
But it was too late. The next morning, she slipped into a coma, her lungs filled with fluid, and she slipped peacefully away. There is no doubt in Bret's mind that if the doctors had been allowed to do their job from the start, Jean Harlow, dead at 26, would have made old bones.
Like the best Hollywood legends, she lived fast and died young. But it is hard to resist the conclusion that she was a victim. So many people - most notably her mother - had tried to live their lives through hers, to manipulate and control her, all in the pursuit of fame. In the end, sadly, it was the death of her.