In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must
Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age
through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard
Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and
publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom.
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of
entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually
harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But
as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was
Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a
cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late
1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of
Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn,
Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and
Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more
than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified
and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s
grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an
increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private
investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these
actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining,
The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in
Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's
Hollywood
Image of Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard
Hughes's Hollywood
Author(s):
Karina Longworth
Release Date:
November 13, 2018
Reviewed by:
Mike Farris
“Throughout his moviemaking career, Hughes relentlessly
worked the Hollywood system to fuel his ego, his libido, and his ambition, but
in the end, he was undone by his own paranoia. He died a reclusive outcast
remembered almost as much for his oddities as he is for his accomplishments.”
Most people today think of Howard Hughes as the eccentric
germophobe who made millions in the oil and aviation businesses (including
wartime profiteering during World War II), while dabbling in the movie
industry, but Hughes more than dabbled. He used his money and power as a
producer, and later as owner of RKO Studios (which he essentially ran into the
ground), to collect Hollywood starlets “so visually similar to one another that
a rubber stamp would have offered more variation,” while simultaneously using
that power, and sex, to make, control, and crush careers.
If Hughes were alive today, he might well be a poster boy
for the #MeToo movement. Such is the decidedly unflattering portrait author
Karina Longworth paints of Hughes in her new book Seduction: Sex, Lies, and
Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood.
Longworth gives us a glimpse of Hollywood as it moved from
its infancy to adolescence, from silent films to talkies, when multitudes of
young women answered its siren call, hoping to find fame on the silver screen.
For many, their only currency was their beauty and sexuality, which played
right into the lustful hands of many of Hollywood’s power elite.
It was into this strange, and often perverse, industry that
Howard Hughes, Jr. arrived in 1924 when, at the age of 18, he became heir to
his father’s business as manufacturer of the Sharp-Hughes drill bit, with which
the senior Hughes aspired to “drill the deepest well in the world.” But young
Howard had different aspirations: to make a name for himself in aviation,
movies, and golf . . . and to become the richest man in the world.
He quickly mastered Hollywood’s formula of promising young
actresses a shot at fame in exchange for sexual favors. He also began
“replicating the failure to make good on the promise, implied or directly
stated at the beginning of the sexual transaction.” In fact, Hughes often took
the formula one step further, promising marriage. That strategy would later
cause considerable distress to his heirs and line the pockets of many a lawyer
hired to untangle the legal mess wrought by his marriage-or-not to actress
Terry Moore.
Seduction tells the story of some of the women who became
involved with Hughes, either sexually or professionally. Some of them prospered
because, or in spite, of Hughes, while others saw him dash their dreams before
they could get airborne. The names
include luminaries like Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Jane
Russell, and Ava Gardner, and lesser knowns such as Billie Dove, Jean Peters,
and Faith Domergue.
Hughes’s first major foray into moviemaking, which set a
pattern for the rest of his Hollywood career, was with Hell’s Angels and his
discovery of Jean Harlow. It also marked the birth of his fascination with
using women’s breasts as a marketing tool. The author calls it his “interest
and expertise in costuming for cleavage.”
That fascination created friction with his star, another
pattern that would follow with future projects. Longworth tells us: “That
Harlow took no pleasure in putting herself on display made the pleasure Hughes
took in forcing her to do so all the more sadistic.” With Hell’s Angels, Hughes
hit a trifecta of his personal interests: movies, aviation, and beautiful
women. Had he been able to slip a Hughes drill bit into the film, it would have
been a quadfecta.
Yet another pattern set by Hell’s Angels was the beginning
of Hughes’s feuds with censors as he continually pushed the envelope of what
was acceptable, often because he simply didn’t know what he was doing. The
author tells us that his “lack of regard for the ‘rules’ of Hollywood had
promotional value, but behind the scenes, his ignorance was at times almost
embarrassing.”
By the time the 1940s rolled around, Hughes had mastered the
game, and he turned his attention to a new generation of women. “As with so
much in his career, Hughes did the same things that other men did—he just did
them more crudely, and with even less of a regard for the person these
actresses were before they came into his life, and what would become of them
once he had moved on.”
Throughout his moviemaking career, Hughes relentlessly
worked the Hollywood system to fuel his ego, his libido, and his ambition, but
in the end, he was undone by his own paranoia. He died a reclusive outcast
remembered almost as much for his oddities as he is for his accomplishments.
This is a book for Hollywood lovers, especially lovers of
the golden age when the studio system cranked out movies like products on
assembly lines. The moral of the story is that, when the rich and powerful die,
they are just as dead as the poor and oppressed. The final exam is how they are
remembered for living their lives when they were above-ground. To hear Karina
Longworth tell it, Howard Hughes flunked.
Mike Farris is an author of both fiction and
nonfiction. His most recent nonfiction
books include Poor Innocent Lad: The Tragic Death of Gill Jamieson and the
Execution of Myles Fukunaga and the award-winning Fifty Shades of Black and
White: Anatomy of the Lawsuit behind a Publishing Phenomenon. A retired
attorney whose practice included commercial litigation and entertainment law,
he is an adjunct professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Texas at
Arlington.
Early romances
In 1929, Hughes' wife, Ella, returned to Houston and filed
for divorce. Hughes dated many famous women, including Billie Dove, Faith
Domergue, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn,
Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, Janet Leigh, Rita Hayworth, Mamie Van Doren and
Gene Tierney. He also proposed to Joan Fontaine several times, according to her
autobiography No Bed of Roses. Jean Harlow accompanied him to the premiere of
Hell's Angels, but Noah Dietrich wrote many years later that the relationship
was strictly professional, as Hughes apparently personally disliked Harlow. In
his 1971 book, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, Dietrich said that Hughes
genuinely liked and respected Jane Russell, but never sought romantic
involvement with her. According to Russell's autobiography, however, Hughes
once tried to bed her after a party. Russell (who was married at the time)
refused him, and Hughes promised it would never happen again. The two
maintained a professional and private friendship for many years. Hughes
remained good friends with Tierney who, after his failed attempts to seduce
her, was quoted as saying "I don't think Howard could love anything that
did not have a motor in it." Later, when Tierney's daughter Daria was born
deaf and blind and with a severe learning disability because of Tierney's being
exposed to rubella during her pregnancy, Hughes saw to it that Daria received
the best medical care and paid all expenses.
Buys luxury yacht, fatal car accident
In 1933, Hughes made a purchase of an unseen luxury steam
yacht named the Rover, which was previously owned by British shipping magnate
Lord Inchcape. "I have never seen the Rover but bought it on the
blueprints, photographs and the reports of Lloyd's surveyors. My experience is
that the English are the most honest race in the world."Hughes renamed the
yacht Southern Cross and later sold her to Swedish entrepreneur Axel
Wenner-Gren.
On July 11, 1936, Hughes struck and killed a pedestrian
named Gabriel S. Meyer with his car at the corner of 3rd Street and Lorraine in
Los Angeles.[87] After the crash, Hughes was taken to the hospital and
certified as sober, but an attending doctor made a note that Hughes had been
drinking. A witness to the crash told police that Hughes was driving
erratically and too fast, and that Meyer had been standing in the safety zone of
a streetcar stop. Hughes was booked on suspicion of negligent homicide and held
overnight in jail until his attorney, Neil S. McCarthy, obtained a writ of
habeas corpus for his release pending a coroner's inquest. By the time of the
coroner's inquiry, however, the witness had changed his story and claimed that
Meyer had moved directly in front of Hughes' car. Nancy Bayly (Watts), who was
in the car with Hughes at the time of the crash, corroborated this version of
the story. On July 16, 1936, Hughes was held blameless by a coroner's jury at
the inquest into Meyer's death. Hughes told reporters outside the inquiry,
"I was driving slowly and a man stepped out of the darkness in front of
me."
During his 1954 engagement at the Last Frontier hotel,
entertainer Liberace mistook Hughes for his lighting director, instructing him
to instantly bring up a blue light should he start to play "Clair de
lune". Hughes nodded in compliance, before the hotel's entertainment
director arrived and introduced Hughes to Liberace.
Marriage to Jean Peters
On January 12, 1957, Hughes married actress Jean Peters at a
small hotel in Tonopah, Nevada.The couple met in the 1940s, before Peters
became a film actress. They had a highly publicized romance in 1947 and there
was talk of marriage, but she said she could not combine it with her career.
Some later claimed that Peters was "the only woman [Hughes] ever
loved," and he reportedly had his security officers follow her everywhere
even when they were not in a relationship. Such reports were confirmed by actor
Max Showalter, who became a close friend of Peters while shooting Niagara
(1953). Showalter told in an interview that because he frequently met with
Peters, Hughes' men threatened to ruin his career if he did not leave her
alone.
Nixon scandal
Shortly before the 1960 Presidential election, Richard Nixon
was alarmed when it was revealed that his brother, Donald, received a $205,000
loan from Hughes. It has long been speculated[98] that Nixon's drive to learn
what the Democrats were planning in 1972 was based in part on his belief that
the Democrats knew about a later bribe that his friend Bebe Rebozo had received
from Hughes after Nixon took office.
In late 1971, Donald Nixon was collecting intelligence for
his brother in preparation for the upcoming presidential election. One of his
sources was John H. Meier, a former business adviser of Hughes who had also
worked with Democratic National Committee Chair Larry O'Brien.
Meier, in collaboration with former Vice President Hubert
Humphrey and others, wanted to feed misinformation to the Nixon campaign. Meier
told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election because Larry
O'Brien had a great deal of information on Richard Nixon's illicit dealings
with Howard Hughes that had never been released; O'Brien did not actually have
any such information, but Meier wanted Nixon to think he did. Donald told his
brother that O'Brien was in possession of damaging Hughes information that
could destroy his campaign.Terry Lenzner, who was the chief investigator for
the Senate Watergate Committee, speculates that it was Nixon's desire to know
what O'Brien knew about Nixon's dealings with Hughes that may have partially
motivated the Watergate break-in.
Last years and death
Physical decline
Dietrich wrote that Hughes only ate the same thing for
dinner, a New York strip steak cooked medium rare, dinner salad, and peas, but
only the smaller ones, pushing the larger ones aside. For breakfast, Hughes
wanted his eggs cooked the way his family cook, Lily, made them. Hughes had a
"phobia about germs", and "his passion for secrecy became a
mania."
While directing The Outlaw, Hughes became fixated on a small
flaw in one of Jane Russell's blouses, claiming that the fabric bunched up along
a seam and gave the appearance of two nipples on each breast. He wrote a
detailed memorandum to the crew on how to fix the problem. Richard Fleischer,
who directed His Kind of Woman with Hughes as executive producer, wrote at
length in his autobiography about the difficulty of dealing with the tycoon. In
his book, Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer explained that Hughes was fixated
on trivial details and was alternately indecisive and obstinate. He also
revealed that Hughes' unpredictable mood swings made him wonder if the film
would ever be completed.
In 1958, Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some
movies at a film studio near his home. He stayed in the studio's darkened
screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He ate only chocolate
bars and chicken and drank only milk, and was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex
boxes that he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to
his aides giving them explicit instructions neither to look at him nor speak to
him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair,
often naked, continually watching movies. When he finally emerged in the summer
of 1958, his hygiene was terrible. He had neither bathed nor cut his hair and
nails for weeks; this may have been due to allodynia, which results in a pain
response to stimuli that would normally not cause pain.
After the screening room incident, Hughes moved into a
bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he also rented rooms for his aides,
his wife, and numerous girlfriends. He would sit naked in his bedroom with a
pink hotel napkin placed over his genitals, watching movies. This may have been
because Hughes found the touch of clothing painful due to allodynia. He may
have watched movies to distract himself from his pain—a common practice among
patients with intractable pain, especially those who do not receive adequate
treatment.[39] In one year, Hughes spent an estimated $11 million at the hotel.
Hughes began purchasing all restaurant chains and four star
hotels that had been founded within the state of Texas. This included, if for
only a short period, many unknown franchises currently out of business. He
placed ownership of the restaurants with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
and all licenses were resold shortly after.
Another time, he became obsessed with the 1968 film Ice
Station Zebra, and had it run on a continuous loop in his home. According to
his aides, he watched it 150 times. Feeling guilty about the commercial,
critical, and literal toxicity of his film The Conqueror, he bought every copy
of the film for $12 million, watching the film on repeat. Paramount Pictures
acquired the rights of the film in 1979, 3 years after his death.
Hughes insisted on using tissues to pick up objects to
insulate himself from germs. He would also notice dust, stains, or other
imperfections on people's clothes and demand that they take care of them. Once
one of the most visible men in America, Hughes ultimately vanished from public
view, although tabloids continued to follow rumors of his behavior and
whereabouts. He was reported to be terminally ill, mentally unstable, or even
dead.
Injuries from numerous aircraft crashes caused Hughes to
spend much of his later life in pain, and he eventually became addicted to
codeine, which he injected intramuscularly. Hughes had his hair cut and nails
trimmed only once a year, likely due to the pain caused by the RSD/CRPS, which
was caused by the plane crashes. He also stored his urine in bottles.
Later years as a Las Vegas recluse
The wealthy and aging Hughes, accompanied by his entourage
of personal aides, began moving from one hotel to another, always taking up
residence in the top floor penthouse. In the last ten years of his life, 1966
to 1976, Hughes lived in hotels in many cities—including Beverly Hills, Boston,
Las Vegas, Nassau, Freeport, Vancouver, London, Managua, and Acapulco.
On November 24, 1966 (Thanksgiving Day), Hughes arrived in
Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into the Desert Inn. Because he refused to
leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners, Hughes bought
the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center
of Hughes' empire and the ninth-floor penthouse became his personal residence.
Between 1966 and 1968, he bought several other hotel-casinos, including the
Castaways, New Frontier, the Landmark Hotel and Casino, and the Sands.He bought
the small Silver Slipper casino for the sole purpose of moving its trademark
neon silver slipper; visible from Hughes' bedroom, it had apparently kept him
awake at night.
After Hughes left the Desert Inn, hotel employees discovered
that his drapes had not been opened during the time he lived there and had
rotted through.
Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas to something
more glamorous. As Hughes wrote in a memo to an aide, "I like to think of
Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully
jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car." Hughes bought
several local television stations (including KLAS-TV).
Hughes' considerable business holdings were overseen by a
small panel unofficially dubbed "The Mormon Mafia" because of the
many Latter-day Saints on the committee, led by Frank William Gay. In addition
to supervising day-to-day business operations and Hughes' health, they also
went to great pains to satisfy Hughes' every whim. For example, Hughes once
became fond of Baskin-Robbins' banana nut ice cream, so his aides sought to
secure a bulk shipment for him, only to discover that Baskin-Robbins had
discontinued the flavor. They put in a request for the smallest amount the
company could provide for a special order, 350 gallons (1,300 L), and had it
shipped from Los Angeles. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced
he was tired of banana nut and wanted only French vanilla ice cream. The Desert
Inn ended up distributing free banana nut ice cream to casino customers for a
year. In a 1996 interview, ex–Howard Hughes communicator Robert Maheu said,
"There is a rumor that there is still some banana nut ice cream left in
the freezer. It is most likely true."
As an owner of several major Las Vegas businesses, Hughes
wielded much political and economic influence in Nevada and elsewhere. During
the 1960s and early 1970s, he disapproved of underground nuclear testing at the
Nevada Test Site. Hughes was concerned about the risk from residual nuclear
radiation, and attempted to halt the tests. When the tests finally went through
despite Hughes' efforts, the detonations were powerful enough that the entire
hotel where he was staying trembled due to the shock waves. In two separate,
last-ditch maneuvers, Hughes instructed his representatives to offer
million-dollar bribes to both presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.
In 1970, Jean Peters filed for divorce. The two had not
lived together for many years. Peters requested a lifetime alimony payment of
$70,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, and waived all claims to Hughes'
estate. Hughes offered her a settlement of over a million dollars, but she
declined it. Hughes did not insist on a confidentiality agreement from Peters
as a condition of the divorce. Aides reported that Hughes never spoke ill of
her. She refused to discuss her life with Hughes and declined several lucrative
offers from publishers and biographers. Peters would state only that she had not
seen Hughes for several years before their divorce and had only dealt with him
by phone.
Hughes was living in the Intercontinental Hotel near Lake
Managua in Nicaragua, seeking privacy and security, when a magnitude 6.5
earthquake damaged Managua in December 1972. As a precaution, Hughes moved
first to a rather large tent, facing the hotel, then after a few days there to
the Nicaraguan National Palace and stayed there as a guest of Anastasio Somoza
Debayle before leaving for Florida on a private jet the following day. He
subsequently moved into the Penthouse at the Xanadu Princess Resort on Grand
Bahama Island, which he had recently purchased. He lived almost exclusively in
the penthouse of the Xanadu Beach Resort & Marina for the last four years
of his life. Hughes had spent a total of $300 million on his many properties in
Las Vegas.
Memoir hoax
In 1972, author Clifford Irving caused a media sensation
when he claimed he had co-written an authorized autobiography of Hughes. Hughes
was so reclusive that he did not immediately publicly refute Irving's
statement, leading many to believe the Irving book was genuine. However, before
the book's publication, Hughes finally denounced Irving in a teleconference and
the entire project was eventually exposed as a hoax. Irving was later convicted
of fraud and spent 17 months in prison. In 1974, the Orson Welles film F for
Fake included a section on the Hughes biography hoax, leaving a question open
as to whether it was actually Hughes who took part in the teleconference (since
so few people had actually heard or seen him in recent years). In 1977, The
Hoax by Clifford Irving was published in the United Kingdom, telling his story
of these events. The 2006 film The Hoax, starring Richard Gere, is also based
on these events.
Death
Hughes family grave site at Glenwood Cemetery
Hughes was reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27
p.m. on board an aircraft owned by Robert Graf and piloted by Jeff Abrams. He
was en route from his penthouse at the Acapulco Fairmont Princess Hotel in
Mexico to the Methodist Hospital in Houston. Other accounts indicate that he
died on the flight from Freeport, Grand Bahama, to Houston.
After receiving a call, his senior counsel, Frank P. Morse,
ordered his staff to get his body on a plane and return him to the United
States. It was common that foreign countries would hold a corpse as ransom so
that an estate could not be settled. Morse ordered the pilots to announce
Hughes' death once they entered U.S. airspace.
His reclusiveness and possible drug use made him practically
unrecognizable. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long—his tall 6
ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to
use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body.Howard Hughes' alias, John
T. Conover, was used when his body arrived at a morgue in Houston on the day of
his death.
A subsequent autopsy recorded kidney failure as the cause of
death. Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his
death. He suffered from malnutrition. While his kidneys were damaged, his other
internal organs, including his brain, which had no visible damage other than
illnesses, were deemed perfectly healthy. X-rays revealed five broken-off
hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms. To inject codeine into his
muscles, Hughes had used glass syringes with metal needles that easily became
detached.
Estate
Approximately three weeks after Hughes' death, a handwritten
will was found on the desk of an official of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. The so-called "Mormon
Will" gave $1.56 billion to various charitable organizations (including
$625 million to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute), nearly $470 million to
the upper management in Hughes' companies and to his aides, $156 million to
first cousin William Lummis, and $156 million split equally between his two
ex-wives Ella Rice and Jean Peters.
In this will, Hughes left his entire estate to the Hughes
Medical Institute, as he had no connection to family and was seriously ill.
This is contrary to the many wills that have surfaced after his death. The
original will that included payments to aides never surfaced. It was apparently
in a home surrounding the Desert Inn Golf Course belonging to the mother of an
assistant. He had no desire to leave any money to family, aides or churches,
including William Gay and Frank Morse.[131][full citation needed] Hughes was
not Mormon and had no reason to leave his estate to that church. Frank P. Morse
is still the attorney of record for Hughes.
A further $156 million was endowed to a gas-station owner,
Melvin Dummar, who told reporters that in 1967, he found a disheveled and dirty
man lying along U.S. Route 95, just 150 miles (240 km) north of Las Vegas. The
man asked for a ride to Vegas. Dropping him off at the Sands Hotel, Dummar said
the man told him that he was Hughes. Dummar later claimed that days after
Hughes' death a "mysterious man" appeared at his gas station, leaving
an envelope containing the will on his desk. Unsure if the will was genuine and
unsure of what to do, Dummar left the will at the LDS Church office. In 1978, a
Nevada court ruled the Mormon Will a forgery, and officially declared that
Hughes had died intestate (without a valid will). Dummar's story was later
adapted into Jonathan Demme's film Melvin and Howard in 1980.
Hughes' $2.5 billion estate was eventually split in 1983
among 22 cousins, including William Lummis, who serves as a trustee of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled
that Hughes Aircraft was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which
sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5.2 billion. The court rejected suits by
the states of California and Texas that claimed they were owed inheritance tax.
In 1984 Hughes' estate paid an undisclosed amount to Terry Moore, who claimed
she and Hughes had secretly married on a yacht in international waters off
Mexico in 1949 and never divorced. Moore never produced proof of a marriage,
but her book, The Beauty and the Billionaire, became a bestseller.
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