Citizen Kane : Shot by Shot

[Jeff Bernstein]

77–83

NEWSREEL NARRATOR : “Kane urged his country’s entry into one war, opposed participation in another. Swung the election to one American president at least. Spoke for millions of Americans. Was hated by as many more.”

 

Jaunty patriotic music in 77, as if Kane was in all-American fun. And how much fun is this Newsreel, audience, am I right?

 

Kane was a colossal American personality in his day. “Spoke for millions”, “hated” by millions? His newspapers manipulated outcomes of presidential elections? His newspapers led the U.S. into The Spanish-American War? In that case one might define Kane as a proponent of “Expansionism”. But then Kane's newspapers “opposed participation” in WWI—in which case one might define Kane as a proponent of “Isolationism”. Hmm. A personality might justifiably change over time : but the stark contrast here evokes a strong sense of contradiction. Of Kane’s newspapers saying whatever the hell they feel like saying, for some short-term self-advantage. (Which is itself a contradiction of the young Kane’s idealistic promise to print the Truth!)

 

Contradictions abound in this Newsreel. The Newsreel already wants it both ways about a man the newsmen themselves despise. They humiliate him and celebrate him by turns, according to the whims of the manipulative infotainment product that puts bucks in their pockets.

 

So : cue the Jaunty patriotic music.

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

77  The English Language

This grotesque grammar is a climactic horror of the Newsreel-speak (akin, say, to Annie’s last vehicle in Halloween (1978)).

 

The Newsreel means to say :

 

Kane covered the news for years. And for years Kane himself was news.

 

This word-gloop embodies grammatical abominations mentioned earlier : the subject shunted to the back-end, clauses mixed up needlessly. Now a new abomination enters : ending an English sentence with a verb.

 

Quirk’s Comprehensive Grammar : “At the simplest level, we may make the follow generalizations about clause structures. The verb element is the most ‘central’ element, and it is preceded by the subject. Following the verb there may be one or two objects. . . The verb element is the most ‘central’ element in that (i) its position is normally medial rather than initial or final. . . .” (2.13)

 

Obviously licence may be taken with language according to context. Here, however, the Newsreel authors are artists only of imbecility.

 

That said, if we receive these two lines as contemporary poetry, the authors may be on to something.

[Jeff Bernstein]

Editor Robert Wise Up To His Old Tricks

 

78

79

In 78, the procession is moving to-the-left. Note the figure in the top-center of 79 : he is moving to-the-left, continuing the abstract sense of movement to-the-left. Yet another of the very many graceful transitions already : such transitions act on the viewer's unconscious as the eye absorbs the continuum. Theory : such transitions generate both forward momentum and stability.

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

A rare moment of religion in CK : associated with death.

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

This shot also conveys an abstract sense of unanimity. The US people were fully behind WWI. So when Charles Foster Kane made mistakes, he made them big.

 

 

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

Sgt. Stubby

 

1.

 

“At-ten-tion!”

 

Conroy stood up straight, rising tall with shoulders back, belly in, feet together. He hoped his promptness of response was impressive. At enlistment he’d promised his father he’d do his utmost to act a perfect soldier.

 

Striding up was a trim man in a peaked garrison cap, his immaculate uniform impeccably starched and creased. Silver eagles glittered at his tunic shoulder straps: it was the colonel of the regiment. He halted, standing close in Conroy’s face. His glasses were rimless and his moustache and goatee were trimmed with precision.

 

“Private, is it too much to ask for you to salute an officer?”

 

So much for perfection. Conroy raised his right hand and held it at his forehead until the colonel gave a half-hearted salute in reply.

 

“Private,” incredulous, “what is that at your feet?”

 

Conroy looked down at Stubby.

 

“EYES FRONT! I’ll ask you again. What is this breathing lump of whiskery meat occupying space at your feet?”

 

“A dog, sir.”

 

“A dog?” Spoken as if astounded beyond all measure of reason at the enormity of the situation. “Is it yours?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“This is not your dog?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

“Have you been feeding this dog?”

 

A devastating question. Conroy was forced to answer: “Yes, sir.”

 

“You’ve fed the dog?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“This dog.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

“But still you allege this is not your dog?”

Perspiration. “Yes, sir.”

“Whose dog is it?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

The colonel glared at Conroy, then gave Stubby the full weight of his attention. Sitting on his haunches, Stubby looked up good-naturedly with his widely spaced eyes the colour of golden ale, the red ball chocked in his mouth. He let the ball drop to the ground. The colonel, unamused, watched the rubber ball roll away then raised his sceptical gaze back to Conroy.

 

“Private, what is this sorry-looking scruffy flea-bitten delinquent dog doing in my camp?”

“I think he enjoys the companionship, sir.”

Tense pause. The mildness of the answer knocked the colonel off his stride. Conroy waited at attention in the hot sun. Stubby’s eyes flickered from man to man. The colonel spoke, less emphatically : “What is your name, son?”

“Private Conroy, sir.”

“Conroy.” Pronounced as if a ‘conroy’ were a species of abomination. “What company are you with?”

“Company E, sir.”

“Conroy, how did this questionable specimen of man’s best friend end up on U.S. Army grounds?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Stray dogs are not allowed in camp.”

“It’s not my doing that the dog wandered into camp, sir.”

The colonel’s face hardened. Conroy was presently feeling the pressure of the commanding officer of the entire 102nd Infantry. “Private, you will cut out that answering back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you ever have anything of significance to say, which would surprise me greatly, you will ask for permission to speak.”

“Yes, sir,” said Conroy. “May I speak, sir?”

“Denied.”

The colonel frowned at the dog at his feet. Stubby looked up with interest at the colonel. His open mouth suggested a smile, his long pink tongue lolling while he panted. The animal sat alert and eager and upright, holding himself, like Conroy, at attention.

The colonel’s brow furrowed. Conroy held his breath. The colonel was remembering a dog he’d known twenty years earlier when he’d served as captain in the First Connecticut Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War. He’d been in Company D and the dog had belonged to the boys in Company K, but all of the soldiers had known of the dog. Old Jack his name was, Old Jack Brutus. He’d been one tough-looking terrier with maybe some bulldog blood in him. Old Jack had a flair for playing dead: he would stumble on his hind legs, tragically so (you had to see it to believe it), before tipping onto his side. The boys had laughed perversely at that flair of showmanship.

When the colonel spoke he sounded agreeable. “What is this dog’s name, Private?”

“Stubby, sir.”

His anger flared. “You’ve given the dog a name but assert that this is not your dog?”

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel let it go. “Why the name ‘Stubby’?”

“Because of his short tail, sir.”

The colonel gave Stubby a friendly look. It was true, the dog had a passing resemblance to Old Jack, who had brought much comfort to the soldiers, and who had been so good for morale; and like Old Jack, Stubby sat cool under fire. This confrontation didn’t seem to faze Stubby in the slightest. The colonel admired poise.

But stray dogs were forbidden on army grounds. The dog might harbour infectious diseases such as rabies. Even if the dog were free of contagion, he still might bite a soldier, causing needless injury. Or the dog could scratch someone with his claws. Fleas could leap off its coat and bite the men, transmitting who knew what. Ticks could be a problem. Seen one way, a dog was an ambulatory bazaar of germs and parasites, a threat to camp sanitation. Even if the dog were as healthy as a newborn babe, the animal still might cause disruption, such as barking at night or getting underfoot during drill.

All that said, there was such a thing in the present army regulations as an official company mascot.

Conroy and Stubby waited at attention for the colonel to render his verdict.

The colonel dropped his heavy gaze onto Conroy. “Private, since you feed this dog,” he said, “you shall be its sponsor.”

Conroy took his first breath in living memory. “Yes, sir.”

“If this is Stubby’s patch,” the colonel continued, “then Stubby can stay here. For now. But you are responsible for cleaning up after this animal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I sink my foot into anything offensive, on the parade ground, in between the tents, or anywhere in the camp, inside or out, I will send you straight to Hell. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is your responsibility to keep this animal under control.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If the dog exhibits any threatening behaviour, if he destroys any army property, if he is unruly in any way, this dog will be seized by the military police and removed from the camp.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He is to stay well away from the storehouse.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are to wash your hands after touching this animal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now take him to the veterinary section and have him immunised for rabies. That’s an order, Private.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do know where the veterinary section is?”

“Yes, sir.” Conroy had no idea.

“One more thing. Under no circumstances will this dog be accompanying us overseas. Am I understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well.” The colonel dropped his eyes to Stubby. Stubby looked up smiling, nose twitching, scenting the air. The dog seemed obedient and well-mannered. But would he have what it takes to deserve the position of United States Army mascot? Time would tell. He wouldn’t make Stubby’s appointment official just yet.

The colonel gave Conroy a sidelong glace, then patted Stubby on the head.

“Woof,” said Stubby.

“Carry on, Conroy,” the Colonel said. “Stubby.”

Conroy remembered to salute as the colonel stepped away.

“Well, Stubby,” Conroy said, his heartbeat slowing, “I reckon he’s gone off to wash his hands.”

He looked down at his four-legged friend. When their eyes met Stubby shifted his weight on his paws, barely containing a great excitement, a joy of life, pleased to be regarded by his new—or was it first?—master.

“Phew! That was something.” Conroy removed his campaign hat and with his sleeve wiped the sweat off his brow. He still had a little bit of the shakes. “Come on, Stub. Orders are orders. Let’s skedaddle.”

He was ready to prompt Stubby to retrieve his ball but when he looked, it was already in Stubby’s mouth.

“Good dog. Now march!”

Walking side by side they went off to find the veterinarian. Conroy and the rest of the recruits had already been inoculated against typhus and vaccinated against smallpox and tetanus. Now it was Stubby’s turn to get the needle. He was fast becoming one of the boys.

“Gee, Stubby,” Conroy marvelled after Stubby had gotten his shot, “you’re in the army now.”

 

yet another novel of the 16 books unpublished

[Jeff Bernstein]

Sgt. Stubby : His Men

 

The YMCA hut was a common meeting-place for the recruits in the evening after drill hours. The men sat side by side on long benches at rough wooden tables, drinking hot chocolate out of mugs, and smoking cigarettes. In between bookcases filled with books—English classics and contemporary American novels and army manuals—rousing posters were tacked to the walls: “Destroy This Mad Brute” (German soldier depicted as a rampaging gorilla); “Beat Back the Hun” (a menacing German looming over the horizon with mad white eyes, fingers dripping with blood). A Victrola phonograph played upbeat 78s :

Oh you beautiful doll!
You great big beautiful doll!

“Before this who the hell heard of Belgium?” Silvia asked his table. “Where the hell is Belgium? You know where Belgium is, Lynch?”

“It’s on the other side of the ocean,” Lynch answered.

Pearce was crooning the popular song, “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going But I’m On My Way”. Some of the soldiers laughed.

The sergeant spoke up sharply. “Belgium is not your concern, Silvia. We’re going to France.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cut that out, Pearce.”

More laughter from the table.

“What you happy-go-lucky privates need to remember is this,” the sergeant continuing, “if we don’t fight them there, we sure as hell will be fighting them here. We’re not fighting out of charity. This is self-defence.”

The sergeant looked from man to man.

“You want to fight them here?”

Conroy felt a chill, recalling the nightmare vision of The Battle Cry of Peace. Of the many moving pictures on the war theme released by Hollywood in the past three years, The Battle Cry of Peace had upset him the most. It depicted an invading army crossing the Atlantic Ocean on huge steamers and bombarding the American east coast. It was horrifying to see the streets of America invaded by the enemy. New York City decimated by bombs; the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. destroyed by artillery fire; Americans rounded up by firing squad and summarily executed. No character in the story had been safe from catastrophe. The women in the audience had frequently screamed in terror at the spectacle. The film offered no comforting happy ending; the audience had filed out in a state of shock. Afterwards Conroy was troubled for days. Could America fall like that, so easily? If something wasn’t done now?

“They’re already here,” Malone spoke up. “The Heinies got spies all over the place. They send reports back in secret code. It was in the Providence Journal, sergeant.”

“Secret agents sneaking around with fake passports,” Graziani said. “Lighting fires and blowing things up.”

“Those lowlifes damaged the Statue of Liberty,” Dudziak said.

“Biggest explosion ever in New York City,” Graziani said.

The boys were referring to the ammunition depot of two million pounds of munitions stored on an island in New York Harbour known as “Black Tom” that exploded spectacularly at 2:08 a.m. on 30 July 1916. Thousands of windows shattered throughout Manhattan; people thought they were waking up to an earthquake of considerable magnitude.

“And that plant,” Malone said, “in, uh—”

“New Jersey,” said Russell.

This was the Canadian Car and Foundry Company, a factory producing high-explosive shells. Canadian Car was destroyed in an explosion even greater than the Black Tom disaster after a fire broke out in one of its factory buildings on 11 January 1917.

Both were considered acts of German sabotage. And they were not the only ones. Since 1915 mysterious fires had been breaking out and explosions taking place at a number of munitions factories, chemical factories, ammunition depots around the country.

“It’s creepy,” Conroy observed, “knowing the enemy is slinking around inside our borders.”

The soldiers nodded gravely.

Gittleson and Bucholz, holding hands in a silly dance, whirled deliriously up to the table and banged against it laughing. The soldiers exclaimed “whoa!” and “hey!” and raised their mugs of chocolate high out of reach.

“What gives?”

“Watch out, you boneheads!”

Gittleson addressed the table : “I’m teaching this bimbo the foxtrot so he can bag one of them mademoiselles in France.”

“I don’t know a speck of nothing about France,” Silvia admitted, staring into his mug.

“It’s the same as here,” Pearce said, “except they have different names for things.”

Conroy practiced a phrase he’d recently learned from The Soldiers’ French Phrase Book : “Avez-vous mon fusil? (Have you my rifle?)”

Silvia : “Avay what?”

“Wait,” Gittleson, jostling, squeezing in alongside Bucholz. “It’s coming to me.... Je vais très bien, merci (I am very well, thanks.)”

“Pardon their French,” Pearce said, eliciting laughter.

Silvia slammed his mug onto the tabletop. “We win the war, the whole world should speak English.”

Judson at the far end of the table, flexing his biceps, rubbing them through his wool shirt. “We’ll win the war.”

Russell ventured : “I heard their officers let their soldiers fight drunk. Makes em crazier. More destructive.”

Dudziak grimaced in distaste.“No discipline.”

“Is it true they carry needles with them?” Ducharme looked around with a shy, haunted look. “So when they catch you they shoot you up with tuberculosis?”

 

“Is that true, sergeant?” Silvia asked.

 

The sergeant nodded his head thoughtfully.

 

“They cut the noses off of English prisoners,” Gittleson said.

 

Ducharme looked stricken. “And then let them live?”

 

“Assume so.”

This was news to Ducharme. “What sort of a man would mutilate people?”

“‘Villains’ is too weak a word to describe these monsters, Ducharme,” the sergeant said.

Many of the German army’s outrages were made public in May 1915 when newspapers across the United States published details contained in the Bryce Report, the outcome of an investigation by a British committee on the conduct of the German army in Belgium. Headlines screamed : “Torturing Butchers”; “Young and Old Mutilated”; “Germany’s Revolting Methods”; “Sights That Drove Men and Women Out of Their Reason”.

“When those sons of a gun go into a village they round up all the men and execute em. Just like that.” Swinglehurst had captured the attention of the entire table. “They take the women and have their way with em in plain sight. They hack babies into pieces; then they burn the village down. They especially burn houses down if people are hiding inside. Whole families, burned alive.” He took a sip of his chocolate, letting the awfulness sink in. “Either that or they shoot em as they run for safety.”

Ducharme sat white-faced. “Why would they do that to civilians?”

“Hatred of anything that’s not them,” Conroy said. “Hatred of anything that is not their way of life.”

Ducharme tugged at his collar. He looked pretty worked up. “Murdering innocent people intentionally should be no part of war between civilised nations!”

“Civilized?” Judson laughed joylessly. “These Huns are barely human. They bayonet priests.”

“They’re animals,” Brockway said. “They fire on the wounded lying on stretchers.”

“These are not gentlemen soldiers, Ducharme,” the sergeant said. “These are men who rope women and children together and place em at the head of their columns and use em as shields.”

Graziani pronounced the word as if it were the worst word in the world : “Germans.”

“Heck, sergeant,” Bucholz smiling, “I just joined up to get a free trip to Europe.”

The soldiers at the table laughed.

The sergeant waited until the laughter passed. “We cannot rest on our laurels, men. Regardless of what Bucholz here thinks, this will not be a rosewater job. The Krauts may be crackpots but they are not soft men.”

“Just give me a shot at em, sergeant,” said Judson. “Then we’ll see how hard they are.”

“You’ll get your chance, Judson.”

Gittleson cracked a smile. “Maybe they give out medals for committing the worst outrages.”

“Well,” Conroy responded, “the Germans made a medal commemorating the Lusitania.”

“Can you beat that?” Malone narrowed his eyes.

“I saw a photograph of it in a magazine,” Conroy said.

Ask any man in the room where he was when he heard the news of the sinking of the Lusitania and he would remember. The Lusitania was a British ocean liner which departed New York City and was struck with a torpedo from a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. It sank in eighteen minutes on 7 May 1915. Over 1, 100 of the 1, 900 people on board lost their lives, including 128 Americans. It was reported that 94 children were killed. (An American newspaper thundered in a headline : “Only A German Could Murder Little Children!”) Reports conveyed the terror of the passengers amid the chaos of a failed lifeboat launch. The front page of the Philadelphia Evening Ledger had proclaimed : “American Passengers Lost : Germany Jubilant!” The American press reported that schoolchildren in Germany had been given a day off from their studies to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania.

Gittleson raised himself up noisily and paraded down the aisle kicking his right leg up into the air : it was a parody of a goosestep, and he drew some applause. “Deutschland, über alles!... Anyone who marches like this can’t be normal.”

All of the soldiers laughed.

“They’re inhuman,” Brockway growled. “They’re gorillas. I hear their women are as pug-ugly as they are.”

One of the privates from a table over leaned up to speak. “I heard something,” he said. “What they do is they pile their dead onto trains and bring em home and put em in a factory and grind em in a mill and boil em into pig food.”

Silvia : “Pig food?”

“I hear they make butter out of the fat of the corpses.” Someone said that.

“I heard soap.” Bucholz.

“I heard that.” Russell. “They make soap out of the bodies.”

Silvia wiped his face with a trembling hand. “That whole country’s crazy as a bedbug.”

Russell shrugged. “It’s what I read.”

“I have a bedtime story for your folks,” Gittleson said. “The German soldiers stick their bayonets into little children, little girls and boys, then pick them up over their heads and march off singing.”

The soldiers murmured in assent. Most of them had heard these stories.

“I’m going to tear those devils apart.” Brockway cracked his knuckles for emphasis. “With my bare hands, I swear it.”

Judson sat relaxed. “We’ll give em a beating all right.”

America was already erasing signs of Germanness from within its borders. Cities were changing the names of their German-sounding streets. German books were being removed from libraries, and burned. Americans now referred to hamburgers as “liberty sandwiches”. The state of Nebraska forbade the teaching of German in its schools. Orchestras shunned works by the German-speaking Mozart and Beethoven. The Espionage Act had been passed on 15 June: anyone anywhere in America heard to sympathise with the Germans in any way or be undermining the Allies even with offhand comments could be jailed for years. Already various motion pictures had been censored and various newspapers banned.

 

Onto the Victrola came one of the most popular songs at the moment, “America, Here’s My Boy”, a catchy, foot-tapping tune sung by the Peerless Quartet.

America, I raised a boy for you;
America, you’ll find him staunch and true;
Place a gun upon his shoulder, he is ready to die or do;
America, he is my only one, my hope, my pride and joy;
But if I had another, he would march beside his brother;
America, here’s my boy!

[Jeff Bernstein]

Sgt. Stubby : Hooray for Stubby!

 

“Come on, Gus, show some pep!” Private Fryer implored. “Step to it!”

 

Augustus the army mule stood stoically in place in the middle of the main camp road, whisking his tail to drive the flies away. In a fit of exuberance he had leaped over the four-foot-high fence of the corral and was presently at large, absent without permission. He was grey, with white around his nose. He stood five feet tall with long floppy ears and was at this particular moment content to stand still.

 

“Forward, forward!” Private Fryer persisted, pushing on Augustus’ rump.

 

The mule wouldn’t move.

 

“Walk! Scoot!” Now he was slapping him on the rump. “Yaa! Yaa!”

 

The mule stood unperturbed. He was a heavyweight, close to eight hundred pounds, and he wasn’t going where he didn’t want to go. The army personnel glancing over as they strode past weren’t the only spectators of the private’s travail. From his inconspicuous position on the sidelines, a patch of grass in the shade by the officers’ quarters, Stubby contemplated the emerging situation with interest.

 

The road was straight and lined with long, low wooden buildings. Beyond the buildings on the eastern side were corrals where horses and mules were kept. On the western side the drill grounds were visible in the distance and the tent city beyond that. It was late in the day but sunlight blazed over the camp.

 

Augustus stood there as if he had all the time in the world.

 

A company of soldiers marched in quick time onto the road. Organised as one formation of four parallel columns, they moved with military precision in khaki uniforms and broad-brimmed campaign hats at one hundred and twenty steps a minute, dropping a foot straight down thirty inches ahead with every step, their captain marching smartly at the forefront. It was Company E. Earlier in the day they had marched a few miles east for a hike along the woodland trails and red basalt ridge of East Rock Park and now they had returned, dusty and exhausted. They had a full load of equipment in their haversacks hanging heavy on their shoulders. Added to these thirty-two pounds was a rifle (nine pounds) slung to each right shoulder. Evening mess was imminent and the recruits were famished. But Augustus was standing in their way.

 

Glancing over his shoulder Private Fryer frowned at the approaching soldiers. He placed his open palms on the right flank of the beast and tried to push him forward. The private was a burly fellow but Heracles himself would have found the will of Augustus insuperable.

 

“Get a move on, you fiddle-headed clodhopper!”

 

Augustus didn’t move.

 

“Company, halt!” The captain of Company E raised his right arm high in the air.

 

The soldiers stopped three yards from Augustus’ rump. They stood in place, hands by their sides.

 

Stubby rose to his paws, intrigued by familiar scents, and watched.

 

At the head of the lines the captain stalked up to Private Fryer, who, swallowing hard, saluted his superior officer.

 

The captain contemplated the bristly, bewhiskered impediment blocking the forward way. “Best get this animal back in the corral, soldier.”

 

“I’m trying, sir.”

 

“Try harder.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Stubby, meanwhile, emerging out of the shadows, and, animated by a sudden inspiration of fun, bounded off along the side of the road, running toward Augustus.

 

Standing in the ranks Private Conroy spotted Stubby scampering their way.

The blood drained from his face. “No,” he murmured, “no...”

 

“Look there,” Gittleson whispered with amusement. “Isn’t that Conroy’s dog?”

 

Augustus put his ears back. Perceiving Stubby’s spunky approach, the mule began to back up and let out a sort of bellow, almost a roar. He also kicked out dangerously with his back feet.

 

“Whoa, Gus! Whoa!”

 

The men at the front of Company E withdrew some number of steps; they began to break ranks. A mule kick could break a bone. Sergeant Burchell shouted, “Quit that talking! Get back in formation!”

 

“Scat!” Private Fryer hissed. “Go on, pooch, scram!”

 

The captain watched stone-faced as Stubby cheerfully closed in, barking in welcome. Augustus the mule turned tail, causing the captain to stumble back out of the way; and broke off in a trot, heading straight for the columns of men. Letting out amused panicked cries the soldiers scattered from the oncoming mule, scrambling for safety as Augustus invaded their formation, disarranging it. The captain’s eyes widened at the calamity befalling his company. “Conroy...” he growled.

 

Stubby sprinted playfully after Augustus, shooting through the gap between the private (anxious) and the captain (fuming). Augustus’ trot became a fast run as he navigated through the startled men of Company E. An eight-hundred-pound beast was running flat out down the main road of the army camp! Like a bolt of lighting he exploded the lines as he shot through them; and in a growing panic Company E spread out every which way, the men bumping, jostling, blundering into each other with their heavy loads on their backs; and some lost their balance and stumbled to their knees onto the ground. Conroy, filling with dread, looked on from the sidelines at the chaos of the scattering soldiers. Private Fryer was giving chase, hollering “Whoa, feller! Whoa! Easy! Easy!”

 

Two troops came into view, hauling between them a large pot of beef stew meant for the back of a cart. It was parked to one side of the mess hall. They spun their heads sidewise; they saw a mule running their way. Dropping the pot of stew they leaped for safety; the metal pot clanged onto the road and spilled its contents. The mule breezed past and knocked them both to the ground. Looking up in surprise from the dust, the two troops saw Stubby leap up over them and soar over the rolling pot without losing stride and leave them behind. One of the men, his face caked with stew, shook his head dolefully. Then Private Fryer sprinted past them, his arms up high, yelling “Stop! Stop!”

 

After he had deranged the full complement of two hundred and fifty men of Company E, his heavy hooves leaving deep indentations in the dirt road, Augustus swung around gracefully on his front legs. Now, his ears pointing straight up, he faced Stubby. A little ways away the sportive dog dropped to his belly in the dirt, his front paws stretched out before him, his long tongue lolling, panting. Augustus, in the middle of the road, surrounded by an audience of hundreds of soldiers, started off at a run toward Stubby. The army dog stood his ground. At the last moment Stubby feinted right—then broke left, while Augustus, fooled, ran off to the right. All the soldiers cheered.

 

Augustus came round in an arc and pursued Stubby down the road. Conroy watched with a tightening knot in his stomach, fearful of a long stay in the stockade.

 

Racing along in a spirit of play, Stubby kept swerving from one side of the road to the other, taking quick peeks at the mule charging after him. Private Fryer, trying to catch up, knew that a mule could run much faster than a dog and observed fretfully that Gus was holding back his speed. The mule was having fun, enjoying himself!

 

Stubby broke left and ran along the access way between the post exchange and the field adjutant’s office. The dog glanced back to see the mule gaining on him. Stubby rushed through an open gate. Augustus followed him in, slowed to a stop, and lowered his head, feeling at home, smelling scents of oats and hay. They had entered into a corral. More than a dozen mules standing round noted Stubby’s arrival. Some whinnied. Some began moving his way—perhaps not in a spirit of friendship. Stubby turned tail to see the gate swinging shut. Private Fryer slammed it and locked it. Trapped? Stubby, calculating fast, bounded off toward the perimeter. Chased by mules, he leaped through the two strands of the rope-and-post fence. He was out! Safe!

 

“Good dog,” Private Fryer sighed, out of breath.

 

Dudziak, standing by the post exchange, shouted to his fellow soldiers : “The dog got the mule back in!”

 

Conroy didn’t dare breathe.

 

“The dog chased the mule back into the corral!” Russell shouted.

 

Silvia clapped his hands. “Stubby saved the day!”

 

Conroy began to breathe. Then here came Stubby from round the corner, trotting nonchalantly onto the main road, looking for something new to do, his tongue lolling out of his smiling mouth.

 

Ducharme shouted out : “Hooray for Stubby!”

 

“Hooray for Stubby!”

 

The cheer caught on like wildfire. All the hundreds of soldiers along the road cheered as one vigorous force as Stubby walked among them as conquering hero. “Hooray for Stubby!” Young men’s cheers resounded up and down the length of road. “Hooray for Stubby!” The sergeants of the unit looked on approvingly at the troops, whose roar of solidarity was heard all over camp.

 

Stubby picked out Conroy among the soldiers. He sat amiably at his feet with his natural good-humour, and looked up, his eyes bright and alert, waiting for the next event in his life.

 

“Hooray for Stubby! Hooray for Company E!”

 

Silvia, Graziani, Lynch, Dudziak, Russell, all of them, they all cheered, even Private Fryer, who belonged to another company.

 

Again, stronger : “Hooray for Company E!”

 

Conroy, waiting for his thudding heart to slow, ventured a cautious look at the captain. When he met the twinkling eyes of his commanding officer, he gave his superior a sheepish grin. The captain nodded dryly at Conroy, as if to say, ‘This stunt worked out for you—this time’.

 

“Stub,” said Conroy, patting Stubby’s head, “you did an awfully good job.”

 

The captain cut the celebration short. “Assemble! Assemble!”

 

Company E reconstituted itself rapidly in the middle of the street.

 

“Forward, march!”

 

The men marched down the road with their loads on their backs and their faces distinguished with smiles. The captain marched along on the left, and Stubby on the right. At the end of the road where divisional headquarters stood, passing the flagpole where the American flag hung high over the camp, the two columns of Company E turned the corner and passed out of sight, Stubby’s tail wagging happily.

 

Over the next couple of days the story of the hero dog made the rounds throughout the camp and most of the 3500 members of the 102nd Infantry Regiment learned of Stubby, the keen black and white Boston terrier, the mascot of Company E.

 

 

Best wishes.

[Jeff Bernstein]

JANE RUSSELL AND THE OUTLAW[1]

Do gentlemen prefer blondes?

 

She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell in Bemidji, Minnesota, on June 21, 1921. The Russells took up residence in the San Fernando Valley in Southern California when she was a girl. She grew up as a tomboy, unsurprising considering that she had four younger brothers to play with.[2] Her handsome father Roy was a successful manager in the business sector who died prematurely at the age of 47 during a gallstone operation in 1937. Her pretty mother had been an actress in her youth and had always wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps. After graduating from Van Nuys High School in 1939, Jane took a couple of drama courses in Hollywood, then became a chiropodist’s assistant at $10 a week.[3] She had a vague desire to try to break into the movie industry but had no idea how. In the spring of 1940, Tom Kelley, a friend and professional photographer, suggested he take a series of shots of her, head shots and some bathing suit poses.[4] Around June, Levis Green, a talent agent at a small agency, fixated on a photograph of Jane during a routine visit to Kelly’s studio. Green took the photo with him. When he went to see Freddy Schussler, Hughes’ casting agent for The Outlaw, Schussler became interested too. Green then phoned Jane’s mother. The message was a dramatic one: Howard Hughes wants to see your daughter.

 

Jane went “over the hill” (southeast out of the valley) to Hollywood, when she was given a screen-test at 7000 Romaine Street, Hughes’ west coast headquarters. Cameraman Lucien Ballard recalled, “We filmed those tests on 16mm in Hughes’ basement. I made these tests in the haystack, used cross-lights so her tits show big, and Hughes went wild for it. I didn’t know it then, but he had a thing for tits; he had the scene made into a loop, and he’d run it over and over again.”[5] Hughes had been looking for a woman to star in his western for many months and Russell touched something deep inside him. He told Noah Dietrich, “Today I saw the most beautiful pair of knockers I’ve ever seen in my life.”[6] Hughes signed her to a seven-year contract at $50.00 a week.[7] By late summer, at the start of the filming of The Outlaw, Russell was nineteen years old, five-foot-seven, 38-24-36. And she couldn’t stop smiling at her good luck.

 

With the sudden ascendancy of Jane Russell, Howard Hughes was violating the well-established policy of star-making. A bona fide “overnight sensation” was a rarity in Hollywood. The stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood had slowly gained in visibility and experience over many years of working in small roles in minor pictures before their elevation into starring roles. Old-time film director Allan Dwan expressed the prevailing mind-set of the studio-run Hollywood of this period: “You can’t just stick some kid up on the screen as a star, she’s not ready for that yet, she’d stumble if you did that.”[8]

 

But Hughes was an independent and would do things his way. Russell’s lightning-quick ascendancy would be a new phenomenon in Hollywood. She was only a newcomer, yet she was starring—headlining even—in her first picture! Moreover, Hughes would make her a star before she even hit the screen! He cranked his publicity machine into full-blown saturation coverage. Over forty thousand photographs of Jane Russell would be in circulation between 1940 and 1943. Everyone would know of Jane Russell the Hollywood actress for three years before they even saw her act!

 

Howard Hughes placed the innocent Jane Russell—who didn’t know a whit about the film business or the mechanics of a film shoot—right into the middle of things. Yes, Jane Russell was that true rarity in Hollywood: an overnight sensation, and it had been orchestrated note-by-note by Howard Hughes, hypemeister extraordinaire.

 

*

 

This down-to-earth, church-going girl-next-door was refashioned by Hughes into the quintessence of smouldering sexuality. Through it all, Jane kept a droll perspective on her media coverage and subsequent film career; and the sweet girl was never eclipsed, even when she was directed to play torrid and sensuous. Russell’s heart transcended Hughes’ sensational exterior engineering.

 

The cinema for Jane Russell was a mere job; it never went to her head. She remained amused with it all. Wry, street smart, she was the female analogue of Robert Mitchum, Hollywood’s foremost laid-back laconic skeptic and counterculture hero. No wonder their pairings in His Kind of Woman (1951) and Macao (1952) are so satisfying, however questionable the films themselves might be.

 

Oh that famous photograph—by George Hurrell, the virtuoso of the glamour shot, taken at his Sunset Boulevard studio—of Russell reclined upon a haystack, her head cast back, eyes narrowed and full red lips just apart; breasts dramatically rounding out a peasant blouse, her finger snug on the trigger of a six-shooter resting against her lap; her long legs inviting entanglement. Provocative! A woman to reckon with. A woman who will have to be tamed to be won. A violent, tempestuous, passionate lover. The photograph advertises blood-red erotic euphoria!

 

If Jane Russell’s acting ability in The Outlaw seems non-existent, she will advance by leaps and bounds, becoming an engaging screen personality in the 1950s.

 

Back in 1930, Hughes was instrumental in elevating Jean Harlow into the big time, but she ended up in only one of his pictures. Robert Mitchum will already be established in Hollywood at the time Hughes acquires his contract by default upon buying into RKO in 1948. But Russell—she was Hughes’ own creation. He plucked her from obscurity and maintained her career over twenty years. After The Outlaw, she went on to star in seven of his RKO productions.

 

In fact, for most of Russell’s motion picture career, she would be under contract to Howard Hughes. She was under contract to Hughes for nineteen years (1940-47; 1948-55; 1955-1960). She retired from motion pictures in 1970.

 

*

 

SHOOTING THE OUTLAW. The screenplay was finished by March 1940.[9] In late summer of 1940, the location shooting for The Outlaw got underway in a desert landscape studded with picturesque rock formations near Tuba City, Arizona, eighty miles east of Flagstaff. Cast and crew numbered upwards of 250 persons.[10] Hughes had hired Howard Hawks to direct his picture. Hawks had directed Scarface for Hughes back in 1930, so one would have thought that things would have run just as smoothly this time. Moreover, Hawks had just shot three fantastic pictures in a row: Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), and His Girl Friday (1940). Hawks was riding a creative high when he began shooting The Outlaw. 

 

Newcomer Jane Russell learned that a film shoot wasn’t all about acting for the cameras. Russell Birdwell, superstar Hollywood publicist and Hughes associate since Hell’s Angels, organized a series of photo sessions with photographers from fan magazines, insuring that Jane Russell would soon become the woman of the moment.

 

Dailies were being flown to Hughes who maintained an out-of-the-way office at the Goldwyn Studios. Control-freak Hughes would respond by phoning Hawks, demanding changes. Not two full weeks in, Hawks walked off the production, taking the cameraman, Lucien Ballard, with him. “I’m leaving,” Hawks told Russell. “We just can’t agree on how the picture should be done. I told Howard he’d better do it himself, because no one tells me how to shoot a picture.”[11] The location shoot was closed down. Hawks went straight into production on Sergeant York with Gary Cooper, for which he would receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

 

Decades later, Hawks recalled, “I made the introduction of Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday on location, and then Hughes messed up the rest. Probably a thousand or fifteen hundred feet of what I did remained in it.”[12]

 

The production moved to the Goldwyn Studios at 7200 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.[13] Howard Hughes himself would direct The Outlaw, but only in the afternoons and evenings.[14] Gregg Toland, fresh off Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, stepped in as cinematographer.[15]

 

This is how Russell recalled Hughes at this time:

 

White shirt, dark trousers, and dark shoes on his lanky, thin body. His eyes were . . . dark brown and kind. He had a bit of a Texas whine to his voice and spoke softly, even apologetically, as he explained that he and Howard Hawks had totally disagreed on the way the picture should be shot. . . . I felt at ease and totally at home with him. He was rather like a Texas cousin.[16]

 

Hughes was a meticulous director who, like Chaplin and Kubrick, didn’t mind taking his time. The engineer in him, who was able to envision exceedingly complex aircraft designs in blueprint form in his head, sought to arrange the details in every cinematic shot in a similarly painstaking and precise fashion. To the amusement of the film crew, Hughes designed many of his shots specifically around Jane Russell’s cleavage.[17]

 

Jane and her co-star Jack Buetel (playing Billy the Kid), a 23-year-old Texan and a newcomer to the film industry, had no idea that Hughes their director was rather out of the ordinary in this respect, since it was their first movie. “Today, I would have lost my mind,” Jane mused, “but then I didn’t know any better.”[18]

 

Howard was always very kind and soft-spoken, but he always wanted one more take. “Jack, you lifted your left eyebrow,” he’d say. “I’d like to try it without that. It may give Billy a smart aleck attitude.” Over and over we did it until, instead of just concentrating on lines and intent in a scene, we were both thinking of eyebrows. Don’t move your left thumb, don’t lean too far to the right, and on and on. We were like wooden dummies.[19]

 

Veteran character actor Thomas Mitchell was a third lead, playing Pat Garrett. Just the year before Mitchell had won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939). Also in 1939, he had recently featured as Scarlett O’Hara’s father in Gone With the Wind, as well as in Only Angels Have Wings for director Howard Hawks (suggesting that the two of them would have worked well together if Hawks had persevered). Mitchell quickly found himself exasperated with Hughes’ grueling working methods. One day, after suffering through 26 takes of the same scene, Mitchell blew his top, as Russell recalled:

 

He glared at Howard, stormed up and down, and swore a blue streak. He finally threw his hat down and stomped on it and turned back to glare at Howard again. That clever, darling man just sat looking at his shoes as he slumped in his chair, hat on the back of his head and coat draped over his shoulders. Finally, when Tommy stopped stomping and everyone was looking at him, Howard glanced up innocently and said, “Oh, Tommy, did you say something?”[20]

 

“Most pictures were made in six to eight weeks,” Russell reminds us.[21] Shooting of The Outlaw, however, dragged on six days a week for six months.

 

So we filmed scenes again and again. Howard knew what he wanted, but he couldn’t explain it from a motivation viewpoint. So he just did it over and over until he had one he liked out of thirty or forty takes. . . . He was single-minded, persistent, and never lost his temper. He was patience personified and, in his own kind way, wore us down. In one scene, where Billy was talking beside Doc’s grave, we did 103 takes![22]

 

“On the set . . . he was usually unshaven, always unpredictable,” Time magazine reported in its eventual review of the film. “He would phone his assistants at home at all hours and announce: “This is Mr. Hoyt.” Often there would follow a long silence, broken finally when Hughes would bark briskly: “I just thought of something; I'll call you back later.”[23]

 

During production, when Hughes had to be away on other business, Jules Furthman, The Outlaw’s screenwriter, was given the authority to act as director pro tem. This meant that Furthman began getting regular phone calls from Hughes in the dead of night, infuriating Furthman, who finally had to resort to having his maid tell Hughes, “He has a gun. He told me that if I woke him up he’d shoot me.”[24]

 

Shooting was finally completed and a rough cut pieced together by February 8, 1941.[25]

 

*

 

HOOPLA IN EXCELSIS. Meanwhile Jane Russell was becoming increasingly visible on the covers of fan magazines and glamour magazines on newsstands across America. Along with Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell became a popular pin-up girl during World War II. American soldiers around the world would open their lockers to see a shaply female entreating their attention, reminding them of their sweethearts back home. American sailors voted Jane Russell “the girl we’d like to have waiting for us in every port.”[26] So far she was famous simply for being beautiful. If the film shoot was stuttering and backfiring, the publicity campaign was certainly well-oiled and consummate.

 

Howard Hughes presided over the most flamboyant advertising campaign to promote an actress Hollywood had ever known. With The Outlaw Howard Hughes proved himself to be the King of Hollywood Hoopla and would go down accordingly in the annals of Tinsel Town.

 

“Before I even went on location for the picture,” Jane recalled, “they started giving me the buildup. I christened boats, I judged baby contests, I reclined in haystacks, I sprawled on beaches—always in a low-cut blouse.”[27]

 

Richard G. Hubler, a screenwriter of the 1940s and 1950s, penned an article for a Hollywood periodical called The Screen Writer in September 1947, in which he marvelled at the media storm that Hollywood insider Russell “Birdie” Birdwell had created around Jane Russell.

 

While I was munching a Jane Russell Special—two poached eggs on toast—I got to noting down my memories of Birdie and his work on the publicity phenomenon of our time.

Undoubtedly the finest bit of his obsessive boobery ever foisted upon the great American public in recent years was back in 1941, the publicity campaign conducted by Russell Birdwell around the bosom of Jane Russell in ballyhooing the Howard Hughes picture, The Outlaw. . . .

Pictures of Jane Russell, in every conceivable pose, swept the country. Birdie could not supply the demand. A survey taken by a trade paper during a random three-week period in 1941 showed 532 papers put out 4,256 pages on Miss Russell and 448 Sunday papers published 2,016 columns about her. Her picture appeared on the covers of eleven national magazines and she was awarded spreads of 196 pages in said magazines.

Esquire ran a double-page truck in color of Miss Russell. Circulation leaped 186,000 copies. Spot, with approximately 150,000 circulation, ran a picture of Miss Russell on the cover and jumped 200,000. It hopefully ran another picture of her the next month and duplicated the feat.

The Fawcett Publishing Company, with five magazines, ran a picture of Miss Russell on the cover of one publication or another every month. Even the staid Ladies’ Home Journal came through with a full page of Russell in color.

. . . Her picture, on a traffic Safety First poster, was reported to have cut rather than increased traffic accidents by 30 percent.

. . . Harper’s Bazaar ran a photograph of her, titling it: The Return of the Full Bosom.[28]

 

Over 43,000 photographs of Russell were in circulation by the outset of 1943—before anyone has even seen her act in a single frame of film.[29] After she visited G.I.s at military camps, the Navy masterminded a novel ad campaign: JOIN THE NAVY AND MEET JANE RUSSELL![30] Russell was a full-blown media phenomenon.

 

Perhaps we should hear from Allan Dwan again. He pointed out that no matter how much energy a studio exerts in pushing a newcomer, in the end “A star is made by an audience.” Howard Hughes responded intrinsically and persuasively to Jane Russell’s photograph and screen-test, and then the general public confirmed his original spark of interest by making her a media darling. If Hughes’ taste in movies was too often dismal, his eye for beautiful women was sharp and discerning. As the ‘discoverer’ of Jane Russell Howard Hughes proved himself to be a huckster sympatico with the people. Jane Russell’s ‘look’ became all the rage.

 

*

 

BATTLING THE CENSORS. Back in 1930, the American movie studios had drafted its own code-of-practices known as the Production Code, in order to prohibit potentially offensive products from bringing disrepute upon all of Hollywood. In 1934, the watch-dog administration named the Production Code Administration (PCA) was established, which acted to maintained standards of acceptable morals in Hollywood films, so that the Hollywood industry would be accepted by the rest of the business world not as a fly-by-night operation but a responsible industry worthy of respect. Also, if Hollywood was seen to be self-regulating, the American government wouldn’t have to impose its own censorship body upon the studios if and when questionable product was released onto an unsuspecting American public. First the PCA would have to approve a script before shooting began, then when the film was completed the PCA had to approve its content before distribution. A Code Seal from the PCA was a stamp of purity in a manner similar to a USDA stamp on meat. The chief censor was Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (est. 1922), which oversaw the PCA. The three General Principles of the Production Code were:

 

1.   No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong-doing, evil or sin.

2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.

3.    Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.[31]

 

 

At the time of The Outlaw brouhaha, Joseph Breen was the Director of the Production Code Administration. After Breen discovered, via the daily Hollywood trade journals, that Hughes had started filming The Outlaw without having first submitted the script for PCA approval, Breen wrote Hughes on December 3, 1940, requesting a copy of the shooting script for assessment. Hughes complied. Breen read the script then wrote Hughes again, citing no less than twenty-three objections to specific lines of dialogue, cold-blooded violence and sexual situations. Hughes ignored Breen’s reservations and continued with his production.

 

Producer-director Hughes, sensitive to the bureaucratic controversy beginning to gather steam over the supposedly explicit nature of his western, organized high security precautions on-set, refusing even to let his actors view the dailies (film scenes shot the preceding day).[32]

 

Hughes’ western was completed by the late winter of 1941. Breen was present at a screening of an early cut of the film at the PCA screening room on Hollywood Boulevard on the afternoon of March 28, 1941. Taken aback by what he saw, Breen fired off a letter to Hughes, informing him that the PCA has refused to grant The Outlaw a Code Seal, citing the non-stop, prodigious, in-your-face presentation of Jane Russell’s breasts, which, of course, would have damaged America’s morals to no end if projected on the silver screen. “The Outlaw,” according to Breen in his letter to Hughes, was “definitely and specifically in violation of our Production Code.”[33] Later that same day Breen wrote his boss, Will Hays:

 

In my more than ten years of critical examination of motion pictures I have never seen anything quite so unacceptable as the shots of the breasts of the character Rio. . . . Throughout almost half the the picture the girl’s breasts, which are quite large and prominent, are shockingly emphasized and, in almost every instance, are very substantially uncovered.[34]

 

Virtually every scene Jane Russell appeared in was objectionable. Breen compiled a list for Hughes suggesting thirty-seven “breast shot” deletions.[35] Furious and obstinate, Hughes refused to release The Outlaw with any cuts or trims. Hughes couldn’t see what the fuss was about; he fought tooth-and-nail to get his film released uncut. The censorship controversy over Hughes’ film was the most dramatic ever experienced in Hollywood up to that time.[36]

 

In mid-May 1941, Russell Birdwell was sent to represent Hughes at a hearing before the Production Code Administration in Manhattan. It would be an occasion for Hughes to carry out an amusing coup. Birdwell brought with him a hefty pile of enlarged photographs of busty Hollywood beauties which he set up around the table of sober-suited film censors. Accompanying Birdwell was a mathematics professor from Columbia University, who, armed with calipers, a tool used for measuring thickness and distance, proceded to measure the bustlines visible in the photographs and compared the figures to the contested images of Jane Russell in The Outlaw. The Hughes-hired mathematician demonstrated, for example, that in one shot of actress Marie Wilson, the cleavage quotent was actually 6.4 percent higher than corresponding shots of Jane Russell. It was proven that Russell’s bosom was no more flagrantly exposed in The Outlaw than other actresses’ in other Hollywood films. The censorship board capitulated to the scientific method and scaled down its objections to The Outlaw. Now the content of only three of Jane Russell’s scenes were considered objectional.[37]

 

The PCA wouldn’t budge from its demands for cuts. Breen, however, compromised by agreeing to only thirty seconds or so of minor deletions, considerably less footage than he had first ordered removed in his “breast shot” memorandum. Hughes responded with his own change of heart, trimming around forty feet of material (a half-minute of screen time) from his movie. The PCA seal of approval was awarded to The Outlaw on May 23, 1941.[38]

 

Yet the PCA Seal wasn’t enough for some American states. Censors in Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvana wanted more cuts made or the film would be banned from all theatres in those states.[39]

 

Hughes decided to put the censorship battle on the back burner for the time being and stored The Outlaw in a film vault at Romaine Street pending his next brainstorm.[40] In the interim he was deep in his D-2, TWA, and then HK-1 affairs.

 

Two years on, the publicity machine went into overdrive, and The Outlaw finally opened to fantastic business at the Geary Theater in San Francisco on February 5, 1943. It was the movie everyone was talking about. Russell Birdwell had orchestrated a word-of-mouth campaign based around the supposed racy and provocative elements of The Outlaw’s Reel 3. Excited members of the public began phoning The Geary Theatre asking, “When will Reel 3 start?”[41] Meanwhile, the advertising of the picture—eyecatching billboards of sexy Jane Russell in various poses punctuated with suggestive captions—led the San Francisco polite to prepare arrest warrants for the makers of The Outlaw.[42] Jane Russell recalled, “The Catholic church was now excommunicating anyone who saw the picture, and every pulpit sermonized about the evils of the picture.”[43]

 

On February 25, 1943, the National Legion of Decency included The Outlaw in its list of “C-class” films—C for Condemned. “The film presents glorification of crime and immoral actions,” the Legion alleged. “The film throughout a very considerable portion of its length is indecent in costuming.”[44]

 

The United States Army refused to screen The Outlaw at its bases in America and around the world.[45]

 

After close to two months of fantastic box office for The Outlaw, Hughes suddenly withdrew the film from its lone San Francisco run and kept it on ice for three years.[46]

 

*

 

Not long after the premiere of The Outlaw, Jane Russell, the media-proclaimed “Sexpot of the Century” married her long-time sweetheart, Robert Waterfield, UCLA football star and later L.A. Rams quarterback, on Easter 1943 in Las Vegas.[47] Far from being a temptress, she was actually happy being a homebody.

 

*

 

Hughes might have had a change of heart in May 1942—but he would get his own back against the censors in March 1946. At that time Hughes re-released his infamous western, this time in cities across America, and subjected the American people to the raciest advertising campaign ever seen up to that time.[48]

 

Movie posters began proliferating: “At last you can see—Howard Hughes’ daring production The Outlaw.”[49] Another went: “Tall . . . . Terrific . . . . and Trouble! Howard Hughes’ daring production The Outlaw introducing Jane Russell.” The marquee of the Radio City Music Hall in New York City advertised: THE MUSIC HALL GETS THE BIG ONES![50]

 

If the sexually portentous billboards for The Outlaw were honest (“Not a scene cut—exactly as filmed”), Hughes had put all of the offending material back in to the picture. The Production Code Administration responded to Hughes’ sensational advertising campaign by revoking The Outlaw’s seal of approval on April 23. Hughes hit back at the censors the very next day by filing a $5 million lawsuit against the Motion Picture Association of America in District Court in New York, charging unfair censorship and restraint of trade.[51] It was the first major challenge to the legality of the Production Code in Hollywood history. “A careful study of the Hays Office convinces me that the entire Hays Office in its very essential fundamentals is a group boycott in restraint of trade and in absolute violation of the Antitrust laws of this country,” Hughes said in a statement printed in the Los Angeles Times.[52] He accused the MPAA of violating his “rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”[53] Hughes also announced he was withdrawing from the MPAA.

 

Daily Variety reported on April 26, 1946, “Both the Justice Department and the FBI are now fighting growing juvenile delinquency and at least one Department official has expressed the opinion that “The Outlaw” is the type of film to stimulate delinquency.”[54]

 

The re-release of The Outlaw caused a minor calamity across the country. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s Most Reverend George Leo Leech excoriated The Outlaw as “a destructive and corrupting picture which glamorizes crime and immorality.” Theater exhibitors in Minneapolis and St. Paul caved in to pressure from the church and cancelled bookings of the film. In Massachusetts, the film was banned from being screened on Sunday.[55] Bishop Christopher E. Byrne of Galveston, Texas urged for a boycott of the Loew’s Theater chain, which chose to run The Outlaw.[56] Many states would only show the film after deletions were made. A censorship board up in Alberta, Canada even obtained cuts in The Outlaw’s coming attraction.[57]

 

The controversy dragged on while the ticket sales mounted. On May 5, the Washington Post reported that The Outlaw “continues to be exhibited to perhaps the most phenomenal business in the history of motion pictures.”[58]

 

On June 27, 1946, Hughes lost his suit in the New York District Court; Judge D. J. Bright had taken the moral high ground, ruling that “the industry can suffer as much from indecent advertising as from indecent pictures.”[59]

 

Following Hughes’ disastrous accident in the XF-11 experimental aircraft on July 7, Hughes was out of the fight for a couple of months. On September 6, the PCA demanded that Hughes remove the Code Seal from all prints of the picture. In a courageous riposte to Breen and Hays, Hughes, now recovered from his injuries, decided to distribute the picture (through United Artists) without the go-ahead from the PCA. It was the first time in Hollywood history that a producer would defy the Production Code by releasing a film without the Code Seal. The film, advertised as “The Most Daring Picture Ever Made”, continued to draw an immense amount of publicity and ticket sales. The film was running in hundreds of theaters across America and Canada, many of them as record-breaking “holdover engagements”.[60]

 

As in 1943, once more did objectors to The Outlaw line up to excoriate its subject matter, including women’s groups, parent-teacher groups, and church groups. Once more were censorship boards in various American states refusing to allow the picture to be shown.

 

Hughes’ first flight following the XF-11 crash was a trip in his B-23 from Culver City to New York (via Kansas City) on September 10-11, 1946. He headed to Manhattan to rejoin the struggle against the censorship of The Outlaw. “Still weak and gaunt,” reported the Washington Post, “he was flying by visual contact rather than by instruments, which would require him to file a flight plan.[61] If Hughes had lost none of his secretive nature, he had also lost none of his willingness and energy to stand up for his position. He hired a series of lawyers to fight for his cause, including Cleveland attorney Francis Poulson and Los Angeles attorney Jerry Giesler.[62]

 

Maryland was one of the U.S. states which banned the film outright. Hughes fought the ruling in court and lost. A Baltimore judge took offense at Jane Russell’s breasts, which “hung over the picture like a thunderstorm spread out over a landscape.”[63]

 

In San Francisco, the city’s police force took action to prevent the film being shown, then was forced to relent following a jury trial in municipal court. Judge Twain Michelsen said, “We have seen Jane Russell. She is an attractive specimen of American womanhood. God made her what she is.”[64]

           

Regardless of Judge Michelsen’s astute observation, the Legion of Decency gave The Outlaw a “Condemned” rating.

 

On Hughes’ side was the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, Inc., an independent organization established in 1909 to promote appreciation of the art of the cinema. On November 21, 1946, the Board released a statement criticizing New York state’s ban on The Outlaw, describing it as “censorship in its worst form.” The statement went on to declare that “The public alone has the right to judge what is to be shown to it.”[65]

 

As a result of all of the infamy and notoriety, the film was a box office sensation, grossing some $5 million.[66] (Even though it played in only 40 percent of the theaters it was originally signed for.[67])

 

The Washington Post captured the phenomenon in a nutshell: “If Mr. Hughes’ indifference to the motion picture industry’s production and advertising codes was a deliberate device to attract attention to a picture which otherwise might conceivably have been passed over, it has been successful beyond his most extravagant hopes.”[68]

 

When The Outlaw opened in the United Kingdom in February 1947, the critics “unanimously and openly sneered,” as Time reported to its American readers. The public, however, loved it, and the film broke box-office records at the London Pavilion.[69]

 

One again moviemaker Hughes had scored with an international hit. And he had beat the censors to boot. The Outlaw played on and off here and there across America through to 1950.

 

In 1949, in preparation for a major re-release of The Outlaw through RKO, Hughes made a few trims to his picture and once again received a seal of approval from the Production Code Administration. In response, the Legion of Decency withdrew its “Condemned” rating and assigned The Outlaw a “B”—“morally objectionable in part for all.”[70] During its final run in 1949-50, The Outlaw played in 6,153 theaters and grossed over $3 million, plus $1.5 million in foreign receipts.[71] All told, Hughes made over $8 million on The Outlaw.[72]

 

Some 5,000 movies were produced by Hollywood in the 1940s and The Outlaw eventuated as one of the grandest of the decade in terms of notoriety.[73]

 

In the 1970s, Geoff Shurlock, employee of the Production Code Administration at the time of The Outlaw brouhaha, looked back at Hughes’ achievement with amusingly colorful words:

           

The breast exposure that caused the uproar in The Outlaw would not create much excitement today. Still Hughes corrupted the whole world on this mammary gland business. He started the exploitation of big breasts. He started the cinematic avalanche of breasts.[74]

 

*

 

A rumor has percolated through Hollywood down through the years that Howard Hughes filmed a nude version of The Outlaw for his private delectation.[75] It was just one more of the many weird and strange Hughes stories drifting through the industry. Another that has persisted over the decades was that Hughes offered $10,000 to actress Hedy Lamarr—who had performed one of the first nude scenes in cinema history in Ecstasy (1933)—if she would pose with a rubber sex dummy—for a photo for Hughes’ scrapbook, perhaps.[76]

 

*

 

MYSTERIOUS MOVES. One running theme in the Johnny Meyer part (#62-6282) of the Howard Hughes FBI file is an open question regarding the derivation of the film stock that Hughes used to make the 250 prints of The Outlaw for its 1946 release (through United Artists).[77] In 1945, 35mm film stock was subject to quotas by the War Production Board, and the FBI’s L.A. bureau reported that Hughes hadn’t been assigned enough raw 35mm film to fulfil The Outlaw’s requirement.

 

On September 6, 1945, the L.A. Bureau filed a report which related: “John Meyer had circulated rumors through the Hughes Organization that he had obtained four or five million feet of raw film for “The Outlaw” through some secret connections in the motion picture industry in Hollywood. . . . .”

 

In report after report the FBI wondered where exactly Hughes Productions got its extra 5.5 million feet of film stock, yet (evidently) did not engage in an intense investigation of the question. The FBI’s account of a conversation that Meyer had with an unnamed person in March 1946 may or may not have shed light on the truth:

 

Meyer is stated to have mentioned the name of John Small formerly under Julius Krug with the War Production Board and at present in charge of the Civilian Production Board, which handles all building materials. Meyer described Small as a “stumble bum”, whom he had known for many years. Meyer also related that it was through John Small that he had been able to secure 8 million feet of movie film.

 

However, the FBI didn’t investigate Meyer’s comment at all. It was never made plain if Meyer was either bragging or indulging in disinformation.

 

It is not out of the question that Hughes acquired the necessary 35mm film stock from the Underworld. The American Mafia maintained a significant foothold in Los Angeles. More to the point, infamous gangster Johnny Rosselli, who will make significant appearances later in this account of Hughes’ life, had been involved in promoting a brand of film stock in 1940 and for an unspecified time thereafter.[78]

 

*

 

RUSSELL UNDER CONTRACT. After The Outlaw was in the can in the spring of 1941, Jane Russell did not have to wonder what to do next with regards to her film career. She was under contract to Hughes and he would make her career choices for her. Alas, he did nothing with her. Though she was getting paid by the week, and though she was a hot new recognizable face in the public eye, Jane Russell appeared in no film between 1941 and 1945. Hughes wasn’t producing any film of his own for her to star in. Worse, he refused to loan her out to other studios.[79]

 

Hughes will likewise refuse Jack Buetel, also under contract to Hughes Productions, the chance to star in Howard Hawks’ Red River in 1947. When Hughes is studio chief of RKO, actresses such as Jane Greer and Jean Simmons will be treated in a similarly dismal way. Robert Mitchum, too, will be denied many chances for choice roles at other studios over the years.[80] Many of Hughes’ capable players had their careers inhibited by an imperturbable Hughes. He would keep them under lock and key just like so many of his airplanes which were left to gather dust in hangars here and there across America. Obviously Hughes had a “thing” about his possessions.

 

“Some strange quirk make it uppermost for Mr. Hughes to have control and domination over the people he collected,” recalled actress Janet Leigh, “or was it just the act of collecting?”[81]

 

After The Outlaw was released to great audience enthusiasm in 1943, Hughes failed to capitalize on Jane Russell’s meteoric notoriety. If he had pumped out two or three pictures a year starring Jane Russell he was sure to have made a quick buck. If he had loaned out Jane to other studios and those pictures had hit it big, her salary would have skyrocketed and Hughes the businessman would have reaped the rewards. And then if Hughes the moviemaker followed with his own picture he might further reap the rewards of her stardom. But Hughes didn’t want to become a movie mogul. The Outlaw was a private hobby for him.

 

The Outlaw had never been just about money for Hughes. It hadn’t been a business venture only. In his own way he had cared about it, in the same way that he had cared enough about Hell’s Angels to bring it to fruition on his own stream. Just as the Hughes Flying Boat in 1947 will be a throwback to the 1930s, the great age of the flying boats and Hughes’ aviation triumphs, so the production of The Outlaw had been a sentimental journey for Hughes back to the exciting early days of his Hollywood experience. He made movies from 1926 to 1932, then he dedicated himself wholeheartedly to his aviation pursuits from 1932 to 1938, then, taking somewhat of a breather, he went back to movies again in 1940, perhaps wanting a little fun.

 

Finally, in 1946, Jane Russell was allowed to star in The Young Widow, made by United Artists and including an appearance by Faith Domergue, one of Hughes’ love interests. Then Jane was immediately put on cinematic ice again until 1948, when she was allowed to appear in The Paleface for Paramount, starring as Calamity Jane opposite Bob Hope.[82]

 

Jane Russell’s rise to prominence in 1940 had been lightning-quick but her movie career achieved only minimal development through the 1940s. Still and all, in 1948 Russell signed a new seven-year contract with Hughes. It was then that her acting career went into high gear, because in that year Hughes bought in to RKO Studios and now owned an assembly line to manufacture many pictures in quick succession. Jane starred in five pictures for Hughes in 1951 and 1952 (Double Dynamite, His Kind of Woman, The Las Vegas Story, Macao, and Montana Belle). In that same time-frame she appeared in  two pictures for Paramount as well (Son of Paleface and The Road to Bali). In 1953 she starred opposite Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks’ Gentleman Prefer Blondes, for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Then she made two more films for Hughes and RKO—The French Line (1953) and Underwater! (1955).

 

Hughes had kept his promise. Jane Russell had trusted him, she had put pen to dotted line, and Hughes had come through. He had made her an actress, star, and celebrity. She’d be able to trade off her celebrity status for the rest of her days.

 

*

 

Hughes bows out of RKO in 1955. Yet he will not be completely through with the movie business. In that year, after he washes his hands of his movie studio once and for all, he gets Russell to sign a third contract with him. The deal was attractive. She would appear in six films made by various studios within five years, and he would pay her $1 million dollars, spread over twenty years at $1,000 a month. In a way you can call this method of payment a ‘sinecure’ or ‘maintenance’ or ‘allowance’. Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons called it an “insurance policy”.[83] Hughes also kept an RKO publicist on his payroll, Edith Lynch, to handle Jane Russell’s public relations. Everything, from Russell’s photographs to guidelines for interviews to publicity notices—as well as all personal appearances—had to first be approved by Hughes.[84]

 

Fulfilling the terms of her contract with Hughes, Russell starred in six not particularly notable films for various film studios in 1955-57 and that was that.

 

But the movies had never been and would never be her whole life. Back in 1953 she was a founding member of WAIF, the international adoption agency of the International Social Service, headquartered in Switzerland; and from time to time she hosted fund raisers for the cause. She also became the mother of three adopted children. After 1957, there was a hiatus in her film career until 1964. In the interim she went on a world tour of WAIF orphanages. She starred in a glitzy show at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. She hosted more WAIF fundraisers, including one in Honolulu. “Eventually,” Russell recalled, “even the Hughes office joined WAIF, openly took a table at every fund-raising event, and gave us ads for the books, signed only with “From a friend.”[85] She was present at the openings of new Hilton hotels in Cairo and Athens. She worked on the stage in New England and New York. No longer under contract with Hughes, she appeared in five more unmemorable films between 1964 and 1970. In 1970 Jane Russell retired from the silver screen. She had never cared much for movies anyhow. Being in the movie business with Howard Hughes hadn’t been a bad life for her. Disappointing, yes, because the movies Hughes put her in are pretty much neither here nor there except as star vehicles. “When you are under contract,” Russell once said, “you must do the movies they order you to do.”[86]

 

Russell always remembered Hughes with love: “We may have fought and disagreed about some things, but we were both very loyal and respected each other a great deal. Ours was truly a platonic love affair.”[87]

 

*

 

Jane Russell and Howard Hughes shared a close-knit friendship for two decades. In a way, he would be a father figure in her life. She had been nineteen years old and had known absolutely nothing about the film business when she entered into a contract with the man, fifteen years older, who would manage her Hollywood career for two decades. He led her as if by the hand into the realm of Celebrity. Jane was plain-speaking but polite; naturally skeptical but not irritating; an innocent, religious girl at heart; and Hughes felt a deep connection with her vibe. Howard Hughes had many, many aspiring actresses under contract between 1940 and 1955 but Russell was the only one who routinely made it onto the screen.

 

*

                                                 

Jane Russell recalled that Hughes did once “try it on” with her. It would be one of Hughes’ psychodramatic moments. First, he devised a plot in the cunning way of a lothario to get her into his bedroom. Then, the carrying out of the cunning plot segued into an eerie psychological moment.

 

Some time in 1948 Jane Russell was spending the night at one of Howard Hughes’ houses in Los Angeles. She was sleepy after a night of socializing among a number of people including Ava Gardner and Hughes was concerned for her welfare. “Howard was totally convinced that if I drove home I would crash the car and get myself killed,” she recalled. “He was always worried about people. If we crossed the street alone we were sure to get hit by a car, or if we went skiing we’d break a leg. He worried like a mother hen.”[88]

 

So he led her upstairs to one of his guest rooms. Like a good father, he instructed her to lock the door. She went to sleep. Later, she was woken up by a pounding on the door. She opened it and Johnny Meyer came reeling drunkenly into the room. Meyer was Hughes’ Assistant to the President and Public Relations Director at the Hughes Tool Company. Russell recalled that Meyer was attempting to paw her lasciviously but something didn’t feel right to her, she sensed that Meyer was only going through the motions. Then Hughes was there. “Get out,” he told his employee, who promptly left. “Come on, Jane,” Hughes said, “I think you’ll be better off in my room. He won’t bother you there.”[89]

 

In this particular house Hughes had chosen—if only for the night—the master bedroom. There were two beds. “You can have that one,” Hughes said, “and I’ll sleep in the other. That way I’ll be here in case anyone else gets any ideas.”[90]

 

Jane tucked herself in and went to sleep. Then she was awake. Hughes was standing over her. It would be a replay of the infamous scene in The Outlaw when Jane-as-Rio tells an ailing, bed-ridden Billy the Kid that she’ll get him warm by slipping under the sheets to give him her naked body heat! Hughes was playing out a scene from his film, but deadly seriously.

 

“I’m freezing,” he whined. “I must have caught a chill driving Ava home. “Can I get in with you?” he asked in a small boy’s voice. I reached out and touched his hand. It was like an ice cube. I was mad.

“Okay,” I snapped. “Get in. But no funny business.”[91]

 

It was not long before she kicked him out of bed.

 

“All right,” he muttered. “I’ll go. But let me get out when I decide. I don’t like people telling me what to do. I won’t touch you again. I promise.”[92]

 

 

---

[1] Of all the accounts of Howard Hughes’ life, the episode of The Outlaw’s release schedule and censorship battle is one of the most riddled with contradiction. There are no less than six different and contending accounts of the theme.

[2] See Parish, James Robert, The RKO Gals (London: Ian Allan Ltd., 1974), p. 707.

[3] See Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 26; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 162; Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 20.

[4] Tom Kelley was the photographer whose nude calendar shots of the young Marilyn Monroe in the summer of 1949, for which she was paid $50, brought her, and Monroe’s film Clash by Night (distributed by RKO), a firestorm of publicity in March 1952.

[5] See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 708.

[6] Quoted in Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 153.

[7] See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 708.

[8] Quoted in Kobal, John, Rita Hayworth: The Time, the Place and the Woman (New York: W W Norton & Company, 1977), p. 57.

[9] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 96.

[10] See “Hughes’s Western”, Time, February 22, 1943; [HH:US], p. 145; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 162. Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 97, says shooting began in November, and Hack, Hughes, p. 130, seem to accord with Higham. Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 81, says production got underway in December 1940.

[11] Quoted in Russell, Jane, An Autobiography (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986), p. 19.

[12] See Bogdanovich, Peter, “Interview with Howard Hawks” in Jim Hiller & Peter Wollen, Howard Hawks: American Artist (London: British Film Institute, 1996), p. 57. See also McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p. 50.

[13] See [HH:US], p. 146. But Time magazine on December 9, 1940, suggested that Hughes was shooting The Outlaw on the Twentieth Century-Fox lot. See “New Order”, Time, December 9, 1940.

[14] See “Hughes’s Western”, Time, February 22, 1943.

[15] While Citizen Kane was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, Welles’ first choice of subject was Howard Hughes. In Welles’ television documentary F for Fake (1973), actor Joseph Cotten says that he would have played the Tycoon if the film had gone ahead.

[16] Russell, Autobiography, p. 55-6.

[17] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 54; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 164; Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 116.

[18] Russell, Autobiography, p. 57.

[19] Russell, Autobiography, p. 56.

[20] Russell, Autobiography, p. 57; see also “Hughes’s Western”, Time, February 22, 1943; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 163.

[21] Russell, Autobiography, p. 59.

[22] Russell, Autobiography, p. 57; see also Bell, Howard Hughes, p. 16.

[23] “Hughes’s Western”, Time, February 22, 1943.

[24] See Schumach, Murray, The Face on the Cutting Room Floor: The Story of Movie and Television Censorship (New York: De Capo Press, 1975), p. 54; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 163.

[25] See Churchill, Douglas W., “Screen News Here And In Hollywood”, New York Times, March 1, 1941, p. 8; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 99

[26] See “This Week: Jane Russell”, Time, March 25, 1946.

[27] Quoted in Parish, RKO Gals, p. 708.

[28] Hubler, Richard G., “As I Remember Birdie”, The Screen Writer, September, 1947, in Christopher Silvester, The Penguin Book of Hollywood, p. 285-8. See also “Hughes’s Western”, Time, February 22, 1943.

[29] See [HH:US], p. 148.

[30] See Hubler, Richard G., “As I Remember Birdie”, The Screen Writer, September, 1947, in Christopher Silvester, The Penguin Book of Hollywood, p. 287.

[31] Quoted in Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 340. Also in the appendix of Leff, Dame in the Kimono; and Schumach, Cutting Room Floor. ¶ The Production Code was abandoned in 1968 in favor of the Code and Ratings Administration.

[32] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 162.

[33] Quoted in Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 117; also in Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 56.

[34] Quoted in Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 111-2; also in Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 85; Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 56-7; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 165; and Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 20.

[35] See Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 118.

[36] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 52; 53; 149.

[37] See Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 71; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 161-3; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 165; Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 20; [HH:US], p. 165-6; also Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 118.

[38] Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 118, and Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 57, both say The Outlaw received its PCA seal in May, while Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 165, says March 23, 1941.

[39] See Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 118; also “‘The Outlaw’ Is Banned”, New York Times, January 17, 1942, p. 12.

[40] Glenn Odekirk was given the job of building the lead-lined film room at Romaine. See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 167.

[41] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 166-7.

[42] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 58; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 710.

[43] Russell, Autobiography, p. 74.

[44] See “‘The Outlaw’ Condemned”, New York Times, February 22, 1943, p. 19; Bell, “Dispute Over ‘Outlaw’ Throws Whole Movie Code Into Crucible”, p. S4. 

[45] See Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 248.

[46] The Outlaw grossed over $158,000 from three weeks at the Geary and four weeks at the Tivoli Theatre. See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 710; Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 125.

[47] For quote, see Russell, Autobiography, p. 81.

[48] “This Week: Jane Russell”, Time, March 25, 1946, says The Outlaw was “ready for public release (first showing: Richmond, [VA]).”

[49] See Maguglin, Hughes: His Achivements, p. 44.

[50] See Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 137.

[51] See “‘Outlaw’ Censorship Brings $5,000,000 Suit”, Washington Post, April 24, 1946, p. 1; Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 201.

[52] See document dated May 6, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[53] See Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 137-8;

[54] See document dated May 21, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[55] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 59-60.

[56] See “That Outlaw”, Time, June 10, 1946.

[57] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 59-60.

[58] Bell, “Dispute Over ‘Outlaw’ Throws Whole Movie Code Into Crucible”, p. S4. ¶ For quotes from The Outlaw’s negative reviews, see Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 172.

[59] Quoted in Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 59; also in Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 202. See also Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 169-70.

[60] See Bell, Nelson B., “Long Runs Are Making An In-Law of ‘Outlaw’”, Washington Post, September 5, 1946, p. 5; Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 139.

[61] “Hughes Flying to New York To Fight Ban on His Movie”, p. 6.

[62] See documents dated January 16, 1946, January 29, 1946, May 21, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[63] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 59-60; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; “Howard Hughes: Cash-and-Carry Casanova”, p. 12; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 712; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 194; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 171; Demaris, “You and I”, p. 77; Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 139.

[64] See “That Outlaw”, Time, June 10, 1946; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 712.

[65] See Bell, Nelson B., “Film Board of Review Takes Deserved Sock At N.Y. Ban on ‘Outlaw’”, Washington Post, November 23, 1946, p. 10. ¶ State and civic censorship boards would be abolished in the 1950s and 1960s. See Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, p. 424-5.

[66] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 195; Leff, Dame in the Kimono, p. 139; “The Secret World Of Howard Hughes”, p. 29.

[67] See “The Mechanical Man”, Time, July 19, 1948.

[68] Bell, “Long Runs Are Making An In-Law of ‘Outlaw’”, p. 5.

[69] See “Peep Show”, Time, February 17, 1947.

[70] See Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 60-1.

[71] See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 716.

[72] See Thompson, “Riddle of an Embattled Phantom”, p. 25. ¶ “After he released The Outlaw, relatives of some of the descendents of the principals portrayed in the motion picture brought action on the ground that the characters of their ancestors had been impugned.” Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 351.

[73] Statistic from Friedrich, City of Nets, p. xiii.

[74] Quoted in Schumach, Cutting Room Floor, p. 61; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 174.

[75] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 116.

[76] See Eszterhas, Hollywood Animal, p. 375

[77] See documents dated July 7, 1945; August 1945; September 6, 1945; March 16, 1946; March 18, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[78] See Rappleye, Rosselli, p. 99.

[79] See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 711; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 100. ¶ In a loan-out situation, when an contract player is sent to another studio to act in a picture, the owner of the contract is paid the actor’s salary.

[80] See Server, Lee, Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don’t Care (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2001), p. 274.

[81] See Leigh, Janet, There Really Was A Hollywood (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984), p. 122.

[82] In between her two movies of 1946 and 1948, Russell pressed Hughes to let her go on the road as a songstress. In March 1947, she appeared for one week at the Latin Quarter Club in Miami Beach, for which she was paid $15,000—“believed to be the highest salary ever paid a feminine nightclub entertainer,” noted the Washington Post. Following this, she appeared for thirteen weeks on the ABC radio show “Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Fun and Knowledge”. Furthermore she recorded for Columbia Records a single (“Boin-n-ng”) followed by an album of ballads. See Bell, Nelson B., “Outlaw It If You Will, But for Jane It ‘Ads’ Up to $15,000 a Week”, Washington Post, February 25, 1947, p. 5; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 714-5.

[83] See Parsons, Louella, “Jane Russell Launches a Trend”, Washington Post, January 20, 1955, p. 47; Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 11.

[84] See Russell, Autobiography, p. 116.

[85] Russell, Autobiography, p. 173.

[86] See Parish, RKO Gals, p. 714. ¶ In the 1970s Russell advertised Playtex Cross-Your-Heart bras both in magazines and on television.

[87] Autobiography, p. 146.

[88] Russell, Autobiography, p. 102.

[89] Russell, Autobiography, p. 102.

[90] Russell, Autobiography, p. 103.

[91] Russell, Autobiography, p. 103.

[92] Russell, Autobiography, p. 103.

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

FOUR DAYS IN 1971

 

Howard Hughes is famous today for the wrong reasons. Mention his name and the average American thinks, “Billionaire Eccentric”.

—Plane & Pilot Magazine, May 1971[1]

People no longer discuss the Nevada trouble in terms of Hughes’ eccentricity. They debate whether Hughes is dead, or alive and nonfunctioning and the object of manipulation.

—JAMES PHELAN, 1971[2]

I don’t know how many more summers I have left . . . but I don’t expect to spend all of them holed up in a hotel room on a Barca-lounger.

—HOWARD HUGHES, early 70s[3]

 

 

B/R: bathroom

c : codeine injected by syringe, in grains (1 grain=0.0648 gram)

#4s: Empirin Compound #4, an analgesic containing codeine[4]

BB: 10-milligram Valium capsules

 

Friday, 17 Dec. 71

 

12:10 AM        Chair.

1:20      "          Screening “WRECKING CREW.”

2:15      ″          B/R

2:45      ″          Chair. Resumed screening ″WRECKING CREW.”

3:25      ″          Chicken and dessert.

5:20      ″          Finished.

5:25      ″          B/R

5:45      ″          Bed and asleep.

7:50      ″          B/R and shower.

8:35      ″          Chair.

9          ″           Screening ARABESQUE

10:15    ″          B/R

10:40    ″          Chair 8c’s (23 left)

11:30    ″          Chicken

1:00     PM      B/R

1:20      ″          Chair—“ARABESQUE” reel #3

2:50      ″          B/R—John, must, somehow, acquire additional #4s.

3:25      ″          Chair—

5:00      ″          B/R—called Gordon.

5:50      ″          Chair—Resumed screening “DEADLIER THAN THE MALE.”

6:40      ″          Food: chicken only

7:35      ″          Finished eating.

8:00      ″          B/R

8:20      ″          Chair. Screening “DARING GAME.”

9:45      ″          B/R

10:15    ″          Chair. Resumed screening “DARING GAME.”

                         Reels 1 & 2.

11:10    ″          B/R.

11:45    ″          Chair. Screening “TENSION AT TABLE ROCK.”

 

Saturday, 18 Dec. 71

 

12:50    AM      B/R

1:05      ″          Chair.

1:30      ″          Food: chicken & desert. [sic]

3:30      ″          Finished.

3:40      ″          B/R

4:30      ″          Bed and asleep

9:20      ″          B/R and awake

11:30    ″          Chair

11:45    ″          10 #4. 32 left.

5:00      PM      Food: chicken only.

6:10      ″          B/R

6:30      ″          Chair. Screening “WRECKING CREW.” 5 BB’s.

7:00      ″          B/R.

7:20      ″          Chair. Resumed screening “WRECKING CREW.”

7:40      ″          Food. Dessert only.

8:30      ″          Finshed eating.

8:45      ″          B/R

9:00      ″          Bed. Asleep

 

Sunday, Dec. 19

 

3:30     AM      B/R

4:50      ″          Bed

7          ″           B/R and shower

9:10     ″          Chair

9:25      ″          Screening DEADLIER THAN THE MALE

11:25    ″          B/R

11:50    ″          Chair

12:30    PM      Food—DEADLIER THAN THE MALE finished.

2:00      ″          Finished complete meal.

2:40      ″          Asleep

5:20      ″          Awake. B/R.

5:45      ″          Chair (12 No. 4’s 20 left)

7:10      ″          B/R

7:30      ″          Screening ″WRECKING CREW.”

8:15      ″          Food: Chicken only.

9:30      ″          Finished eating. ″Wrecking Crew” completed.

10:20    ″         B/R.

Info: He OK’d the following films to be returned: Wrecking Crew, Deadlier Than The Male, Arabesque, Sundowners & Tension at Table Rock.

10:50    ″         Chair. Screening “NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY.” Compelted.

 

Monday, Dec. 20

 

1:15      AM      B/R.

1:35      ″          Chair. Screening “BULLET FOR A BADMAN.”

4                       B/R

4:45      ″          Chair #2 reel of BULLET again.

5:55      ″          B/R

6:25      ″          Chair #2 reel of BULLET again.

6:40      ″          Chicken

8:25      ″          B/R Discontinued eating

9:20      ″          Chair #2 reel of BULLET

                         About 10 #4’s. Maybe ten left.

10:20    ″          Chicken

11:10    ″          B/R

 

*

 

We know Howard Hughes’ hour-by-hour behavior of his reclusive years because operational logs were assiduously kept by his inner circle of aides. These logs would eventually run to many thousands of pages. The majority of these day-to-day logs are frighteningly similar to this example:

 

Sunday

6:55 a.m.          Asleep

11:15 a.m.        Awake B/R  [Bathroom]

11:35 a.m.        Chair, screening “SITUATION HOPELESS BUT NOT SERIOUS” (completed all but last 5 min. reel 3)

1:30 p.m.          10/C  [10 grains codeine]

1:50 p.m.          B/R

2:10 p.m.          Chair, resumed screening “THE KILLERS”

3:30 p.m.          Food. Chicken only.

4:20 p.m.          Finished “SITUATION HOPELESS BUT NOT SERIOUS”. Screening “DO NOT DISTURB”

6:45 p.m.          B/R

7:00 p.m.          Chair

7:45 p.m.          Screening “DEATH OF A GUNFIGHTER” (1 reel only)

8:25 p.m.          B/R

8:45 p.m.          Chair

9:00 p.m.          Screening “THE KILLERS”

9:35 p.m.          Chicken and dessert. Completed “THE KILLERS”

11:25 p.m.        B/R

11:50 p.m.        Bed. Changed bandages. Not asleep.[5]

 

Or this example:

 

Friday

30 June 1972

(continued)

4:20 p.m.          Finished eating dessert. (one serving)

4:45 p.m.          Screening “SHANGHAI EXPRESS” Again!

6:40 p.m.          B/R

9:10 p.m.          Chair

11:00 p.m.        Dessert

Saturday           1:00 A.M.        Finished dessert.

July 1, 1972      1:10 a.m.       Fell asleep in chair

3:00 a.m.          B/R

3:40 a.m.          6 bbs. [Blue Bombers, ten-milligram valium capsules]

4:20 a.m.          2 bbs. Bed.

4:35 a.m.          Asleep.

1:30 P.M.          Awake, B/R

2:25 p.m.          Chair, T.V.

4:30 p.m.          B/R

5:05 p.m.          Chair, screening “CATTLE KING”

7:35 p.m.          Finished “CATTLE KING”, OK to return.

7:50 p.m.          B/R

8:05 p.m.          Chair

9:50 p.m.          B/R

10:10 p.m.        Chair

11:45 p.m.        B/R

Sunday             12:15 A.M.      Chair

July 2, 1972      1:55 a.m.        B/R

                                    2:20 a.m.          Chair

                                    3:15 a.m.          B/R

                                    3:40 a.m.          Started eating (chicken). Screening

“DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER”

                                    5:15 a.m.          Finished eating.

                                    6:30 a.m.          B/R

                                    7:00 a.m.          Chair

                                    7:50 a.m.          Finished “DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER”

                                    8:10 a.m.          Finished eating dessert.

                                    10:10 a.m.        B/R

                                    10:35 a.m.        5BB’s.

                                    11:00 a.m.        Screening “SEVEN WAYS FROM

SUNDOWN”

Reels 1 and part of 2.

                                    1:15 P.M.         B/R

                                    2:40 p.m.         Chair, working.

                                    6:25 p.m.          B/R

                                    10:00 p.m.        Bed and asleep

Monday           7:15 A.M.         B/R. Big E. [Enema]

July 3, 1972      9:45 a.m.       Bed. 6 bbs. Asleep.

                                    3:40 P.M.          Awake & B/R

                                    4:14 p.m.          Chair, 2bb’s.

                                    5:00 p.m.          B/R

                                    5:20 p.m.          Chair

                                    6:15 p.m.          B/R & Big E.

                                    8:10 p.m.          Bed & Asleep.

Tuesday           12:50 A.M.       B/R

July 4, 1972      1:25 a.m.        Chair

                                    3:15 a.m.          Started screening.

                                    4:30 a.m.          Started eating chicken. Finished “SEVEN WAYS

FROM SUNDOWN”—can return it.

                                    5:45 a.m.          B/R

                                    6:10 a.m.          Chair

                                    8:10 a.m.          Finished eating—2 desserts. Finished

“SHANGHAI EXPRESS”

                        8:15 a.m.          B/R

                        8:50 a.m.          Chair, screening “OCEAN’S ELEVEN”

                        10:50 a.m.        B/R

                        11:15 a.m.        Chair, resumed screening “OCEAN’S

ELEVEN”[6]               

 

The meticulous logs documented what time Hughes awoke; what drugs he took; what movies he watched; his meals; his bathroom breaks; the frequency of his enemas; and when he fell asleep (in bed or in his chair). The one detail the logs usually failed to note were Hughes’ telephone calls to Romaine Street.[7] In the documentation Hughes was never mentioned directly, but was referred to as, for example, He, Him, The Stockholder, HRH, or the Boss.[8] These logs, what the aides referred to as “information sheets”, were necessary for a couple of reasons. They were necessary to prepare the aides who were arriving on shift. Just as importantly, they also kept Romaine Street apprised of Hughes’ every move. According to Hughes estate court documents, “The aides . . . provided Gay and [Kay] Glenn with copies of, or access to, daily logs they kept . . . on Hughes’s daily activities.”[9] In other words, Romaine Street knew everything there was to know about Hughes’ narcotics addiction. What an amazing irony it is that for someone like Hughes who demanded utter secrecy in his personal life, would have lived—in the words of a Hughes estate report prepared after his death—“one of the most completely documented lives in history.”[10]

 

*

 

The records quoted directly above relate that Hughes was taking up to 60 mgs of Valium at one time, though 30mgs is the highest single dosage that Lippincott’s Nursing Drug Guide advises—and only for patients suffering delirium tremens from alcohol withdrawal. Even more dramatically Hughes was consuming up to 648 milligrams of codeine in a single dose, when Lippincott’s recommends not to exceed 360 milligrams in a 24-hour period.[11]

 

 

---

[1] See Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 31.

[2] Phelan, “. . . Still Stand Up?”, p. 316. ¶ Logs quoted in Gonzales, “Secret Files”, p. 194. ¶ According to court documents prepared by the Hughes estate administrators in 1978: “Chester Davis was well aware that Hughes was addicted to drugs and of his mental condition.” Dr. Lawrence Chaffin recalled telling Davis and Gay about Hughes’ abysmal condition in June 1971. See Real, Asylum, p. 281.

[3] Undated memo quoted in Finstad, Heir, p. 20.

[4] “Empirin number 4 . . . is the strongest Empirin compound, containing phenacetin, aspirin, caffeine and codeine. Phenacetin is a common painkiller.” Gonzales, “Secret Files”, p. 194.

[5] See Drosnin, Citizen Hughes, p. 414-5; [HH:US], p. 349-50.

[6] See [HH:HLM], p. 510.

[7] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 265.

[8] See Gonzalez, “Secret Files”, p. 154.

[9] See Real, Asylum, p. 273; Phelan, Money, p. 124-5; [HH:HLM], p. 327.

[10] See Fowler, “Psychological Autopsy”, p. 24; also Phelan, Money, p. 125; [HH:HLM], p. 326-7. ¶ “In the log for a day in 1971 identified only by the words “Merry Xmas”, is a marginal note: “Wants to start orange tarts again. Also wants to change the Napoleons so there is cake between custard rather than the flaky piecrust material they now have. The custard and frosting should remain as is.” Gonzales, “Secret Files”, p. 194.

[11] See Karch, Amy, M., 2004 Lippincott’s Nursing Drug Guide (Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2004), p. 328; 386.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

XF-11 CRASH. Howard Hughes’ most dramatic and newsworthy event of 1946 was almost his last—his ill-fated test flight of the XF-11 which left him a hair’s-breadth from death. Less than a month following Germany’s surrender to the Allied Forces, almost to the day that Hughes surfaced from his self-imposed exile from his responsibilities, the U.S. Air Force had cancelled its production contract for ninety-eight of the one hundred XF-11 planes. For all of Hughes’ hopes concerning his plane over the last eight years, the two XF-11 prototypes that were eventually completed would be Howard Hughes’ only contribution of aircraft for the military. Still and all, two experimental airplanes were contracted for delivery and Hughes Aircraft would have to prove their airworthiness. Howard Hughes, 40, would himself take his beloved XF-11 into the air for its first test-run, in the early evening of Sunday, July 7, 1946.[1]

 

 

XF-11 PHOTO-RECONAISSANCE AIRCRAFT. The XF-11 is another magnificent-looking Hughes plane, a sleek beauty. “Design was very clean, a hallmark of all Hughes aircraft,” observed Walter Boyne. “Reduction of drag was the keynote.”[2] Like the Hughes H-1 Racer, all of the rivets on the XF-11 were flush with the airframe.

 

 

The cockpit, which was designed for a crew of two (pilot, and navigator/camera operator), was pressurized.  The 47,500-pound plane was designed to fly at a top speed of 420 mph at a ceiling of up to 48,000 feet for a maximum range of 5,000 miles, the state-of-the-art for aircraft at the time.

 

 

Over five years in development, the XF-11’s design was unorthodox. It was a twin-boom configuration with a shorter, enclosed cockpit nestled in between. A horizontal tailplane joined together the parallel booms aft, giving the XF-11 a “squared-off” look when seen from above or underneath.[3] Wingspan was 101 feet 5 inches; length, 65 feet 5 inches. The plane was designed to carry eight cameras, fitted front and back. The cockpit of the dramatic aerodynamic marvel featured a pointed snout.

 

 

Each boom housed a powerful Pratt & Whitney Wasp Major R-4360-31 engine rated at 3,000-horsepower. (The United States Air Force Museum describes the R-43760 as “the most technically advanced and complex reciprocating aircraft engine produced in large numbers in the United States.”[4]) Each engine featured two sets of propellers, one pair right behind the other. The pair of propellers behind were contra-rotating, designed to give optimum thrust at all times in flight.

 

 

According to a front-page story in the New York Times on July 8, “The photographic plane . . . had received little or no publicity outside the neighborhood of the Hughes plant.”[5]

 

 

*

 

 

During the afternoon of July 7 Hughes performed two hours of high-speed taxi tests in the shiny, light-grey XF-11, closely watched by Gene Blandford, Chief Flight Engineer at Hughes Aircraft. Hughes carried out three taxi runs along with seven practice hops (lifting off the airstrip for only seconds at a time).[6] Then the airplane was gassed and readied for flight. The two sets of twin counter-rotating propellers were powered up. It would be the first flight of the XF-11. Among the invited spectators standing near the airstrip was Jean Peters.

 

 

A day earlier, Hughes Aircraft engineer Joe Petrali had remarked to Hughes that the plane was too complicated an aircraft for a solo pilot. “It’s suicide,” he said.

“Nonsense,” Hughes replied. He pointed out that the plane hadn’t encountered any trouble during the runway tests. “I won’t have a problem with it in the air.”[7]

 

 

But the airworthiness of the XF-11 had yet to be demonstrated. (In fact, a small oil leak inside the right engine had been discovered some weeks earlier, but the problem wasn’t considered serious enough to warrant an immediate repair.[8]) The fearless Howard Hughes would carry out the altitude tests on his plane himself. Before taking off, he decided to order Blandford out of the cockpit. When his co-pilot climbed out of the plane, Hughes waved to the crowd, then closed the cockpit around him. He accelerated down the runway for 3,280 feet and the XF-11 took off at 150 mph. It was 5:20 pm.

 

 

Predictably, for the XF-11’s test flight Hughes was going to proceed according to his own rules. Military regulations stipulated that experimental aircraft test runs were to take place at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, for reasons of safety to the public at large; but somehow Hughes had persuaded the powers that be to allow him to fly the plane from his own airstrip at Hughes Aircraft in Culver City. Moreover, the plane, according to military regulations, was supposed to be filled with only six hundred gallons of fuel, and the flight time was supposed to be forty-five minutes in total, but Hughes had topped up the tank to twelve hundred gallons, and would keep his plane up in the air for around an hour and fifteen minutes, which was when the trouble started.[9]

 

 

Designed as a high-speed photo-reconnaissance spy plane, the XF-11 had a sleek, streamlined design and looked beautiful in the air. Flying in wide arcs over the busy metropolitan west side of Los Angeles, and keeping the air speed down to around 190 miles per hour, the XF-11 was performing well even though something on the cockpit niggled at Hughes: the landing gear warning light kept glowing red, indicating, rightly or wrongly, that the gear was still partly down. Hughes lowered the gear then raised it again yet the red warning light continued to glow.

 

 

Hughes Aircraft employees Glenn Odekirk and Gene Blandford had taken off from the Culver City site in a Douglas A-20 twin-engine bomber and were flying behind Hughes in order to gain an aerial inspection of the XF-11 in flight. Hughes attempted to contact the company-owned A-20 but discovered that—silly error—their radios were tuned to different frequencies.

 

 

At around 6:30 p.m., airport traffic controller Dick M. Fischer received a call at the Los Angeles Municipal Airport Control Tower. “Army 47155 to any tower.”—it was Hughes, having switched frequencies to 126.8 megacycles.[10] When Fischer answered the call, Hughes instructed:

 

 

47155 to Los Angeles Tower, this is a test ship out of Hughes Aircraft. Will you see if you can contact the A-20 that is on this test flight with me and tell him I am having gear trouble? If you are unable to contact him, call Hughes Aircraft at Ashley 4-3361 and find out what frequency he is using.[11]

 

 

Fischer attempted to contact the A-20 five times without any luck. The air traffic controller then tried to contact Hughes, who did not reply. Inside the cockpit of the XF-11, Hughes saw that the landing gear warning light had gone out and must have thought that his problems were over. He was now alone in his patch of sky, as the A-20 chase plane had decided to return to the Hughes Aircraft landing strip.

 

 

At 6:39 p.m. Hughes was heading north at 5,000 feet when the XF-11 suddenly banked right on its own. The plane was just north of the Baldwin Hills Golf Club. In the pilot’s own words, “It felt as if some giant had the right wing of the airplane in his hand and was pushing it back and down.”[12]

 

 

Experiencing a strong drag, the twin-tail aircraft began losing altitude fast. Hughes was two to three miles northeast of his landing field at Culver City. He tried a series of maneuvers to get the XF-11 under control. He let the plane bank to the right until it was headed due east then counteracted by attempting to veer sharply towards due west, hoping to steer the plane toward the direction of Hughes Aircraft. As the stricken plane descended through the air Hughes unbuckled his safety belt, left his seat, and stretched as far as he could in the cockpit while still holding the control wheel with his left hand, looking through the transparent canopy at his airplane from a variety of angles, hoping to locate the cause of the drag. Unable to see anything suspect, Hughes returned to his seat but did not think to refasten his safety belt. Meanwhile the plane was now moving generally north, away from the Hughes Aircraft landing strip.

 

 

He increased power to 2,800 RPM on both engines but could not regain control. He lowered the power then tried full throttle on the right engine at 2,200 RPM. No dice—the plane was out of control. Hughes considered bailing out but decided he was getting too close to the ground to rely on a safe parachute landing. By holding full left rudder and full left aileron, with the spoilers on the left wing in up position, Hughes discovered he was able to control the direction of the aircraft but he could not control the plane’s rapid descent.

 

 

The XF-11 was streaking downwards at 155 miles per hour, crossing Washington Boulevard at 2,500 feet, Venice Boulevard at 2,000 feet, Pico Boulevard at 1,000 feet. At 800 feet he was still trying to puzzle out the problem of the right wing drag. Hughes lowered the landing gear in the chance of jarring loose something on the undercarriage that might be causing the trouble. No luck. All the while the XF-11 was descending fast and heading northwest straight into the heart of the wealthy community of Beverly Hills.

 

 

Hughes thought to try for the fairways of the Los Angeles Country Club but he realized from the increase in sink rate that he wasn’t going to make it. Its 3,000-horsepower engines screaming, Hughes’ plane dropped out of the sky at a high angle of attack—nose high left, tail down right.[13] He crossed Wilshire Boulevard at 600 feet then Santa Monica Boulevard at 500 feet. With Hughes bracing himself for the crash, his feet against the instrument panel, the airplane smashed through the second floor of 800 North Linden Drive, a private residence, at 6:42 p.m.[14] Crashing through a corner bedroom, the plane narrowly missed the house’s occupants, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry De Kamp.[15] The right wing was torn off as it sliced through the garage of the house next door, 802.[16] The plane was slowed down but kept barrelling ahead, pitching onto its side and rolling end over end, bouncing along an alley with Hughes being flung all over the cockpit like a pinball. Utility poles were knocked down, sending telephone and power lines askew. The large left engine sheared off, rebounded off the front corner of 808 North Whittier Drive and dropped onto the house’s front lawn 60 feet away from the plane. The slewing plane sheared poplar and eucalyptus trees until finally skidding to a rest in a fiery wreck between two houses at 808 and 810 North Whittier Drive. It was 6:42 p.m. A gas main on the ground was damaged; flames a hundred feet high were roiling into the air. The left landing gear ended up in number 808’s kitchen; the house caught fire and eventually reduced to a burnt-out ruin.[17]

 

 

Except for the miraculous containment of the cockpit, the XF-11 was wrecked. The right engine had sheared off and was nose down in the alley. Much of the length of the four propellers had snapped off. Along with the wings and the engines, both right and left landing gears had broken off. What was left of the destroyed metal airframe was overcome with flames.

 

 

Hughes dragged himself out of the mangled cockpit and was sprawled lifeless on what was left of one of the burning wings. The first man who arrived to help was a U.S. Marine Sergeant named William Lloyd Durkin. At first Durkin had thought himself “stupid” even approaching the burning plane. “Nobody could live through that,” he thought. Thick black smoke choked the scene, making visibility difficult. He heard banging coming from the plane, possibly from the cockpit. “Somebody’s stumbling around in there!” Durkin thought.

 

 

Durkin took a deep breath, put his hand over his nose and mouth, closed his eyes and jumped toward the sound. He lucked out and landed right on Hughes. With one hand Durkin yanked him around as though he weighed nothing. Flames were burning an eight to ten inch strip of Hughes’ clothing from above the armpit down to his waist. Durkin took Hughes’ wrist, lifted the arm clear, and with his own forearm brushed the fire out. Hughes’ hand looked as though he had stuck it in a deep fat fryer.[18]

 

 

Hughes was carried clear of the flames by Durkin and a fireman who rushed up to help. “Hughes was bleeding from one ear, his nose, and mouth,” Durkin later told newsmen. “And he was muttering to himself. He kept saying, ‘I’m Howard Hughes. Let me up. Lay me on the lawn.’ He was conscious, but badly banged up. His shirt was burned almost completely off.”[19] Hughes was laid onto the ground in desperate need of an ambulance.

 

 

Hughes later remembered closing his eyes and drifting into a euphoric state, free of pain. He realized he was dying, but at least he wasn’t burning to death.[20]

 

 

Hughes the hapless pilot was a gruesome sight, a veritable encyclopedia of injuries. His life was critically threatened. Like Stephen King in his meeting with the blue van, Hughes wasn’t supposed to survive, but somehow he did. Luckily no one on the ground was injured.

 

 

The crash site looked like an incendiary bomb had gone off in the midst of peaceful suburbia. Hughes had ripped a gaping hole in the roof of 800 North Linden. The house’s yard was completely covered over with the leafy trees that Hughes had knocked down. Shattered glass, masonry, and pieces of Hughes’ plane were strewn about. When the news broke, newsreel cameramen sped to the site to capture the catastrophe. In double-quick time Odekirk and Joe Petrali arranged to have security guards posted to keep anyone from touching what was left of the plane.[21]

 

 

His battered body in severe shock, Hughes was rushed first to the Beverly Hills Emergency Hospital, where he was put in an oxygen tent for a half-hour, and then to the Good Samaritan Hospital, where the physician in charge, Dr. J. C. Murray, gave Hughes only a “fifty-fifty chance” of surviving.[22]

 

 

That night, Hughes’ condition was in a severely critical state. He went into profound shock and was administered two emergency blood transfusions as well as treatment to raise his blood pressure.

 

 

Back at the crash scene, Odekirk and Petrali worked through the night, investigating the wreckage with flashlights, searching for any tell-tale signs of malfunction.

 

 

On the morning of July 8, the front pages of newspapers around the country screamed the news, variations on

 

 

MULTIMILLIONAIRE AVIATOR HOWARD HUGHES

GIVEN ONLY A 50/50 CHANCE OF SURVIVAL.[23]

 

 

According to a statement released by Hughes’ private physician, Dr. Verne R. Mason, Hughes’ gruesome injuries consisted of:

 

 

Fracture of the left clavicle; Fracture of the posterior portion of the upper nine ribs on the left side; Fracture of the first two ribs on the right side; Possible fracture of the nose; A large laceration of the scalp on the left side; Extensive second and third degree burn of the left hand; A large second degree burn of the lower part of the left chect extending from the nipple line to the medial scapular line; A large second degree burn of the left buttock; Numerous cuts, bruises, and abrasions of both arms and both legs, numerous small cuts about the face.[24]

 

 

Barton and Steele add, “His heart had been pushed to one side of his chest cavity.”[25]

 

 

On July 8, Dr. Mason reported, “The left lung, which suffered contusions from severe crushing of the chest, is not yet functioning.”[26] Hughes’ life hung in the balance—he was being administered a constant supply of oxygen—yet he still managed to carry out a bedside business conference with Glenn Odekirk, Hughes’ capable confrere at Hughes Aircraft, and John Meyer, Hughes’ jack-of-all-trades publicity man.

 

 

On the same day, Petrali, as Hughes’ Service and Flight manager, began removing the plane wreckage from the crash site. What was left of the right engine was lifted by a crane and transported back to the Hughes Aircraft plant where it would be inspected down to the smallest detail.[27]

 

 

Hughes, doped up on morphine, would remain in a “severely critical” state for close to a week. The New York Times followed the progress of Hughes’ medical condition, turning his fight for life into a minor national drama. Headlines on Hughes, described as a “wealthy airplane manufacturer and civilian pilot”, with his wealth estimated at $125 million, included “Howard Hughes is Improved”, on page 3 on July 14; “Hughes Continues to Improve”, on page 13 on July 15; “Hughes Is Gaining”, on page 25 on July 16; “Hughes Has Transfusion”, on page 25 on July 17; “Hughes Still Gaining”, on page 27 on July 18.[28] An editorial on page 12 on July 20 extolled Hughes: “He has proved himself a fit successor to that long line of airmen who always have been willing to try something new, to attempt to achieve what other men said was impossible.”[29]

 

 

By slow degrees over four weeks Hughes pulled through.[30] Hughes was convinced, he told a friend later, that his life was saved because he drank great quantities of orange juice freshly squeezed right there in his hospital room.[31] A steady stream of his Hollywood flames came to cheer him on: Lana Turner, Linda Darnell, Jane Greer, and the starlet Jean Peters among them. Hollywood historian Lee Server observed, “the waiting room and hallway outside drew more big-named actresses than the Oscars.”[32] Ava Gardner and Yvonne De Carlo sent flowers. Thousands of well-wishers, including those from the highest level of American government, including President Harry S. Truman, sent letters of support.[33] Cary Grant and Errol Flynn were there if their friend wanted to see them, as was Jack Frye, president of TWA. Hughes’ family members who flew to their nephew to offer their support, including Aunt Annette, were ignored.[34] A security guard kept watch at Hughes’ hospital door.

 

 

Hughes was significantly strengthened in body to carry out a three-hour business conference with Odekirk in his hospital room on July 25.[35]

 

 

Hollywood gossip queen Hedda Hopper passed on this nugget in the Los Angeles Times on July 29: “Howard Hughes is on the mend. Picking up a magazine, he was attracted by the cover girl and promptly instructed an aide to sign her for pictures. She is Norman Jeane Dougherty.” Norma, who was gracing the cover of a racy rag called Laff, was subsequently signed by Twentieth Century-Fox, whose casting director was none other than Ben Lyon, Hughes’ old associate from the Hell’s Angels days. Norma’s career in pictures was jumpstarted by a Hughes-related notice in the papers. She was about to be reborn as Marilyn Monroe.[36]

 

 

Hughes had eleven broken ribs but the burns on his body were so severe Hughes couldn’t be treated with casts. Immense pain followed even the slightest movement, leading Hughes’ private physicians, Dr. Verne Mason and Dr. Lawrence Chaffin, to administer MORPHINE to their patient by injection.[37] When Hughes had originally regained consciousness, he at first refused to take any painkillers, though the pain he felt all through his body was excruciating. “If I’m going to die,” Noah Dietrich quoted Hughes as saying, “I want to know it.”[38] Being told that he had received morphine intravenously while unconscious, and realizing that his body would suffer even worse if he quit the morphine cold turkey, Hughes demanded Dr. Mason to begin cutting back on the shots. Over a three-week period Hughes kept a chart of his morphine intake and repeatedly ordered that the prescribed dosage was to be cut by up to a third before administered.[39]

 

 

In the hope of allieviating some of Hughes’ discomfort, his engineers built for him the first motorized adjustable hospital bed. The mattress came together in six sections; each section was connected to its own screwjack operated by a crank. There was available to Hughes around thirty adjustments in all. (According to Terry Moore, Hughes also devised a new bedpan while recuperating at the hospital.[40]) The mechanical bed was not used at this time, however, as Hughes was discharged not long after taking delivery of the bed.[41]

 

 

Hughes was released from the Good Samaritan Hospital on August 10 and convalesced for the next four weeks at Cary Grant’s home on Beverly Grove Drive in Beverly Hills.[42] He promptly grew a moustache to hide a facial scar caused by the crash.

 

 

Hughes later explained to newspaperman Earl Wilson: “I lost 35 pounds and haven’t gained it back. I burned my left hand pretty badly tearing back the lucite canopy of the plane getting out. I’ll never be able to straighten two of my fingers.”[43] Newsweek magazine reported that Hughes was left with long-term bladder and prostate trouble.[44] Actress Gene Tierney remarked on Hughes’ changed appearance after the accident: “There had been a soft, boyish, clear-eyed quality about him. Now the eyes had turned beady, the face had tightened. The scars only aged him.”[45]

 

 

Significantly, ominously, Hughes was prescribed CODEINE (in tablet form) to cope with the immense pain he suffered as well as alleviate some of the withdrawal symptoms from coming off morphine.[46] August 1947 would be the beginning of Howard Hughes’ addiction to the painkiller that would eventuate as the major disaster of his life. It would be an addiction that would “creep up” on him unawares.

 

 

*

 

 

CODEINE. Codeine is a narcotic substance originally found in tiny concentrations in opium and was isolated for the first time in the 1830s. Today, the codeine used in medical products is synthesised from morphine. Codeine occurs as colourless or white crystals, or as a white powder. The chemical composition of codeine converts to morphine when it is introduced into the bloodstream. Codeine waters down the perception of pain at the spinal cord and higher levels in the Central Nervous System. Codeine is available in tablet, capsule, syrup, and injectable forms, and is in wide use throughout the world as a prescription analgesic. High doses of codeine leads to lightheadedness and the obfuscation of mental processes. The medical profession warns that codeine can become habit-forming, the patient’s body acquiring a physical dependence to the drug.

 

 

*

 

 

Hughes will express his gratitude to the two men who had carried him from the burning wreckage of the F-11, William Durkin and an unnamed fireman, by awarding them a stipend of $200 a month for the rest of their lives. Moreover, in 1949 Hughes will invite Durkin to his office at the Hughes Aircraft plant in Culver City for a short friendly meeting. If a legend arose during his lifetime that he had failed to even send his rescuers a note of thanks, this was due to Hughes’ prohibition against newspaper columnists reporting his goodwill gesture. Throughout his lifetime Hughes will carry out many acts of kindness, especially to those requiring medical attention, but he will always keep such charitable undertakings quiet. Later in Hughes’ life, journalist Phil Santora will point out how Hughes’ obsession with secrecy and control was at such an extreme pitch that his employees “refused to discuss him—even to utter words of praise.” [47]

 

 

*

 

 

Four days after the crash, Hughes, ailing from his hospital bed, sinking in and out of a critical state, had pointed the blame at a propeller on the right side of the aircraft. “The right wing kept stalling,” he said. “I put full power on that engine, the right engine, but it still got worse.”[48] Indeed, an air force investigation agreed with Hughes’ assessment, concluding that a propeller on the right side had a design fault.[49] Hughes later filed a lawsuit against Hamilton Standard, the manufacturer of the XF-11’s propellers, and settled out of court, with Hughes awarded $175,000 for personal injury.[50]

 

 

Recall that the XF-11 had two sets of propellers, one in front of the other, on each of the plane’s two engines. An oil leak in the right engine had caused the rear propeller on the right side to reverse itself (a “negative pitch position”), pushing the plane backward, while the propeller in front of it kept endeavoring to propel the plane forward—an aerodynamic nightmare which resulted in the catastrophic drag on the right side. In the words of aviation journalist Don Dwiggins, “The blades had gone into flat pitch, producing a barn-door drag.”[51] Joe Petrali explained, “The more power Howard poured on, the more the airplane wanted to stall, because that right engine was trying to fly the plane backwards!”[52]

 

 

Hughes the aircraft designer was off the hook, yet the disastrous test flight turned out to be a professional embarrassment for Hughes the pilot. The XF-11 that Hughes flew for this test flight might indeed have contained an eccentricity concerning the propeller he identified, but the crash was adjudged after the fact as perfectly avoidable.

 

 

In the conclusion to a report on the accident, Captain B. B. Brown of the Aircraft Accident Investigating Board of the Air Corps wrote that the Board agreed that the right-hand engine’s rear propeller had experienced a functional failure. Yet Brown went on to write,

 

 

[S]everal indirect causes contributing to the accident were the result of technique employed by the pilot in operating the aircraft. . . .

a. The pilot did not utilize the special radio frequency and facilities that were provided. . . .

            b. The pilot . . . was not sufficient acquainted with [the propeller’s] emergency operating procedures. . . .

c. The pilot retracted the landing gear immediately after take-off which action the Board feels was incompatible with the flight test program. . . .

d. The pilot did not give proper attention to the possibility of an emergency landing during the period when sufficient altitude and directional control were available. . . .

e. The pilot failed to analyze or evaluate the possibility of failure in the right hand power section. The Board believes that the pilot conducted an extensive visual check for structural failure, but that he did not reduce power on both engines simultaneously in order to distinguish between structural and/or power failure.

f. The Board feels there was poor coordination by the principals concerned, i.e. Hughes Aircraft Company employees, Air Matériel Command, Mr. Howard R. Hughes, and Hamilton Standard Service representatives, which resulted in a lack of single centralized control over the entire flight program.

g. The Board is of the opinion that this accident was avoidable after propeller trouble was experienced.[53]

 

 

The crack-up occurred because Hughes, solo at the controls, had been off in his personal la-la land at the crucial moment. He hadn’t been thinking entirely straight, his behavior was off. We well know that by 1946 Hughes was going off the rails—not an auspicious metaphor in this instance since I am referring to an aviator—and except for isolated short-term periods Hughes was never again to regain his youthful energy, promise, excitement, romance, equilibrium.[54] Howard Hughes was a brilliant pilot, one of the best in the world, everyone knew that, he’d demonstrated it especially in the triumphant around-the-world flight eight years earlier. Howard Hughes crashed and burned in the test flight of 1946 because he was a man not entirely ‘there’, unable to think clearly.

 

 

Some of Hughes’ employees at Hughes Aircraft were in agreement that Howard Hughes himself had contributed to the crash. Hydraulics engineer Dave Grant commented that his boss “was kind of funny in being very thorough about many things, but relative to the [XF-11] flight test he didn’t check everything out the way he should have, including communications.”[55]

 

 

Aerodynamicist Carl Babberger is on record as saying, “Howard got spooked on that one. He lost it. If he had cut the power he would have been okay.” Joe Petrali agreed: “All he had to do was kill the power on that right engine and let it windmill; he could have flown on the other engine with no trouble.”[56] Glenn Odekirk ventured, “He should have reduced speed on both engines so that he could have distinguished between structural troubles or power failure.”[57]

 

 

“Hughes had the opportunity to land at either Culver City or Santa Monica Airport, but he wanted to know what had gone wrong,” Hughes Aircraft mechanic Ray Kirkpatrick recalled, “Hughes didn’t want engineers telling him what was wrong.”[58]

 

 

“That crash should never have happened,” finalizes Petrali. “The XF-11 was an airplane that no man should ever have tried to fly alone.”[59]

 

 

Suggestions of pilot error!—If Hughes had heard what his employees had said, that might have been the end of a beautiful friendship!

 

 

Hughes’ stubborn reliance on his own way of doing things, coupled with his (at times) diminished capacity for clear thinking, led to the XF-11 disaster.

 

 

*

 

 

Hughes, undaunted by the fallout from the XF-11 affair, got right back into a cockpit when he was healthy enough to do so.[60] From September 10, 1946 to January 1947, he travelled the continent first in his B-23 bomber and then in his DC-3, hopping from city to city, with his bosom friend Cary Grant at his side.[61] Grant was between wives at the time and enjoying the financial and critical success of one of the triumphs of his film career, Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, which had just opened that September.

 

 

On January 10 and 11, 1947, front pages of newspapers around the world reported variations on

 

 

AVIATOR HOWARD HUGHES – CARY GRANT MISSING; BELIEVED DEAD.

 

 

It seemed that no one knew where Hughes’ DC-3 plane had gone after it disappeared off a radar screen heading into the midwest.[62] The news media could not resist. Howard Hughes and Cary Grant were big news.[63] Newspapers suspected the worst because the worst sells newspapers. In fact, the two of them had gone to Mexico where they put their feet up for three days, oblivious to the flurry of newsprint they were generating.[64] Cary Grant later recalled: “We read in the local paper that we were dead. It’s quite a blow to read about your own death. But after you get over the initial shock, it makes a great story.”[65]

 

 

---

[1] “Sunday, July 7, dawned with sky conditions clear—just the usual Los Angeles area haze limited visibility a bit. Hughes met with a few of his engineers at breakfast in the company cafeteria. Hydraulics engineer Dave Grant remembers that Hughes seemed tensely excited but well controlled. But it was Hughes’ breakfast menu that stood out in Grant’s mind: a cafeteria banana cream pie a la mode.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 132; see also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 123. ¶ “He was dressed in his standard white shirt and khaki slacks, his lucky fedora cocked back on his head.” Hack, Hughes, p. 157. ¶ The serial number for this XF-11 was 44-70155. See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 74.

[2] Boyne, “The Most Elusive Hughes”, p. 49.

[3] The XF-11 looks similar in design to Lockheed’s XP-38, which first flew on January 27, 1939; as well as the Lockheed XP-58, “Chain Lightning”, which first flew on June 6, 1944. See Francillon, Lockheed Aircraft, p. 158-81; also p. 252-5. ¶ “As a finish, the airframe was painted Liht Grey and then given a very shiny nylon-based top coat, which was heavily waxed and polished once it had dried.” “Hughes XF-11”, available online.

[4] See “Pratt & Whitney R-4360” at the USAF Museum website.

[5] “Howard Hughes Gravely Injured In Crash on Test of New Plane”, New York Times, July 8, 1946, p. 42. See also “To Test New Photo Plane”, New York Times, March 8, 1947, p. 2.

[6] “Howard Hughes Gravely Injured In Crash on Test of New Plane”, p. 42.

[7] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 211.

[8] “According to Gene Blandford, Hughes didn’t communicate very well with either his engineers or mechanics. Hughes was not aware of the oil seepage . . .” Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 74.

[9] See War Hearings, p. 24523-5.

[10] See Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 41

[11] War Hearings, p. 24509; also in Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 41.

[12] Quoted in [HH:HLM], p. 139.

[13] See combined eyewitness statements in War Hearings, p. 24512-4.

[14] “. . . smashing through the shingled gables of an expensive home in Beverly Hills . . .” Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 41.

[15] See “Howard Hughes Gravely Injured In Crash on Test of New Plane”, p. 1.

[16] “The right wing snapped off and the tip killed a neighbor’s dog.” Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 124.

[17] “The owner [of 808 North Whittier], Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. Meyer, was in Europe serving as an intepreter at the Nuremberg war trials.” [HH:HLM], p. 140-2. ¶ “It would take three hours to contain the flames and reopen the streets to traffic.” Hack, Hughes, p. 160. ¶ For other details regarding eyewitnesses and home owners, see Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 214. ¶ “Hughes missed the golf course by about three blocks,” continued Ray Kirkpatrick.” Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 77. ¶ “He crashed it right near where Wilshire and Santa Monica meet, about 150 feet from the Los Angeles Country Club.” Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 32.

[18] Barton, Flying Boat, p. 139. ¶ Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 70, says a Captain James Guston was the second man who helped Hughes.

[19] See “Hughes Horrifies His Doctor By Calling Business Meeting”, Washington Post, July 9, 1946, p. 4. 

[20] [HH:US], p. 215.

[21] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 56.

[22] See “Howard Hughes Gravely Injured In Crash on Test of New Plane”, p. 1; “Hughes Horrifies His Doctor By Calling Business Meeting”, p. 4. 

[23] See, for example, “Howard Hughes Critical/Millionaire Flyer Given 50-50 Chance/Plane Hits 4 Houses in Beverly Hills”, Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1946, p. 1.

[24] War Hearings, p. 24508. See also Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 70; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 78; Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 16.

[25] [HH:HLM], p. 142.

[26] See “Hughes Surviving Air Crash Injuries”, New York Times, July 9, 1946, p. 15. ¶ “In the early morning of 8 July, 1946, hemorrhage occurred into the left pleural space, and this was followed by an effusion into the chest. This plueral space was tapped and 3,400 cc. of bloody fluid were removed at three tappings. The hemoglobin content of this fluid was 18%, and it is probable that 650 cc. of hemorrhage took place into the chest.” Statement of Verne R. Mason, M. D., in War Hearings, p. 24508; also in Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 70. ¶ “Gradually, as the hours passed, Hughes’ blood pressure rose and he began to come out of shock. Now the excruciating pain began, and for this they gave him injections of morphine.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 140.

[27] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 56. ¶ “It would take . . . four days for the remains of the plane to be moved.” Hack, Hughes, p. 160.

[28] Wealth estimate in “Howard Hughes Gravely Injured In Crash on Test of New Plane”, p. 42. ¶ “On July 11, the Hollywood Citizen News ran a feature on Hughes’ “flying fedora”. His felt hat had been recovered from the crash site “amid mud and debris in the forward end of the wrecked ship.” It was described as a slouch-brim felt, grey-brown, size 7 ½.” Hack, Hughes, p. 161-2. ¶ “On the fourth day Hughes asked for his good luck charm—a battered felt hat that he wore on all test flights, races, and other potentially dangerous situations. Policemen E. R. Davis found it in the wrecked cockpit, dirty and water-soaked but miraculously unburnt, and Hughes welcomed it as an auspicious omen.” Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 71.

[29] “Howard Hughes Improves”, New York Times, July 20, 1946, p. 12. ¶ The Washington Post also followed the Hughes story. See, for example, “Hughes Rallies After Night of Restful Sleep”, Washington Post, July 15, 1946, p. 3. 

[30] RIO: “[You’ve been in bed] A month . . . You’ve been terribly sick.” BILLY: “A month! That’s a long time.”—The Outlaw.

[31] “Hughes insisted that the oranges be sliced and squeezed in his room—the only way he could insure that the juice was fresh.” [HH:HLM], p. 143.

[32] Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 189. See also “Condition of Hughes Seen Very Critical”, The Abilene Reporter, July 9, 1946, p. 1.

[33] “By Saturday, July 13, over 6,000 letters had been received at Good Samaritan. . . .  New York Mayor William O’Dwyer told Hughes to “give ’em hell.” Hack, Hughes, p. 162. ¶ President Truman’s telegram stated, “I am watching eagerly all the reports concerning you. I feel sure that you will win this fight.” See “Truman Cheers Hughes: He Sends A Wire of Confidence Flier Will Win Struggle”, New York Times, July 13, 1946, p. 12. Also in Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 71. ¶ After Hughes’ round-the-world flight in 1938, he was voted a congressional medal for his feat. But he never went to the White House to get it. When President Truman found it in a White House desk, he mailed it to Hughes who received it at the hospital on July 18. See “Hughes Receives Medal”, New York Times, July 19, 1946, p. 13; also “Life of Howard Hughes Was Marked by a Series of Bizarre and Dramatic Events”, p. 70.

[34] “Hughes refused to see his Houston Aunts, Annette Lummis and Martha Houstoun, who had hurried to California to be by his side.” [HH:HLM], p. 142. ¶ Glenn Odekirk recalled, “Hughes had me go talk to her [Annette] like I did to a lot of other people that came to visit him, and explain to her why he didn’t want anyone to see him in the physical condition he was in.” Quoted in Finstad, Heir, p. 125. ¶ “Next, Mr. Fred Lummis came from Houston. He was the husband of Howard’s aunt, a distinguished, European-trained physician. He requested permission to examine Howard. Same answer. No.” Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 195.

[35] See “Hughes In Conference”, New York Times, July 26, 1946, p. 19.

[36] See Summers, Anthony, Goddess: the Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1985), p. 26; Wolfe, Donald H., The Assassination of Marilyn Monroe (London: Time Warner Paperbacks, 2002); Mailer, Norman, Marilyn (London: Spring Books, 1973), p. 63.

[37] See[HH:US], p. 220.

[38] See Gonzales, “Secret Files”, p. 194. See also Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 195; Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 16.

[39] See [HH:US], p. 220.

[40] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 5.

[41] See “Injured Hughes Inventive”, New York Times, August 14, 1946, p. 34; Hill, “No-Man in the Land of Yes-Man”, p. 42; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 190-1; also “Life of Howard Hughes Was Marked by a Series of Bizarre and Dramatic Events”, p. 70; “Fabled Mystery Man Howard Hughes”, p. 43; “Mr Howard Hughes”, The (London) Times, April 7, 1976, p. 16; “The Secret World Of Howard Hughes”, p. 29.

[42] See “Hughes Leaves Hospital”, New York Times, August 13, 1946, p. 31. ¶ “He gave the doctor who had operated on him a blank check.” Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 32.

“In 1946 Grant bought [Hollywood agent] Frank Vincent’s house on Beverly Grove Drive from his estate. Modeled after an old French farmhouse, it sits high in the hills overlooking Beverly Hills, just below the houses of Charles Boyer and Miriam Hopkins. Over the years the house had been home to more than one celebrity. Katharine Hepburn rented it from Vincent, and when Grant was in Europe, he lent it to Howard Hughes.” Nelson, Evenings, p. 158.

[43] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 194; also in Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 92. See also “Rashomon, Starring Howard Hughes”, Time, January 24, 1972.

[44] See “The Secret World Of Howard Hughes”, p. 31. ¶ “Howard would live for another 30 years, but he never fully recovered.” Real, Asylum, p. 25.

[45] See Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 32.

[46] Dr. Verne Mason dealt with Hughes’ codeine prescriptions. See Phelan, Money, p. 135; also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 78.

[47] For details in this paragraph, see Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 348; 349; [HH:HLM], p. 140; Barton, Flying Boat, p. 143-4. See also Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 266; and Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 11. See also Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 23.

[48] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 32. Three decades later, Petrali recalled Hughes saying this within hours of his arrival at the Good Samaritan Hospital on July 7. Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 71 says Hughes made a statement on July 8. [HH:US], p. 219, says Hughes gave his explanation via a series of memos he dictated on July 11.

[49] See War Hearings, p. 24502-8.

[50]  “During the settlement, Earl Martin, then president of Hamilton Standard, together with an insurance representative of Liberty Mutual, spent two days with Hughes in California. Hughes said that if they would accept responsibility and make a settlement he would be glad to forget the whole thing, and not only that, TWA would never use anything but Hamilton propellers.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 143. ¶ “The company settled for $175,000, and Howard was particularly proud that the payment came in the settlement of personal injury; thus it was his own tax-free money, not a settlement to Hughes Aircraft.” Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 196-7.

[51] Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 41.

[52] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 56. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 76.

[53] War Hearings, p. 24507. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 78-9.

[54] Looking toward the 1950s: “Hughes’ mental collapse in 1944 had left permanent psychological damage and seeds of the phobias planted in childhood now were in full bloom. Hughes’ behavior was growing more aberrant, more erratic. Many days he acted in a relatively normal fashion, going through the routines of meeting and dealing with people—politicians, businessmen, and friendly admirers—and expressing lucid thoughts. But these days were now punctuated by periods of marked disturbance in his behavior and thought processes.” [HH:HLM], p. 174.

[55] Quoted in Barton, Flying Boat, p. 143; also [HH:US], p. 221.

[56] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 57.

[57] Quotes in [HH:US], p. 221.

[58] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 76-7.

[59] See Petrali, “‘O.K., Howard’”, p. 32.

[60] “Even though he was still in pain and under doctors’ care, he wanted to show the world that he was back on his feet and able to fly.” Real, Asylum, p. 26.

[61] The flight log of the B-23 from this time records an itinerary from September 10 to October 15. (Sept. 10 – Kansas City; Sept. 11 – New York; Sept. 15 – Boston; Sept. 20 – East Hampton, N.Y.; Sept. 22 – New York; Sept. 24 – New Bedford, MA; Sept. 28 – Washington, D.C.; Oct. 15 – Burbank.) See Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 228. See also “Hughes Flying to New York To Fight Ban on His Movie”, Washington Post, September 11, 1946, p. 1.

[62] “They had made radio contact with Indianapolis Airport, but no further word had been heard from them for several hours.” Higham, Lonely Heart, p. 153.

[63] “As the years went by, speculating about the whereabouts of Howard Hughes would become a favorite media pastime.” Real, Asylum, p. 21.

[64] See “Hughes and Grant Fly On”, New York Times, January 11, 1947, p. 2. ¶ “Grant frequently flew with Howard Hughes in a converted bomber, sometimes landing in abandoned fields in Mexico. . . . In January 1947 Hughes and Grant went on a trip to Mexico City via Guadalajara, where they were forced to turn back because of darkness. Ten days later they made a second attempt. On the first leg they were reported missing along with Hughes’ mechanic, Earl Martin.” Nelson, Evenings, p. 159. ¶ “The flight log indicated that Hughes returned from this trip by way of Nogales, Mexico to Burbank, California on January 22, 1947.” Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 10. ¶ See Real, Asylum, p. 227, for more information on the Hughes-Grant trip.

[65] Nelson, Evenings, p. 159.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Wishful thinking, b*****s? How about, Death is Coming? Snappier title?

[Jeff Bernstein]

Lens flare?

[Jeff Bernstein]

Does Salome's soft-focus right-hand side recall to us all :

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

As Salome . . .

Rita

(1953), 1:37:24 / 22:22

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

The Sale of Two Titties : 

 

BACK IN CALIFORNIA 1945 – 1947

 

During the years of America’s involvement in World War II, Howard Hughes’ companies chalked up a net profit of over $15,500,000, according to the Hughes Tool Company and Internal Revenue Service records which will be made available to the Special Committee Investigating the National Defense Program in 1947.[1]

 

That will prove to be small change. Following the war, Noah Dietrich, as executive vice president of the Hughes Tool Company, along with Fred W. Ayers (hired in 1943) as senior vice president and general manager, will streamline and modernize the plant and increase the company’s profits sevenfold from 1946 to 1956.[2]

 

Back in the public eye in Southern California after eleven months away, Howard Hughes’ obsession with chasing women was as intense as ever. Errol Flynn—who was himself no slouch in the seduction department—didn’t give his friend the nickname “the lone wolf” for nothing.[3] In 1945-46 Hughes’ pursuits included—among many others—Hollywood actresses Yvonne De Carlo; Myrna Dell; Jane Greer; Joan Leslie; Jeanne Crain; Diana Lynn; Virginia Mayo[4]; Gail Russell[5]; Lana Turner, and a young star-in-the-making Marilyn Monroe. Hughes’ tried-and-tested strategy of asking his latest flame for her hand in marriage (without, of course, any intention of making that promise a reality) was deployed again and again. Hughes was a leading man in the erotopolis of Hollywood.

 

One of Hughes’ Los Angeles attorneys put it mildly: “The boss was rampantly heterosexual.”[6] Regarding Hughes’ sexually insatiable ways, Kenneth MacKenna, Hollywood actor and long-time Katharine Hepburn confidant, remarked, “Frankly, they don’t come much sicker in Hollywood than Hughes.”[7] Rumors flew through the Hollywood grapevine that Hughes would have up to twenty girlfriends at any one time.[8]

 

Later, in 1954, Tops magazine will look back at Hughes’ over-two-decades’-worth of skirt-chasing in this way: “The actresses mentioned as potential mates of the elusive Hughes sound like a list of female who’s who in the movies.”[9] In the same year Look Magazine got into the act, running a cover story on Hughes with the headline “Howard Hughes—the Fabulous Lone Wolf”.[10]

 

It was at this time that the FBI, who had begun paying attention to the Hughes phenomenon in 1942, intensified its interest in the man who was making millions of dollars a year from the U.S. government. By diligently listening in to his phone conversations, via wiretaps, as well as his hotel room exploits, via bugs, the FBI and other agencies in the event would learn more about Hughes’ sexual exploits than any of his business dealings. This interest in Hughes would continue unbroken into the 1970s. Following President Bill Clinton’s Freedom of Information Act guidelines of the 1990s, the public-at-large is now able to obtain the FBI’s file on Hughes, which runs to over two thousand pages, and which includes data on Hughes’ tireless dalliances.[11]

 

*

 

FBI FILE #62-6282. In August 1936, J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, got a go-ahead from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to implement new powers at the FBI. The FBI would not only be a reactive (crime investigation) agency, but would become a proactive, intelligence-gathering organization as well, using undercover surveillance as its most incisive tool. Ostensibly the FBI would be on the lookout for Communist subversion, but as the years went by the FBI began keeping files on all and sundry for this, that, and the other reason. During the 1940s, physical surveillance (agents shadowing persons) as well as electronic surveillance (wiretaps and bugs) became increasingly popular at the Bureau. Down through the years J. Edgar Hoover would be considered one of the most powerful men in Washington, D.C. due to the fact that he kept “O & C” (Official and Confidential) files of the dirty details of a multitude of American citizens.

 

In the spring of 1945, industrialist Howard Hughes and Hughes’ employee Johnny Meyer (“Assistant to the President and Public Relations Director”) became the FBI’s latest assignment. During the war years, Meyer had hosted many parties in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Manhattan at which, according to the FBI, “potential customers of Hughes Aircraft were entertained with liquor and women . . . which resulted in Hughes obtaining orders for Hughes Aircraft.”[12] Though this FBI report was passing along nothing more than an allegation, suspicions were indeed rife throughout Washington, D.C. that Meyer had wined-and-dined a series of government officials for the purposes of winning lucrative wartime manufacturing contracts for the Hughes Aircraft Company. News of the wheeling-and-dealing for the D-2/XF-11 contract with government figures such as Colonel Elliott Roosevelt and General Bennett E. Meyers was making the rounds on Capitol Hill. Adding fuel to the fire, the Hughes Aircraft party junket was still on a roll—Meyer will organize a party for Julius A. Krug of the War Production Board in New York City in May 1945.[13]

 

In 1944 and 1945, Judy Cook was a young actress and professional swimmer who was present at three of the lavish parties given for important government officials such as Elliott Roosevelt and Julius A. Krug, chief of the War Production Board at the time. For one such party given for Krug at a rented house in Palm Springs, the blonde-haired beauty recalled being paid to swim in the swimming pool in a “skin-tight, flesh-colored bathing suit.”[14]

 

The Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, chaired by Senator Owen Brewster (R., Maine), decided to follow up these suspicions of corruption in an effort to put Howard Hughes in the hotseat. The FBI was enlisted to follow Johnny Meyer around for the purposes of uncovering anything pertinent to the theme of the Committee’s inquiries.

 

The FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282, concerning John William Meyer, runs to just over two hundred pages in its released form. Six different general types of documents comprise #62-6282: teletypes from the field; L.A. bureau reports and letters meant for Bureau Headquarters in Washington, D.C.; office memoranda of Bureau Headquarters; photocopied newspaper articles; and, often, a Federal Bureau of Investigation/FOIPA Deleted Page Information Sheet, indicating that a document or documents have been removed from the released file. Most of the documents have had their text “redacted”. Page by page, words and sentences are blacked out. Sometimes the content of an entire page is wholly marked over in what looks like black magic-marker. In its present form, the information contained in the FBI Howard Hughes File exists as a collection of legible textual fragments found here and there between great swathes of blacked-out paragraphs.

 

The Meyer investigation will be in effect from April 1945 to June 1946. The FBI bugged Meyer’s phones, rifled through his household mail and personal papers, followed his movements through the southwest, eyed his hotel bills and overhead his conversations in restaurants. Since Hughes and Meyer were all but joined at the hip in this period of Hughes’ life, the FBI in the event found out as much about Hughes’ movements as about Meyer’s.

 

When Johnny Meyer flew to Manhattan to join Hughes at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in the summer of 1945, the FBI was watching his every move. The bureau quickly became aware of Meyer’s role in Hughes’ intense womanizing: “Meyer, through his extensive knowledge of girls, has served to acquaint Hughes with many young women. Practically all of them are ‘tarts and chippies’.”[15]

 

*

 

Since the summer of 1945, the brain fever that had led Hughes to hide away from the eyes of world evidently began to lessen. The reappearance of Johnny Meyer at his side confirms this. While for months Hughes had remained disengaged from the outside world, Meyer was now on hand to plug Hughes back in. In early September, Hughes entered into a period of much activity.

 

On September 3, 1945, Hughes flew with Johnny Meyer in his DC-3 to Vancouver in southwest Canada. It was Yvonne De Carlo Week there, the former chorus girl’s home city, and Hughes was eager to celebrate with the young actress who had recently hit it big in Hollywood. He introduced himself to her at a dinner party. “The mysterious Mr. Hughes,” glamour-girl De Carlo recalled, “looked lanky, underfed, and remarkably sad.”[16] He charmed her with his time-honored methods of persuasion. “I immediately felt my maternal instincts coming out,” she said, echoing so many other of Hughes’ conquests.[17]

 

(“That little boy look!” Hughes lover Terry Moore will recall. “There was such a gentle kindness and trust about him that you wanted to put your arms around him and protect him from the cruel world.”[18])

 

Hughes’ latest flame was a stunning beauty. Dark-haired, full-figured and somewhat exotic-looking like Faith Domergue, De Carlo will attain the mantle of “Technicolor Queen”. Following her debut at the age of 20 in 1942, De Carlo would work steadily through the decades, appearing in over sixty films, though most of her movies are now known only to film enthusiasts. For a time she was typecast as a glamorous temptress.[19]

 

He took her on a plane ride over the city. They went golfing. They shared romantic dinners. Their budding love affair hit the gossip headlines back in America.

 

On September 11, Hughes flew De Carlo, with Meyer in tow, on to Reno, where all three checked into the Riverside Motel using aliases. Meyer was John W. Morris, De Carlo was Yvonne Middleton (her real name), and Hughes was Harry Jones. Middleton and Jones checked in together to room 315. An FBI report related that “Howard Hughes until recently [had] obtained a single room at the Riverside Hotel in Reno the year round. It was learned that Hughes has the reputation at the Riverside Hotel of being very eccentric. . . .”[20]

 

One aspect of the flight from Vancouver to Reno De Carlo never forgot. When Hughes landed the plane at an airport for refueling, he went to make a telephone call. She followed, and eavesdropped. “You never cared at all!” She heard a flustered Hughes say, before hanging up the phone. De Carlo didn’t know it but Ava Gardner had just confirmed for the nth time that she wasn’t buying Hughes’ marriage chatter.[21]

 

On September 12, Hughes flew De Carlo and Meyer to Lake Tahoe (an idyllic resort on the California-Nevada border) for the day before returning to Reno in the evening. That night the FBI monitored Hughes’ telephone call to Glenn Odekirk at Hughes Aircraft. The next morning, the trio flew to Las Vegas. Hughes and Meyer checked into the El Rancho Vegas, while De Carlo officially checked into the Last Frontier Hotel. This was Hughes’ attempt at keeping the newshounds from putting two and two together. “Hughes left word at his hotel that his visit there should receive no publicity,” an FBI report mentioned.[22] It was an open secret at the El Rancho, however. According to Omar Garrison in Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, “Hotel employees and amateur odds-makers had begun laying bets on when the pair would finally surface.”[23]

 

On September 16, the trio flew from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Hughes checked into room 905 of the Town House under the name J. B. Alexander—the name of his old flying instructor and chief of aeronautics on Hell’s Angels. For the next week, “Meyer spent considerable time with Howard Hughes . . .  except for interludes when Meyer and Hughes were out of the city,” noted an FBI report.[24]

 

Hughes and De Carlo’s passionate affair will last the rest of the year. They will make yet another flying visit to Las Vegas in October. De Carlo felt a strong physical attachment to Hughes. He demonstrated a keen awareness of the engineering of a woman’s body. She described Hughes-the-lover as “an expert who calculated to please.”[25]

 

According to the FBI, during the month of October Meyer contacted “most Hollywood columnists and offered gifts of scotch whiskey, reportedly offered in order to have columnists refrain from making comments on Howard Hughes’ association with Yvonne DeCarlo.”[26] By the new year, though, the story was already old news. The affair was over. Hughes would have many other women to occupy him.

 

Now that Hughes had finally reappeared in Southern California, he was “back in business”. That is to say, he will reconnect himself with TWA’s aircraft acquisition program, and will have to reckon with the tumultuous condition of his Hughes Aircraft Company.

 

*

 

RETURN TO TWA BUSINESS. As soon as World War II came to a close on V-J Day on August 15, 1945 (following the atomic bomb detonations over Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9), America’s aircraft industry reconfigured their assembly lines for the civilian marketplace. Constellations began coming off the assembly line at the Lockheed plant in Burbank. Ten Connies would be ready for delivery by the end of the year. As the first forty were assigned to the Hughes Tool Company (at a cost of close to $40 million), Hughes didn’t waste any time in taking possession of his planes.[27] Before the Constellations were even delivered to TWA on behalf of H.T.Co., Hughes was test flying the Connies up at Palmdale Airport.

Hughes shot so many landings in a Connie at Palmdale that he wore out at least one set of brakes and tires. He also wore out TWA pilots assigned to fly with him, and he was extremely choosy about their selection. . . . [28]

 

‘Touch-and-go’ flying (repeated take offs and landings) will be one of Aviator’s Hughes’ favorite pastimes throughout his lifetime. At this time Hughes finally persuaded Captain Lee Flanagin, TWA’s western division flight superintendent, to fly with him on Connie test flights.

 

            Lee’s first flight with Hughes took place on a calm night. They flew up to Palmdale and with no wind they began taking off in one direction, then turning around and landing in the other direction. They did this from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. before Hughes finally agreed to call it quits. He hadn’t said much during those grueling eight hours but when they landed at Burbank, Howard growled, “This airplane’s got too much dihedral. It’s unstable close to the ground.”

            Flanagin didn’t agree with him but he kept his mouth shut; if he had tried to argue with Howard, they could have been there another eight hours.[29]

 

Over the years to come there were other TWA employees who would learn this technique when dealing with Hughes, especially when on the telephone: agree with the man or suffer the consequences of a prolongation of the conversation which might have already lasted hours. TWA historian Robert Serling wrote:

 

The famous (or infamous) Hughes phone calls . . . no matter how trival or vital the subject matter . . . taxed human endurance. . . . There was one TWA official who kept a large jar under his desk. Hughes would keep him on the phone so long there wasn’t time to go to the bathroom and relieve himself.[30]

 

Another quirk of Hughes’ that caused some consternation at his airline was his habit of according special favors for his motion picture industry acquaintances. Hughes made sure that at least four sleeper berths on TWA’s transcontinental planes flying out of Los Angeles were always kept unsold until the last minute, just in case one of his VIPs, such as Darryl F. Zanuck, production chief at Twentieth Century-Fox, needed to fly east. This was an inconvenience and financially troublesome practice for TWA. Hughes will also compile for TWA a “free list”: a list of journalists able to fly free of charge on his airline whenever they wanted, such as Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Walter Winchell.[31] Hughes’ interference in TWA’s day-to-day operations exasperated some of the airline’s officials.[32]

 

Hughes will interfere with his airline to a greater or lesser degree over the years, causing many headaches in the process. In the late 1950s an unbalanced Hughes will bring the airline to the brink of bankrupcy. Yet when author Robert Serling interviewed veteran TWA employees for his 1983 book, various employees will remember Howard Hughes not with dismay but with wry affection. Al Jordan, an apprentice mechanic at TWA from 1932 who rose through the ranks over the decades to become a vice president of the airline, recalled the Hughes of the 1940s:

 

In those early years, Howard was very interested in the airline. While he did some weird things, he had a vital concern that we were running a good operation. He’d come out and check on us himself. He’d talk to maintenance people and engineering people. He was always wanting to make our airplanes better and safer. Sure, it seemed like every new model we’d get he’d take for his own use. He’d put a guard on that airplane and you couldn’t get so much as a spare part off it. But the important thing was that he was interested in TWA’s equipment. I think he checked out on just about every type of aircraft this company ever had.[33]

 

*

 

When World War II came to an end in August 1945, war matériel production lines across a victorious America came to a halt. Hughes Aircraft had over two thousand employees, and many of them would now be without specific jobs to perform. So in late 1945, soon after he returned from his almost year-long disappearing act, Hughes bought upwards of a dozen each of war surplus B-23s and Douglas A-20s, both twin-engine bombers, and assigned engineers to refit the planes for sale as private aircraft for corporations. These were low-priority projects somewhat in the manner of busywork for some of the employees, though Hughes also expected his aircraft company to make a small profit from the sideline enterprise.[34]

 

A second project Hughes Aircraft initiated in 1945 was the design of the Feederliner, a twin-engine passenger plane that never got any further than the blueprints. Yet another aborted project in this period was the little-known Hughes VTOL Heliplane.[35]

 

Embarking on these projects—two of them ill-fated—would not be nearly enough to stabilize what had become a company in distress.

 

CHAOS AT HUGHES AIRCRAFT. While Hughes Aircraft would eventually grow into one of America’s largest defense contractors, the company was fated to experience a rocky road to success. 1945-46 would be a crisis time for the company. The general manager of Hughes Aircraft at the time of the war’s end was Charles W. Perelle, who considered the day-to-day operations at the company at the time as something just short of chaos. Perelle had built up a list of grievances against Hughes’s operating procedures which he sent to Hughes in a letter dated October 29, 1945.[36]

 

Before coming to work for Hughes, Perelle had made a name for himself as a highly capable business administrator in the manufacturing sector. He had served as a manager at Boeing before becoming first general superintendent of Vultee Aircraft in 1940 then senior vice president in charge of manufacturing at Consolidated-Vultee in 1943. Perelle’s manufacturing record during World War II was so successful (including establishing mechanized assembly lines for the Boeing B-24 “Liberator”) that he was described by General William S. Knudsen, director general of the Office of Production Management (coordinating America’s mobilization effort), as “the boy wonder of the aviation industry”.[37]

 

Early in 1944, not long prior to embarking on his extended disappearing act, Hughes had approached Perelle with an offer to run Hughes Aircraft. Perelle, aware of the reputation of the company as a shambolic outfit run as if as a hobby by its owner, turned the job down. Hughes, customarily, would not take no for an answer, progressively sweetening the deal to the point that Perelle took the bait and was hired at $75,000 a year.

 

Hughes’ seduction had been consummate. He carried out the rigmarole of organizing a banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in which a series of Hughes managers convened to witness Hughes himself stand up and announce that Perelle would have, according to Perelle, “complete and unrestricted control” of Hughes’ operations. Perelle would be titled director of operations at Hughes Aircraft, as well as vice president in charge of manufacturing for the Hughes Tool Company. Furthermore, Hughes promised that Perelle would be installed on the board of TWA, where Perelle would have “complete voice in representing” Hughes. As Perelle would come to learn, Hughes’ announcement was a list of empty promises, designed solely so that Hughes would get what he wanted. Ensnaring Perelle would be one of the points on the long timeline of Howard Hughes the master manipulator.

 

Charles Perelle’s time at Hughes Aircraft would last only seventeen months, during which time all his fears about the haphazard operation at Hughes Aircraft were borne out. In his detailed letter to Hughes, Perelle identified “many problems confronting the operations of the Hughes Tool Company and the Hughes Aircraft Company.”

 

At the time, Hughes Aircraft had three manufacturing departments: Aircraft, Radio, and Armaments. Following the end of World War II, the company was almost completely quiescent except for the ongoing Flying Boat and F-11 projects. Both of those airplanes had been controversial from the beginning (Perelle referred to the bad “tinge” behind the awarding of the original F-11 contract) and were now inching along at a grudging pace, neither near completion. Armament sales were “practically nil” and the radio division had been operating at a deficit. Perelle was restructuring and downsizing Hughes Aircraft’s internal organization, but for every problem he attempted to solve, many more would demand his attention.

 

Perelle pointed out to his boss that, from Perelle’s point of view, the accounting system at Hughes Aircraft was a mess. “Apparently this company had made no effort to maintain good relations or to cooperate with the Treasury Department,” he wrote, going on to say that “Numerous inexcusable Treasury violations were on file.” Perelle stated that he had corrected these particular problems.

 

He complained about the presence on the payroll of John Meyer, Hughes’ publicist. Meyer kept an office and secretary on-site but was never present. “He refused to acknowledge the authority of management and contributed absolutely nothing to the regular operations of the plant,” Perelle wrote, “despite the fact that he secured Selected Service deferment from the armed forces as a member of the working organization.” Perelle suggested that what he called the “Hollywood operation”—Meyer’s wining and dining of government officials, which bred “hidden expense accounts”—must be stopped.

 

He complained of the slow progress of the F-11 project due to the lack of experience of the engineering department in designing metal planes. He outlined, for example, the “complete failure” in the design of the F-11’s pressurization and hydraulic systems. That the company had returned to a 40-hour work week following the ending of the war had further added to the retardation of progress on the plane. “Many, many other reasons for delay could be cited,” Perelle wrote, suggesting that the project was functioning just short of total confusion.

 

Perelle’s account of the Flying Boat listed similar problems. He cited “numerous day-to-day errors . . . attributable to inadequate engineering” and “poor inspection”, yet agreed that the project was now on track even though the “poor administration of the engineering department” was still a problem, as was “our inability to obtain qualified personnel.” Perelle expanded on this last point:

 

That the various top officials of the Hughes Tool Company in Houston from time to time have openly discussed, and with Army officials, the thought of closing or relegating the aircraft division to a plaything for your personal use is also a matter of record. This results in the lowering of employee morale within the plant and in the discouragement of qualified people outside the plant from becoming associated with us.

 

Perelle was also angry that his position at H.T.Co. had been “completely ignored by the Houston organization.” Perelle had quickly come to learn that Hughes’ promises that Perelle would run Hughes’ empire had been nothing short of moonshine. Perelle stated, “I have not at any time been properly posted on activities of the Hughes Tool Company.” Furthermore, Perelle’s association with TWA was similarly ineffectual and pointless. Perelle was justifiably angry at having been strung along by these “dummy directorship or management titles.”

 

It was inevitable that Hughes and Perelle had to part ways. Perelle announced his resignation on January 9, 1946.[38] Hughes bought out Perelle’s contract for $250,000. Hughes had Noah Dietrich, his “hatchet man”, carry out the firing, which was due to, in Hughes’ phrase, “insubordination.”[39]

 

As we will come to learn, Perelle would be just one of the legion of capable Hughes executives in the 1940s-1960s that Hughes will manage to alienate and chase away.

 

As for solving some of the problems at his aircraft company, Hughes made a monumental decision in 1946 which fundamentally changed the course of the fortunes of Hughes Aircraft. He hired Dr. Simon Ramo as director of operations and Dr. Dean Wooldridge as vice president for research and development. Ramo recalled the attitude of Hughes Aircraft’s chief executive at the time Ramo arrived:

 

Howard Hughes, I was informed, rarely came around. When he did show up, it was to take up one or another trivial issue. He would toss off detailed directions, for instance, on what to do next about a few old airplanes decaying out in the yard or what kind of seat covers to buy for the company-owned Chevrolets, or he would say he wanted some pictures of clouds taken from an airplane.[40]

 

Both Ramo and Wooldridge had Ph.D.s, having graduated summa cum laude from Caltech, Wooldridge in physics and Ramo in electrical engineering and physics. The pair were two of the most capable men in the burgeoning aerospace industry. Hughes poached Ramo from General Electric and Wooldridge from Bell Labs, during his drive to contain the fallout of Perelle’s departure and reestablish Hughes Aircraft as a state-of-the-art laboratory. In what was an auspicious move, Hughes gave complete autonomy to Dr. Ramo, who immediately founded at Hughes Aircraft what he described as “an astounding high-technology center . . . which came to house the largest concentration of technical college graduates, including the greatest number of PhD.s in any single industrial facility” over the next decade “except for the Bell Telephone Laboratories.”[41] During their seven years at Hughes Aircraft Ramo and Wooldridge will preside over an amazing turnaround at the company before they, too, will flee from Hughes and his strange ways.

 

*

 

In November 1945, Hughes flew to Palm Springs where he remained in contact with Johnny Meyer, his confidant, girl-getter, and official Hughes Aircraft Company public relations man. During the month, according to the FBI, “Meyer’s interests were primarily linked to contacting various girls such as Diana Lynn, Jeanne Crane and others associated with the movies in whom Howard Hughes had indicated an interest and desires to meet.” On November 23, Meyer flew from Palm Springs to Los Angeles. “Since his return from Palm Springs,” the FBI noted, “Meyer has continued to make contacts with various women in movies in whom Howard Hughes has shown interest.” On December 7, the FBI reported, “Among those actresses whom Meyer has been contacting are: Diana Lynn, Joan Leslie, Gail Russell, Jeanne Crain, and Barbara Bates.”

 

Hughes the infamous womanizer could certainly merit an entry in the dictionary under “cradle-robber.” On the verge of his fortieth birthday, he was resolutely chasing these young, up-and-coming actresses, the oldest of whom was 21 years old. Blonde, brunette, tall, short, bold, demure—evidently nothing mattered to Hughes except that his women had to look stunning. Crain was a recent Miss Long Beach and Bates a former fashion model; Leslie was a sweet girl-next-door type while Russell had a melancholy angelic look; and Lynn was making a living playing pert teenagers. The common link between all of these young women was that all had only recently gained a foothold in the industry. In the cuththroat world of Hollywood, Hughes could be their kindly father figure—that was the idea, at least.

 

In January 1946, “Meyer continues to be in contact with Howard Hughes and is principally active in endeavoring to make contacts with various movie actresses, particularly Diana Lynn whom Howard Hughes desires to meet.”[42]

 

*

 

During this busy period of Hughes’ skirt-chasing, Cary Grant promoted the idea of romance between Hughes and dark-haired beauty Irene Meyer Selznick, estranged wife of producer David O. Selznick and daughter of MGM chief Louis B. Mayer. (She was also a close friend of Katharine Hepburn.) Grant had been passing messages from Hughes on to Selznick. They met for a date at the legendary “21” restaurant in Manhattan. Predictably, Hughes admitted that he was lonely and, completely out of the blue, proposed marriage, which she immediately refused. (This is remarkable for the fact that Irene was 39 years old at the time, almost 20 years older than Hughes’ usual conquests.) They remained friends, however. She has been quoted as saying, “If there was one thing that Howard was good at, it was arranging free transportation.”[43]

 

*

 

One of Hughes’ encounters with Myrna Dell, a glamorous blonde actress whose Hollywood success peaked in the decade of the 1940s, exemplifies some of Hughes’ time-worn strategies for seducing women. He first met her through Johnny Meyer in 1944, when she was 20 years old and her career was just getting underway at RKO. When Hughes heard that she would be unable to attend one of his cocktail parties because she had no transportation, he arranged for her to borrow a car—an old, powder-blue Mercury registered to the Hughes Tool Company—which she used for the next two years. (Hughes had the car recalled only after she had tallied up more than 40 parking tickets, causing hassle for the tool company.)[44] She thought Hughes was not only one of the handsomest men in Hollywood, but also one of the kindest. In 1946, Dell was in Cleveland promoting a film, The Falcon’s Alibi, when she was taken ill and required hospitalization. When Hughes heard the news through the grapevine, he immediately sent a private plane for Dell which brought her back to Los Angeles where she could stay in a hospital among friends and family.[45] While their casual acquaintance had remained a platonic one, Hughes would finally make his move—but in a customary devious way—soon after she got well.

 

Hughes phoned her to say that Tyrone Power, whom Dell considered another of the most gorgeous men in Hollywood, thought she was attractive and wanted to meet her. Hughes said he would make all of the arrangements. A few nights later, she was driven by a Hughes car to an office Hughes kept at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios. She had expected to find Power waiting for her there, but he was nowhere to be seen. Hughes told her that her date would meet them at Preston Sturges’ Players Club on Sunset Boulevard. When they arrived there, she was led to the third floor which was a cavernous space fit for 150 guests. The two of them sat down at a table in the middle of the room. They were the only ones there. “I was told he held a standing reservation on this room at all time and no one else was allowed to use it,” she recalled. Hughes made a show of repeatedly excusing himself to telephone Tyrone Power, only to return every time with the news that the actor was tied up at the studio but still hoped to make it. As it happened, it would be only Hughes and Dell for dinner—the first time the two were alone together. If Hughes had organized the evening for this specific outcome, he never admitted it. After dinner, and for some time after, he kept apologizing for Tyrone Power’s rudeness. Perhaps with Hughes somewhere in her mind, Myrna Dell one day told the Boston Sunday Post, “You can have the night clubs, for all I care. A girl gets bored with the glamour, the atmosphere, the wolves.”[46]

 

*

 

Along with his intense womanizing, piloting Constellations, and tinkering with Hughes Aircraft, another of Hughes’ time-honored obsessions was brought back into the light. The Outlaw was re-released in February 1946 and played to record-breaking crowds in selected cities across America. One movie poster enthused, “FINALLY, after a 3 year delay, you can see Howard Hughes’ production THE OUTLAW starring JANE RUSSELL. Sensation too startling to describe!” A cinema marquee thundered, “The Picture That Couldn’t Be Stopped!”[47] It became one of the biggest hits of the 1940s. Once more the ticket buying public went into a frenzy, prompted both by the flamboyant promotional techniques and the sensational controversy the film inevitably stirred up all over again. Hughes had reassigned some of his engineers at Hughes Aircraft to stage a promotion in which an enormous blimp would fly over Los Angeles advertising the film in neon lights.[48] A skywriting plane etched the words THE OUTLAW across the Pasadena sky, emphasizing the charms of the film by adding two circles, each with a dot in the center.[49] Billboards across the country asked the American people, “How would you like to tussle with Russell?” Another queried, “What are the two great reasons for Russell’s success?” “Trigger-fast action,” promised another. The Outlaw cost $3.4 million dollars in all and made back ten times that amount.[50]

 

Playwright George S. Kaufman described Hughes’ ad campaign as “The Sale of Two Titties”.[51] Time magazine marvelled wryly, “Bust Becomes Bonanza!”[52] In its first seven days of release in Atlanta, The Outlaw grossed a miraculous $22,413, which was $3,091 more than Gone With the Wind, the all-time box office champ at the time. Hughes’ film did ferocious business in Chicago, where it broke box-office records at the 3,250-seat Oriental Theater by $21,749.[53] The Outlaw shot to number one in St. Louis, grossing up to $30,000 a week, and became the top attraction in Kansas City, Indianapolis, Louisville, San Francisco, and other cities.[54] Over one million tickets were sold in Los Angeles alone.[55] “What packed them in,” wrote the Los Angeles Daily News, “was an opportunity for anatomical research.”[56]

 

Hughes returned The Outlaw to the cinema screens at exactly the right time. The Outlaw would ride the post-war movie boom; 1946 turned out to be the best year Hollywood ever enjoyed, with an average weekly cinema attendance of over 82 million generating a total of 1.5 billion tickets sold during the year.[57]

 

*

 

CONSTELLATIONS IN THE SKY. The post-war American scene was an exciting time for Hughes’ TWA. Now that the war was over, America’s manufacturing plants could dedicate themselves with renewed vigor to the capitalist pursuits of private industry. Constellations rolling off the assembly line at Lockheed were being introduced into service at TWA with all of the hype and hullabaloo one would expect from a media-savvy Hughes.[58] Howard Hughes’ dream of elevating TWA into an international air carrier had come to fruition.

 

On December 3, 1945, a TWA Constellation (the Star of Paris) shuttled its first passengers (invited guests) from New York to Paris and back in a major promotional event.[59]

 

On February 1, 1946, a TWA Constellation piloted by Captain Busch Voights flew nonstop from New York to Los Angeles in 10 hours and 49 minutes, slicing through the headwinds and breaking all East-to-West speed records for commercial passenger planes in the process. The flight time was fifty-six minutes faster that the previous record set by a TWA Stratoliner in 1940. Referring to the Connie’s pressurized cabin, a New York Times reporter noted, “There was none of the crackling noise in the ears that air travelers usually experience.”[60]

 

On February 3, 1946, Jack Frye and TWA pilot Lee Flanagin flew a Constellation carrying 45 print and radio reporters from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours and 27 minutes—another new transcontinental record for large-scale transport planes. The flight, which also set a record for the most passengers carried by any plane flying nonstop coast-to-coast, cut an amazing four-and-a-half hours off the previous speed record set by a TWA Stratoliner six years earlier.[61]

 

On February 5, 1946, the Constellations started a scheduled passenger service between New York and Paris. On February 9, the TWA Constellation named “Star of Dublin” set a new transatlantic speed record, flying the 2,940 miles from Shannon, Ireland to New Bedford, Massachusetts in 13 hours and 30 minutes.[62]

 

On Friday, February 15, 1946, Howard Hughes himself piloted a TWA Constellation (the Star of California) full of over forty Hollywood stars and their friends from Los Angeles to New York as a public relations exercise to get his airline and the Connie into the newspapers and the newsreels. (The FBI was paying attention every step of the way.) The flight took 8 hours 38 minutes, six hours under the standard flight time set by the DC-4s flown by TWA’s domestic competitors. Hughes was caught on a newsreel as he left the plane that evening. He was dressed beautifully in a classic suit and overcoat with fedora on top. It was one of the last times he was photographed looking urbane and movie-star handsome.[63]

 

On March 6, TWA began a nonstop route between New York and Chicago, shaving more than an hour off the established flight time for the journey.[64] Every single time the Constellations were entered into service on a new route, records were broken. On March 28, Jack Frye announced to the airline’s shareholders that TWA was set to triple its passenger capacity rate through 1946.[65] TWA will have more than one hundred planes streaming along its route structure.

 

On April 2, TWA planes became the first U.S. airline service to offer flights to Rome, Italy. From Italy passengers could board TWA planes and fly on to Cairo. TWA also flew to Geneva and Athens.[66] On May 1, TWA introduced flights from New York to Lisbon and Madrid. Flights to Bombay would begin the following January.

 

(In this period TWA was also associating itself with a series of foreign airlines, such as Ethiopian Airlines, which TWA helped establish literally from the airstrips up; Transportes Aereos Centroamericanos S.A.; Philippine Air Lines; and Iranian Airways. Other countries with whom TWA had contracts to assist in aviation operations to greater or lesser degrees included Ireland, France, Italy, Egypt, Turkey, and Sauda Arabia. “What we give them is our know-how in operations, traffic, weather, the care of airplanes and engines and the operation of modern American equipment,” explained Otis Bryan, vice president for international operations.[67] TWA’s stake in foreign airlines contributed to its own network of international routes; for example, in April 1946, the same month that TWA established routes to Cairo, Ethiopian Airlines inaugurated its own service between Addis Ababa and Cairo.[68] On April 13, the New York Times noted that TWA’s “Peaceful Penetration of 13 Nations [is] Seen as Enhancing U.S. Accord in World.”[69])

 

Juan Trippe at Pan American, hitherto the only American airline with the rights for international flights, could only grin and bear it. Newsprint inches and radio broadcasts enthused over Hughes’ airline, and newsreel cameras caught the distinctive Connies lifting into the wild blue yonder.[70]

 

TWA’s passenger planes, both domestic and international, were, for a short time at least, the largest and fastest of their kind in the world.[71] It was all just as Howard Hughes had envisoned it.

 

*

 

And yet all of a sudden the excitement at Hughes’ airline would grind to a halt. All the media hype from the record-breaking Connie flights belied the fact that TWA’s competitive advantage over its rivals turned out to be marginal at best. Pan American introduced its Constellation service between New York and Lisbon on January 20, 1946, thereby reducing TWA’s competitive advantage in the European marketplace. Just over a year later, United and American introduced transcontinental services with DC-6s, reducing TWA’s advantage in the domestic market. “The relatively short duration of TWA’s exclusive Constellation advantage was a major disappointment,” noted Robert Rummel.[72] Why did events turn out this way for TWA? The war had slowed down the American airline industry’s development. Constellations for TWA would have been available much sooner if the American airplane manufacturers, Lockheed included, hadn’t had to reconfigure their assembly lines to pump out war matériel.

 

The cost of acquiring new planes and establishing new routes had reduced TWA’s net income from $2,752,960 (on operating expenses of $20,569,472) in 1944 to $1,893,576 (on operating expenses of $30,575,841) in 1945, and the airline would drop into the red during 1946.[73] 1946 and 1947 would turn out to be hard years for Howard Hughes and Howard Hughes’ TWA. 

 

DARK CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON. There is one more significant point that must be made. On November 30, 1945, TWA, with Hughes’ blessing, borrowed $30 million from the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America to keep itself up and running. On May 10, 1946, TWA borrowed $10 million more. The deal included the provision that in the event of TWA defaulting on its loan, Equitable would assume managerial control of the airline via a voting trust. This deal is going to come back to haunt Hughes in the autumn of 1960.[74]

 

*

 

Needless to say by now, no matter what else Hughes is doing in the 1940s, he is also most likely persisting in his serial womanizing, whenever time or inclination permits. He was juggling a slew of women. Sometimes he was romancing those he shouldn’t have. One such mistake was dark-haired beauty Gene Tierney. Tierney, a sophisticated, intelligent East Coast socialite-turned-Hollywood actress, dated Hughes in 1939 and 1940 (plane trips, expensive jewelry, a meeting in an empty house) when she was new in town and still in her late teens, but now was a married woman. But Hughes would find a way back into her heart, even if his charity might have come from the most ingenuous part of his self. In 1944, Tierney’s year-old baby daughter Daria was diagnosed as deaf, partially blind, and mentally disabled. When Hughes heard the news, he paid $15,000 for one of America’s foremost pediatricians to care for Daria.[75]

 

Recalling Hughes with tenderness in her memoir, Self-Portrait, Tierney described Hughes as “a strange and impulsive man, but at heart a kind one.” He was no conversationalist, except on the subject of aviation. “When he spoke of flying his eyes glowed and his language was almost sensual.” A “gangly fellow” with his “cuffs two inches above his ankles and his socks showing,” he won her over with his boyish charm. “He never pushed, never came on too strong in a physical way. . . . He was sweet and quiet . . . and gentle and well-bred.” He performed many acts of kindness: sending her a roomful of flowers; putting a car at her mother’s disposal when she visited L.A.; ensuring that mother and daughter ate for free at their favorite restaurant whenever they wanted. He gave her brother, studying at Harvard, a summer job at the Hughes Aircraft plant. When Tierney was brought low by a stomach illness, Hughes had his private physician, Dr. Vernon Mason, examine her. However, she was not blind to his reputation. “He did not talk about women,” she remarked, “he collected them.”[76]

 

Nevertheless, the Hughes magnetism had worked its magic over the years and Tierney found herself unable to extricate entirely from his spell. She accepted Hughes’ invitation to be a guest on the star-studded Star of California flight on February 15.

 

Some time shortly after this flight, her estranged husband, famous fashion designer Oleg Cassini, lay in wait at their Los Angeles home, and caught his wife with Hughes one evening when he brought her home from a dinner date. The suave and polished Cassini roughed up Hughes, hitting him, before Hughes escaped in his car. According to Tierney, “Oleg ran to his car and roared out of the driveway. They raced through Wilshire Boulevard, running red lights, until Howard reached a townhouse he owned in the middle of Beverly Hills. Oleg tried to follow him into the elevator but the guards stopped him.”[77]

 

A month later, Hughes was at a Hollywood party and found himself face to face with Cassini once again. Hughes ran upstairs, locked himself in a bedroom, and telephoned for help. “Twenty minutes later,” Cassini recalled in his own memoir, “half a dozen gorillas ran into the place yelling, ‘Where is he? Where’s Mr. Hughes?’”[78]

 

Hughes fled in safety, but it won’t be the last time he would be attacked by a disgruntled husband.

 

*

 

Often through the first half of 1946 and then later in 1947 Hughes flew one or another of Hughes Aircraft’s B-23s to various points across the country. On the pretext of carrying out flight tests Hughes could get away from it all. Getting into a cockpit and flying a plane was Hughes’ consummate method of escape, of focusing his mind away from his personal troubles. (Later in life, Hughes will become a movie addict for this same purpose.) Accompanying him sometimes were most often either John G. Foster, a Hughes Aircraft pilot, or Earl Martyn, a flight engineer for Hughes since 1935.[79] During this period Martyn was struck by Hughes’ poor eating habits and generally careless attitude to his person. For trips which might last days or more Hughes usually took nothing more than some clean shirts only, and cookies and milk in a paper bag. 

 

Like many another co-pilot over the years, Martyn observed how Hughes’ hearing seemed fine whenever he was up in the air. He further noticed that he never saw Hughes more relaxed than when he was at the controls of an airplane.

 

More often than he would have wished, Martyn was forced to experience Hughes’ desire to fly the unpressurized B-23 at 15,000 feet, even though oxygen tanks hadn’t been installed inside the cockpit. Sometimes Martyn found the thinness of the atmosphere heavy-going, and thought that the headaches that Hughes often complained of might be due in part to these high-flying experiments.[80]

 

“He was a little odd,” recalled Martyn, “but if I had that much money I’d be odd too.”[81]

 

Hughes appropriated one of the B-23s for a private plane and modified it to his customary exacting specifications. Predictably, he installed state-of-the-art navigation equipment. Similar in spirit to his S-43 “flying penthouse”, his personal B-23 also featured, as described by Robert Serling, “a luxurious interior with leather upholstery, a divan and a kitchenette”.[82]

 

In Howard Hughes’ Airline, Serling documents an interview with William Meador, who was a young electronic engineer at TWA’s Kansas City base in the immediate postwar period. Hughes landed in his private B-23 and required technical assistance to fix a malfunctioning radio compass. After Meador fixed the compass, he found that Hughes was loath for him to leave his side. “You haven’t seen a B-23 like this one,” Hughes said, “Let me show you what I’ve done.”

 

For the next twenty minutes, he took Meador on a guided tour through the aircraft, happily pointing out every feature . . . To Meador, Howard Hughes that day was a lonely man grasping for a little touch of companionship in the prison cell he had constructed himself.[83]

 

*

 

NOTE ON HUGHES’ ADVENTURES IN FLYING. Aviator Howard Hughes loved sitting solitary on top of the world, looking down at everything under his feet. Noah Dietrich explained, “When he was in the air, he was an entirely different man from the one that people knew on the ground. He seemed greatly at ease with nothing to concern him but weather and engine and maps.”[84] Recalled Jack Real, “I’ve been with people . . . flying’s in their blood. But never as deep as Howard”[85]

 

Many reasons can be enumerated for Hughes’ love of flying: comfortable being alone and away from it all; his natural flair for adventure and style; his love of technology. Perhaps another reason why he felt so comfortable in the cockpit had to do with his hearing trouble. “It has been reported that Howard was hard of hearing,” Real said. “Curiously, Howard could hear fairly well when we were talking about aviation aboard the [airborne] aircraft.”[86]

 

Up in air, Hughes wouldn’t have been bothered by his tinnitus—the disorder of perpetual noises in the ear which can drive one batty. Hughes had suffered from the affliction since at least 1930. Intensified by his hearing loss, his tinnitus would have been insufferable at times. Installing himself in a loud environment might have been the only way Hughes could get relief from his tinnitus. Up in the air in the cockpit of his plane, he wouldn’t be able to hear his aural annoyance over the sound of the motors. (This relates to Hughes’ propensity, in the 1940s and 1950s, for having business meetings in a loud, clunky, idling Chevrolet; and later on his inveterate watching of movies with their intrusive audiotracks.) Perhaps Hughes felt he could think clearest up in the air, when his tinnitus was masked by the loud noise of the airplane in flight. When he couldn’t hear his tinnitus, he felt himself back to the ‘normal self’ of his earlier, healthier years. Flying was a vacation from his ongoing, never-ending aural affliction.

 

Hughes himself once said, “There’s no better place to think straight than when you’re flying.”[87]

 

 

 

---

[1] See War Hearings Report, p. 265; Mollenhoff, Pentagon, p. 106; [HH:US], p. 127.

[2] See “Hughes Tool: A Gusher of Money”, p. 171; Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 190-1. ¶  “Domestic crude oil production . . . [at] 64 million in 1900, reached 1.4 billion in 1940 and nearly 2.6 billion in 1959.” Engler, Robert, The Politics of Oil (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 35.

[3] See [HH:US], p. 193.

[4] Born Virgina Clara Jones in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920, the classic sweet All-American blond-haired beauty began her career as a chorus dancer and would feature in over three dozen movies in the 1940s-50s, gaining in popularity but never attaining superstar status. Proficient in musicals, comedies and dramas, she featured in The Best Years of Our Lives, winner of the Best Picture Academy Award for 1946. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and White Heat (1949) are her other high-profile starrers. In later years she appeared on various televsion shows such as Remington Steele and The Love Boat. Today she lives in Thousand Oaks, California, and seems to be retired from show business. 

[5] Gail Russell was a beautiful brunette with a melancholy aura. She had an alcoholic problem that grew during her rise to prominence in a series of films for Paramount in the 1940s. She died of an alcohol-related heart attack at the age of 36 in 1961.

[6] See [HH:US], p. 195.

[7] See Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 466.

[8] See Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 12.

[9] “Howard Hughes: Cash-and-Carry Casanova”, p. 12.

[10] See Look, February 9, 1954.

[11] The FBI File on Howard Hughes is available on two reels of microfilm produced by Scholary Resources Inc. of Wilmington, Delaware. ISBN: 0-8420-4290-3.

[12] See document dated June 4, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[13] A year later, Krug became President Harry S. Truman’s Secretary of the Interior.

[14] See Spargo, “Krug Testifies He Attended Big Parties of Howard Hughes”, p. 1; 3. See also “Check, Please!”, Time, August 4, 1947.

[15] See document dated June 16, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[16] See [HH:US], p. 195.

[17] See [HH:US], p. 195.

[18] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 4.

[19] Her most memorable movie is The Ten Commandments (1956), in which she played Moses’ wife Sephora. De Carlo played Lily Munster in the hit CBS television show The Munsters from 1964-66. She was last seen in a made-for-tv movie, Here Comes The Munsters, in 1995.

[20] See document dated October 24, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[21] See [HH:US], p. 198.

[22] See document dated October 24, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[23] See also Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 34.

[24] See document dated October 24, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282; also Hack, Hughes, p. 154.

[25] See [HH:US], p. 199.

[26] See document dated November 20, 1945 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[27] See “Record-Breaking Team—Howard Hughes Joins Kaiser Project”, Washington Post, August 24, 1942, reprinted in War Hearings, p. 24429.

[28] Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 118-9. ¶ Serling suggests this episode takes place in late September, and this accords with the time frame established by Hughes’ FBI file.

[29] Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 119.

[30] Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 139.

[31] See Phelan, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels, p. 183; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 115; 179.

[32] See Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 151; 152-3.

[33] Quoted in Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 159.

[34] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 65-6; Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 149; Bylinsky, “Hughes Aircraft”, p. 102.

[35] See Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 44; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 71-2.

[36] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 218-226; [HH:HLM], p. 131; 135-7.

[37] Quoted in “Charles W. Perelle” at an American Bosch Arma Company website.

[38] See document dated January 16, 1946 in FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282. See also “When Will It Fly?” Time, January 21, 1946.

[39] See “Charles Perelle’s Spacemanship”, Fortune, January 1959, reprinted online; also [HH:HLM], p. 137; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 106. ¶ Perelle was subsequently hired as president of Gar Wood Industries; then became president of American Bosch Arma Corporation in 1954.

[40] See Ramo, Simon, “Memoirs Of An ICBM Pioneer”, Fortune, April 25, 1988, p. 124. See also Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 188; Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 72; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 261.

[41] See Ramo, “Memoirs Of An ICBM Pioneer”, p. 124.

[42] See documents dated November 20, 1945; November 29, 1945; December 7, 1945; January 10, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[43] See Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 440-2; also [HH:US], p. 205; Thomson, David O. Selznick, p. 146-7.

[44] See Dell, “The Howard Hughes I Knew”, p. 13.

[45] See Dell, “The Howard Hughes I Knew”, p. 51.

[46] See Dell, “The Howard Hughes I Knew”, p. 50-1; “Biography” on the official Myrna Dell homepage.

[47] See photograph in Maguglin, Hughes: His Achivements, p. 44.

[48] For an amusing anecdote about Hughes giving this blimp a flyby in his B-23, see Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 69-70.

[49] See Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 201; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 167-8; Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 21; [HH:US], p. 207. Also Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 11.

[50] For budget, see, for example, Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 12 (says original budget estimate was $440,000).

[51] See Medved, Hollywood Hall of Shame, p. 42.

[52] “Bust Becomes Bonanza”, Time, April 15, 1946.

[53] See “Bust Becomes Bonanza”, Time, April 15, 1946; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 195; [HH:US], p. 208; “Jazz Age Chicago: Oriental Theatre” at www.chicago.urban-history.org.

[54] “That Outlaw”, Time, June 10, 1946; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 195.

[55] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 195; Bell, Nelson B., “Dispute Over ‘Outlaw’ Throws Whole Movie Code Into Crucible”, Washington Post, May 5, 1946, p. S4. 

[56] Quoted in Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 171.

[57] See Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 67; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 125.

[58] TWA had ordered 40 Constellations at $425,000 each from Lockheed. And it wasn’t only TWA who was buying. Along with Pan American, many European carriers would be flying new Connies through 1946, including British Airways, BOAC, Air France, SAS, and KLM. ¶ “Here at long last was the commercially viable landplane [to cross the Atlantic] that the world’s airlines had been looking for.” Beaty, Transatlantic Flight, p. 174.

[59] See Davies, TWA, p. 50; Rummel, Hughes and TWA, p. 103.

[60] See Graham, Fred, “Civilian Air Record Is Set to the Coast; Lockheed Does It in 10 Hours, 49 minutes”, New York Times, February 2, 1946, p. 22.

[61] See Graham, Fred, “52 Aboard Plane Span U.S. In Record 7 Hrs. 27 mins.”, New York Times, February 4, 1946, p. 1; Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 121.

[62] See “Eire-to-U.S. Flight Sets Atlantic Mark”, New York Times, February 10, 1946, p. 30.

[63] Tinseltown notables sipping Dom Perignon en route included Cary Grant; Virginia Mayo; Walter Pidgeon; William Powell; Veronica Lake; Andre De Toth; Jack Carson; Linda Darnell; Edward G. Robinson; Tyrone Power; Janet Blair; Paulette Goddard; Gene Tierney; Myrna Loy; Randolph Scott, and others. Catering for the journey was provided by Hollywood’s most famous restauranteur, Dave Chasen. (According to a FBI report, infamous mobster Bugsy Siegel had been invited by Hughes to make the trip, but declined.) Hughes’ press agent Johnny Meyer had made reservations for the Hollywood party at both the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and the Sherry Netherlands Hotel. While the arrangements had been set to fly everyone back to Los Angeles on Sunday the 17th, some of the forty guests elected to stay and the party continued on for days. Hughes didn’t fly back to L.A. until March 5. Among the passengers onboard the return flight were Meyer, Governor M. C. Wallgren of Washington, and ex-prince Carl Johann Bernadotte and his wife. TWA picked up the tab for the entire $1,750 bill for the Manhattan party. See Hack, Hughes, p. 156; Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 124; Rummel, Hughes and TWA, p. 103-4; [HH:US], p. 205; see telex dated February 14, 1946 in FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282; also document dated April 4, 1946; “Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator”, DVD documentary; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 73; documents dated March 7, 1946, April 4, 1946, and April 29, 1946 in FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282.

[64] See “New U.S.-Paris Flights”, New York Times, Mar 7, 1946, p. 27.

[65] See “TWA Will Triple Capacity This Year”, New York Times, March 28, 1946, p. 47.

[66] See “TWA Starts Cairo Flights Sunday”, New York Times, March 29, 1946, p. 15; “7 to 9 Airlines Set For Atlantic Runs”, New York Times, April 9, 1946, p. 26; Leviero, Anthony, “TWA ‘Monopoly’ Pact With Italy Embarrasses State Department”, New York Times, April 23, 1946, p. 4.

[67] See Stuart, John, “TWA Global Route Expanding Rapidly”, New York Times, April 13, 1946, p. 15.

[68] See “TWA Will Triple Capacity This Year”, p. 47; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 231; Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 124-9; “General Profile” on the Ethiopian Airlines home website; “Strengthening the aviation industry will help increase tourist inflows”, The Ethiopian Reporter, January 29, 2003, available online. ¶ In 1945, the Ethiopian delegation to the United Nations asked the United States for help in establishing a national airline. President Harry S. Truman was all for the project. TWA cooperated closely with the Ethiopian government in founding Ethiopian Airlines on December 30, 1945. Ethiopia’s first civil airline was based in Addis Ababa and flew five DC-3s (donated by the U.S.A.) on routes to three neighboring countries.

[69] Stuart, “TWA Global Route Expanding Rapidly”, p. 15.

[70] Reproductions of a series of pretty TWA advertisements from 1946 hyping its Constellation fleet’s Paris, Rome, Greece, and Egypt routes; as well as other vintage TWA print adverts from the 1940s and 1950s, are found in Heiman, Jim (ed.), See The World (Köhn: Taschen, 2002).

[71] See “Constellation Put On Ground By CAA”, New York Times, July 12, 1946, p. 1.

[72] Rummel, Hughes and TWA, p. 104.

[73] See “TWA Will Triple Capacity This Year”, p. 47.

[74] See “Battle for T.W.A.”, Time, January 6, 1947; McDonald, “T.W.A.”, p. 109; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 232; Rummel, Hughes and TWA, p. 114-5

[75] See Tierney, Self-Portrait, chapter 4; also p. 97; [HH:US], p. 202.

[76] See Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 28-32.

[77] See Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 144-5 (vague on date); [HH:HLM], p. 120 (places episode in late 1942 or early 1943); Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 114 (suggests 1945); [HH:US], p. 202 (suggests 1946). ¶ Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 10, says Hughes first dated Tierney in 1936, which is wrong.

[78] See Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 145 (“I did not date Hughes again.”); [HH:HLM], p. 120.

[79] On the afternoon of February 11, 1948, John Foster and Joe Petrali survived a crash in one of Hughes Aircraft’s B-23s when they ran out of fuel just outside Mitchel Field on Long Island. Flying in from Miami, they encountered bad weather over the airport and had to circle overhead through thick cloud cover and snow, using up their fuel. On final approach, the plane hit power poles and crashed. The wings and landing gear were ripped away and the fuselage was mangled, but the two fliers walked away intact. Hughes was unhappy when he heard the news, and Foster soon left Hughes Aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. See “2 Escape Injuries As Plane Crashes”, New York Times, February 12, 1948, p. 47; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 232.

[80] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 66-7.  ¶ The B-23’s cruising speed was 210 mph; its range, 1,400 miles.

[81] Quoted in Barton, Flying Boat, p. 242.

[82] See Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 150; also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 68. ¶ Hughes’ B-23’s serial number was 39-33, and its registration, N7474M. See “Douglas B-23 ‘Dragon’” on the Aviation Enthusiast Corner website.

[83] See Serling, Howard Hughes’ Airline, p. 150; also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 67-8.

[84] Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 132.

[85] See “Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator”, DVD documentary.

[86] Real, Asylum, p. 141.

[87] Quoted in Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 27.

 

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

Blue Velvet (1986), 50:06

Throne of Blood (1957), 22:07

 

 

 

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

“THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE”  1932 – 1938

 

In September of 1932 a tall, young, clean-cut man in a blue cotton suit applies for work at the Fort Worth personnel office for American Airways.[1] He calls himself Charles W. Howard. That is what it says on his social security card and Texas driver’s license. Charles gets a job as a baggage handler, working the daytime shift at the local airport, checking and stowing luggage on the daily Fort Worth to Cleveland flight. He collects boarding passes. Charles gets to sit in the cockpit during some of the flights—of wooden trimotor Fokkers—as he has signed up for the pilot-in-training program. Three weeks into his job, Charles is receiving favorable recommendations and is awarded a raise from $115 to $250 per month. He learns everything he can about commercial flying, asking endless questions about routes, fuel loads, schedules, how to gather weather reports, and so on. He becomes a bona-fide co-pilot. His fellow pilots consider him an exceptional airman. Finally an airline employee recognizes him as the millionaire moviemaker Howard Hughes. The front pages of newspapers and photographers’ flashbulbs have a field day. So Howard Hughes has surfaced into the light! For three weeks in September, no one in Hollywood nor anyone at Hughes Tool nor anyone in the world had known where the millionaire had gone. Howard Hughes had managed a disappearing act. It would be the first of many throughout his life. As for American Airways, they promptly fired Howard Hughes because he had misrepresented himself on his employment application. This other behavioral trait, his disregard for rules, would stick with Hughes for the long haul. At the time Hollywood pundits mused that moviemaker Hughes must have been gathering research for another cinematic blockbuster on an aviation theme.

 

After Hell’s Angels was completed and released, Hughes dedicated himself exclusively to the advancement of aircraft design and technology. Hollywood and the movies were shunted into the background. As Hughes’ concentration at this time was wholly occupied by his aerial pursuits, he financed no film in between Scarface (1930, released 1932) and The Outlaw (1940-43). Aviation was “in the air” at the time and Hughes, just as he had endeavored to step in and come out on top in Hollywood, now fostered similar aspirations in the world of aircraft mechanics and flight. When Hughes wanted something, nothing or no one could halt his forward advance. When Hughes had an obsession he was unstoppable. Money was no object—the Hughes Tool Company was footing the bill.[2]

 

Following Hughes Tool’s introduction—in 1933—of the tricone drill bit, an advance on Hughes Sr.’s two-cone bit, the company’s market share of the oil drilling business will approach 100% between the years 1935 to 1955.[3]

 

If Hughes was going to make a motion picture, it would have to be the greatest, most expensive production yet mounted. If Hughes was going to take to the skies, he would chase every world record worth chasing. The land speed record. The transcontinental speed record. Then the most awesome aviation record of them all—the around-the-world speed record. Never in his life would Howard Hughes employ half-measures. Hughes, however, was not a pretentious man. Thinking ‘on the big picture’ came perfectly naturally to him. His philosophy of action was simple: if he was to embark on a pursuit, he might as well do it better than the next man. If a project was worth his attention, it was worth his entire lifeblood.

 

In the 1930s the world of aviation was still largely an unconquered frontier. Aircraft aerodynamics was a young science. The technology of airframe design along with the power of aircraft engines were advancing almost by the day. In this decade the old wooden strut-and-wire biplanes would be superseded by sleek all-metal monoplanes. Like the Hollywood film industry at the same time, the aviation industry was experiencing its boom time, and Hughes was right there in the thick of it.

 

In late 1930 Hughes acquired a Boeing 100A, a U.S. military pursuit biplane, and threw himself headlong into the project of remodelling its design in order to coax the plane to fly faster.[4] Hughes spent the years 1931 to 1934 studying tirelessly the latest developments in aerodynamics. He was in the air daily, amassing data on the vagaries of altitude and wind patterns. By 1932 he will have assembled a small group of expert engineers working for him as his Brain Trust in his quest for a state-of-the-art aircraft.[5] Hughes originally called his team the Aircraft Development Group of the Hughes Tool Company, and had set up shop in an old Western Air Express hangar in Burbank, California.[6]

 

Hughes [himself] had little formal engineering training. But he had a tremendous natural aptitude and motivation for engineering and design, a mind quick to grasp complex technical relationships, and a retentive memory for technical detail. Furthermore, Hughes exploited his contacts in industrial and academic circles to gain information on the latest theories and developments.[7]

 

Hughes won flying awards at air meets. His aerial exploits and trophies generated news story after news story.

 

*

 

In January 1933, Hughes acquired a Sikorsky S-38, a twin-engine Amphibian aircraft for $59,000.[8] Sikorsky seaplanes were part of the fleet flown by Pan Am known informally as “flying clippers”.[9] He had engineer Glenn Odekirk at Pacific Airmotive Corporation in Burbank reconstruct the plane according to Hughes’ customary exacting standards.

 

Hughes had first hired Odekirk back in 1928 to generate some sound effects for Hell’s Angels, when Odekirk had been working as a designer for the Bach Aircraft Company. By the spring of 1933, Odekirk will be working full time for Hughes as co-pilot and mechanic, and over the next two decades will serve as one of Hughes’ closest associates in aviation matters.[10]

 

In April 1933 Hughes and Odekirk embarked on a long jaunt across America, flying from point to point with Hughes at the controls of the Sikorsky. During the first leg of the flight Hughes carried out a series of tests of a new radio that Odekirk had installed in the plane. They stopped in Phoenix; then Houston for a week[11]; then headed to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.[12] In the process they weathered thunderstorms, treacherous landing conditions, and snooping reporters out for a scoop. They stayed in New Orleans for ten days while an engine was being repaired; then flew to Richmond, Virginia; then to the Sikorsky factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the plane was kept for the rest of the summer,  during which time Hughes and Odekirk enjoyed the parties of the smart set at luxurious estates on Long Island.

 

Few would forget the sight of them, skimming in the Sikorsky through the Atlantic waters, mooring it at a pier, two tall and wildly attractive men in black leather, striding leggily up the sloping lawns, then changing in the hosts’ bedrooms into black tie for the evening.[13]

 

Later in the summer the pair flew to Miami, Florida, then back to Los Angeles, where Hughes and his team devoted themselves to aviation business. Early in 1934 Hughes sold his S-38 because the plane’s cruising speed of 110 miles per hour wasn’t nearly fast enough for him.

 

*

 

GRAND PRIZE LAGER BEER. Throughout his adult life Howard Hughes always liked to strike where the action was hot—such as the time he opened up the Gulf Brewing Company on the Hughes Tool Company grounds almost as soon as Prohibition ended. On September 29, 1933, H.T.Co.’s so-called Grand Prize Lager Beer appeared as the first legally-produced beer in Houston since the onset of the thirteen-year-long ban on the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcohol.[14] Sales of Grand Prize grew through the 1930s. For at least five years running Grand Prize beer was the top-selling Texas beer in America, generating profits of up to $500,000 annually.[15]

 

*

 

On January 14, 1934, Hughes won first place in the Sportsman Pilot Free-for-All category at the All-American Air Meet at the municipal airport in Miami. He flew his modified Boeing B-100A biplane and before the day was through he delighted the spectators with a dazzling display of aerial acrobatics.[16]

 

*

 

By 1934 Hughes had formed the Hughes Aircraft Company, to deal with the logistics and expenses of remodelling his Boeing 100A military plane.[17] Richard W. Palmer, 31, a recent graduate of Caltech with degrees in physics and engineering and who had aleady made a name for himself at Lockheed and Vultee, was hired to lead Hughes’ design team as chief engineer; Glenn Odekirk, 28, was hired as construction supervisor; and William C. “Rocky” Rockefeller, another recent Caltech graduate, came on board as head meteorologist.[18] General manager was Hughes’ old flying buddy, J. B. Alexander.[19] To ensure secrecy, Hughes moved most of his aviation engineering operations out of the Burbank airport and into a leased warehouse at the Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles located just northeast of Hollywood.[20] For the the time being Hughes maintained aviation operations in both Burbank and Glendale. Over the next twenty years Hughes’ aircraft company will expand from an outfit of eighteen to a workforce of thirty-six thousand.[21]

 

Rumors started coming thick and fast about a new airplane, a “Hughes Mystery Ship” being built under the strictest secrecy in a small, nondescript building off by itself at one corner of the Union Air Terminal in Burbank.[22]

 

*

 

While his mystery ship was in the process of construction, Hughes, for training purposes, acquired a Beech A-17-F Staggerwing biplane for $25,000. Upon its introduction in 1932, the Staggerwing series was immediately recognized as one of the great aircraft of the 1930s. Flying faster than all Army aircraft at the time, the Beech Aircraft Company’s Staggerwing was a favorite of air racers; it was also a difficult plane to fly. “A pilot who could master the Staggerwing could fly any plane,” noted George J. Marrett in Howard Hughes: Aviator.[23] The A-17 was the highest-powered and most expensive model in the already expensive Staggerwing series. Hughes’ high-performance, state-of-the-art biplane was furnished with a 690-horsepower Wright Cyclone air-cooled radial engine capable of a top speed of over 220 miles per hour. Because the Beech plane was so expensive, it was a treat for connoisseurs, and only two A-17s were flying in 1934, and no more would be built.[24]

 

*

 

During the early years of his aircraft company, Howard Hughes demonstrated quintessential characteristics of his character that associates and co-workers would have to contend with for decades to come.

 

Whenever Hughes was chasing a grandiose vision, he was fanatical about every last detail. Hughes had an exacting eye and could reduce his employees to exhaustion with his indefatigable nit-picking. Glenn Odekirk knew this aspect of Hughes only too well. A few years earlier when Odekirk was refitting Hughes’ S-38, Hughes once spent no less than three hours explaining where and how exactly he wanted three screws to be placed in a strip of metal.[25]

 

Hughes would work for days without pause, sustaining himself for more than twelve hours at a time on such meagre fare as a peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of milk. Sometimes he vanished for days at a time without warning or explanation.[26]

 

Noah Dietrich recalled,

 

Howard was as happy as I ever saw him while the H-1 was a-building. He enjoyed creating mechanical things, and he was never more at ease than when he was around a hangar. He felt comfortable with other airmen; to them he was a flier, and not Howard Hughes, millionaire. He couldn’t cope with the small talk of social gatherings, but he could chatter for hours about propellers and motors and air fuel.[27]

 

Still, Hughes would always be a private man. Hughes Aircraft employee John Harvey Newbury recalled the period during the construction of the H-1: “Howard didn’t buddy around with his crew. There was little personal contact. He did give a few parties with good food and champagne when significant goals were reached. Everyone was searched before they left the property. You couldn’t get a ballpoint pen out of there. Howard was paranoid about someone stealing his ideas.”[28]

 

Hughes at work was obsessed with his vision and expected everyone around him to be available for him regardless of the hour or the day. Hughes simply wasn’t conscious of the fact that other men had lives beyond his latest obsession. Odekirk recalled a quintessential episode. One night after a long working day, Hughes Aircraft engineers and mechanics were still working on one of Hughes’ planes, readying it for flight.

Odekirk politely inquired of Hughes, “Do you know what day this is?”

It took Hughes some time, but it came to him. “It’s my birthday.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What?”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Odekirk said. “We should let the men leave.”[29]

 

*

 

One evening during the time that the mystery ship was being built, Hughes telephoned two of his Hughes Aircraft associates, Richard Palmer and W.C. Rockefeller, and asked them to drive him ninety miles northwest to Santa Barbara, where Hughes was to have a dinner date with one of his many paramours. During the drive, Hughes said, the three of them would discuss business. As it turned out, this episode would demonstrate not only Hughes’ constant demands on his employees, but his concern for animals as well. En route to Santa Barbara, their car hit a dog that had run into the road. Hughes picked up the bloodied animal without thought of germs, put it in the car, and the three men set off to find a veterinarian. At the animal hospital, Hughes was told the dog had a good chance to survive. Hughes and his two associates went on to meet with Hughes’ dinner date, though they were three hours late. During dinner, Hughes was more concerned with the dog than with either his airplane or his date. He kept excusing himself to phone the animal hospital to check on the dog’s progress. The story had a happy ending. The dog lived, and Palmer adopted it.[30]

 

*

 

In the summer of 1935 the Hughes Mystery Ship was unveiled as the H-1. The plane was assigned Hughes Aircraft serial number 1, hence H-1. Built at the cost of $120,000, it was a sleek silver ship beautiful to behold.[31] The biplanes that Hughes had been flying were not fast enough for his tastes, even with all of his modifications. The H-1 was a monoplane, and would soon prove to be the fastest airplane in the world.[32]

 

Hughes had no qualms about taking his experimental plane up into the air himself. The single-engined, 1,000-h.p., high-performance monoplane had been his vision. He would be its test pilot.[33]

 

On August 18, 1935, after eighteen months of development and construction, Hughes piloted the maiden flight of his wonder plane he renamed the Flying Bullet.[34] He wowed an assembled crowd of aircraft company executives and mechanics at Mines Field (today LAX) with a fifteen-minute test flight over the airport.[35]

 

The plane was bare of markings except for the license number NR 258Y in chrome yellow on the wings; its streamlined polished aluminium fuselage was an aerodynamic marvel and gorgeous to behold. Many of its design features were innovatory. The fully retractable landing gear was the most advanced of its kind. To reduce drag, Hughes had cut the wingspan down to the absolute minimum allowable for flight.[36] It was the first plane to wholly utilize flush riveting. Each and every nut, bolt-head, and rivet slotted neatly into its own particular niche, allowing the plane to present a continuous surface to the wind stream without any interference to interrupt air flow.[37] The fuselage was as sleek as a space ship. Anyone with eyes could see that the Flying Bullet was the plane of the future.

 

H-1 IN MORE DETAIL. Hughes’ magnificent racer was a small plane, its slender fuselage 27 feet long, its wingspan 25 feet. Its Pratt & Whitney R-1535 Twin Wasp Jr. engine was rated for 700-hp but had been modified by Odekirk and crew to operate with specially formulated 100-octane fuel to give Hughes a maximum of 1000-hp.[38] The Twin Wasp Jr. engine was ultra-modern at the time, “the first two-row engine that Pratt & Whitney built,” Hughes noted in an interview.[39] The R-1535 was not yet available for the commercial marketplace and was shrouded in secrecy, having been developed for the U.S. military, but Hughes managed to get his hands on one. Hughes’ technicians fitted the engine in a cowling, a streamlined cover which reduced drag and improved engine cooling. The Hamilton Standard propeller had a ten-foot diameter—a large prop for such a small plane.

 

While the engine was modified for maximum speed, the airframe was designed for minumum weight and minimum drag.[40] The fuselage was aluminum, but the wings, designed by Richard Palmer, were made of plywood, which allowed for the smoothest finish possible to maximize airstream flow.[41] While virtually every airplane up to this time used struts and wires to holds the wings to the fuselage, the cantilevered wings of the H-1 jutted out without support as if by magic.

 

The cabin enclosure was of a design unique to the H-1. While most airplanes had open cockpits, the H-1’s cockpit was completely enclosed. “The wind screen was cranked forward for entrance or egress and aft for flight; the sides of the canopy rolled up from a slot in the fuselage sides, jointing at the top,” explained aviation historian Walt Boyne. “The arrangement was simple, lightweight and effective, for it had relative low drag, yet provided good in-flight visibility.”[42]

 

All-metal airframe construction; high-performance engine and engine cowling; retractable landing gear; flush riveting; wing flaps and ailerons; aerodynamic fuselage design—The aircraft was a compendium of, and refinement to, state-of-the-art aircraft technology. The elegance of the H-1’s construction, its superlative craftsmanship, took airmen’s breath away at the time, and still does, even in the twenty-first century. Walt Boyne described the H-1 as “perhaps the most precise hand-built machine of all time.”[43]

 

On Friday, September 13, 1935 at Martin Field at the Irvine ranch outside Santa Ana, CA, Howard Hughes captured the world speed record for a plane flying over land, flying his H-1 at 352.46 miles per hour.

 

This first great aviation triumph of his almost became his last when the H-1 ran out of gas in mid-air. It would take all of Hughes’ piloting skill to save himself and his plane from disaster.

 

 

“THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE”. The National Aeronautic Association laid out a 4.8 mile closed course at Martin Field. An electrical timing system and official cameras were set up at each end of the course. For Hughes to break the land speed record of 314.32 mph set by Raymond Delmotte in a Cauldron C-460 in December 1934, he would have to surpass Delmotte’s speed four consecutive times without flying higher than 1,500 feet.

 

The Frenchman Delmotte had taken the land speed record from Ace American pilot James Wedell, who had achieved 305.33 mph in September 1933.[44] Hughes wanted to bring the record back to America.

 

Among the officials present was Joseph Nikrent, head timer of the N.A.A. Famed pilots Amelia Earhart and Paul Mantz were present as N.A.A. assistants and watched Hughes’ progress from two planes in the air. Hundreds of spectators had assembled at the airfield to witness Hughes’ bid for glory.

 

Hughes’ glimmering silver plane traced a series of arcs in the sky to pick up speed. Flying up to 1,500 feet, he’d aim downward then come in fast and low past the timers at 200 feet. Making seven runs in all (in both east-west and west-east directions) he clocked in speeds of 355, 339, 351, 340, 350, 354, and 351 miles per hour. Hughes’ average speed was 352.46 mph—outstripping Delmotte’s time by 38 mph. The record was his![45]

 

But the excitement wasn’t over. Hughes wanted to carry out an eighth run. Suddenly the engine spluttered. The H-1 was losing altitude. “My supply of gasoline apparently had been exhausted,” Hughes later said, “and when I tried to cut the other tank in, the motors refused to take it.”[46] Spectators on the ground saw black smoke streaming from the plane before it disappeared over the horizon north of the landing strip.

 

Instead of bailing out, Hughes brought the plane in dead-stick at 90 m.p.h., achieving a nearly perfect wheels-up landing in a beet field. The propeller blades were bent and the tail gear (a skid, not a wheel) was damaged, but the fuselage of the H-1 remained intact.

 

Earhart and Mantz flew over the scene and witnessed Hughes disembark unhurt from his plane. When Noah Dietrich, Glenn Odekirk, and other observers drove up and jumped out of their cars, they found a perfectly relaxed Hughes leaning against the H-1. “It’ll go faster,” Hughes said.[47]

 

American test pilots will be breaking the sound barrier a little more than a decade hence, achieving more than double the rate of speed Hughes reached—Chuck Yeager in the Bell Aircraft-built X-1 conquering Mach I, and then Scott Crossfield surpassing Mach II—yet Hughes’ accomplishments in aircraft speed are not thereby diminished by these latter triumphs. What Hughes accomplished in his day was a necessary link in the chain of American aviation progress. Hughes offically held the land speed record until Hans Dieterle flew a Heinkel HE-100 V3 at 463.92 mph on March 30, 1939. For a short time at least it was Howard Hughes who was “the fastest man alive”.

 

Hughes might have been out of show business but he was definitely not out of the limelight. He had piloted his plane with panache—wearing a dark double-breasted suit and tie, with handkerchief in the breast pocket!

 

*

 

Following this record-breaking milestone, which had only whetted his appetite for adventure, Hughes turned his complete attention to high-altitude flying. Throughout 1935 he made a dozen transcontinental flights in Douglas DC-2s, as a co-pilot for Transcontinental and Western Airlines, gaining experience and know-how.[48] (At this time TWA was the industry leader for speed, making coast-to-coast runs, with refueling stops, in eighteen hours.) Hughes said,

 

I realized that by climbing up to the substratosphere, and taking advantage of the westerly wind created by the motion of the earth, I could reduce the time of crossing the continent.[49]

 

Long-distance air travel became Hughes’ latest obsession.[50] Hughes was dazzled by a vision which he would bring to fruition no matter the cost. While the money Hughes pumped into his Hollywood ventures had a chance to be recouped if the films produced were winners, in the case of his aviation obsession Hughes’ expenditures were all outgoing. In this instance money meant nothing, it was the dream that mattered. 

 

*

 

As the H-1 Racer wasn’t originally designed for extended flights, Hughes leased a Northrop Gamma, refitted it, and proceeded to put his high altitude experiments to the test.

 

Hughes achieved his first transcontinental flight speed record on Monday, January 13, 1936, flying from Burbank, CA to Newark, NJ in 9 hours, 27 minutes and 10 seconds. He broke the record of 10 hours, 2 minutes and 57 seconds set by Roscoe Turner on September 2, 1934. Once more the pilot had been natty in a suit and tie to complement his aviator’s goggles.

 

 

GAMMA. Designed by Jack Northrop, one of the pioneers of aircraft design, the Northrop Gamma was an all-metal, low-wing, cantilever monoplane. Only 60 Gammas would be sold during its one production run in the early 1930s. The Gamma Hughes rented was owned by Jacqueline Cochran, who had received her private pilot’s license in 1932 and over the next four decades proved to be the greatest female pilot in American aviation history. Cochran described her particular Gamma, a model originally built for TWA’s mail service and acquired by her in 1934, as “bullet-shaped” and “souped-up”. Hughes phoned Cochran one night at 11:30, asking to buy her plane. After four weeks of negotiations, Hughes had to be content to rent the plane.[51] He forthwith refitted the Gamma with a new engine and propeller, new nose and cowling, new cockpit instruments, extra tankage, and new seats. Hughes told the New York Times, “My engine is the new Wright G Cyclone [R-1820G] being built for the army. It is not released for public use as yet, but I had special permission to use it on this test. It gives 925 horsepower for take-off at sea level. It is equipped with a two-speed blower or supercharger.” He also used a Hamilton constant-pitch propeller which gave him “maximum bite” of the air at take-off.[52]

 

 

FLIGHT LOG. The refitted Gamma weighed 10,000 pounds at take-off, a record load for its type of plane. Its fuel tanks had been topped up with 700 gallons of gasoline. But the Gamma’s 925 horsepower engine along with the low pitch of the propeller blades got Hughes off the ground after a run of only about 1,800 feet, or half the length of the runway of the Burbank Airport. It was 12:15 p.m. Los Angeles time. His heavy plane rose in the afternoon sunlight to 15,000 feet. It would have been a text-book take-off except for the fact that his radio antenna snapped off as his wheels left the ground. He would be out of radio contact for the duration of the flight. He soon hit thick weather and had to fly blind (i.e. via cockpit instrumentation) for two hours, finally breaking through the poor conditions over Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cruising at heights of up to 18,000 feet, he had to breathe in whiffs of oxygen every so often from the tanks he’d installed. He hit a pocket of rough air north of Wichita, Kansas; turbulence knocked his compass cock-eyed, rendering it useless. Without a radio or a compass, Hughes was forced to dead-reckon his way forward with only his map as guide, making out the cities below him by the spread of their lights. The rest of the 1,200 mile trip, blessed by clear skies, went smoothly. He reached Newark Airport in New Jersey at 12:42:10 a.m. He had flown the 2,445-mile route at an average speed of 327 miles per hour, and in the process shaved a half-hour off the standing transcontinental speed record. Only one person was there at the flood-lit airport to hail his arrival, an official timekeeper. Hughes taxied to the TWA hangars where the Gamma would be parked for the night. He later told newsmen at his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, “I wanted to go to New York, so I tried to see how fast I could do it. I don’t think there was anything sensational about it.”[53]

 

It could get uncomfortable at times, sitting cooped-up in the small cockpit in one position for hours in the cold air of the higher altitudes. Sometimes operating the airplanes of the 1930s took a lot of muscle power, a reason why both male and female pilots had strong hands and arms. Of course, a pilot’s eyesight had to be sharp.

 

In the days following Hughes’ record-breaking flight, the New York Times reported,

 

When an amateur flier in the space of a few months can set the world’s land-plane record and lop more than half an hour off the transcontinental record, he is a pilot to be reckoned with.[54]

 

Over the next couple of months the obsessive, tireless Hughes set two more flight speed records in the silver-gray Gamma racer, reducing the flight time from Miami to New York in April, then from Chicago to Los Angeles in May.

 

 

Miami to New York—Tuesday, April 21, 1936: Hughes took off from Pan American Airport in Miami at 11:49:50 a.m. During the smooth flight his altitude reached 13,750 feet. Then his radio malfunctioned over North Carolina—Hughes time and time again would have trouble with his radio during his various significant flights—and he flew the rest of the way by directional gyro and by sighting landmarks on the ground, even though for most of the flight visibility was poor. Kenneth Behr, the manager of Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and Hughes’ official timer for the flight, recalled seeing the silver racer fly out of the haze over Coney Island and approach the airfield in a long dive at “terrific speed”. Hughes covered the 1,196-mile distance in 4 hours, 21 minutes, 32 seconds, breaking the previous record of 5 hours, 1 minute, 39 seconds set by James Wedell in 1933. Hughes’ average speed was 276 mph.[55]

 

 

Chicago to Los Angeles—Friday, May 15, 1936: Hughes bet a New York friend that he could have lunch in Chicago and dinner in Los Angeles in the same day. Hughes, flying into Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale at 7:15:25 pm, won the $50 bet. It hadn’t been easy though. After he climbed as high as 20,000 feet to get above 40 mph headwinds, his oxygen supply malfunctioned; he became lightheaded and barely conscious. Then his radio failed. Reducing altitude while flying over Kansas, he encountered thick fog, and for the rest of the way flew blind without maps while ice formed on the wings, dangerously altering the pattern of the airflow along the plane. Hughes told newsmen, “The only thing that worked on my ship was the engine.”[56] Making the trip in 8 hours, 10 minutes, 25 seconds, Hughes broke Wiley Post’s L.A. to Chicago record of 9 hours, 9 minutes, 4 seconds, set in his Winnie Mae on August 27, 1930.[57]

 

Hughes’ aviation exploits were front page news in the New York Times, America’s newspaper of record. Cinema audiences across the country could see Aviator Hughes larger than life in newsreels devoted to his exploits, such as this one from Universal: “Flies from Miami to N.Y. In 4:21 Hrs. For New Record.”[58] Hughes also made the rounds of America’s magazines. Argosy Weekly, which billed itself as “America’s most popular Pulp Adventure Magazine”, ran a story titled “Men of Daring: Howard Hughes, air speed king”.[59] The editor of Liberty magazine called the high-flying Hughes “the most picturesque young man in the country today.”[60]

 

*

 

While the H-1 was being remodelled by Hughes Aircraft engineers for long-distance travel[61], Hughes had time to continue his ever-expanding series of whirlwind romances with the actresses of Hollywood’s elite. He becomes bosom buddies with Cary Grant and the handsome pair of playboys will share good times over and again throughout the next couple of decades.[62] Grant was then a rising star with a lot of buzz around him, a veteran of upwards of twenty pictures since 1932, and was approaching his greatest financial and critical triumph yet, The Awful Truth (1937). The handsome, debonair Grant was in the process of becoming Hollywood’s epitome of masculine sophistication, and women of all ages found him irresistible. A common theme the two friends shared was their effortless seduction of legions of women. Hughes will visit Grant at Grant’s Santa Monica beach house which was ever-populous with a steady stream of beautiful young women.[63] Moreover, Hughes will frequent Marion Davies’ grandacious three-story beach house, known as Ocean House, scene of many a fabulous party featuring Hollywood’s most glamorous and exciting set, also in Santa Monica.[64] Davies later recalled,

 

[Hughes] was just a big, awkward, overgrown country boy, always very shy, very polite. He was a little hard of hearing. He was kind, he really was, and smart, but he didn’t show it. He came to many of our parties and was very nice and affable. He was good company, because he didn’t talk too much.[65]

 

Hughes acquired a custom-built twin-engined Sikorsky S-43 amphibian aircraft and turned it into a flying penthouse, complete with leather divan for teenage starlets to stretch out along; sometimes Grant and friends  came along for the ride.[66] No doubt Howard Hughes must have been one of the original members of the Mile-High Club.[67] Moreover Hughes trades in his old yacht for a new one, the fifth largest in the world. The cost for this new plaything was a whopping $850,000. Named by Hughes the Southern Cross, the 335-foot, 1,800 ton steam yacht will be the location for an omnibus of lascivious assignations.[68] Now and then throughout the 1930s Hughes was photographed hitting the Hollywood night spots with Ginger Rogers, the youthful, ebullient Queen of the Lot at RKO Studios. There will be many another daillance with women known and unknown. Hughes’ highest-profile love affair at this time will be with Katharine Hepburn.

 

One afternoon in the summer of 1936, Cary Grant introduced Hughes to Hepburn at Trancas Beach above Malibu, where the A-list film actress was working on the film set of Sylvia Scarlet. Hughes buzzed his Boeing 100A over the film set, landed, then enjoyed a picnic lunch with Hepburn, Grant, and the film’s director, George Cukor. “He was one of the tallest and boyishly handsome men I’d ever seen—a wondrous sight, really,” Hepburn recalled. “He wore a brown leather flight jacket, with the sign of an eagle sewn on the left pocket. He also wore elephant-colored jodhpurs and jet-black Cordovan boots with some sort of silver ornamentation on them.”[69]

 

Flyboy Hughes landing his plane on a hill alongside the Pacific surf is as romantic a scene as to be found in any of his Hollywood features! This was the beginning of Howard Hughes’ two-year romance with Hepburn, though he would never be a one-woman guy.

 

*

 

Saturday, July 11, 1936. 11:00 p.m. Hughes was driving his $16,500 Duesenberg coupe—the “J” series, the state-of-the-art in instrumentation and design—with a blonde-haired socialite named Nancy Belle Bayly, 20, of a “blue-blooded” Pasadena family, at his side. The pair had spent a high-hearted evening on the town, flitting from Trader Vic’s restaurant to the glittering Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel. The streets of Los Angeles were mired in fog. Since Hughes didn’t care much for alcohol, he had only had a half-glass of champagne earlier in the evening. At Third Street and Lorraine Boulevard, Hughes swerved into a streetcar safety zone to avoid an oncoming car; Hughes heard what he later described as a “thump” and hit the brakes.

 

He had struck a pedestrian, Gabe S. Meyer. Meyer, 59, was unmarried, and worked as a salesman for the May Company department store. Hughes approached the body sprawled in the street, then bent down to check the man’s pulse. As spectators began to accumulate, Hughes turned to Bayly to say, “I want you to melt into the crowd,” and ushered her onto a streetcar which trundled away from the scene.[70]

 

Witnesses crowded around Hughes as he bent over Meyer’s body, reaching in to pick him up. Hughes later testified that he thought he would bring the man to the hospital himself. One witness called out, “Don’t you dare touch that man!” Another witness simply said, “The man is dead.”[71]

 

The police arrived, questioned a somber Hughes and some of the eyewitnesses, then took Hughes to the Hollywood Receiving Hospital, where he passed a sobriety test. Hughes was then taken to the Wilshire Police Station where he was faced with two hours of  interrogation by detectives. He stubbornly refused to give his side of the story until he had a chance to talk to his attorney. “I have always been told when something like this happens, to just keep my own counsel,” Hughes told Detective Lieutenant Ralph N. Davis.[72] Hughes was booked on suspicion of negligent homicide (as defined by Section 500 of the Vehicle Code). He was fingerprinted and placed in a cell. Hughes attorney Neil McCarthy arrived with a writ signed by Superior Court Judge Fletcher Bowron which extracted Hughes from the grip of the police before dawn broke on Sunday.

 

Over the next week various Los Angeles newspapers grabbed onto the story, including the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Examiner, and the Pasadena Star-News; as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post. Since Hughes was keeping mum on the identity of the young woman whom eyewitnesses placed in Hughes’ car at the time of the accident, the newspapers were able to generate sensational headlines such as MISSING BEAUTY HOLDS KEY TO DEATH.[73]

 

A coroner’s inquest was held at the W. M. Strother Mortuary in Hollywood on July 15. Eyewitnesses’ accounts differed in significant respects, such as where exactly the victim had been standing at the time of the accident and the rate of speed Hughes was driving at (clocked at anywhere between 18 to 40 mph). Though Hughes had been loath to cooperate in this instance, his attorneys had no choice but to have Nancy Belle Bayly present for questioning at the inquest. When Hughes himself was questioned by Coroner Nance, he took pains to describe what happened as a complete accident.

 

I have driven automobiles since I was 12 years old. My father had the first automobile in the state of Texas. I have driven automobiles for eighteen years. I never even had any sort of accident. Never hit a dog or a cat. This car I have had six-and-a-half years and never scratched the paint.[74]

 

Hughes said that his sight was excellent—as an aircraft pilot, his eyes were required to be examined every six months—and that, as a pilot, he was experienced in dealing with emergencies.

 

I know that, in any emergencies, I have always acted promptly and intelligently; and I don’t think I would have a record of driving as long, or that my record of flying would be as good, if I could not have reacted promptly. And I believe this was beyond anyone’s power to avoid.[75]

 

Control-freak Hughes went on the record as saying, “There can always be a set of circumstances that is beyond anyone’s control.”[76]

 

The six-man coroner’s jury found Hughes blameless for the death of Gabe S. Meyer, which was ruled an accident. Leaving the courthouse, Hughes told the press,

 

The accident was not my fault. That was clear from the start. I was driving slowly and a man stepped out of the darkness in front of me.[77]

 

Hughes donated either $10,000 or $20,000, according to the account, to the Meyer family. Nancy Belle Bayly never saw Howard Hughes again.

 

The news story of the Hughes automobile accident came and went and was promptly forgotten by the general public. The accident would be shunted into the deep background of Hughes’ life and would not return to “haunt him” in any way in future years; his national reputation as an American hero would not be tainted at all.[78]

 

*

 

Through 1936 Aviator Hughes remained as busy as playboy Hughes. On February 5, 1936, four weeks after his first triumphant coast-to-coast run, Hughes took delivery of a twin-engined DC-1 from Transcontinental and Western Airlines.[79] It was an historic aircraft, the first of its line, which eventually became one of the flagships of world aviation, the Douglas Commercial series. In fact it was the only DC-1 ever built. Introduced in 1933, the DC-1 had been the most advanced passenger plane at the time, with an all-metal, streamlined fuselage, retractable landing gear, variable-pitch propellers, as well as sound-proofing insulation. TWA’s DC-1 had already set close to two-dozen speed and distance records by the time Hughes bought it. The distinguished pedigree of the plane must have gratified the collector in Hughes, but he hadn’t purchased the plane to put it out to pasture. He refitted it for his own ongoing long-distance experiments, installing additional fuel tanks; new cockpit instrumentation, including the Sperry Gyro Pilot, the first automatic pilot system; as well as up-to-the-minute radio equipment, in order to carry out operations tests in preparation for his record-breaking flights to come. Hughes’ DC-1 was nicknamed the Flying Laboratory.

 

In this period Hughes Aircraft engineer Gus Seidel accompanied his boss on one of the experimental flights of the DC-1 and witnessed an example of Aviator Hughes’ recklessness. When Hughes flew into the Union Air Terminal in Burbank one night, he decided to park his airplane inside his own hangar. It would be a close fit. When he disembarked from the DC-1 Seidel saw that one of plane’s wingtips was only a half-inch away from the hangar window.[80] One could only shake one’s head at the audacity of it! Hughes loved to act with flair; if he said it could be done, he would do it—to his own specifications.

 

*

 

On November 15, 1936, Hughes was flying an amphibian aircraft and coming in for a landing at North Beach Airport, a small municipal airfield in Queens, N.Y., when a tail wind thrust the plane nose down into the ground. The hull and right wing were damaged but Hughes showed no signs of injury and walked away from the crash. In years to come, aviator Hughes will not be so lucky.[81]

 

*

 

Howard Hughes the aviator hit the national headlines in a big way in 1937 and then again in 1938.

 

In the early hours of Tuesday, January 19, 1937, Hughes took off from Burbank in his reconstructed H-1[82] heading to Newark, chasing his transcontinental record. Life-threatening complications plagued the flight when his oxygen mask failed, yet Hughes prevailed in shaving two hours off his previous cross-country speed record, clocking in at 7 hours, 28 minutes, 25 seconds.[83] This record would stand for nine years.[84]

 

 

FLIGHT LOG. Hughes took off from the Union Airport at Burbank at 2:14 a.m. He was clad in a light-colored flight suit lined with fur, worn over his customary flight attire, his gray double-breasted suit. The H-1 broke through the cloud cover and rose toward 20,000 feet. Hughes was wearing a newly-designed oxygen mask meant for flying at high altitudes. Making adjustments with the oxygen mask while the plane cruised high over the Sierras, Hughes suddenly began losing consciousness. He experienced what he called a “helpless, hopeless feeling”.[85] His arms and legs felt paralyzed. He had to struggle to regain his bearings. Hughes later described the effects of oxygen deficiency: “A throbbing pain followed by almost blissful dizziness. Then another throbbing pain.”[86] He screamed at the top of his lungs to equalize the pressure in his head with the air outside. Doing his best to stay awake, he nosed the plane down into less rarefied air, readjusted the mask, and returned to full consciousness.

 

Hughes was dead-reckoning his way east, as his cockpit radio was found to be unable to tune into the radio beams that would have guided him. Morever, he was without a radio transmitter. Luckily, through a break in the relentless clouds he saw Winslow, Arizona down below, and knew he was on course. Hughes relaxed as his plane was hastened on by a strong tailwind. He didn’t see topography again until he crossed the Mississippi River just north of St. Louis.

 

The clouds began to let up as he crossed the eastern half of the continent. Over Indiana his oxygen ran out and he had to drop several thousand feet to stay alert.

 

Hughes reached speeds of 380 mph during his long power dive down to Newark Airport. He buzzed the airfield at 12:42:25 in the afternoon, as noted by William Zint, present at the airfield as official timer for the National Aeronautic Association. Hughes had to circle over the airport while a United Airlines airplane taxied and took off, then finally accomplished what the New York Times reported as a “perfect three-point landing” at 1:02:30 pm. He was greeted by a crowd of well-wishers and newsmen, with cameramen capturing the jubilant return for the newsreels.

 

Hughes had flown at an average speed of 333 miles an hour (5½ miles a minute), at an average altitude of 14,000 feet, over the 2,490 miles travelled. He broke eleven landplane distance speed records in the act.

 

In the days immediately following the flight, Hughes arranged for a twenty-four-hour guard watch over the H-1 which was kept in a hangar at Newark Airport. Hughes was so secretive about his plane that he had workmen build a wooden shelter around it to further hide it from prying eyes. “It was reported the ship contained instruments not yet patented,” the New York Times noted.[87]

 

*

 

Hughes was now an aviation icon and media personality whose likeness was used in a print advertisement for Thompson Valves, “the flier’s friend”. In between two reproductions of the H-1 and a short account of Hughes’ second transcontinental record, the text declared, “In this latest achievement, as in previous records made by Hughes, Thompson Valves were standard engine equipment.” Howard Hughes had become a media sensation—he was to be found on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers, on the covers of Hollywood’s fan magazines, in gossip columns, and now advertisements.

 

*

 

Hughes was honored in a White House Presidential ceremony on March 3, 1937. He was presented with the Harmon International Trophy as the world’s outstanding pilot of 1936.[88] There is a photo of Hughes in the Oval Office, shaking hands with a beaming President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

 

1936! Howard Hughes was already America’s Greatest Pilot for 1937 as well!

 

But Howard Hughes, described by the New York Times as “millionaire sportsman pilot” and “a playboy with a purpose”, wouldn’t be satisfied until he attempted the grandest aviation challenge of them all, the speed record for an around-the-world flight.[89]

 

 

 

 

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[1] A subsidiary of The Aviation Corporation (AVCO), American Airways was established on January 25, 1930. It was the second of the ‘Big Four’ domestic U.S. mail and passenger carriers, the others being Eastern Air Transport (est. July 10, 1929), Transcontinental and Western Air (July 24, 1930), and United Air Lines (July 1, 1931). By 1931 American was maintaining a Los Angeles-New York route, built up of over twenty stopping points along the way, following a course along the southern United States. American Airways became an independent company and renamed itself American Airlines on April 11, 1934.

[2] “Drilling literally ground to a halt in the depression. In 1931, Toolco’s sales plunged 75 percent to $2,977,000 and the company lost $812,000. The deficits continued for three years; still, they totaled only $1,515,000, less than half the company’s 1930 pretax profit. Toolco’s sales rebounded during the last half of the 1930s, but profits remained comparatively meager until after World War II.” Loving, Jr., “Hughes Tool”, p. 173. ¶ “His income from the tool bit was over $1 million a month, even in the Depression.” Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 65. ¶ “Profits rose to $6 million in 1935, to $9 million in 1936, and to $13 million in 1937.” [HH:US], p. 126. ¶ “In 1937 the gross revenues were about $35 million and profits after taxes were a little over $3 million.” “Hughes Tool: A Gusher of Money”, p. 82 (says figures are based on estimates).

[3] See Loving, Jr., “Hughes Tool”, p. 173.

 

[4] Hughes had taken ownership of the plane (NC247K) by September 1930, according to Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 11. ¶ “Hughes’ first airplane had been the Waco with which he earned his private flying license. In 1932, through special arrangements with Boeing and the Army Air Corps, he purchased a Boeing Model 100A, a two-seat, open-cockpit biplane, the civilian counterpart of the Army’s P12B and the Navy’s F4B. Not satisfied with the airplane as it was, Hughes had Douglas modify the P12B for him in accordance with his extensive, detailed, and everchanging requirements. The resulting $75,000 bill for the changes greatly exceeded the $45,000 original cost of the plane. . . . By 1933 the rather gawky-looking biplane with its uncowled engine and unstreamlined landing gear had been transformed into a sleek, single-seat biplane racer with every conceivable aerodynamic improvement from a landing gear elaborately streamlined by fairings and spats to a long-chord NACA cowling over a highly souped-up Pratt & Whitney 450 h.p. engine. Additionally, a streamlined headrest faired into the taller verticle fin and rudder assembly necessitated by the additional forward area created by the cowling and landing gear fairing.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 28; see also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 12. ¶ “Boeing Model 100A . . . Hughes added a large NACA cowling, wheel pants, taller rudder and vertical fin, plus other changes.” Boyne, “The Most Elusive Hughes”, p. 46. ¶ “Hughes, working with Glenn Odekirk and others, saw to it that the 1344 cubic inch Pratt & Whitney Wasp was tuned and tweaked to a maximum horsepower, probably near 700.” Boyne, Walt, “Speed Merchant: The Ultimate Racer Howard Hughes H-1”, Airpower, September 1977, p. 10. ¶ “Boeing built several commercial/export versions of their F4B-1, known as the Model 100. These military airframes were fully licensed under Approved Type Certificate l33. A special convertible two-seat version of the basic Model 100 was built to the special order of Mr. Howard Hughes. It was designated Model 100A and licensed under Memo 2-83.  The 100A was first of the 100-series to fly, on July 25, 1929.” “Aircraft Photos by Emil Strasser: Part III Boeing 100s”, AAHS Journal, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter 2002, available on the American Aviation Historical Society home website. ¶ “Boeing 100A. First manufacture: 1929. Approved Type Certificate: 2-83. Special two place 100 with 450hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp C engine. Number built: “1 for Howard Hughes, later sold to Art Goebel for exhibition work [NC/R247K]. Appeared post-WW2 in Texas registered to performer Ben Hunter [X247K].” See “Aerofiles: 100 years of American Aviation” website.

[5] “In 1931 he set up his own organization so that he could design, build and fly his own planes.” Lee, “Hughes’ Empire Facing A Crisis”, p. 11.

[6] The 234-acres of land in the northwest corner of Burbank that eventually became known as the Union Air Terminal was acquired by the United Aircraft and Transport Company, the holding company of Boeing, in 1929, and was opened as both a Southern California base for the Seattle-based Boeing and as a commercial air field. It stood alongside the premises of the Lockheed Aircraft Company, which had moved to Burbank from Santa Monica a year earlier, in March 1928. ¶ In 1929 and 1930 Western Air Express (which merged with T.A.T. to become TWA in October 1930) was the only commercial airline to operate out of the Burbank airport. ¶ United Airlines acquired the airport in 1934 and named it the Union Air Terminal. In the 1930s Burbank in the San Fernando Valley was still a small town of under 30,000 inhabitants; its airport, however, became the busiest in Los Angeles. ¶ TWA moved its operations from Grand Central to the Union Air Terminal in 1936. American Airlines moved on site in 1939. ¶ As at Grand Central, movie stars came and went through the Burbank airport in the 1930s and 1940s. Great pilots were regulars at the airport, such as Roscoe Turner, who featured in Hell’s Angels to such an extent that Hughes gave him sixth billing; Turner was immediately recognizable with his white monoplane with the picture of his mascot on the fin—the “Gilmore lion”, his pet cub who flew in the cockpit with him. ¶ Lockheed purchased the Union Air Terminal in 1940, at the time that the Los Angeles Airport (later LAX) opened on the site of the old Mines Field. Lockheed absorbed the Union Air Terminal within its extensive facilities, using it for the test flying of its planes while keeping it open for commercial flights as well until 1975, when the land area of the old Union Air Terminal was sold and renamed after its consortium of buyers: The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport.

[7] Barton, Flying Boat, p. 33.

[8] While Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 64, says Hughes bought an S-43 in 1933, Marlett, Howard Hughes Aviator, p. 12, corrects this to the S-38. According to Gibbs, Smith, Charles H., The Aeroplane (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1960), p. 113, the S-43 didn’t fly for the first time until 1934.

[9] Igor Sikorsky built bombers for Russia during World War I then emigrated to America, arriving in New York City in March 1919. He founded the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation and built his first major U.S. plane, the S-38, a ten-seat amphibian, in 1928. About 120 S-38s were built in total.

[10] Odekirk was born in Portland, Oregon in 1905. ¶ “Odekirk was a superlative and ingenious craftsman. In the early 1920s he had made headlines in his home town of Portland, Oregon after touring the United States in a self-built automobile that excelled factory models in appearance and construction.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 28-9. ¶ “Odekirk had been a mechanic, then a charter pilot, flying Los Angeles gamblers to the race track at Aquacalientes, Mexico. When the charter business suffered in the depression, Odekirk signed on as a grease monkey at Pacific Airmotive, and in the course of things found himself working side by side with a Texas millionaire . . .” Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 60. ¶ “Glenn Odekirk, a cheerful, thoroughly competent mechanic and pilot.” [HH:HLM], p. 78. ¶ “Odekirk became one of Hughes’ closest friends.” [HH:US], p. 94. ¶ “Odekirk, who was probably closer to Hughes than any other aviation figure, having flown thousands of hours with him.” Boyne, “The Most Elusive Hughes”, p. 46.

[11] “Hughes spent five days at the Hughes Tool Company, talking with his executives and examining the corporate records.” Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 61.

[12] For reference to Hughes in New Orleans, see Myers, Robert, “Kaiser Will Find in Howard Hughes A Shy, Retiring Airplane Genius”, Washington Post, August 26, 1942, p. 3. 

[13] Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 65. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 13-4; 16. Higham mistakenly says S-43, while Marrett says S-38. ¶ For an undated anecdote regarding Hughes and Odekirk flying into Indianapolis, see Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 341-2. ¶ “The ingredients were ideal for bright chatter: a handsome millionaire, still under 30, who was a top producer and the escort of more beautiful women that you could possibly shake a camera at: moreover, a frequenter of nightclubs and parties who was also serious, restless, and withdrawn.” Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 24.

[14] See Hurley, Marvin, “Progress Despite Depression”, August 28, 2002, on the Historic Houston website. ¶ The Eighteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution establishing Prohibition went into effect on January 16, 1920. The ban on any beverage with more than 0.5 percent alcohol was enforced by the Volstead Act. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment, passed through Congress on February 20, 1933 and ratified on December 5, 1933.

[15] See “Hughes Tool: A Gusher of Money”, p. 174; [HH:HLM], p. 80; Hack, Hughes, p. 96.

[16] “In preparation for the All-American Air Meet Hughes had Odekirk tune and tweak the Boeing biplane racer’s 1,344 cubic inch Wasp engine to a maximum horsepower well above the 450 horsepower listed for that engine. When Hughes took the plane up for a test flight he averaged 225 miles per hour, a remarkable improvement over the plane’s original top speed of 185 miles per hour. . . . On January 14 Hughes won the sportsman pilot free-for-all, averaging 185.7 miles per hour over a twenty-mile course and nearly lapping his nearest competitor. For good measure Hughes treated the crowd to a remarkably exhaustive and polished display of aerobatics before landing.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 31; see also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 14-5. ¶ “Miami Air Races . . . Hughes won his first aviation trophy, the Trujillo Trophy.” Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 59. ¶ “By way of celebrating his victory he treated the ten thousand spectators to an unscheduled display of aerobatics before coming in for his landing. He put the little biplane through slow rolls, snap rolls, spins, inverted flight. He went through the whole bag of tricks that the fighter pilots of Hell’s Angels had taught him and landed to find himself the most sought-after guest of the Florida winter season.” Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 65. ¶ “He thrilled the crowd with his loop-the-loops, his daring nosedives to within a few feet of the grandstands, and his snakings through the sky. He and other pilots joined in a fake air raid, dropping imitation incendiary bombs on a miniature version of Miami. Then he flew on a wave of cheers and awards to Palm Beach to party at the Breakers Hotel, in Palm Beach, night after night until dawn.” Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 68.

[17] “Hughes Aircraft Company, which he formed in 1934.” “Hughes, 33, Holds Assorted Honors”, p. 3. ¶ “In 1932 he founded Hughes Aircraft.” Demott, John S., “Hughes for Sale”, Time, May 27, 1985. Also Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 3. ¶ “Hughes . . . created the aircraft company in 1934.” Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 117. ¶ 1937: “About three years ago, Howard engaged a few young graduates of engineering school. . . .” Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 30.

[18] Other engineers and mechanics working for the original Hughes Aircraft Company included Bill Seidel and his son, Gus; Jim Petty; John Harvey Newbury; Earl Martyn; and Robert Rummel, later one of Hughes’ closest associates at TWA. See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 66; [HH:US], p. 94; Barton, Flying Boat, p. 32; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 11; 16-7; 66; www.wrightools.com. ¶ In 1932: “Don’t call me Mr. Hughes. Call me Howard. The other bothers me.” “Okay, Howard,” said Odekirk.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 29. ¶ Flight engineer Earl Martyn, who worked for Hughes for 31 years: “When there weren’t strangers around that I didn’t know I called him Howard. But when there were strangers around that I didn’t know I called him Mr. Hughes.” Barton, Flying Boat, p. 240. ¶ When flying alongside Hughes in the cockpit, his employees were invited to address him as Howard; in public, though, they reverted to Mr. Hughes. In private they referred to him as “the Man”.  See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 32; 66; 183. ¶ For other references to “The Man”, see Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. ii; 163; Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 10; Coffee III, Shelby, “The curious Washington days of deposed Vegas Prince Bob Maheu”, Washington Post Sunday Magazine, August 1, 1971, p. 12.

[19] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 21.

[20] The Grand Central Airport was the first paved airstrip on the west coast when it opened for commercial service in 1928. It featured a handsome control tower. ¶ For most of the 1930s Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) and American Airlines flew in and out of Grand Central. ¶ “Located near the Los Angeles River in Glendale, Grand Central was the region’s most glamorous passenger airport in the 1930s. Charles Lindbergh flew the first transcontinental airline flight from there on July 8, 1929, and pre-flight parties for departing Hollywood celebrities were a common sight. In World War II, Grand Central became a training base. After the field closed in 1959 the acreage was developed as an industrial park. Still standing, however, is the Spanish Colonial Revival terminal building and control tower designed by Henry L. Gogerty. Now owned by Disney, it can be seen at 1310 Airway Drive.” See  “History and Lore of the San Fernando Valley” on www.AmericasSuburb.com.

[21] In 1934, “Odekirk had letterhead paper and invoices printed with “Hughes Aircraft Company” on it, though no such company existed. Legally, they were part of the Hughes Tool Company.” Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 17. ¶ Hughes Aircraft will move into its own home in Culver City in 1941. ¶ “In the beginning nothing more than a glorified machine shop and a set of books, in time Hughes Aircraft would become one of the nation’s largest and most powerful defense contractors.” [HH:HLM], p. 75. ¶ In the 1930s Hughes will be part of a small group of civilian aircraft owners. In 1932 and 1933 total aircraft production for civilian use was 803 and 858, respectively; by 1939 the figure will have risen to a still meager 3,661. Moreover, the U.S. aircraft industry as a whole went through a fallow period through the 1930s. Sales to the military were woefully low, partly a reflection of the politically-isolationist complexion of the government during the decade. ¶ “In 1935 the United States produced almost 4 million motor vehicles and not quite 2,000 airplanes, a ratio of 2,000 to 1. Two years later, when aircraft output had doubled, the radio was 1,500 to 1.” Rae, Climb to Greatness, p. 81.

[22] “Built under a cloak of complete secrecy was the remarkable Hughes H-1, an all-metal monoplane that was one of the most advanced aircraft of its day.” Real, Asylum, p. 20. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 17. ¶ “The place was well guarded and so were the drawings that poured from it into a blueprint shop.” Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 30. ¶ For a contemporary reference to the Hughes Mystery Ship, see “Pilots Warm Up Speediest Planes To Shoot at Bendix Trophy Mark”, Daily Freeman (Kingston, N.Y.), Monday Evening, August 25, 1935, page 5; available online. The photograph accompanying the article includes this line: “Hughes, youthful film producer, has had a $100,000 “mystery ship” built for the event.” ¶ Hughes will talk about the H-1 in his January 7, 1972 telephone interview, recalling that the H-1 was designed and built in a very small building at the Union Air Terminal in Burbank. See Hughes’ recollection and a photograph of the airport at the time in Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 12. [HH:HLM], p. 78, however, says that the H-1 was built in a corner of the Babb Hangar at Grand Central Airport in Glendale. Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 66, Real, Asylum, p. 20, [HH:US], p. 94, and Hack, Hughes, p. 95, also say Glendale. ¶ Hughes, of course, may have remembered incorrectly. If in fact he had decided to have his supersecret H-1 built at the Grand Central Airport in Glendale rather than at the Hughes Aircraft facilities in Burbank, perhaps the reason was that United Airlines had purchased the Burbank airport in 1934 and quickly built it into the most popular airport in L.A.

[23] See Marrett, Howard Hughes Aviator, p. 19-20. Hughes’ Staggerwing had license number N12583.

[24] See Model 17 Specifications at Staggerwing.com, the official site of the Staggerwing Museum of Tullahoma, Tennessee; “Beech Aircraft Corporation” and  “Beech Model 17 Staggerwing” at the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission home page; “This Aviation History Classic Was Years Ahead Of Its Time”, Wavelink News Magazine at the Elliott Aviation homepage, 2001. ¶ Between 1933 and 1939, more than 424 Model 17 Staggerwings were sold. ¶ As late as 1938, Hughes kept his Staggerwing at his hangar space at the Union Air Terminal in Burbank.

[25] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 60; also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 64. ¶ A Hughes Aircraft employee remarked to Rupert Hughes, “Howard knows every bolt in his ship, just what it’s for and just what condition it’s in, before he takes off.” See Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, p. 24.

[26] Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 13. ¶ “Hughes would disappear for a few days and go to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in Virginia, where he could be found drinking coffee and talking with the government’s top engineers and flight designers, essentially picking their brains.” See “Visionary Backgrounds: Howard Hughes” on the Welcome to Las Vegas home website.

[27] Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 132.

[28]  See Tripp, R.. S., “Howard Hughes”, Plane & Pilot, January 2005, available online.

[29] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 79; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 18.

[30] See Barton, Flying Boat, p. 232; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 68-9; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 348.

[31] For cost, see “Hughes Hits 353 Miles an Hour, Breaks Record, Misses Death”, Washington Post, September 14, 1935, p. 1; “Record Into Beet Patch”, Time, September 23, 1935; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 17; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 70; [HH:US], p. 94. ¶ Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 10, says “$350,000”. ¶ “The original airplane took 18 months, 42,000 man-hours and $105,600 of Hughes’ money.” Tripp, “Howard Hughes”, Plane & Pilot. ¶ “$100,000”, says “Fastest Airplane To Be Given Tests”, Washington Post, August 15, 1935, p. 2.

[32] At the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Cal Tech in September 1934, Richard Palmer had carried out wind tunnel tests on a model of the H-1, and predicted a maximum speed of 365 mph. See Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 35; [HH:HLM], p. 78; Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 12; “Hughes H-1 Racer”, on the  Hughes: Aviator, p. 17.

[33] In May 1943, “When asked [by C. W. Von Rosenberg] why he didn’t hire a test pilot . . . Hughes answered, “Hell, why should I pay somebody else to have all the fun?” Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 61; also in Barton, Flying Boat, p. 69; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 55. ¶ “On August 10, he had Noah Dietrich give a press conference announcing that Hughes would be trying for the world speed record on September 12. The Hughes Tool Company executives panicked, convinced the flight might cost him his life, and insisted he make out a new will.” Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 70; see also Finstad, Heir, p. 18, where Finstad writes that Hughes drafted a will not in 1935, but 1938. ¶ Through early August Hughes carried out many days of taxi tests at Mines Field (today the site of the Los Angeles International Airport). See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 20.

[34] The H-1 is also referred to as the Racer, the Silver Bullet, the Winged Bullet, and the Hughes H-1 Racer.

[35] See Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 30; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 71-3; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 15-6; Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 61. ¶ Aviatrix Jacqueline Cochran recalled that in 1935 she saw the fully-built and operative H-1 at Mines Field (the present day Los Angeles International Airport), where Hughes was keeping it with “an army of police around it.” See Cochran, Jacqueline & Maryann Bucknum Brinley, Jackie Cochran: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), p. 151.

[36] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 14-5. ¶ Time magazine described the H-1 as “husky red-winged plane”. See “Record Into Beet Patch”, Time, September 23, 1935.

[37] Dietrich recalled that flush-riveting the entire H-1 was Hughes’ idea. See Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 132. ¶ Hundreds of screws joined together the sections of the fuselage; each wing was attached to the fuselage with 56 attachment bolts. See Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 13; 20.

[38] “The modifications called for higher than standard compression in the cylinders which available standard fuels could not tolerate. . . . At 100% power, the engine was estimated to burn 100 gallons of fuel per hour.” Dennis Parker, “H-1”, a link from the Wright Tools homesite. Parker was a member of the design and research team for the Howard Hughes H-1 Racer Reproduction which Jim Wright flew in 2002. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 19. ¶ “The plumbing for the fuel tanks was complicated, as tankage for 280 gallons was built into the fuselage and wing.” Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 14; see also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 68.

[39] See Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 12.

[40]  “The fuselage of the aircraft was a highly polished aluminum structure, using aluminum skins that were butted together (rather than overlapped) for aerodynamic efficiency. . . . The one piece wooden wing was part of the fuselage and firewall structure—an innovation that increased strength and reduced weight. A huge central keel system was incorporated into the fuselage, which provided for greatly improved rigidity and strength.” Dennis Parker, “H-1”, a link from the Wright Tools homesite.

[41] See Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 15; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 19; Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 35; [HH:HLM], p. 78.

[42] Boyne, “Speed Merchant: The Ultimate Racer Howard Hughes H-1”, p. 13-4. ¶ “The pilot sat in a smoothly faired and totally enclosed cockpit during cruise. During take off and landing, the side windows were lowered into the fuselage, the windscreen slid forward, and the seat was raised to allow for more forward visibility.” “Hughes H-1 Racer”, on the www.wrightools.com website; see also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 18. ¶ “One associate said the only way it could have achieved one extra mile per hour in speed was if Hughes himself were a smaller pilot; the plane’s cockpit was formfit around Hughes’ six-foot-three-inch frame.” Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 61.

[43] Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 10.

[44] Wedell, a fellow Texan, died in a plane crash on June 24, 1934.

[45] See “New Air Speed Mark Is Set Unofficially”, New York Times, September 13, 1935, p. 10; “World Speed Mark Set By Coast Flier”, New York Times, September 14, 1935, p. 3; “Hughes Hits 353 Miles an Hour, Breaks Record, Misses Death”, p. 1; Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 30; [HH:HLM], p. 81-2; [HH:US], p. 95; Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 35; Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 61; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 22. ¶ “Fliers of those days were a superstitious lot, and some of Howard’s fellow aviators tried to dissuade him from a Friday the 13th flight. Howard had phobias galore, but no superstitions. Friday the 13th was just another flying day to him.” Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 133. ¶ A contemporary account of the H-1 describes the plane as a “red and silver sardine-shaped plane.” See “Hughes Sets 347 M.P.H. Air Record, Foils Crash Death”, p. 1. (Red license number instead of chrome yellow?) ¶ Originally opened as a private airstrip by flyer Eddie Martin in 1923, Martin Field became publicly owned in 1939 and was renamed John Wayne International Airport in 1979. It is located 35 miles south of Los Angeles, in Orange County. ¶ Dr. Albert A. Michelson confirmed the speed of light at 186,000 miles a second at Martin Field in 1930.

[46] Quoted in “World Speed Mark Set By Coast Flier”, New York Times, September 14, 1935, p. 3.

[47] Quoted in  “Record Into Beet Patch”, Time, September 23, 1935; [HH:HLM], p. 82; Hack, Hughes, p. 97; see also [HH:US], p. 95, which has Hughes saying instead, “She’ll do better than this, Ode.” Alternatively, Hughes is also quoted as saying, “She’ll do better—we’ll fix her up and try again.” See “Hughes Sets 347 M.P.H. Air Record, Foils Crash Death”, Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1935, p. 1. Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 17, has Hughes saying, “That plane can do 385 miles per hour and might have done it at this time if the cocokpit shield hadn’t blown off. . . . I only got a chance to use 900 of the 1100 horsepower available.” Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 75, has Hughes saying nonchalantly while jotting notations in a paper pad, “Did I make it?” ¶ A rumor arose that one or two bits of steel wool were found in the gas lines of the H-1 and that no one knew how the steel wool got there. Dietrich said this was not true. However, in his 1972 interview Hughes will say, “We got some kind of a fuel block or air in the fuel line.” Quoted in Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 13; see also Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 30; Dietrich, Amazing Howard Hughes, p. 134; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 71-2; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 76-7; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 17.

[48] Hughes had a friend in Jack Frye, the well-regarded President of Operations at TWA since 1934. ¶ TWA’s fleet of DC-2s was a new acquisition; 28 were delivered to the airline between May 1934 and April 1935. The all-metal twin-engine DC-2 had room for fourteen passengers and cruised at 190 mph. ¶ Transcontinental and Western Air had been established in 1930. ¶ “The number of planes in scheduled air transport service during the mid-1930s came to only about three hundred aircraft.” Bilstein, Enterprise of Flight, p. 30. ¶ In the 1930s, “There were rules of the air. . . . Planes flying westerly must fly at an altitude based in the even thousands of feet . . . And planes flying easterly based in odd thousands.” Cochran, Jackie, p. 99.

[49] Quoted in [HH:HLM], p. 83. See also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 22. ¶ We wouldn’t want to suggest that Hughes was the only pilot investigating atmospheric dynamics at this time! First, famous American pilot Wiley Post developed, with the B.F. Goodrich Company, an early version of a pressure suit with which Post, in his Lockheed Vega Winnie Mae, climbed to 40,000 feet above Chicago on September 5, 1934. (see www.acepilots.com). Then, in March 1935, Post in his Winnie Mae flew from Burbank CA to Cleveland OH in the stratosphere using the jet stream, making the journey in 7 hours and 19 minutes. Though his plane’s engines could reach only 179 mph, at times his ground speed exceeded 340 mph. Following this, from the spring of 1936, ace TWA test pilot Tommy Tomlinson performed a series of research flights high over the midwestern states in a Northop Gamma TWA deemed the “Experimental Overweather Laboratory”. Tomlinson reached altitudes of 35,000 feet, thereby discovering the jet stream, winds of 100 mph to 150 mph. ¶ “Tomlinson flew many research flights in the Gamma and catalogued scientific information in detail. His exploits contributed valuable meteorological information and demonstrated the important operational advantages that could accrue from high-altitude flight. His work helped shape the future course of transport aviation.” Rummel, Robert W., Howard Hughes and TWA (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), p. 46-9.

[50] “Hughes was by this time an original investigator of theoretical speeds; and he worked at his subject in the machine shop, in the meterological chart rooms, in the wind tunnels and in the design studios as well as in the cockpit. On every test flight he took meticulous notes on oil temperatures, manifold pressures, the effect of altitudes on engine performances and on the varying efficiencies of sundry fuel mixtures at different altitudes and humidities.” Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 78. ¶ Apart from his TWA flights, Hughes carried out a series of high-altitude experiments in which a series of timers were stationed on peaks in mountainous territory. See “Howard Hughes Builds Plane Designed to Fly 400 M.P.H.”, Washington Post, April 26, 1936, p. M10.

[51] See Cochran, Jackie, p. 100; 103; 151-2. ¶ When Hughes returned the Gamma to Cochran, she flew it in the Bendix Cross-Country Air Race in September 1936; then sold it to another pilot, Bernarr MacFadden, in 1938. ¶  “At the time of her death on August 9, 1980, Jacqueline Cochran held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any other pilot, male or female, in aviation history.” National Air and Space Museum exhibit, quoted in Cochran, Jackie, p. vii.

[52] See “10-Hour Travel From Coast Seen By Hughes After Record Flight”, New York Times, January 15, 1936; p. 21; see also Cochran, Jackie, p. 152; Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 62; Hack, Hughes, p. 98; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 23.

[53] See “Film Director Cuts Air Time From Coast”, New York Times, January 14, 1936, p. 3; “Film Producer Clips Turner’s Plane Record”, Washington Post, January 15, 1936, p. 3; “Nothing Sensational”, Time, January 27, 1936; Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 31-2; “Airliner Crosses Country In 7 Hours, Setting A Record”, New York Times, April 18, 1944, p. 1; Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 24; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 19; [HH:HLM], p. 85; Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 62; [HH:US], p. 96; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 23-4. ¶ Hughes told reporters he did not eat anything during the entire flight. Reporters also noticed that Hughes had trouble hearing their questions. See “Film Director Cuts Air Time From Coast”, p. 3; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 19. ¶ Hughes had waited three days for the most favorable weather report before attempting his flight. See “Nothing Sensational”, Time, January 27, 1936. ¶ Hughes also told reporters, “I’ve been wanting to do this for three years. I feel pretty good about it.” See “Film Producer Clips Turner’s Plane Record”, p. 3. ¶ He also said, “There isn’t a record that can’t be broken. Regular passenger ships will be making this trip in ten hours soon.” Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 32.

[54] Quoted in Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 35.

[55] See “New Air Mark Set By Movie Producer”, Washington Post, April 21, 1936, p. 20; “Hughes Sets Mark in Flight From Miami; Time is 4 Hours 21 Minutes 32 Seconds”, New York Times, April 22, 1936, p. 1; Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 32.

[56] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 97.

[57] See “Hughes Sets Mark Chicago to Coast”, New York Times, May 15, 1936, p. 27; Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, Part II, p. 32; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 20-1; Kemm, Rupert Hughes, p. 252; [HH:US], p. 96.

[58] See “Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator”, DVD documentary.

[59] See August 1, 1936 issue.

[60] Quoted in Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, p. 24; Kemm, Rupert Hughes, p. 252. ¶ 1937: “Yet little is really known about this spectacular figure. Howard has dodged personal publicity as far as he could . . .” Hughes, “Howard Hughes—Record Breaker”, p. 25.  ¶ “Annoyed by this unwelcome attention, Howard began to develop the innumerable disguises he would use for the rest of his life. He coined pseudonyms for hotel registers, grew beards and shaved them off, and adopted unusual dress habits, all with the single purpose of evading the reporters and the curiosity-seekers.” Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 20.

[61] By 1936, Hughes Aircraft had fifty employees, including fifteen engineers. See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 88. ¶ By 1936, Hughes had moved much of his Hughes Aircraft operations back to the Union Air Terminal in Burbank.

[62] “He paid Cary the greatest compliment of taking him to his secret hangar at Grand Central Airport in Glendale. Closed to all but a handful of visitors, the hangar was the site of the building of its creator’s beloved aeroplane, H-1.” Higham, Charles and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart (London: New English Library, 1989), p. 60. ¶ “In explaining his durable friendship with Hughes, Grant once said, “We certainly weren’t at all alike—maybe that’s why we liked each other so much.”[HH:US], p. 99. ¶ “Underneath the façade of raffish allure were two shy sullen boys who had been overindulged by their mothers and then ripped from their protection too early in life. They bonded firmly at the hip and remained friends throughout the remainder of their lives.” Hack, Hughes, p. 94.

[63] “In late summer 1935 Grant and Randolph Scott rented the Santa Monica beach house producer Joseph Schenck had built for his wife, the silent-screen great Norma Talmadge. Over the next few years 1018 Ocean Front hosted many star-studded Sunday parties. . . . William Randolph Hearst, Jr., recalls the beach house as a bachelor’s paradise— “There were girls running in and out of there like a subway station.”— Nelson, Nancy, Evenings with Cary Grant (New York: Citidel Press, 2003), p. 79.

[64] Site of amatory escapades too numerous to count, the beach house—actually a complex of five buildings—was a grand affair with more than one hundred and ten rooms, fifty-five bathrooms, and thirty-seven fireplaces. Consumption was as conspicuous there as at San Simeon. ¶ “The beach house, which became known as the “Versailles of Hollywood”, was the epicenter of a hurricane of social activity. . . . Entertainments there were apt to be joyous and unconventional.” Swanberg, Citizen Hearst, p. 452. ¶ Hughes got along well with Marion Davies, who was remembered by all as ‘No snob’. Most of her life was a charmed one. She  met Hearst when she was a showgirl in New York’s Ziegfield Follies. She was 16 and he was 48. Soon she broke into movies in a big way, with help from Hearst. Relocating to Hollywood around 1923, Hearst and Davies became a King and Queen of Hollywood Royalty. She made more than twenty pictures at M.G.M. between 1924-36 before giving it up to keep the party going full-time. The party continued until August 1951, when Hearst passed away. Davies followed him ten years later.

[65] Davies, The Times We Had, p. 145. She goes on to recall with amusement: “He loved ice cream, you know. He never drank or smoked, but he was an ice cream addict. He ate it by the quart. At one time I too was an ice cream fiend, and we used to have ice cream races at night. I always ate the most, so I always won.” (p. 148.) ¶ There are photographs of Hughes in German costume for a Tyrolean costume party held at Ocean House in 1934. His facial expression? Like the cat who got the cream.

[66] The S-43 was a scaled-down version of the popular four-engine S-42. Only 53 S-43s were manufactured in all, the majority of them going to the U.S. military and Pan American Airways. ¶ Hughes ordered the plane, number N440, on March 15, 1937. Hughes would keep his S-43 at his hangar at the Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale. See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 32-4. ¶ “red-leather upholstery . . . camel-colored carpeting.” Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 285.

[67] In the 1940s, Hughes and Lana Turner will have “sex on the floor of the Sikorsky while it flew at 12,000 feet on autopilot.” Hack, Hughes, p. 166. ¶ “He bought a Sikorsky S-43 seaplane and used it to entertain female movie stars . . .” Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 113. ¶ According to actress Terry Moore, in 1951 Hughes took her up in a Constellation, put it on auto-pilot, then made love to her. See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 132-3; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 156.

[68] For dimensions, see Block, Alan A., Masters of Paradise: Organized Crime and the Internal Revenue Service in The Bahamas (New Brunswick and London, Transaction Publishers, 1998), p. 58. ¶ His luxury yacht, with a crew of thirty, with Irishman Carl Flynn as captain, “became the most legendary yacht in Southern California, the grandest boat of all in a region accustomed to floating palaces. Howard used it with great effectiveness when rushing prospective conquests. . . . Some of the most desirable women in the world would be entertained on this seagoing palace, which featured a $5,000 wine cellar, a case of Napoleon brandy, and dressing rooms with a full rack of Parisian perfume plus towels, sheets, and linens monogrammed HH by nuns in Belgium.” [HH:US], p. 86. ¶ [HH:US], p. 86 says fifth-largest; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 65, says seventh-largest. ¶ “Elaborately refitted, with sumptuous furnishings of white and gold, and solid gold taps and fixtures in the bathrooms, the Southern Cross boasted a master stateroom with a vast double bed covered in wolf skins . . .” Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 66. ¶ Hughes kept the Southern Cross berthed in San Pedro, California. See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 66. ¶ See photos of the exterior and stately interior in Maguglin, Hughes: His Achievements, p. 60. ¶ The yacht had its own barber shop. See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 48-50. ¶ “Hughes once flew Ida Lupino to view his yacht; she found it draped in canvas. Says Ida: “I asked, ‘Do you ever use this boat?’ And he said ‘Nope.’ Then I asked if it just stood there with a full crew ready all the time. And he said ‘Yep.’” “People”, Time, April 3, 1972. See also Helenthal, The Keokuk Connection, p. 11.

[69] See Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 208. See also [HH:US], p. 101; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 70; Hack, Hughes, p. 96. For an account of Hughes’ second flying visit to the set, see Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 209-10.

[70] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 105. See also “Howard Hughes Held In Motor-Car-Death”, New York Times, July 13, 1936, p. 11; “Hughes, Adjudged Sober, Freed On Writ After Auto Kills Man”, Washington Post, July 13, 1936, p. 1; “Hughes is Freed In Fatal Accident”, Washington Post, July 16, 1936, p. 9.

[71] Quoted in Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 184.

[72] Quoted in Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 186.

[73] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 106.

[74] Quoted in Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 193; Hack, Hughes, p. 101; [HH:US], p. 106.

[75] Quoted in Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 193.

[76] Quoted in Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 178.

[77] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 106.

[78] See Hack, Hughes, p. 100-2; also [HH:US], p. 104-6; Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, chapter 10, “Howard Hughes and the Man He Killed”, p. 178-95; [HH:HLM], p. 86; Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 250; Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 177; Davenport, Hughes Papers, p. 41; Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 215-6.

[79] Negotiations for the plane had been carried out in secret. He received the plane in New York and flew it to Los Angeles. See “Flying Laboratory Bought by Hughes”, Washington Post, February 7, 1936, p. 10; Davies, R. E. G., TWA: An Airline And Its Aircraft (McLean, Virginia: Paladwr Press, 2000), p. 35; Hack, Hughes, p. 102; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 27.

[80] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 27; Davies, R. E. G., TWA: An Airline And Its Aircraft (McLean, Virginia: Paladwr Press, 2000), p. 35; Hack, Hughes, p. 102. ¶ Hughes flew the DC-1 with five men from Los Angeles to Dayton, Ohio, then from Dayton to New York, on August 11-12, 1936. At Dayton Hughes communicated with Major General A. W. Robbins, chief of the materiels division of the Army Air Corps. See “Hughes Lands in Dayton on Flight to New York”, Washington Post, August 11, 1936, p. X3; “Hughes’ Flight ‘Business Only’”, Washington Post, August 12, 1936, p. 4.

[81] Hughes had borrowed the plane from Dean Frankyn of Queens. North Beach Airport was bought by the city and renamed LaGuardia Field in 1939. See “Howard Hughes in Plane Crash”, New York Times, November 16, 1936, p. 15.

[82] Larger fuel tanks and longer wings (32-foot-span instead of 25-foot), among other changes. ¶ The refitted H-1 had a 14-cylinder Twin Row Wasp engine, capable of 1,100 horsepower. ¶ The cockpit contained a gyro compass, a Sperry artificial horizon, and other instruments for blind flying. ¶ “Although its wing loading of thirty-seven pounds is very high its power-load of seven pounds per horsepower is very low and it is practically a “flying engine.” “Hughes, Riding Gale, Sets Record Of 7 1/2 Hours in Flight From Coast”, The New York Times, January 20, 1937, p. 1. (Wing-loading is the weight of an airplane compared with its wing area.) ¶ “. . . his rebuilt H-1, now supercharged . . .” Dwiggins, Howard Hughes, p. 35. ¶ “A big engine with a saddle” is how mechanics described the revamped H-1, as quoted in Time magazine. See “Saddle Soar”, Time, February 1, 1937. ¶ “The plane, aerodynamically, is the most efficient ever built,” Hughes told newsmen. “It has the lowest ‘drag’ of any ship in the air.” See “Howard Hughes Builds Plane Designed to Fly 400 M.P.H.”, p. M10.

[83] “Hughes was rumored to have spent the last 30 hours before take-off working on the airplane.” Boyne, “Speed Merchant”, p. 12. ¶ Following the triumph, Hughes officiated with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at the opening of the National Aviation Show at the Grand Central Palace on January 28. ¶ Regarding his record-breaking transcontinental flight in the reconstructed H-1, Hughes told the Senate War Investigating Committee in 1947, “I don’t think that any other airplane had ever flown 332 miles an hour for even a short distance like 300 miles, and my ship accomplished it for a 2,500-mile flight. It was an astounding accomplishment, and it took the Army, with all of the Army’s airplanes, 8 years to break the record.” War Hearings, p. 24366. ¶ Hughes never flew his H-1 Racer again. Allen Russel, William Randolph Hearst’s personal pilot, flew the plane back to Los Angeles from a hangar on the east coast in 1939. See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 31. ¶ In 1957, John Glenn, five years before he became the first American to orbit the earth, would win for himself the transcontinental speed record, Los Angeles to New York, with a flight time (in a F8U fighter plane) of 3 hours, 20 minutes, more than halving Hughes’ time,—exemplifying just how fast aviation technology was progressing following Hughes’ pioneering exploits. ¶ In March 1990, a Lockheed SR-71 flew coast to coast across America in 68 minutes!

[84] Hughes’ transcontinental speed record held until January 26, 1946, when Colonel William Councill flew nonstop from Long Beach to New York City in 4 hours 13 minutes 26 seconds in a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. See Francillon, René J., Lockheed Aircraft since 1913 (London: Putnam & Company, 1982), p. 245; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 31.

[85] Quoted in Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, p. 341.

[86] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 108. ¶ “The world’s atmosphere becomes less dense with height, so that if an airman managed to climb above the weather he would get the bends from bubbles in his blood stream, be subject to immense fatigue and lack of oxygen. Since temperature drops by 1°F every 300 feet, he would be half frozen in the cockpit.” Beaty, David, The Story of Transatlantic Flight (Suffolk: Airlife Publishing Ltd, 2003), p. 8.

[87] See “Hughes, Riding Gale, Sets Record Of 7 1/2 Hours in Flight From Coast”, p. 1; “Saddle Soar”, Time, February 1, 1937; [HH:HLM], p. 87. “Hughes’s Plane Guarded”, New York Times, January 24, 1937, p. 45; Porter, Katharine The Great, p. 274-5; 280-1. [HH:US], p. 109, says Hughes landed at 12:42 p.m.

[88] From the Smithsonian Institution website: “In 1926 Clifford B. Harmon, a wealthy sportsman and aviator, established three international trophies to be awarded annually to the world’s outstanding aviator, aviatrix, and aeronaut. A fourth trophy was later created to honor achievements in space flight. The Harmon Trophy—the aviator’s award—is given for the most outstanding international achievements in the preceding year, with the art of flying receiving first consideration.” ¶ “For his 1936 aviation exploits he received the Harmon Medal, which was presented to him by President Roosevelt in Washington on behalf of the Ligue International des Aviateurs. Representatives of twenty-one countries comprising the league agreed unanimously that his were the outstanding contributions to scientific aviation in 1936.” “Hughes, 33, Holds Assorted Honors”, p. 3. ¶ For list of notable attendees of the ceremony, see “Hughes Is Given Harmon Trophy By the President”, Washington Post, March 3, 1937, p. 6.

[89] For first quote, see “Hughes, Riding Gale, Sets Record Of 7 ½ Hours in Flight From Coast”, p. 1; for second quote, see “Hughes, 33, Holds Assorted Honors”, p. 3. ¶ “a manufacturer and sportsman flyer,” wrote “Hughes Flies Here For Hop To Paris”, New York Times, July 5, 1938, p. 34.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Blue Velvet, 1:08:49 / 1:09:03  

Coming soon :

82

83

 

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

77–83

78–80 Three shots of specific political Situations meant in the Newsreel to typify the ups and downs of Kane's lifetime as a political presence in the chattering American zeitgeist. The first, a farce (Kane's newspaper propaganda to jumpstart a questionable war : "I'll provide the war." 25:28); the second, a spectacular tactical blunder (on the wrong side of the public on that issue); the third, all is right in the world : Kane and the public are one in celebrating beloved war-hero Teddy Roosevelt.

 

As for a technical issue of 80—Welles occupies the same shot as historical personage Theodore Roosevelt Jr.—it looks here as if an actor is impersonating America's 26th president, but my life doesn't depend on the point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 25, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein