Citizen Kane : Shot by Shot

[Jeff Bernstein]

(1:40:40)

The Lady from Shanghai (1947), 1:21:59

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

EARLY HAND-HELD CAMERAWORK

 

122

123

124

125

Theory : new, smaller cameras were developed for WWII, and Gregg Toland got his hands on one of them. I know I saw one 1930s film with a handheld moment, but I cannot recall the title.

 

 

 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Coming soon

[Jeff Bernstein]

Sweet Dreams : Tartuffe (1925), dr. F. W. Murnau

(23:27) Exquisite miniature work.

[Jeff Bernstein]

For our dreams

Tartuffe, 59:48

Alexander McQueen, No. 13 (SS99)

McQueen, Sarabande (SS07)

Edited February 28, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

119–126  Last Days

 

NEWSREEL NARRATOR : (119) “Kane helped to change the world, but Kane’s world now is history, and the great yellow journalist himself lived to be history, outlived his power to make it. (120) Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, (121–125) never photographed, an emperor of newsprint continued to direct his failing empire, vainly attempted to sway, as he once did, the destinies of a nation that had ceased to listen to him, ceased to trust him. (126) Then last week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane.”

 

119

This is (evidently) a bequeathment ceremony to an institution : the construction of a new building possibly with Kane’s name on it.

 

119 and 120 sustain the Newsreel’s centrally-structured “grand building” motif. Once, the complicated Charles Foster Kane naturally evoked imagery of such elaborate structures. Now he has to make such metaphors happen : he must conjure his own celebrations into being, by paying for them. The construction of a building in his honor is a trip down memory lane; an I do not know when to quit; also an I am important! and Remember me! plea from Charles Foster Kane.

 

At this bricklaying ceremony in Kane’s honor, at first glance the man looks lordly. He is American royalty, and his beautifully-made garments, a formal topcoat (note the hidden buttons) finished with a top hat, give him an authoritative presence.

 

But the Newsreel overlays jolly music in jeering contrast to Kane—because American icon Kane goofs. The old man absent-mindedly spills mortar on himself as he is delivering his ceremonial words.

 

Some lackey enters the frame to brush the detritus from his topcoat, a further infringement of the solemn tone of the occasion.

 

The Newsreel includes this footage in order to have a laugh at the fumbling, awkward Kane. The Newsmen are overjoyed that the grand Kane has been reduced to a figure of fun.

 

120

Here, Kane looks bewildered and out of it—not the deportment of a man enjoying the solemnity of the occasion. Kane is out of sync; simply going through the motions—badly, first with his goof, and subsequently with abrupt, ungraceful gestures. As a stone is winched away Kane looks abruptly behind him at the sudden movement. The Guest of Honor is not going with the flow : he seems a puzzle piece in the wrong puzzle. This august presence in elegant garments is goofy, distracted, off in his own world, seemingly close to senile, a figure of derision to the Newsmen.

 

Only one single photograph is taken in the shot (if the flashbulb is any indication of this). The one lone flashbulb conveys the newsworthiness of the event. Once Kane was besieged by photographers (22–23), but not now.

 

There is a simulated jump cut at 11:45. A simulated jump-cut appeared earlier at 8:55 (90).

 

121

“Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace”

 

Does the patient reader recall the allusion to the “Bits of Literature” performer (94)? Now it is Kane writing bits of material. Note the crumpled sheet of paper at his feet. How can Kane’s words not be drivel, since he is so out of touch with the times? Yet his words may enter his newspapers anyway. Still and all, Time employs its poetic justice : the newspapers themselves very quickly degenerate to rubbish (114).

 

The Newsreel has jeered at and humiliated Kane, but now would have us symphathize with the Monster. As the Newsreel Narrator intones, “Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited”, the music turns melancholy. We are meant to sympathize with the isolated and the lonely person.

 

Why not feel melancholy? This shot evokes Time grading into Lostness : the ancient sculptures from two different civilizations frame a Kane who is himself Ancient History.

 

Gregg Toland’s strong diagonal conveys (a) unsettlement, (b) the rapid movement of Time, (c) the skew of things; (d) whatever else. The shot is asymmetrical in a number of ways. Kane ofter occupied the center of the screen in the Newsreel (as in 74, 76, 80, 85, 86, 87, 90, 93, 97, 100, 105, 108, 109, 110). But the Newsreel has begun to shift him sidewise from the center. In 117–118 he is standing just off screen-center, sharing the screen with a nondescript reporter (we’ll get to that). In 119–120, at the goofy bequeathment ceremony, he is standing off-center. And now here : the most awkward construction yet (arguably). Look how the sculpture on the left reduces the stature of Kane’s presence. The elements of the location overawe the character, reducing him to one more (alas) inert object in the outlay.

 

Recall the deft filmmaking that conveys the Mercedes seeming to surround its driver Richard Gere (i.e., to contain—in the sense of ‘confine’ or even ‘extend a power over’ or ‘restrain in subjection’ or even, surprisingly—until the film's end clears this up for us—‘repress’) in American Gigolo (1979), at :46–126. Paul Schrader’s Situation there is obviously symbolic, too.

 

121 includes a lighting effect of hypnotic horizontal wavering, reflections from the swimming pool on the awning and upright classical scupture and fixtures.

 

The horizontal wavering reflection may express the feeling of slow time. We feel time is moving slowly, yet before we know it we're at our end. The shot therefore may include the following contrast : the quick-swooping diagonal (fast time) as opposed to the hypnotic wavering (slow time).

 

122

The shot is dominated by the shape of an X. On this visual point I could flood this post with screenshots of The Departed (2006), but let’s move on.

 

Can we agree that an X is a generally negative symbol in many contexts?

 

We might say that Kane himself is crossed out—as the Narrator says over this : “a nation that had ceased to listen to him”.

 

The fence recalls NO TRESPASSING. There may as well be a “CLOSED” sign as well (as in 111, 112, 113, and 114).

 

The wooden fence is softer in vibe than the chain-link fence, suggesting the softness of old age.

 

123

The Newsreel’s central structural motif of grand buildings has reduced itself to the dimensions of a wheelchair. Kane was a man who never stood being pushed around in life—examples : standing up to Thatcher, 26:16; standing up to Gettys, 1:09:39. Now Kane is being pushed around the labyrinth. The man about whom Leland said, “I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions” (50:43), is now silent.

 

124

In the Newsreel, we last see the character of Charles Foster Kane amid grass and trees : a person amid nature. He moves through a peaceful pleasant location of the natural world.

 

125

Then he is rolled over a curb and onto full-screen concrete with ominous shadows : cut to death notice.

 

126

The grand motif of the Newsreel : a monumental building.

 

Vehicular traffic and pedestrians move along, (apparently) unheeding of the death notice : life goes on. The Living have places to go and people to see. The electric lights are burning : the city is alive. Charles Foster Kane might have died 10,000 years ago. But, though the Newsreel Narrator told us, “Kane’s world now is history” (119), the world he represented—Tyranny—lives on in 2023.

 

Note the contrast of light and dark between 125–126.

 

The Newsreel presents Kane’s death notice with solemn music. The Newsreel ridiculed the man but now attempts to squeeze a little sympathy out of its subject. So Kane is universalized : “death, as it must come to all men”. . . .

 

Why would the Newsreel want to generate sympathy for Charles Foster Kane? Theory : This was done in order to, paradoxically, be a “feel good” production (i.e., objectively and entertainingly informative).

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

“Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace”

 

NEWSREEL NARRATOR : (119) “Kane helped to change the world, but Kane’s world now is history, and the great yellow journalist himself lived to be history, outlived his power to make it. (120) Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, (121) never photographed, an emperor of newsprint continued to direct his failing empire, vainly attempted to sway, as he once did, the destinies of a nation that had ceased to listen to him, ceased to trust him. (122) Then last week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane.”

 

Emperor : the Newsreel’s dig at his failed bid for governor. The gibe of emperor of news print is also conditioned by the phrase great yellow journalist himself.

 

*

 

“The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens (1922)

 

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

*

 

“The Emperor of Ice Cream” by Wallace Stevens (1922)

 

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

 

Evocation of energy, of complacent civilization, of grandness, of the domestic and the feminine. Here Now for a Limited Engagement : Life.

 

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

 

Evocation of the pointlessness of facts in light of the sensual idleness of the Now.

 

Let be be finale of seem.

 

Who perpetually asks, “What is going on” in a responsible manner? People just live and hope for the best.

 

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

 

Ice cream melts. Imagine an arm deteriorating to dust as it stretches to high heaven. We lord over an ever-accelerating deterioration, yet feel superior (the honorific “Emperor”, for example).

[Jeff Bernstein]

Madame DuBarry (1919), dr. Ernst Lubitsch

(1:00:38)

[Jeff Bernstein]

Emphasizing the lens

Welles : “Read the Inquirer!”

 

That is to say : Now watch my movie!

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

117

REPORTER : Is that correct?

 

KANE : Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio.

 

Asking a question of Kane. Kane as emblem of Reason. Kane has answers. Kane is confidence.

 

Just here, Welles makes a joke. Howard Hughes’ around-the-world flight was one of America’s most newsworthy events of 1938. Another took place over the national radio airwaves on October 30, 1938 : Orson Welles’ dramatization of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Presented in the form of news bulletins and so on—the same realism-game as the Newsreel—Welles’ broadcast fooled the American public into believing an alien attack was actually underway within the continential United States. Pockets of hysteria broke out, and subsequently a contrite Welles apologized to the nation for something or other. We can imagine the Reporter asking Welles, right before his first heard question, “You actually sparked that national hysteria?”

 

So now a joke, meant to be received by the Spectator in the Dual Way we're used to by now: as a phenomenon both in the Newsreel and in CK : so, therefore, having two meanings at face value :

 

KANE : Don’t believe everything you hear on the radio.

 

118

KANE : Read the Inquirer. (Smiles at camera.)

 

REPORTER: How did you find business conditions in Europe?

 

KANE : How did I find business conditions in Europe, Mr. Bones? With great difficulty. (Laughter.) With great difficulty.

 

A silly joke revelatory of his outdated status. Intensifying his inconsequence, the old man repeats his punchline. Kane’s off in his own pleasantly chucklesome world. But he has always been in his own world. Recall a line of the admittedly disgrunted Leland's : “He never believed in anything except Charlie Kane.” (50:46)

 

Kane is in high spirits, in part (possibly) because he is once more the center of media attention, however small. Some members of the public (presumably?) are laughing along with him, so he has an audience to enjoy and play to—possibly the last audience of his life. Possibly the last strangers to see him alive.

 

REPORTER: Are you glad to be back, Mr. Kane?

 

KANE : I’m always glad to be back, young man. I’m an American. Always been an American. Anything else? When I was a reporter, we asked them quicker than that. Come on, young fella.

 

REPORTER: What do you think of the chances for war in Europe?

 

KANE : I talked with the responsible leaders of England, France, Germany and Italy. They’re too intelligent to embark on a project which would mean the end of civilization as we now know it. You can take my word for it, there will be no war.

 

The last words of Charles Foster Kane as heard by the American public are dead wrong.

 

Certainty. Confidence. What did these bring Kane in the end? Your humble author speculates what may be now travelling through a mind or two : “That character made dumb mistakes. I won’t make those. I’ll be one of the lucky ones!”

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

THE RKO STUDIOS YEARS

At the outset of 1948 Howard Hughes was once more resting at Cary Grant’s Beverly Hills home. In a recent profile, the New York Times had described the “lanky and somber” Hughes as “taciturn, ill-dressed and always preoccupied with problems.”[1]

 

Faith Domergue was out of Hughes’ love life, meaning the house he had leased for her on Sarbonne Drive was now virtually empty. (When Jane Russell visited the Sarbonne mansion for a business meeting on Christmas Eve, 1947, Hughes’ 42nd birthday, she was “appalled” at what she saw. “It resembed a mausoleum, all marble and cold, with white sheets covering all the furniture,” she recalled. She discovered that Hughes chose to sleep in a small den which resembled an office. “Why the hell don’t you buy something cosy?” she asked him. “Well, you know, Jane,” he replied, “I don’t pay much attention to such things.”[2]He sold the property within the year.

 

Soon Hughes relocated to Bungalow 19 of the Beverly Hills Hotel, what would become his private base in Hollywood on-and-off until 1961.[3]

 

BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL. The Beverly Hills Hotel at 9641 Sunset Boulevard is an indelible icon of Tinseltown. The “Pink Palace” surrounded in palm trees has been the scene of deal-making and carousing since the Golden Age of Hollywood, and no montage of Hollywood sights is complete without it. Originally built in 1912, the building was one of the first constructions on Sunset Boulevard. The crescent wing, a four-story addition featuring the distinctive “Beverly Hills Hotel” in script on the façade, was added in 1949. The Hotel features the famous Polo Lounge (opened 1934), an intrinsic fixture of Hollywood mythology. “More show business deals blossom or bust in the several forest green rooms of the Polo Lounge than in any other place in America,” noted journalist Bob Woodward, and the reference is apt here: Champion dealmaker Hughes felt right at home in the epicenter of Hollywood dealmaking.[4] “The most celebrated oasis for drinking and mingling in the United States,” wrote Sandra Lee Stuart, the hotel’s biographer, who pulled out all the stops to describe the hotel’s allure: “The meeting place, trysting spot, love nest, cloister, front stage, home, and waystop for the beautiful, the rich, the powerful. . . . The intoxicating, bawdy, dream-built, passionate, erotic Beverly Hills Hotel, with its gardens reeking of sex and scented with romance.”[5]

 

Behind the hotel, a number of bungalows were hidden away in relative seclusion amid twelve acres of gardens, palms and jacarandas. Hughes chose to stay in the bungalows because of the secrecy they afforded him. As he could park his car and reach his bungalow via an rear alleyway, he could come and go as he pleased without having to walk through the lobby. (Even so, everyone in Hollywood at one time or another is going to claim to have seen Hughes lurking in the garden or drinking in the Polo Lounge.[6]) From the outside, Hughes’ bungalow resembled a modest, two-story house such as what is seen in most every American suburban enclave from coast to coast. The front entrance even had an aluminium screen door, a small-town touch. There was a modest, well-manicured lawn, with trees here and there spreading shade and offering a flavor of seclusion; while high shrubs blocked the bungalow’s windows. The gardens were scented with a heady mixture of pointsettas, hibiscus, gardenias, ginger, jasmine, oleander, hyacinth; the mood was calm, retired, sequestered. Hughes had at least one guard on duty at his bungalow hideaway all the time.[7] He also utilized aides operating out of Romaine Street to maintain the needs of his habitation.

 

In the late 1940s Hughes began drafting memos which can only be described as strange. Here is an early example, regarding the finer points of opening a door:

 

First use six to eight thicknesses of Kleenex pulled one at a time from the slot in the box . . . then fit them over the door knob and open the bathroom. Please leave the bathroom door open so there will be no need to touch anything when leaving. This same sheaf of Kleenex may be employed to turn the spigots so as to obtain a good force of water.[8]

 

Another, from December 1950:

 

It is extremely important to me that nobody ever goes into any room, closet, cabinet, bathroom, or any other area used to store any of the things which are for me—either food, equipment, magazines, paper supplies, Kleenex—no matter what. It is equally important to me that nobody ever opens any door or opening to any room, cabinet or closet or anything used to store any of my things, even for one-thousandth of an inch, for one-thousandth of a second.[9]

 

The bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel served as Hughes’ love-nest, business office, and—primarily—his sanctuary from a world of germs. As the Beverly Hills Hotel came to be Hughes’ primary place of residence in Los Angeles during the decade of the 1950s, it was exquisitely fitting that the building—when seen from above—was in the shape of an H.

 

*

 

At this time Hughes the lover will be as busy as ever. 1948 included Hughes’ marriage proposals to starlets Terry Moore, Vera Miles[10], and Jean Peters, as well as a dalliance with shapely dancer Cyd Charisse[11]. Meanwhile Hughes made the rounds of his more than one hundred starlets under contract to his new movie studio and installed each in her own property throughout Los Angeles.

 

Taking another year almost at random, in one twelve-month period from 1954 to 1955 Hughes proposed marriage to Hollywood stars Kathryn Grayson (May), Ava Gardner (July), and Susan Hayward (early 1955). “He was like the little boy with his hands and mouth full of cookies,” Terry Moore recalled. “He had to drop some to grab for more.”[12]

 

In this period, Christina Crawford met Hughes one evening while having dinner with her mother, actress Joan Crawford, at Don the Beachcomber’s restaurant in Hollywood. Christina recalled, “He was a strange, tall, rumpled man who seemed ill at ease . . .  with himself.”[13]

 

By the early 1950s Hughes’ personal net worth was usually estimated at around $200 million.[14] His empire will be grossing upwards of $50,000 an hour—at a time when the average family income in the U.S. was between $3,000 and $5,000 a year.[15] The Hughes Tool Company is a hundred-million dollar a year company, and Hughes Aircraft, growing to fifteen thousand employees during the decade, will not be far behind on the balance sheet. At TWA, Ralph Shepard Damon became president of operations (the third so far under Hughes) on January 25, 1949, and this eminently capable leader remained at the helm until his untimely death on January 4, 1956. In this period, Hughes’ companies were in the hands of capable executives, leaving Hughes with the free time and ample funds to follow his own inclinations. Hughes buys a movie studio in Hollywood, but during the early 1950s, up to 1954, he will be for the most part unseen in Hollywood, preferring to haunt the neon nightspots of Las Vegas, the 24-hour city of sin where he will be enjoying dalliances with—among a legion of others—the young Hollywood starlets Mitzi Gaynor and Debra Paget, both of whom, of course, he promised to marry. Hughes’ Nevada sojourn inspired Hughes to produce a film at RKO called The Las Vegas Story (1952).

 

All the while a dark cloud is overtaking the man. If Howard Hughes the Tycoon is getting richer and richer by the hour, by 1955 Howard Hughes the man’s incipent madness will be full-blown and overpowering, leading him into his dark and dismal later years.

 

*

 

May 18, 1948 was a fateful day in the history of RKO Studios, one of the largest and most well-respected studios in Hollywood. It was the day that Howard Hughes assumed its ownership. RKO from that moment on spun into a financial decline from which it never recovered.

 

 

RKO RADIO PICTURES. RKO movies began with what is arguably the most eyecatching and atmospheric “tag” in Hollywood studio history: the image of a huge radio tower standing atop the spinning earth transmitting beeping signals into space.

 

RKO Radio Pictures, or simply RKO Studios, emerged out of the merger of three different companies, each dedicated to a particular and complementary aspect of the art of film. In February 1926, millionaire Joseph P. Kennedy (John F. Kennedy’s father) purchased the The Film Booking Offices of America, Inc. (FBO), a small Hollywood film studio specializing in low-budget quickies for low-brow audiences. In January 1928, just months after the immensely successful release of the first “talkie” (Warner Brothers’ The Jazz Singer), Kennedy’s FBO joined forces with David Sarnoff’s Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which had just invented a new audio system for recording dialogue for synchronized-sound motion pictures. In October 1928, FBO merged with the Keith, Albee and Orpheum chain of vaudeville theatres, which, when converted to sound movie houses, insured that the new enterprise would have an assured outlet for its pictures. The new entity was named the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corporation. It advertised itself at the time of its establishment as “One Mammoth Unit Of Showmanship”.[16] RKO Radio Pictures was, of course, the motion picture production side of the corporation. In 1929 the RKO studios lot opened on 780 Gower Street in the heart of Hollywood. RKO was the first new major studio of the Age of the Talkies.

 

The film studios of Hollywood’s Golden Age were motion picture assembly lines. A studio had under contract both the actors who performed in front of the cameras, as well as all of the technicans behind the camera who made the picture. A studio owned its own soundstages, lighting equipment, costume department, and so on—everything necessary to get a movie made. At this time each of the major film studios also owned its own chain of cinemas across America. This insured that Hollywood’s film output would reach audiences without fear of being squeezed out by any competition.

 

RKO survived to become one of the “Big Five” studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The others were MGM, Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, and Paramount. RKO’s output in the 1930s and 1940s included some of the most memorable films of all time. King Kong (1933); Becky Sharp (1935), the first full-length Technicolor production; Bringing Up Baby (1938); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941), often described as one of the greatest Hollywood films of them all; also Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943); It’s A Wonderful Life (1946); Out of the Past (1947), considered one of the most significant of film noirs; nine Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, including Top Hat (1935), the studio’s biggest hit of the thirties; a series of Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films.

 

But the ground-breaking artistry of Citizen Kane was an aberration for the studio. The majority of pictures RKO distributed down through the years were forgettable B pictures. In the 1940s RKO become known as the studio for “entertainment, not genius”. In three decades of filmmaking RKO won the Academy Award for Best Picture only twice: Cimarron (1930) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

 

RKO was always the most unstable of all the major studios. While MGM had Louis B. Mayer and Fox had Darryl F. Zanuck, for example, RKO never had a long-term leader to guide its fortunes and shape its destiny. Unlike the others of the “Big Five”, RKO was never stamped with the personality and authority of a “Mogul”. The top office of RKO Radio Pictures might as well have been fitted with a revolving door. No less than seven Production Heads came and went in the twenty years before Howard Hughes assumed control. With every new president came a shift in creative policy. Of the five majors, only RKO never cultivated a particular in-house style. Also, RKO never achieved the level of financial success of its main competitors; so that, while MGM’s films were renowned for their lavish production values and technical grace, RKO’s films were usually made on the cheap.

 

Almost from first to last, the behind-the-scenes history of RKO was marked by creative and financial chaos.[17] The climax of the chaos came with the advent of Howard Hughes, Studio Chief.

 

*

 

DETAILS OF HUGHES’ RKO BUY. Self-made multimillionaire Floyd Bostwick Odlum, President of the Atlas Corporation, had begun buying shares in RKO in 1935, and by 1940 he was majority stockholder and chairman of the board of RKO. Between 1942 and 1946 RKO was at its most successful, paying out to its shareholders dividends averaging $3,500,000 a year.[18] In 1947, Odlum, for reasons of his own, decided to get out of the picture business.[19] He asked around $9 million for his 929,000 shares.[20] There were no immediate takers. In mid-January, Howard Hughes entered the scene. 

 

At the time, Odlum described his initial talks with Hughes as “general and tentative conversations relating to the purchase of RKO stock” which “could hardly be classified as negotiations.”[21] On January 15, the New York Times reported on the Odlum-Hughes talks while pointing out that “Mr. Hughes recently announced his temporary retirement from the field of independent motion-picture production to devote himself to his aviation interests.”[22] Later that same day—January 15—Odlum referred to his talks with Hughes: “Under today’s almost panicky conditions in the production end of the movie industry, it is doubtful if any person or group of substance with the industry has the combined money and nerve to meet the faith of the Atlas Corporation in the industry.”[23] If Odlum was trying to give Hughes a little pinch in public, he needn’t have bothered. With respect to the RKO negotiations, Hughes was only getting started.

 

Hughes’ negotiations for the purchase of RKO were carried out in his customary protracted and hyper-detailed manner. Hughes and Odlum negotiated on and off for the next four months, most of the time at Odlum’s 900-acre estate in Indio in Riverside County, around 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Situated on the edge of the Mojave Desert, Odlum’s home was an oasis of flowers and fruits and vegetables, including grapefruits, tangerines, and dates. There was a swmming pool and nine-hole golf course. Inside, the ranch house was elaborate, with fabulous furnishings. Over the years the Indio house welcomed many of the world’s rich and powerful figures, including presidents of the United States.

 

Born in 1893, son of a midwestern Methodist minister, Odlum was a bespectacled, balding, straight-laced man, a wiry 5’ 8” ½, never showy in dress or manner. He founded the Atlas Corporation in 1923 and proved to be a financial wizard, building Atlas from a $40,000 company into a $75 million company by the early 1950s. His Atlas Corporation was a remarkably diverse empire encompassing all manner of companies; at one time or another Odlum was involved with—for example—Paramount Pictures; Greyhound Bus Company; Hilton Hotels Corporation; Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation; Madison Square Garden; Utilities Power & Light Corporation; the Italian Superpower Corporation; Bonwit Teller, Inc.; Hearst Consolidated Publications; and the United Fruit Company. Though he was one of America’s richest businessmen, life wasn’t all rosy for Odlum. He suffered from crippling arthritis from 1941.

 

Odlum’s wife was Jacqueline Cochran, the famous aviatrix whom Hughes had known since the 1930s. Of the RKO negotiations she later recalled, “He must have been to our house sixty times. He just loved to deal. He loved to deal.”[24] (“Negotiating was an important essence of living, a self-satisfying, intellectual pursuit, and a mind-against-mind contest that he really enjoyed,” noted Hughes biographer Verl L. Frehner.[25]) According to Bartlett and Steele, “Hughes usually arrived about midnight, and he and Odlum would then spend hours haggling, either in Odlum’s ranch house or in Hughes’ car parked out front.”[26] Like Hughes, Odlum was a man with a profound hatred of desks, and never did his business from behind one. Vi Strauss Pistell, the housekeeper at the Indio house, recalled, “Mr. Hughes would come to dinner and not eat anything. . . . He used to open and close all the doors, even closet doors, to make sure no one was hiding.”[27] These must have been some of the details Fortune magazine had in mind when it described the Hughes-Odlum RKO talks as “some of the most bizarre negotiations in film history.”[28]

 

On April 8, Odlum announced, “The conversations between my old friend, Howard Hughes, and myself relating to the purchase and sale of RKO stock have been terminated without agreement.”[29]

 

(Meanwhile Hughes had legal troubles on another front. Both the Hughes Tool Company and the Hughes Aircraft Company were indicted by a Federal grand jury in Honolulu on April 22, 1948. Following an extensive investigation into the matter by the FBI, the Justice Department accused the Hughes companies of conspiracy to defraud the Government. The indictment charged that Glenn Odekirk and Joseph Petrali at Hughes Aircraft had used a war veteran named Frederick M. Llewellyn as a front to purchase six C-47 surplus war planes at a veterans’ priority discount of $17,500 each.[30] Pleading no contest, the Hughes Aircraft employees were fined $10,000, paid by Hughes.[31])

 

On May 3, 1948, the two tycoons issued a press statement to the effect that a “tentative agreement” for the RKO sale has been reached.[32] Hughes would buy Odlum’s 929,020 shares for a total of $8,825,690.[33] (In all RKO had 3,024,911¾ shares outstanding.[34]) On May 11, Hughes, for reasons which remained unknown, paid $9.50 a share, which was about 50 cents over the market price. (“With tax carrybacks and deductions, the price would be about $5,000,000 out-of-pocket,” reported John Keats in Howard Hughes. “A $10,000,000 loan was negotiated with the Mellon Bank.”[35]) Odlum announced that he had accepted the Hughes offer because Hughes “indicated plans” for RKO.[36] All told, Odlum cleared a $17 million profit on RKO.[37] He also retained 300,000 option warrants on RKO stock and thereby remained chairman of the board for the time being.[38] Hughes, owning about 24 percent of the stock, was now majority owner of the fifth-largest film studio in America. The transaction was hyped as “the largest cash deal in Hollywood history” up to that time.[39]

 

Hughes acquired the primary RKO lot at 780 North Gower Street and a secondary backlot at 9336 Washington Boulevard, comprising 26 sound stages in all. There was also a 89-acre ranch in Encino in the San Fernando Valley.[40] Hughes acquired the studio’s stockpile of 400 unproduced stories; its contracts with 25 stars to appear in 43 films; its library of 740 feature films and 1,250 produced films in all.[41] Hughes also gained control of RKO’s nationwide theatre chain of 124 cinemas.[42]

 

*

 

Within weeks of Hughes’ purchase of RKO, Hughes took to the sky in a rescue operation up the Pacific coast. As a result of heavy rain and melting snow, the Columbia River flooded its banks in places along its route through Oregon and Washington State in May 1948. It proved to be one of the five-worst weather events in the American Northwest in the twentieth century. On May 30, 1948, Vanport, Oregon’s second-largest city at the time, was inundated. The flood lasted 45 days and and 15 people lost their lives. According to author Richard Lemon, “Hughes once flew an airlift to the Columbia River region to bring out hundreds of flood victims, then strictly forbade his aides to tell the press about it.”[43]

 

*

 

When Hughes obtained controlling interest of RKO in May 1948, he pledged to take a hands-off approach with his new studio. RKO President Nathaniel Peter Rathvon announced in a press statement at the time, “I have had numerous conversations with Mr. Hughes and we seem to be in agreement in all matters of policy, and there is no reason to assume that it will be otherwise in the future.”[44] Rathvon should have heeded that old chestnut—never assume.

 

A second statement made by Rathvon in the Hollywood trades in this period turned out, in hindsight, to be a spectacularly erroneous prediction: “The entry of Howard Hughes into the organization ensures the continued growth of RKO.”[45]

 

In May 1948, the studio had 2,000 employees on the payroll. Hughes issued a statement promising a sixty-day moratorium on hirings and firings. In July 1948, almost as soon as the sixty days had passed, Hughes discharged no less than 700 employees.[46] “This was the beginning of the plague years for RKO,” noted RKO’s historian Richard B. Jewell.[47] By the end of the year more than 300 more employees had either quit or been laid off.[48] And it wasn’t only the below-the-line talent which was cut loose. In December 1948, superstar Ginger Rogers’ seven-year contract with the studio was, as she recalled, “mutually cancelled.”[49] Hughes told newsmen during this grim corporate carnage, “My life is not exactly going to be dull for the next two years. I am really cooking at RKO and things are going to pop. I’ll make news for you.”[50] Hughes the studio chief indeed generated news, but not for the reasons he might have envisioned. By 1952, the studio’s workforce will be reduced to less than 500 employees.[51] “A panic-stricken studio,” described Tony Thomas in Howard Hughes in Hollywood. “No other chapter in Hollywood history compares in any way with Hughes’ five years as the commandant of RKO.”[52]

 

*

 

Throughout the 1940s RKO Radio Pictures had been producing many dozens of films a year, releasing, for example, forty films in 1947. Hughes buys the studio in 1948 and the assembly line suddenly stalls. In 1949 RKO produces only twelve new films. With each passing year of Hughes’ reign the number of productions will continue to decrease. In 1954, RKO distributed into the cinemas no more than a half-dozen of its own productions, an embarrassingly small number from one of Hollywood’s Big Five movie studios.

 

Hughes did not buy a film studio because he was inspired to create great art. RKO’s scanty output during the years of Hughes’ ownership was composed for the most part of second-rate melodramas and B-picture westerns. If RKO did happen to distribute a quality picture during Hughes’ reign, it was almost a foregone conclusion that the film had been made independent of the studio.[53] Hughes produced virtually no ‘A’-list prestige pictures which might have been recognized at the Academy Awards. Between 1948 and 1955, not one of RKO’s own self-produced productions would win an Oscar.[54]

 

Evidently Hughes didn’t seem to care overmuch about the financial side of running the studio either. For every year of Hughes’ reign as owner and managing director of production, the studio’s balance sheet, with one (questionable) exception, showed a deficit.

         

                    RKO Studios balance sheet:[55]

1946: profits of $12,187,904.

                                    1947: profits of $5,085,847.

                                    1948: HUGHES ASSUMES CONTROL: losses of $5,288,750.

                                    1949: losses of $3,721,415.[56]

                                    1950: losses of $5,832,000.[57]

                                    1951: claimed to have made profits of $334,626.87.[58]

                                    1952: losses of $10,178,033.[59]

                                    1953: losses of over $15 million.[60]

                                    1954: “RKO was progressing from bad to hopeless.”[61]

                                    1955: Hughes sells an ailing RKO in July.

 

Hughes’ sense of judgment was eroding even if his will to get his own way remained solid, which was a recipe for disaster. Though he allowed Noah Dietrich to run Hughes Tool Company, and though he had recently hired three able executives to manage Hughes Aircraft, and a trustworthy president to steer TWA, Hughes would not allow anyone to run his film studio, even though he was ‘off the lot’ virtually all of the time and unavailable for consultation. He bought the studio then left it to drift wayward toward financial catastrophe. Screenwriter W. R. Burnett, who worked for Hughes in the 1930s and 40s, recalled, “Hughes didn’t mismanage RKO. He didn’t manage it at all. He didn’t care. It was a write-off.”[62]

 

*

 

Director Fritz Lang, who made Rancho Notorious for RKO in 1952, later recalled an oft-told Hollywood anecdote:

 

When the news got round that Hughes had bought RKO all the big shot producers who usually turned up for work at 11 o’clock or later were there at 9 a.m. awaiting the new boss who never appeared. This went on for about a fortnight until they said ‘Oh the hell with it’ and lapsed back into their old ways.

Then, after several weeks, Howard Hughes finally appeared. I’ll never forget it. He had a large entourage and never spoke to anyone. He went through the whole studio, looked at every stage, every shop, and after two hours and twenty minutes all he said was ‘Paint it’. Then he walked out and was never seen again.[63]

 

*

 

N. Peter Rathvon, RKO’s President, and Dore Schary, Head of Production, both left the studio within weeks of Hughes’ arrival.

 

In the case of Dore Schary, Hughes met with him at Peter Rathvon’s home in Beverly Hills a week after the RKO purchase. “Hughes simply touched my hand rather than shook it,” Schary recalled.[64] Though Schary had earlier voiced qualms about Hughes taking over at RKO, the meeting seemed to go well, even if Hughes exhibited his customary hard-of-hearing behavior of staring at the floor.[65] “Everything will stay the way it was,” Hughes told him.[66] “You can run the studio,” he promised. “I haven’t got any time.”[67]

 

Two weeks later Schary was out. Hughes and Schary butted heads telephonically over two details: Hughes didn’t want the WWII film Battleground made, nor did he want the actress Barbara Bel Geddes to appear in Bed of Roses. Schary told Hughes he was quitting, but agreed to see Hughes face-to-face to discuss their differences the next day.

 

One early June afternoon, Schary traveled to Cary Grant’s Beverly Hills home and met with Hughes. “There wasn’t a paper, a cigarette, a flower, a match, a picture, a magazine—there was nothing except two chairs and a sofa,” Schary recalled. “It had the look of a place someone had just moved out of or was moving into. The only sign of life,” Schary went on, “was Hughes, who appeared from a side room in which I caught a glimpse of a woman hooking up her bra before the door closed.” [68]

 

The meeting changed nothing. “He wanted a messenger boy,” Schary recalled, “not a studio head.”[69] Schary left RKO officially on June 30, 1948, and moved to Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, where he became vice president in charge of production. He bought the Battleground script from Hughes for $20,000. “It was my first personally produced picture at M.G.M.,” Schary recalled, “and turned into a box-office and critical smash hit.”[70] Battleground became the second highest grossing film of 1949.[71] It was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and won two, for Screenplay and Cinematography. Hollywood historian Otto Friedrich noted, “After a deficit of $6.5 million during the fiscal year before Schary’s arrival, MGM halted its decline and made a profit of $300,000; the next year, the profits rose to $3.8 million.”[72]

 

As for Peter Rathvon, he later explained, “I agreed to remain as president on the understanding that I would function without interference from Mr. Hughes.”[73] Three weeks after Schary departed, Rathvon resigned.

 

After Schary and Rathvon jumped ship, Floyd Odlum resigned as Chairman of the Board of RKO. In November 1948, Hughes named Noah Dietrich to take Odlum’s place.

 

During Hughes’ tenure at RKO, the studio’s boardroom might as well have been fitted with a revolving door. Executives came and went.

 

*

 

Hughes’ interest would never wholly be in his movie studio. The days when he had obsessed over every detail of Hell’s Angels and The Outlaw were long over. His attention would be far too divided and scattershot for Hughes to make a positive impression at RKO. He became infamous as the unseen executive, the man who wasn’t there.

 

Similar to the experience at Hughes’ other companies, RKO’s executive committee often endeavored unsuccessfully to reach Hughes by phone. Messages were left at 7000 Romaine, but Hughes only sporadically returned his executives’ calls. One ex-RKO executive recalled,

 

If you were lucky enough to get wind of a good story property, you couldn’t even buy an option on it. If you were luckier and succeeded in interesting a star in that story, you had to move on both deals within a few hours. The chances were that even by next day both possibilities would be snapped up by somebody else. Chances also were that it would be three weeks later that Hughes let you know the option might be okay.[74]

 

Sometimes an employee of Romaine Street telephoned one of the executives with the message that Hughes wanted to get in contact; the executive was instructed to check into a specific room at a specific hotel and await Hughes’ phone call. “Remain there and try to stay in your room as much as possible,” the employee would be told. “Mr. Hughes will be calling you.”[75] This became known as “being on the hook.” The word got around Hollywood that Hughes would keep the unfortunate employee waiting indefinitely—days, weeks, if not longer. In the mind of the man “on the hook”, the fear of disappointing Hughes battled with the exasperation of being left in solitary confinement.

 

*

 

“ON THE HOOK”: SOME EXAMPLES. In the mid-1930s, Hughes Aircraft engineer Gus Seidel flew with Hughes to Palm Springs. Seidel’s wife met them there by car. When Hughes disappeared, Seidel and and his wife enjoyed a free week’s vacation on Hughes’ nickel while waiting for Hughes to return to fly them home.[76]

 

In the weeks following Hughes’ round-the-world flight in 1938, he instructed Gus Seidel to fly to Brooklyn to stay with the plane until Hughes returned to fly it back to Los Angeles. While Seidel waited at the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn, Hughes didn’t reappear for eight months.

 

In September 1945, Hughes left his S-43 in New York, instructing Hughes Aircraft employee Ray Kirkpatrick to stay with the plane. Weeks went by before Kirkpatrick received word that the plane would be brought back to Culver City.

 

Hughes Aircraft engineer John Glenn might have had these stories in mind when he recalled, “He’d take his flight engineer and fly to Houston and he’d say, ‘Now you stay here and watch the plane and run it every day and take care of it.’ And then he’d take off in another plane and, well, hell, maybe he’d be gone for two or three months. And there the guy would sit.”[77]

 

In 1946, an advertising man designed a $15,000 campaign of ads for The Outlaw, and flew from New York to Los Angeles to meet with Hughes for approval. He waited at a hotel for three weeks before a Hughes operative finally contacted him. One night, the adman was picked up at a gas station by a Hughes man, who drove him to Hughes at another hotel. Hughes promptly discarded the adman’s designs, produced a pad of paper and quickly sketched the advertising art which was eventually used.[78]

 

“A former Hughes executive” told the Saturday Evening Post in 1963:

 

I once learned a great deal about the family life of pigeons. I was put on standby in a Washington hotel waiting for an urgent call from Hughes. Across the way a pair of pigeons were constructing a nest on a window ledge. They finished it, the mother laid her ehhs and hatched them, they fed the brood and finally taught them to fly before Hughes called. It was actually quite fascinating, especially since I was being paid exceedingly well for this bird watching.[79]

 

When Hughes finally found the time to telephone one of his employees “on the hook”, the aggravation did not yet end there. Hughes, fanatical about secrecy, often instructed his employee to find a public phone booth and phone Romaine Street with the telephone number, which would be passed on to Hughes, who would then phone the employee back at the surveillance-free phone booth number and only then would business be carried out.[80]

 

*

 

While chaos was breaking out behind the scenes at RKO, Hughes was given the honor of appearing on the cover of Time magazine’s July 19, 1948 issue, confirming his status as one of America’s most famous businessmen and media personalities. The cover story’s headline was “The Mechanical Man.”

 

Recounting the main points of “the meteoric Howard Hughes story”, Time described Hughes as a “lone wolf, unpredicable and exasperatingly successful most of the time.” His Hughes drill bit enjoyed a remarkable 75 percent share of the world’s oil drilling market. (As a side note, his Grand Prize Lager Beer brewery on the Hughes Tool Company grounds was described as the largest brewery in Texas.) His fortune was conservatively estimated at about $145 million, and his annual net income at $10 million, but since, as sole shareholder, Hughes wasn’t required to publish company balance sheets and didn’t, it was hard to get specific. He was a businessman of exceeding mystery.

 

According to his detractors, Aviator Hughes was a “hot pilot” but also an “exceedingly reckless one”. Commenting indirectly on how the XF-11 crash had altered Hughes, the magazine described him as a “tall, gangling, aging, sick-looking man of 42.” He was portrayed as an uncharacteristic multimillionaire, one without thought of clothing or mansions. “He has no chauffeur, no cook, no valet,” Time reported, “in fact, no servants in the ordinary sense but a quartet of aides-de-camp.”[81]

 

The article alluded to the fact that Hell’s Angels, while 18 years old, was still playing in some theaters in America!

 

Hughes’ “life and eccentricities have built a lurid legend”, wrote Time, which backed this up with a sensational comment from a “crony of Hughes” who was quoted as saying, “Howard will never die in an airplane. He'll die at the hands of a woman with a .38.”

 

*

 

ROBERT MITCHUM. Hughes as studio chief ignored the gripes and grievances of many of his employees, yet he stepped up to the plate for Robert Mitchum, RKO’s biggest contract star, when Mitchum was busted for possession of marijuana on August 31, 1948. “Yes, boys, I was smoking the marijuana cigarette when you came in,” Mitchum confessed at the police station. “I guess it’s all over now. I’ve been smoking marijuana for years. I knew I’d get caught sooner or later. This is the bitter end of my career. I’m ruined.”[82]

 

Robert Mitchum was a man’s man with an imposing physique who had worked his way up from the wrong side of the tracks and early years of a hand-to-mouth existence. A hobo riding the rails from the age of fourteen and becoming a semi-professional boxer along the way, Mitchum eventually drifted to Hollywood where he broke into the film industry by winning bit parts in ‘B’ westerns in 1942, when he was twenty-five. Hard-drinking, tough, a brawler with brains, with a heavy-lidded, laidback, devil-may-care attitude, Mitchum was an attractive personality to Hughes. Both men were without airs or pretensions. Mitchum had worked for a short time at Lockheed Aircraft during the late 1930s, a detail that must have appealed to Hughes, who even gave Mitchum a private tour of the Hughes Flying Boat at Long Beach—a rare privilege that was one of Hughes’ highest form of compliment.

 

When Hughes first heard the news of Mitchum’s drug bust from one of his operatives, Hughes reportedly responded, “Who do we pay to kill this thing?” When Hughes realized that the police were not going to back off, he put one of his private lawyers to work on Mitchum’s defence.[83]

 

That Mitchum was splashed all over the newspapers and more famous than ever was a primary consideration for Hughes the movie mogul. He rushed a recently-completed Mitchum film into release (Rachel and the Stranger), and rushed a new Mitchum film into production (The Big Steal) to cash in on the publicity surrounding his star.

 

Most of The Big Steal was shot in between Mitchum’s criminal trial and sentencing in January and February 1949. Mitchum was found guilty of “conspiring to possess marijuana” and given sixty days in jail and a year and ten months probation. When Mitchum got out of jail, he was rushed to Mexico for location shooting on The Big Steal.

 

The Big Steal contained references to Mitchum’s newsworthy incarceration: more than once Mitchum’s character alludes to “the place” where he learned how to speak Spanish, and we are to take this to mean jail.

 

While Mitchum was on parole, Hughes assigned a private detective to keep an around-the-clock watch on him. Wiretaps and surveillance bugs were installed on Mitchum’s phones and in his office and studio trailer. “I’m a tall dog on a short leash,” Mitchum noted to the writer William Faulkner at a dinner party.[84]

 

Still, Mitchum harbored no hard feelings. Hughes had stood by his man from start to finish, and even once visited the actor during his spell in the state’s custody. “Any other studio chief would have hung me out to dry,” Mitchum said later.[85]

 

There was an audacious postscript to this episode. In July 1949, RKO Chief Hughes cast Robert Mitchum in Holiday Affair, a heart-warming family movie with a wistful Christmas setting. Out of all the loony personalities in show biz, perhaps only Howard Hughes would have put Mitchum in a wholesome family movie just a year after his well-publicized drug bust!

 

*

 

Hughes never appeared in person to manage affairs at RKO but maintained an office at the Goldwyn Studios a mile down the road.[86] Otto Preminger reported, “He spent many nights there making telephone calls and watching films. He never used a projectionist. He operated the equipment himself, commuting between the projection booth and the theatre.”[87] He stayed in contact with RKO via telephone primarily, and sometimes sent instructions via messengers.

 

The studio lot quickly became a bleak place. TWA employee Robert Rummel, about to be promoted by Hughes to chief engineer, recalled visiting RKO studios on Gower Street early in 1949: “As I drove past studio buildings, not a single person was to be seen. It was as if the property had been abandoned, which was virtually the case.”[88]

 

When Hughes did surface into the light at RKO, he caused uproar in the ranks by tinkering with other directors’ films which were probably better off being released as they were. Director John Sturges recalled:

 

Hughes used to sneak people into the studio to take film out so that he could run it in the evening. Then the same people would sneak the film back. We weren’t supposed to know. But we used to put little pieces of paper in each can of film, so tiny that the projectionist wouldn’t notice when the paper fell out. We knew that if those pieces of paper were missing he’d run the film.[89]

 

Hughes would not shrink away from ordering the reshooting of an entire sequence if the look of an extra struck him unfavorably. In the case of His Kind of Woman (1951) the film lurched in and out of production for over a year while Hughes reinvented scene after scene without care of financial expenditure. In most cases the only attributes of a film which motivated his personal intervention were action sequences and scenes of a sexual nature.

 

New material introduced by Hughes for His Kind of Woman included a lurid sequence in which an ex-Nazi plastic surgeon threatens Robert Mitchum’s arm with a poisonous needle. The syringe business is drawn out for over five minutes of running time. The film keeps cutting back to it, Mitchum squirming in the grip of three henchmen, his arm veins threatened. According to director Richard Fleischer, Hughes himself wrote the scene.[90]

 

In a memo regarding the production of Macao (1952), starring RKO contract star Jane Russell, Hughes the Studio Chief wrote,

 

The fit of the dress around her breasts is not good and gives the impression, God forbid, that her breasts are padded or artificial. They just don’t appear to be in natural contour. . . . It would be extremely valuable if the dress incorporated some kind of a point at the nipple because I know this does not ever occur naturally in the case of Jane Russell. Her breasts always appear to be round, or flat, at that point so something artificial here would be extremely desirable if it could be incorporated without destroying the contour of the rest of her breasts. . . . I want the rest of her wardrobe, whenever possible, to be low-necked (and by that I mean as low as the law allows) so that the customers can get a look at the part of Russell which they pay to see.[91]

 

*

 

It’s Only Money was among the first films that Howard Hughes put into production upon acquiring his new studio. It was billed as a romantic comedy starring Jane Russell, Frank Sinatra and Groucho Marx. When the film soon became bogged down with productions delays, the irony of the title was not lost on RKO’s employees. Part of the delays were down to Hughes’ unhappiness with Jane Russell’s wardrobe; he ordered all of her scenes reshot at great cost. The film, retitled Double Dynamite, wasn’t released until Christmas 1951, a full three years after it was made. A petty antagonism for Frank Sinatra, who was romancing Ava Gardner at the time, led Hughes to reduce Sinatra, the film’s star, to third billing. Double Dynamite’s advertising blared, “double delicious, double delightful and double delirious.” Audiences and critics found it singly dumb. The film lost $5,600,000 for RKO.[92]

 

*

 

One film called Jet Pilot was a particular fiasco. Hughes took over the director’s chair after an ageing Joseph von Sternberg bowed out before the picture was completed.[93] In all, no less than seven directors worked on aspects of this latest Hughes pet project.[94] Jet Pilot, starring John Wayne[95] and Janet Leigh, was shot over 17 months from 1949 to 1951—the longest shoot in RKO history—then Hughes took six years editing the close to twenty-five hours of aerial footage (accumulated from 14 different air bases across North America) down to a proper shape.[96]

 

Leigh plays a Russian spy who falls in love with Army Colonel Wayne at a U.S. military base in Alaska. Hughes ensured that Leigh’s shapely figure would not go unremarked by clothing her in breast-enhancing bras and adding a series of puerile breast jokes to the already silly screenplay. At one point, John Wayne looks at the swell of Janet Leigh’s breasts and says, “We both believe in uplifting the masses.”[97]

 

The advertising promised: “Splitting the sky like thunder/comes the picture/that hits with the impact of a sonic blast!/Howard Hughes presents/“Jet Pilot”.”

 

When the film was finally released in late 1957 (by Universal-International), not only did John Wayne’s 1949 face jar on 1957 audiences, and not only were the Air Force uniforms outdated, but the jet planes were already obsolescent and so the aerial footage was singularly uninteresting.[98] Hughes’ film lost more than $4 million.[99]

 

*

 

SHOWDOWN ON RED RIVER. Producer-director Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes’ old associate and friend, was, by 1948, among Hollywood’s most successful and prolific filmmakers, a maker of popular entertainment that never insulted the audience’s intelligence. Hawks was behind such cinematic gems as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), The Big Sleep (1946).

 

Hughes and Hawks had always gotten along because they were alike in a variety of ways. Hawks had studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University, and, a keen airman himself, had taught pilots to fly during World War I. Hawks was a resolute independent who eschewed signing a long-term contract with the Hollywood studios. He favored Cary Grant, eventually casting him in five of his films. Hawks recalled that he and Hughes had sometimes played golf together during Hughes’ early years in Hollywood.[100] (Eventually Hawks directed Hughes’ discovery Jane Russell in Gentleman Prefer Blondes in 1953.)

 

One of filmmaker Howard Hawks’ most respected films is Red River, a western starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, produced by Hawks’ own production company (Monterrey Productions) and released by United Artists in the autumn of 1948.

 

But Red River almost didn’t get released. One week before the scheduled opening date of Red River, after 450 prints of the film had already been made, Howard Hughes sought to halt the film’s distribution by taking Hawks to court for plagarism. Hughes accused Hawks of stealing specific elements of the ending of The Outlaw for the ending of Red River.[101] Hawks recalled,

 

As for the end of Red River, I told Hughes I didn’t think he made the scene very good in The Outlaw, and I said, “Some day I’ll show you how to do it.”[102]

 

Hawks made good on his promise, and he didn’t reckon on Hughes’ meddlesome legal action which threatened to inhibit the already troubled production, which had gone close to $1 million over budget.

 

The two Hollywood titans had locked horns back in 1930 when Hughes accused Hawks of stealing a scene from Hell’s Angels for Hawks’ own aviation film, The Dawn Patrol. “He was doing everything he could to keep our picture from coming out before his,” Hawks recalled, who took Hughes’ interference in stride and went on to make Scarface for the multimillionaire.[103] In 1948, Hawks would go with Hughes’ flow once more.

 

He sued me to take out a line that said, “Draw your gun.” Hughes sent down a battery of lawyers; we’d have won if we’d wanted to defend it, but finally I cut it out, and it played better without the line. I got some of the funniest telegrams from other directors—Billy Wilder sent me a telegram saying, “I own the rights to say, ‘They went that-a-way.’” And Frank Capra said, “I own the rights to say ‘I love you.’” It’s quite a good collection.[104]

 

Hawks’ Monterrey Films had gone broke. For that reason it was imperative to get Red River into the theaters. But Hawks was contractually obligated to leave for Europe to shoot a Cary Grant picture, I Was a Male War Bride, so he left instructions with his film editor, Christian Nyby, to deal with Hughes’ continued grievances with Red River. Nyby recalled having to show the disputed sequence no less than sixteen times to an obsessive Hughes, who niggled and tinkered and demanded trim after trim until Nyby finally fled the screening room in disgust and exasperation. Hughes stayed behind and cut the sequence to his satisfaction. With Hawks out of the country and Nyby sick to death of Hughes, the 450 prints of Red River ended up being shipped with the Hughes ending—if only so that the film could meet its release date.[105]

 

Neither Hughes nor Hawks bore a lasting grudge against the another. Director Hawks had certainly become used to Hughes’ meddling over the years. “Hughes and I ended up friendly afterward,” Hawks said.[106]

 

*

 

Other RKO films Hughes reworked according to his own taste, attacking elements here and there in the manner of an engineer dismantling then re-assembling mechanical components, include: The Boy With The Green Hair (1949), I Married a Communist, released as The Woman on Pier 13 (1950); My Forbidden Past (1951), The Whip Hand (1951), Slaughter Trail (1951), Two Tickets to Broadway (1951), Double Dynamite (1951), Payment on Demand (1951), At Sword’s Point (1952), Androcles and the Lion (1953), and Son of Sinbad (1955). Notice that most of these films are from 1951 or earlier, in the time when Hughes’ enthusiasm for his new studio plaything was still warm. Also notice that you may not have heard of a single one of these films.

 

*

 

RECKLESS AS EVER. Test pilot Howard Hughes had a long history of evaluating the stalling characteristics of his airplanes using unusual procedures. The 1940s included reckless moments in the Lockheed Constellation in 1943 and 1944, and the XF-11 in 1947. Early in 1949, Hughes took his recently-modified Boeing 307 Stratoliner passenger plane into the air to test fly it prior to selling it. In the cockpit beside him as co-pilot was Chalmer Bowen, Hughes Aircraft flight mechanic.

 

Hughes put the four-engined Stratoliner into a stall just 1,500 feet over downtown Los Angeles.[107]

 

*

 

Back in 1927 Mervyn LeRoy began directing pictures for Warner Bros. in the same time that Hughes began Hell’s Angels. LeRoy went on to enjoy a long career in Hollywood, directing feature films into the 1960s, but his best known effort was as producer of The Wizard of Oz (1939).[108] Back in the early years of Hollywood’s Golden Age Hughes and LeRoy became pals, and were seen around town together from time to time. It was LeRoy who had introduced a taciturn Hughes to the up-and-coming Ginger Rogers at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in 1933, leading to their seven-year off-and-on romance.[109] LeRoy and Hughes crossed paths intentionally around the time that Hughes acquired RKO. LeRoy had recently directed a film distributed by RKO, Without Reservations (1946), with John Wayne and Claudette Colbert, and Hughes was evidently pumping LeRoy, an entrenched Hollywood player, for information, recommendations and counsel regarding his new $8.8 million acquisition. In his memoirs LeRoy recalled the Hughes of 1948-49:

 

One morning, he came by in his little, unpretentious car and asked me if I would drive into Hollywood with him. We were riding along when he suddenly pulled over to the curb. He said he had to stop for a minute and asked meto come with him while he did an errand.

We went into a haberdashery and he bought a set of underwear. Then he went into the back of the store and put on his new, seventy-five-cent underwear and threw the old ones away.

“Sorry to hold you up, Mervyn,” he said, “but my underwear was dirty.”

Then there was the morning when he called me up and it was so early— about four o’clock—that he woke me out of a sound sleep.

“Hey, Mervyn,” he said, “what are you doing?”

“It’s four in the morning, Howard,” I said. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m playing polo.”

That just rolled off his back.

“Tell you why I called, Mervyn. I want to get in touch with Janet Leigh. I’m going to make a Russian picture and I think she’d be right for it.”

I told him where he could reach her, although I’ve always suspected that he had something else in mind, other than a part in a picture. But there was a picture made at the studio with a Russian background, and Janet was in it.[110]

 

*

 

CHASING JANET. Janet Leigh was a striking blonde (and the mother of striking Jamie Lee Curtis), an all-American girl who had sung in her church choir when growing up in Stockton, California. In 1946, at the age of 19, she won a film contract with MGM. She was a lady, warm, kind, polite, intelligent, and eventually well-liked in the industry—but Howard Hughes pushed her to the boiling point, and more than once.

 

It began in the late summer of 1948. While present at a party at the house of Mervyn LeRoy, her host announced, “Janet, there is someone who wants to meet you.” As a girl growing up in the 1930s she had poured over all the movie magazines and had read about the dashing, larger-than-life figure of Howard Hughes. Now here he was standing before her. She described him as “a tall, thin man, fortyish” with “sparse dark hair and a small mustache.” She thought his attire odd—white trousers; white shirt; old, ill-fitting sports coat; white tennis shoes. “Not exactly what one would imagine for such a famous personage,” she noted. “His voice was also a surprise,” she recalled. “A high, soft quality came forth.” The meeting was “bland and brief” and she quickly forgot about him. Hughes, for his part, began a campaign to win her heart.[111]

 

Not long after, she was invited to dinner with Richard Ingersoll, a talent agent. While dining at Sugie’s Tropics, a restaurant to the stars on North Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, a waiter approached and without a word set a third place at the table. Howard Hughes appeared and sat down. At the time Janet was annoyed, and later recalled:

 

Howard Hughes’ arrival certainly caused a stir. Captains and waiters hovered over the table like hummingbirds, and most of the other patrons didn’t eat—just stared. I wondered if this reaction always followed him, and if it bothered him. I found out the answer was yes to both.

 

Hughes spoke predominantly of the movie industry, and the meeting, like her first with Hughes, was, as she put it, unremarkable and “easily dismissed”.[112]

 

But the Hughes machinations continued to churn in secret all the while. One Sunday early in 1949, Ingersoll invited her for an afternoon of sailing off the coast of Balboa. When he drove up to her apartment, Janet noticed Hughes and a young woman sitting in the backseat. While apprehensive about Hughes’ appearance, Janet went ahead with the plans for the day, which turned into a “cockeyed adventure”. She was driven to the Hughes Aircraft plant where one of Hughes’ planes was gassed and ready for flight. “Howard felt it would be more convenient to fly,” Ingersoll assured her. Janet was invited to sit in the co-pilot’s seat to the right of Hughes’ in the cockpit, while Dick and the other woman hung back in the passenger cabin. Janet remained patient while Hughes flew the plane in the opposite direction to the coastline. When she saw the Grand Canyon below them, she was shocked. “I’ve been taken over the state line,” she thought. “I’ve been KIDNAPPED!” A limousine was waiting for them when Hughes landed. She was angry at the deception—“This escapade had obviously been planned. . . . I felt manipulated, scared, and said so.” Hughes apologized, and assured her no more surprises.

 

At dusk Hughes brought them back into the air and Janet was relieved to think they were heading home. Relief turned to anger when Hughes landed in Las Vegas. She was livid. “My parents will be frantic,” she complained. “I really think I should go straight home.” Ingersoll assured her they would find a telephone as soon as possible. She was led to dinner at the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino, which had been prepared for their arrival. When she was finally flown back to Culver City and returned to her apartment, “the long day took its toll,” she recalled, “in hysterics.” She broke off all contact with Richard Ingersoll, which, she hoped, would “sever the Hughes connection”.[113]

 

The biggest surprise yet awaited her. In May 1949, MGM executive Bennie Thau informed Janet that she was being loaned out to RKO to appear in three films for Howard Hughes. She burst into tears.

 

She appeared first in the charming Holiday Affair alongside Robert Mitchum. “Mr. Hughes had to approve the wardrobe, hair, and makeup tests,” she recalled, and he caused a lot of “fuss” while he obsessed over her filmic appearance.[114] He also continued his campaign to seduce her. “One night I received a telephone call at home. The ‘boss man’ wished me to come over to the studio to view the final tests. Aha!” Janet thwarted Hughes that night by having her father accompany her to the screening room.[115]

 

Janet noticed men following her around out on the town to the extent that, as she later told the New York Times, “it wasn’t a coincidence any more.” She was being followed by Hughes operatives, of course, who were supervised by Jeff Chouinard, Hughes’ newly-hired head of security.[116]

 

In the summer of 1949, “Mr. H.” invited Janet to his office where he astonished her with the most dramatic bombshell of them all. When she was a girl she had played a game called “Movie Star” but she had never have imagined what life might really be like in Tinseltown. Now she received an education in the reality of make-believe land.

 

“Janet,” Howard Hughes began, “I have some disturbing information. This was brought to my attention through channels I cannot disclose, and done so because of their knowledge of my interest in your welfare.” He handed her a thick file, a detailed documentary record of her movements over the preceding two weeks. For example:

 

Thursday, 7:15 p.m., Subject departed apartment, 9400 Vidor Drive, accompanied by dark-haired woman (approximately late 20’s) with white flower in hair. Vehicle, yellow 1948 Buick Convertible.

7:30 p.m., Subject arrived La Rue Restaurant, Sunset Boulevard and Sunset Plaza Drive. Sat at table with three males (approximately 30, mid 30’s, mid 40s’s) and two females (approximately 30, early 40’s).

10:00 p.m., Subject departed restaurant with first companion.

10:15 p.m., Subject arrived at Vidor Apartment. Dark-haired woman drove away in same Buick.

No activity remainder of night.

 

Brown and Broeske round out Leigh’s account: “Another bulging dossier included condensations of Janet’s telephone conversations for a six-month stretch.”[117]

 

She stormed out, but was still under contract. The imperious Hughes immediately plunged her into the ill-fated fiasco of Jet Pilot, what Janet called “a giant dud” and “inexcusable waste of talent.”[118] Long after filming had completed, she heard a curious thing. One of Hughes’ creative aides for the production, the producer-screenwriter Jules Furthman, had been given instructions to ask Janet to marry Hughes, but Furthman had never found the opportune time. “How is that for weird?” Leigh asks us in her autobiography, There Really Was A Hollywood.[119]

 

*

 

Almost as soon as Hughes’ surveillance log had ended up in Janet Leigh’s hands, his obsession with information was reported in Eye magazine in July 1949: “Hughes is almost infallable at locating anyone, anywhere, at any time, and he frequently abashes people by reciting intimate details of activities which they imagined were secret.”[120]

 

*

 

MORE AND MOORE. In this period, Vera Miles and Jean Peters will laugh off Hughes’ proposals of marriage. The nineteen-year-old Terry Moore will accept with full blessings from her mother. Born Helen Koford into a Mormon family in Glendale in 1929, Terry Moore was a blond-haired, fresh-faced starlet, a former child model who appeared in eleven films in the 1940s (in roles such as ‘Little Girl’; ‘Paula, Aged 14; ‘Refugee Girl’; ‘Hatcheck Girl’), including Son of Lassie (1945). She was 5 feet 2 inches tall, with a shoe size of 4 and a bust size of “full 32C”.[121] She was yet another stunning-looking, shapely, all-American young beauty on the Hollywood scene, all sweetness and light and a photographer’s delight. Under contract to Columbia Pictures, she was a popular celebrity at the time, a “flavor of the moment”, a cover girl and fashion plate who enjoyed the L.A. scene immensely, frequenting the Beverly Hills Tennis Club, bowling alleys, the ice rink, and so on with her industry friends including Elizabeth Taylor.

 

Hughes and Moore first met (she thought by chance) in November 1948. (She had just appeared in her first adult role in an unofficial King Kong sequel titled Mighty Joe Young while on loan to RKO, though the film hadn’t yet been released upon Hughes taking over the studio in May 1948.) Hughes associate Johnny Maschio invited Terry Moore and her then-boyfriend to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. “Oh there’s Howard Hughes,” Maschio said. “Come join us, Howard.” Hughes—whom Moore’s boyfriend described as a “living legend”—sat at their table. “He wouldn’t take his eyes off me the whole time,” Moore recalled, “and it wasn’t until ten years later that I found out that it had all been a set-up. Nothing with Howard happens by chance.”[122]

 

The young actress had stars in her eyes. Here was a man who had hobnobbed with her favorite Hollywood stars—Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, John Wayne. Now he had eyes only for her. He romanced her using all the old standbys, including a starlight trip to Mulholland Drive in one of his Chevrolets and flights to Palm Springs and the Grand Canyon.[123] Flying over Los Angeles one night, Hughes marveled at the glittering array of lights outspread beneath them. “Look down there,” he told her, “because you’ll never see anything else like it. All the jewels in the world can’t compare to this.”[124] He hired an entire restaurant, the Somerset House on the Sunset Strip, with its waiters and orchestra, so they could share a private dinner date among themselves. She says he even took her bowling at the La Cienega Bowling Alley.[125] That Moore was already involved in a year-long relationship with a boyfriend didn’t faze Hughes in the slightest. When Hughes wanted something, he was irrepressible. “He never forgot anything. My mother’s birthday. He was tenacious,” Moore recalled. “He wanted to get my parents a larger home.” He invited her father, an insurance man, to come work for him. Her father refused Hughes’ largesse, but the daughter fell hook, line, and sinker. During the early months of their relationship Hughes and Moore spoke on the telephone for hours “like two high-school kids”; he would phone her at midnight and they would talk through the early hours of the morning until the sun came up; the lonely Hughes found it comforting to talk, and Moore was enchanted by stories of his Hollywood exploits.[126] “I started out fearing Howard Hughes,” she wrote in her memoir. “I soon grew to like him and then to love and need him with a deep dependency.”[127]

 

Hughes was 23 years older than Terry and only four years older than her mother. At home in the glamorous world of Hollywood, Terry Moore was unhappy with Hughes’ usual appearance—his “scraggly moustache, frayed collar, worn-looking clothes” including “unpressed trousers”—but something about the man captivated her attention all the same.[128] “The most piercing, intense eyes I had ever seen,” she recalled. “His eyes would analyze a person from head to toe.” Moore remarked that Hughes had a fantastic magnetism—at least for her. All he had to do was kiss her hand.[129]

 

When a teenager, Howard Hughes had been too shy to go out on dates with girls. By wooing Terry Moore (and other young-and-innocents), Hughes could, in a manner of speaking, return to that lost time of adolescent loneliness and obtain what he had been unable to receive, the sweetness of female companionship. With Moore he could act like the boy he had never been. (When he was invited to dinner at her family’s home, he struck her mother as “kind, considerate, and boyish.”[130]) At the same time, he exacted all of the power and control the mature Hughes demanded for all of his ‘projects’.

 

He kept tabs on her, ensuring he knew her whereabouts at all times; he repeatedly phoned her at home and at the movie studio (where she kept regular hours); she was driven around town by employees of the Romaine Street drivers pool. He made sure she was followed and her phones were bugged.[131] In June 1949, he rented for Terry and her family a magnificent beach house on Harbor Island, an enclave for the wealthy off Balboa Peninsula at Newport Beach, California. In July he moved them to another summer house, this time in Balboa. He sent her flowers. He spoke to her using sweet names such as “little rabbit” and “little cottontail”.[132]

 

MARRIAGE AT SEA. One evening late in November 1949, Hughes invited Terry Moore and her mother on a special journey on a rented yacht sailing into international waters off the coast of California. The deck was arrayed with flowers and candles; Moore was lightheaded from hot dogs and champagne and the thrill of the romantic setting. Captain Carl Flynn, a dignified 65 year old in dress whites, read from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, pronouncing Howard Hughes and Terry Moore man and wife. But we know Hughes. He is anything but a religious man; the “high words” didn’t mean anything to him. Moreover we suspect he contrived this impromptu ceremony to get the virginal Moore into bed. Hughes didn’t even have a ring for her marriage finger. The “marriage” was consummated hours later on dry land.[133]

 

To celebrate the occasion he gave her a string of pearls and a music box that played “Beautiful Dreamer”. Hughes instructed Moore to keep their union a secret. A marriage would work against her carefully cultivated virginal image in Hollywood. If she wanted to be an A-list movie star, he told her, it would be best for her to remain single. If word got out, it would hurt both their careers, he said.[134]

 

According to Terry Moore, the Hughes who had been “my lover, my adversary, my father” was now also “my husband”.[135] In later years Moore pressed her point in court that it was she who was the legal wife of Howard Hughes at the time of his death, even though not a single photograph of the evening, nor ship’s log nor any marriage licence, were presented as evidence.

 

After the consummation of their “marriage”, Hughes installed Moore in his own bungalow 19 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Throughout 1950, he stayed with her there sometimes, while other times he kept her on ice while he flitted from one L.A. hideout to another.

 

Howard Hughes orchestrated every aspect of Terry Moore’s life for the next two years. “He was more strict about my diet than my parents were,” she said.[136] He instructed her not to wear any makeup when in his presence; if she greeted him with lipstick, he would wipe it off, albeit tenderly. If she had a pimple, he’d use a sterilized needle to puncture the blemish. Then he’d wash her hands for up to ten minutes at a time. One strange quirk of Hughes’, mentioned nowhere except for Terry Moore’s memoir, was that he preferred his women not to shave their legs. “One day I ran into Jean Peters at the studio,” Moore wrote. “She too had hairy legs.”[137]

 

Hughes was adamant that the young woman wear a sturdy brassiere at all times. “Howard would throw a fit if I ever bounced the least little bit,” Terry explained. “He said every shake would break my breasts down a little at a time and soon nothing would raise them up but plastic surgery.”[138]

 

He sent her to his own approved drama and singing coaches. When she went out on the town, Hughes always knew where she was. Hughes operatives dogged her steps. “No sooner would I arrive somewhere than the phone would ring. It was always Howard.”[139] She came to accept the Romaine Street Chevrolets following her around as an ordinary part of her daily life. He bought her a Cessna 140 and hired Ray Pignet, one of Hughes’ pilots for Hell’s Angels, to teach her how to fly.

 

Sometimes they flew to Catalina Island off the coast of Los Angeles for private time together; or Las Vegas, where they’d catch the entertainment at casino after casino; or more often, to Palm Springs, a desert resort for the wealthy where their preferred stop for dinner was the exuberant Chi Chi Club, the most popular night spot in town.

 

On one of their high-altitude flights in Hughes’ Constellation, Hughes put the plane on autopilot then made love to Terry Moore on a bed of mink.[140]

 

While Ava Gardner’s friend Arlene Dahl had described Hughes as smelling foul and unwashed, Terry recalled Hughes smelling like a “Chinese laundry” which was to her “the cleanest, freshest smell” and her “favorite smell in all the world.”[141]

 

When they both stayed at Bungalow 19, Moore saw Hughes’ morning routine up-close. He’d eat a breakfast of figs (his preferred morning meal at the moment), scribble notes in one of his yellow legal pads, then phone Romaine Street for his messages.

 

Whenever he was speaking to someone of great importance, he would excuse himself and set the receiver down, sometimes for five minutes at a time, and yawn and eat his figs and yawn some more. While His Royal Highness continued his yawn, the other party was waiting.[142]

 

In Los Angeles, they went to the Cocoanut Grove, Chasen’s, Perino’s, and so on. They watched movies together in a projection room at Goldwyn Studios, just down the street from RKO. She came to to know well his private office at the Goldwyn Studios, and especially its “old couch”, where “we made love so many times.”[143] She thought their lovemaking was spectacular. “Howard was the best,” she told a gossip columnist.[144] When Hughes removed his clothing, she saw the burns and abrasions on his arms and torso, evidence of the trauma from his various airplane crashes.

 

To keep Terry Moore in his complete control, Hughes negotiated with Harry Cohn, kingpin of Columbia, to borrow Moore for one RKO film. Hughes cast her as a “taxi dancer” (a woman who dances for money in a seedy ballroom) in a lurid feature titled High Heels.

 

Terry Moore heard the rumors circulating among employees on the RKO studios backlot of Hughes visiting a “dentist” then disappearing for two or more days at a time. Hughes might be on drugs. However, Hughes’ growing dependency on codeine, a legacy from his XF-11 crash in 1946, remained nothing more than rumor, and stayed a complete secret in the media until after his death.[145]

 

Another “secret” that remained secret over the years was the Hughes-Moore “marriage”. It is evident that their “marriage” meant nothing much to Hughes or Moore because Hughes legally married Jean Peters in 1957, while Moore went to marry three more times in her lifetime (1951-53; 1956-58; 1959-71), without admitting that she was already married to Hughes (as she put it) until after his death, when the scramble for his fortune was on. After 1976, Moore called herself “the widow of Howard Hughes”—but so did a series of other women, all of them crackpots.

 

*

 

THE WONDER BOYS. In 1950 Hughes orchestrated an elaborate press conference to celebrate the signing of Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna to a production contract. Well-regarded in the industry, and with a long track-record of successful hits, Wald and Krasna were known as the “whiz kids” or the “wonder boys” of Hollywood.[146] The two independent writer-producers, lured from Warner Brothers, would make 12 feature films a year for RKO over a five year period for a total cost of $50 million. Wald and Krasna would retain 50 percent equity in the films as well as fifty percent of the earnings. Moreover, each would receive a weekly salary of $2,700. Independent producers had never had it so good in Hollywood. The Hollywood Reporter hailed the deal as “the biggest independent production transaction in industry history.”[147] Film historian Robert H. Stanley goes one better, describing the contract as “one of the most colossal financial negotiations in movie history.”[148] Wald and Krasna announced at the press conference that they would bring to RKO “the smartest people since the Greeks.”[149] The two happy producers announced nine films already in preparation for production. Guess what? Not one of the nine films would be made for Hughes’ RKO.

 

At first, Hughes might have thought that he would leave the studio’s production output largely in Wald and Krasna’s hands. A weight thereby would be lifted from his shoulders. But Hughes was unable to stop interfering with RKO business. In drawing up the Wald-Krasna contract, Hughes had reserved the right to approve stories, scripts, and players. It wouldn’t take long for Hughes to exercise his right to meddle. When Wald-Krasna refused Hughes’ suggestion to cast Terry Moore in High Heels, Hughes canceled the picture. Eight scripts were submitted for Hughes’ approval, and only two were deemed suitable. Fortune magazine reported the gloomy record of Wald-Krasna in 1951: “Over a million dollars was spent in abortive attempts to get projects rolling.”[150] The man who had hired them was now their chief stumbling block. “They can’t get to him to present their requests or problems when he turns down their ideas—if they get any answer at all,” the Hollywood Reporter conveyed, in the autumn of 1951.[151] The producing team was able to get two films out in 1951—Behave Yourself and The Blue Veil, the latter generating $450,000 in profits, becoming one of the top three RKO earners of the year’s output of 38 releases.[152] Two more Wald-Krasna films were pushed into production that year for release in 1952—Clash by Night and The Lusty Men. After two years of Hughes, Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna resigned in 1952, their high hopes quashed.[153]

 

*

 

One striking example of Howard Hughes’ interventions at RKO came during pre-production of Two Tickets to Broadway, a good-natured old-fashioned romantic musical starring Janet Leigh and a not-so-young Tony Martin. Hughes wanted to inspect the sets for the film but refused to visit the RKO soundstages on Gower Street. So the sets were taken down, brought down the road, and reassembled at the Goldwyn Studios. Hughes examined them and gave his approval. The sets were dismantled and brought back to RKO where they were built once more.[154]

 

Two Tickets to Broadway was Janet Leigh’s third and final film for Hughes. During production, the assistant director maintained a direct telephone line to Hughes, to whom he reported on Janet’s phone calls and movements. When filming was completed in December 1950, the actress threw a party to celebrate her soon leaving Howard Hughes’ clutches. The film, however, wasn’t finally released until late 1951, and lost $1,150,000.[155]

 

In 1951, to publicize the film Hard, Fast and Beautiful—the title, suggesting lurid thrills, certainly sounded Hughes-approved—Hughes’ RKO made a kooky set of moves. The Los Angeles press was flown to San Francisco to see the film, while the San Francisco press was flown to Los Angeles to see the same film. Each contingent was booked into the finest hotel and plied with food and drink. According to Ezra Goodman, Hollywood correspondent to Time magazine at the time, “The cost of the junket was reputed to have almost equaled the cost of the low-budget picture.”[156]

 

Compounding his film studio’s problems, Hughes shut down its production wing for much of 1952 while he carried out his so-called screening program to weed out all Communists and Communist sympathisers at his studio; this led to catastrophic financial losses for RKO.

 

In 1952, half-way through Hughes’ reign as would-be movie Mogul, “Major Hollywood talent agencies now routinely advised their important clients to steer clear of RKO,” wrote Hollywood historian Robert B. Jewell, “which had become the laughing stock and pariah of the entire industry.”[157]

 

Another striking Hughes business decision came during the making of Dangerous Mission starring Victor Mature, Vincent Price and Piper Laurie, in 1953. Production on the film was already underway on location in Montana when Hughes finally got around to reading the script. Unhappy with the story, Hughes immediately stopped production. A frantic Irwin Allen, producer of the film, appealled to veteran screenwriter W. R. Burnett to produce a shooting script fast, which Burnett did, in four weeks—while the cast and crew waited in Montana, drawing their salaries.[158]

 

One RKO filmmaker grumbled, “Working for Hughes was like taking the ball in a football game and running four feet, only to find the coach was tackling you from behind.”[159]

 

*

 

It is a curious fact that Hughes only owned 24 percent of RKO at this time yet was able to control it to the extent that he ran it into the ground with virtually no interference from the other 15,000 shareholders. Hughes having his say at his aircraft company, of which he owned 100 percent of the shares, is defensible, and Hughes controlling TWA, of which he owned over three-quarters of the shares, is likewise plausible. But 24 percent? Hughes had as little respect for the shareholders as for the board room executives.

 

LITANY OF LITIGATION. Hughes’ business practices at RKO spawned a storm of lawsuits. (“Legal disputation, a cloud that follows Hughes wherever he goes,” noted journalist Edwin Fadiman.[160]) The following is only a selection:

 

In 1948-49 Hughes sold RKO four of his films—The Outlaw, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Montana Belle, and Vendetta. In the case of Montana Belle, RKO’s executive board only heard about the sale afterwards. A minority stockholders’ lawsuit filed in late 1952 pointed out that “Hughes was sitting on both sides of the negotiating table”[161]

 

In late 1948 Hughes contracted with Polan Banks Productions, Inc. to produce three films starring Ann Sheridan to be released by RKO. But Hughes kept delaying the production of the first film, Carriage Entrance. In the spring of 1949, Polan Banks filed a $670,000 breach of contract suit against Hughes, who settled by purchasing the screenplay outright.[162]

 

In 1950, RKO apparently signed with Gold Seal Productions to make Appointment in Samarra with Gregory Peck for RKO release. Then Hughes changed his mind. Gold Seal Productions took Hughes to court for violating an oral contract and was awarded $375,000 in damages (plus interest) in 1953.[163]

 

In 1951, Ann Sheridan sued Hughes after he removed her from the lead in the project eventually known as My Forbidden Past. As part of RKO’s settlement with her, Sheridan subsequently starred in Appointment in Honduras (1953).[164] The glamorous Sheridan, 33, had once been hyped as Hollywood’s “Oomph Girl”. When her long-term contract with Warner Bros. expired in 1948, she took her chances with RKO. Following her years of controversy with Hughes, her film career went into a dramatic decline, and her last film role came in 1957.[165]

 

In the mid-1940s, Hughes had financed the making of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, staring Harold Lloyd. When Hughes rereleased the film, following a personally-supervised reedit, as Mad Wednesday in 1951, Harold Lloyd, furious at the editorial deletions Hughes had made, sued Hughes for damaging his reputation by associating him with the reworked film. Lloyd received an out-of-court settlement of $30,000.[166]

 

In 1952, British actress Jean Simmons took Hughes to court, alleging mismanagement of her career. A year earlier, with only six months left on her seven-year contract with the J. Arthur Rank Studio, her contract was sold to Hughes at RKO without her knowledge. Hughes treated her with his customary obsessive possessiveness, refusing to allow her to appear in any films other than his own, even if she wasn’t working on anything. Frustrated at his dominance, she refused to sign a seven-year contract with RKO. Hughes, not one to take no for an answer, allegedly informed the other Hollywood studios that he had a “seven year moral contract” with Simmons and that if she were hired he would take the offending studio to court. Simmons was outraged; and Hughes further antagonized her. With only eighteen days left on her original contract, and with the legal proceedings going on in the background, Simmons was forced to star in RKO’s Angel Face, in which she was cast as a psychopath. Simmons’ husband, actor Stewart Granger, became so exasperated with Hughes that he entertained a plot of pushing Hughes off the high balcony of the house RKO was renting for Simmons—as Granger himself admitted.[167] As for her suit against Hughes, he settled out of court, paying Simmons $250,000 and her legal expenses.[168] As part of the terms of the settlement, Simmons appeared in two more (forgettable) films for Hughes, Affair With A Stranger (1953) and She Couldn’t Say No (1954).

 

RKO had 15,000 minority stockholders and many were exasperated with Hughes. However, they lacked the power to cross him. As Fortune reported in May 1953, “Few of them had the economic incentive, the resources, or the information either to wage a successful proxy fight or to bring suit. The main reason, however, was that nobody wanted to tangle with Howard Hughes.”[169]

 

After a few dismal years with Hughes at the helm, minority shareholders finally got up the courage to file a series of suits against him. In one such suit from 1953, Hughes was accused of running RKO with “caprice, pique, and whim.”[170] The stockholder lawsuits included such allegations that Hughes acted in anything but a “careful, prudent, or businesslike manner” and that he “squandered, wasted, and dissipated” the assets of RKO.[171]

 

*

 

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO . . . ? Jack Buetel was given his big break in 1940 when Hughes cast him, a total unknown, as a leading player in The Outlaw. When he signed the contract with Hughes Productions, he must have been walking on air, thinking he had hit it big in Hollywood. Little did he know that as soon as production on The Outlaw was completed in the spring of 1941, his boss would put him in a suspended animation that would outlast the decade. Buetel remained under contract but Hughes refused to give him work. Even when the immense success of The Outlaw’s re-release in 1946 made Buetel one of the most recognized film actors that year, Hughes would not allow his actor/employee to capitalize on that good fortune. Even when Hughes acquired RKO, he still didn’t give Buetel anything to do. All the while, every week like clockwork, a $1,050 paycheck arrived in Buetel’s mailbox. “My agents tell me he keeps saying he’s grooming me for big things,” he told newsmen in the summer of 1949, “but I just wish he would put me in a movie. He won’t even let me work in radio or at other movie studios.” Buetel kept busy by spending time with his wife and baby girl, playing golf and tennis, and going to parties. When he had a chance to feature in Red River for Howard Hawks, the ultra-possessive Hughes nixed the idea. The hapless Buetel’s Hollywood career had been nipped in the bud by the domineering Hughes, who collected people as if they were objects like airplanes only to then, like many of his airplanes, neglect them. The Washington Post called Jack Buetel “the richest forgotten man in Hollywood”.[172]

 

Buetel wouldn’t appear in any film until Best of the Badmen for RKO in 1951, after which he featured in a series of minor westerns (including The Half-Breed for RKO in 1952) before disappearing off the Hollywood map before the end of the decade.

 

*

 

 

Actor Richard Andes was another casualty of Hughes’ strange ways. When he signed a contract with Hughes and RKO in the early 1950s and appeared in three films in 1952-53 (Clash by Night, Blackbeard the Pirate, and Split Second), he thought his career was about to take off. Just as he was gaining momentum in Hollywood, with another studio importuning Hughes to lend Andes for a role in a film, Hughes refused to capitulate to Andes’ wishes to appear in the film. Possibly in irritation over Andes’ desire to leave RKO, Hughed then held on to Andes’ contract yet failed to cast him in any other RKO production. “He literally owned me and didn’t even meet me,” Andes recalled years later. “For three years he picked up every option and legally no one else could employ me. The money was fabulous, but I never suffered so much in my life.” Andes mused to the Washington Post, “What sort of man needs this power over other people? Strange, isn’t it?”[173]

 

*

 

Hughes treated some of the personnel at RKO monstrously. Yet Hughes had many facets and could act sympathetically as well. Mala Powers was a nineteen-year-old starlet whom director Ida Lupino wanted for the RKO co-production Outrage. Lupino shot some photographs of Powers for Hughes to assess, since Hughes retained the right to choose the male and female leads of the film. He liked what he saw, and arranged to meet with Powers. In January 1950, she was driven in an RKO car along with her mother, her agent, and an RKO representative to the Beverly Hills Hotel. “There, outside the Polo Lounge we had our meeting,” Powers recalled. “Hughes came in and wiped off the chair seats with his handkerchief and we had a discussion for an hour and a half.” Acting every inch the gentleman, Hughes told her, “If your agent doesn’t try to hold us up for too much money, I’ll be very happy to have you at RKO.” She was awarded a long-term contract. Unfortunately, not long after she appeared in Outrage, she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a blood disease. Hughes paid her medical bills.[174] When she got well, she went to see Hughes at his office in the Goldwyn Studios. It was the second and last time she would set eyes on the man. His customary possessiveness toward his contract players—Jack Buetel, Faith Domergue, and Jean Simmons immediately come to mind—was absent in this instance. “You’re welcome to stay with the studio as long as I have it,” he told her, “but if you think you’d be in a better position by going to Universal, then go ahead.”[175] She stayed, and appeared in two more RKO co-productions, Rage at Dawn (1955), and Bengazi (1955). Recalling Hughes from the distance of four decades, Mala Powers saw him as a kindly, equable man.

 

*

 

An RKO executive from the Hughes years recalled that strange era for author Edwin Fadiman, Jr. in 1971:

 

I’d just gotten divorced. I was asleep when the phone rang. It was after 2:00 a.m. It was Hughes. “Are you alone?” he asked suspiciously. I told him I was. “I asked you that because you’ve just gotten your divorce. You’re sure you’re alone?”

He asked me, “How long will it take you to read a script?” I told him about two hours for a standard-length screenplay. “I’ll call you back in two hours,” he said. “There’s a script on its way to you.”

Within one minute after hanging up, the doorbell rang. One of his crewcut young men stood there with a script in one hand and a receipt in the other. I signed for the script, got back into bed and read it. Godawful script. The phone rang two hours later.

“Well? What do you think?”

I remember I thought: Here goes. I said, “If you’re considering this vehicle for someone of Jean Peters’ abilities—I’d say it’s far below her talents, Howard.”

He thanked me, apologized for disturbing me and, one minute later, there was the same guy ringing my doorbell. I gave him back the script, he gave me back my receipt and I went back to bed for two hours’ sleep.

When I got to the office, I didn’t know if I still had a job. Then the other guys started to trickle in, all of them with bags under their eyes. We finally got to talking among ourselves. Everyone there had read the same script the night before. Hughes had staggered his calls at half-hour intervals. One poor bastard didn’t get back to bed at all. He was low man on the totem pole.[176]

 

*

 

PRESENT AT THE BIRTH OF MILITARY ELECTRONICS. Meanwhile, by the late 1940s the Hughes Aircraft Company was in the process of reorganizing itself from a minor aircraft concern into a major weapons manufacturer. Military hardware was about to become computerized. Hughes Aircraft was the company to lead the U.S. Air Force into a modern age of aerial warfare.

 

Following the successful flights of the Hughes Flying Boat and the second XF-11, Hughes had continued entertaining new ideas for state-of-the-art aircraft. Carl Babberger, aerodynamicist at Hughes Aircraft, remembered working with his boss on a series of projects including a nuclear-powered airplane, transatlantic hydrofoils, and specialized submarines.[177] But these projects never got off the drawing board.

 

In the immediate post-war environment Hughes Aircraft was concerned with a series of small jobs, including refitting war surplus planes for resale; as well as manufacturing bits and pieces—ammunition belts, flexible feed chutes, armament boosters—for Air Force planes. These military contracts, however, were small-scale and intermittent. By the outset of 1948, the workforce of Hughes Aircraft was down to 1,000 employees. In that year the company lost $750,000 on sales of $2 million.[178]

 

Between 1942 and 1948 no less than six general managers had come and gone from the Culver City plant.[179] In the spring of 1948, at the time that he was assuming control at RKO, Hughes realized he needed to hire capable management to run his aircraft company. He brought in Air Force Lieutenant General (retired) Harold L. George as vice president and general manager. George, born in Massachusetts in 1893, had been leader of Air Transport Command during WWII. Air Force Lieutenant General (retired) Ira C. Eaker was given the nominal title of vice president of the Hughes Tool Company, and his main role was to act as liaison between H.T.Co. and HAC. During WWII, Eaker, born in Texas in 1896, had been leader of the Eighth Air Force in Britain (1942-43), then commander of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (1944-45). Eaker had also had a role to play at the tail-end of the XF-11 program. Both George and Eaker reported to Noah Dietrich. Charles B. Thornton, born in Texas in 1913, was hired as assistant general manager. Thornton, a graduate of the Harvard Business School, joined the Army Air Corps, then, after WWII, went to work for the Ford Motor Company where he gained the reputation as being a “whiz kid”.

 

It was at this point that Hughes made one of the wisest decisions of the decade. He told Harold George, “I promise that I will not interfere in the operation of the aircraft company.”[180] Working without interference from the president of the company, Hughes Aircraft’s top management and scientists quickly proved to be a “dream team”.

 

Hughes’ executives put to one side Howard Hughes’ long-cherished vision of becoming a manufacturer of aircraft in the manner of Lockheed or Boeing. Instead, Hughes Aircraft would dedicate itself to the burgeoning field of military electronics. This included all-weather radar systems, computerized autopilots, and guided missiles. It was a monumental move and a fortutious one at the time, as the other major defense contractors had yet to take military electronics seriously. Hughes Aircraft had a large head start in a field which eventually became immensely competitive.

 

The Hughes Aircraft Company hired over a thousand employees of superior rank, including eminent physicists, engineers, and mathematicians, many of whom among the best in their fields.[181] Hughes assembled his first-rate research team by sending representatives to companies across America, luring scientists and engineers to Hughes Aircraft by promising them the highest salaries in the business. One rival company told Time magazine, “One Monday we had 42 draftsmen; by the following Friday, we had only five and Hughes had the rest.”[182] The two most significant Hughes scientists at his aircraft company at this point were Dr. Simon Ramo, director of operations, and Dr. Dean Wooldridge, vice president for research and development. They were the two high-level employees who had organized and would oversee the new direction for Hughes Aircraft.

 

In the autumn of 1948 Hughes Aircraft won a contract from the U.S. military to develop the ‘all-weather interceptor’, an autopilot and missile radar system, for the Lockheed F-94A Starfighter fighter plane and the North American F-86D Sabre fighter plane. Hughes Aircraft won the contract by beating out Bendix, General Electric, North American, Sperry Gyroscope, and Westinghouse.[183] Hughes Aircraft went from drawing board to successful prototype in an amazing nine months.[184]

 

The all-weather interceptor is a milestone in military aviation history. Cockpit computers and radar systems—called the Hughes E-1 Fire Control System—allowed the U.S. Air Force to fly and fight day and night and in poor weather conditions. The Hughes system also removed the need for a co-pilot in the case of the F-86D. Via the onboard computers, an autopilot stabilized the craft while a radar aimed the air-to-air missiles installed underneath the fuselage. Production models of the F-94A—the first American jet night fighter—were in military service from 1949.

 

By June of 1950—the outbreak of the Korean War—Hughes Aircraft was the sole manufacturer of electronic weapons systems for all of the United States’ jet fighters.[185] Variants of the armament system were included on the F-102 Delta Dagger, the world’s first supersonic all-weather jet interceptor, as well as the F-106A Delta Dart. Hughes Aircraft also provided a fire control system for AVCO’s CF-100 Canuck jet fighter, flown by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

 

Hughes Aircraft showed sales of $8.6 million and earnings of $400,000 in 1949. Two years later, its military sales reached $151 million with earnings of $5.3 million. In 1953, the company had swelled to 17,000 employees, with sales of $200 million and earnings of $5.3 million.[186]

 

By 1954 production was underway on the Falcon, the first operational air-to-air guided missile—another Hughes Aircraft innovation. In October 1953, Time magazine reported that Hughes Aircraft’s new air-to-air guided missile prototype was “so accurate that tests of it were stopped because it was destroying too many drone planes.”[187]

 

Following these triumphs, Hughes Aircraft continued to go from strength to strength.

 

Eventually, in years to come, the first spacecrafts to soft-land on the moon, to enter into geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, and to penetrate the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter, were developed and built by Hughes Aircraft.

 

*

 

JETS AND BEANS. Hughes eventually owned 1,317 acres of Hughes Aircraft’s Culver City site, but developed less than 10 percent of it over his lifetime. With the advent of the electronic weapons control systems program, his executives wanted to expand the facilities at the plant. Hughes, however, was adamant against it, even though the U.S. government would have covered the costs of the expansion. (In the period immediately prior to the Korean War the government began spending many millions of dollars in building new facilities for its prime weapons contractors.[188]) Why was Hughes resistant against building up the Culver City site? In a word—Taxes. One might have guessed it.

 

Hughes’ Culver City property was originally zoned for agricultural use, which meant a low tax rate. Having no intention of having his taxes raised, Hughes had leased much of the property north and west of the Hughes Aircraft airstrip to a tenant farmer, who, year in year out, maintained a bean crop.

 

But if Hughes’ executives had their way and the Culver City property was rezoned as an industrial or commercial site, Hughes’ property taxes would skyrocket. Hence, Hughes had much affection for his tenant farmer and ensured that he would never have to suffer much trouble from Hughes Aircraft’s incessant flight activity.[189]

 

Part of Hughes Aircraft’s program of manufacturing weapons control systems for the military’s jet planes included the hiring of pilots to carry out flight tests at the Culver City site. Between 1948 and 1953 a number of ex-military fliers, all of whom having served during WWII, found employment at Hughes Aircraft, including Robert M. DeHaven; John Seymour; Charles A. McDaniel, Jr.; Chris M. Smith; James O’Reilly; and Harry E. Dugan. Seymour became Chief of Aircraft Maintenance in 1950. Clarence A. Shoop, a colonel with the Army Air Forces during WWII, served as manager of flight test operations. Assisting Shoop was Winkie Kratz, an ex-general with the Army Air Forces. Hughes Aircraft intended to train its private pilots to operate the newly-built electronic weapons systems, then send those pilots to teach Air Force personnel.[190]

 

In the early 1950s, F-89s and F-94s were seen frequently streaking through the airspace over Hughes Aircraft, as were B-25 Mitchells; these latter aircraft, war surplus medium bombers, were employed solely to test Hughes’ innovative radar systems. (Hughes Aircraft had built the landing gear struts for the B-25 during World War II.) Flight tests were usually carried out over the Pacific Ocean.[191]

 

As a matter of course, the close contiguity between flight operations and the bean field caused problems for both test pilots and farmer. The Air Force’s fighter jets, newly outfitted with Hughes Aircraft’s electronic fire control systems, were often taking off on flight tests, and the hot air blasting from the planes’ powerful engines sometimes burnt the outlay of beans close to the airstrip. Discovering this, the farmer telephoned Hughes to enumerate his complaints. George Marrett joked, “Evidently, he was one of the very few people who knew where to find Hughes when he needed him.”[192] Whenever Hughes and the tenant farmer exchanged words on the subject of the beans, an executive order from Howard Hughes promptly ran the gamut of the Hughes Aircraft hierarchy from top to bottom: the beans were to be protected!

 

It was common for Hughes test pilots to sit through a very complicated technical briefing related to a test mission. As they left the briefing, a simple solemn remark was frequently heard: “Watch the goddamn beans!”[193]

 

*

 

While Hughes Aircraft was thriving, RKO was withering. As a business move, Hughes’ acquisition of the RKO Studios was among his most disastrous enterprises. Hughes realized almost from the first that his interest in the studio was compromised by the fact that he was spreading himself too thin. (Dore Schary, ex-president of RKO, recalled Hughes telling him in 1950 that “he regretted that he had bought RKO; regretted that he had permitted me to leave; was very busy designing a new helicopter that could lift a freight car, and had so many interests that he now found the operation of the studio an onerous one.”[194]) Hughes Aircraft was in the process of swelling into an industrial powerhouse, his Trans-World Airlines had become one of the largest air carriers in the world, and Hughes also had his women to think about.

 

Perhaps a very good reason why Hughes bought the movie studio in the first place was that it was a conduit to a never-ending stream of young women.

 

Norman Krasna, who produced four films for Hughes’ RKO, explained,

 

Hughes was using RKO as a whorehouse. If he made a lot of money out of some magic pictures, fine. . . . He would do such things as the whole picture was done and scored, and he would want better cleavage. So he would build up the sets again and put Vaseline between the girl’s tits and shoot the scene over. Do you know how much that costs? And holding up the release?[195]

 

“Howard’s involvement with RKO had other motivations than the pursuit of profits and furtherance of the art of the cinema,” recalled Noah Dietrich. “I was never certain throughout Howard’s long association with the motion picture industry whether his amours were an off-shoot of that activity or film production was a screen for his romantic ventures.”[196]

 

The cover of the July 1949 issue of Eye magazine, a national general-interest monthly, picked up on the theme, describing Hughes as a “Fabulous Bachelor”, while the article inside described him as “the modern Casanova.”[197] Hughes was quoted as having recently remarked to a newsman, apropos of marriage, “I haven’t got time for that sort of thing.”[198]

 

HUGHES’ STARLETS. During Hughes’ RKO years things were getting as weird in the female department as they would get in Hughes’ life. Janet Leigh, Rita Hayworth, Terry Moore, Jean Peters—they were just the tip of the iceberg.  During the 1950s Howard Hughes the lover and playboy was coming to a close, but in a big way. After Hughes bought RKO he proceeded to amass a harem of starlets, countrified girls who had gone west with their mothers to Hollywood in search of stardom in the movies. It sounds like an amusing anecdote but during the early 1950s Hughes had over one hundred young women consigned to their own apartments and houses distributed throughout Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Brentwood, Westwood, and the San Fernando Valley. “Where others had stamps,” Noah Dietrich recalled, “Howard had girls.”[199] The girls were ‘under contract’ to RKO Studios but more than that they were under house arrest and in Hughes’ TOTAL CONTROL.

 

A starlet’s day was carefully planned for her, as if she were at summer camp. A starlet occupied her time in dance classes, elocution lessons, acting exercises[200], wardrobe fittings, photography sessions[201], screen tests. Sometimes she went on shopping trips with Hughes’ money. She was driven to and fro by a Mormon driver in the employ of Romaine Street. Every evening she had to doll herself up in the event that Hughes the “Big Daddy” and “Man of Mystery” might come to see her, and most every evening she ate alone.

 

Howard Hughes might be far from his girls yet stayed acquainted with their each and every move. Each girl’s phone was tapped.[202] The most up-to-date electronic methods were employed. (Both Hughes Tool and Hughes Aircraft were supplying the American military machine with electronic wizardry.) Each girl was tailed. Minions of HH climbed up telephone poles and hid in bushes and sat in parked cars and who knows what else, all shadowing the girls. Written reports on each were delivered along with surveillance photographs into Hughes’ hands.

 

“We discovered that in the 40s and 50s he turned his social life into a multi-million-dollar operation,” wrote journalist Jack Anderson in 1976. “At least 100 women who struck his fancy were brought under electronic and physical surveillance.”[203] Jim Hougan, another newsman who found this aspect of the Hughes story worthy of comment, remarked, “Photographers worked round the clock providing Hughes with blowups of the women leaving their apartments.”[204]

 

Hughes also had his actors and actresses at RKO under surveillance. It became common knowledge that Hughes had wired the acting classrooms and soundstages so he could monitor progress via a secret intercom or transcripts.[205] While working on the RKO lot, a wry Robert Mitchum sometimes spoke directly to a ceiling or wall: “Did you hear what I said, Phantom? You want me to repeat it?”[206] Hughes kept tabs kept on his RKO executives as well.[207] Hughes had the whole of Hollywood wired for sound, in a manner of speaking. There were many in town who knew how to make an easy $100 in cash: phone the Romaine Street switchboard with any information which Hughes would find interesting.[208] Actress Myrna Dell was one Hollywood player who recalled Hughes’ passionate desire for Hollywood gossip.[209] All manner of Hollywood types cooperated with Hughes—doormen, checkroom girls, bellhops, chambermaids, headwaiters, taxi drivers, bookies, newspaper men; as well as a panoply of studio employees across town from top producers and movie stars on down to electricians, assistant cameramen, and extras.[210] Actress Gene Tierney, yet another Hughes love interest in the 1940s, recalled, “There was not much that went on in Hollywood that Howard did not know, one way or another.”[211]

 

Walter Kane was a one-time actor and now primary talent agent for Hughes Productions, the man who corralled the majority of the hopeful starlets for Hughes.[212] This enterprise had begun in the 1940s, but intensified to a new level during the RKO years.  A detailed personal profile was created for each starlet, complete with bra size and her mother’s likes and dislikes.[213] Before Hughes involved himself personally with one of his young women, she had to have both medical and dental examinations.[214] Photo sessions, another early activity of the starlet process, continued throughout the ‘career’ of the starlet. Some of the girls, lured with promises of motion picture glory, were brought by Kane to a phototographer’s studio at 8484 Sunset Boulevard, where Hughes commenced his seduction which might lead to a love nest on the second floor.[215] Hughes insider Robert Maheu recalled, “They were young girls, innocents really, who wanted a career in show business, and for some reason Hughes liked to keep them around. When one left, two would take her place.”[216]

 

Kane had his own apartment on the Sunset Strip, where a black notebook was kept in which, listed alphabetically, were the names of several hundred women Hughes had been interested in over the years. When Hughes every now and then showed up at Kane’s place with a woman, Kane might check in to the Beverly Hills Hotel and await a phone call giving him the all-clear to return. Sometimes he had to wait three days and more.[217]

 

Alternatively, Hughes might simply make the rounds of his many rented properties wherein his young women were kept, awaiting his arrival. “He seldom visited them,” wrote Charles Higham, “but wanted to be sure that, if he felt aroused at, say, three a.m., and in the unlikely event he was alone, he could drive to that young woman’s home, ring the doorbell, enter—no other man was ever allowed to share their beds—strip, penetrate, climax, dress, and go home.”[218]

 

“Sometimes he used little tricks to win over a romantic prospect,” Jack Anderson reported. “He would buy her a dog and arrange for the dog to be stolen. Then he would find the dog and return it to her.”[219] Hughes was once quoted as boasting that he had deflowered 200 virgins in Hollywood.[220] Time magazine reported in 1972, “Generally he slept with each only once, but continued to pay her rent thereafter.”[221]

 

Jeff Chouinard was Hughes’ head of security from 1949, and he was given the task of coordinating the surveillance effort on the women Hughes was collecting.[222] Chouinard was a small plane pilot (with U.S. Navy training) and ex-Fuller Brush salesman. When Chouinard first met with Hughes in the hope of getting Hughes to invest seed money in an airplane rental business, Hughes had hired him as a security agent instead, though Chouinard was an amateur detective at best.[223] Working under the alias Mike Conrad, Chouinard presided over a mini-CIA of well-groomed college students, policemen, and some of his friends and relatives, all carted around town by fifty drivers on the Hughes payroll.[224] One of the professional wiretappers working for Chouinard carried out his jobs using a duplicate telephone-company truck and uniform.[225] When Hughes was particularly interested in one of his subjects he would orchestrate the operation personally, reviewing time schedules and the like. For one assignment Chouinard recalled Hughes telling him, “We put a man near the big elm tree on the corner and a surveillance car down half a block around the corner on Canon Drive. That will cover the side entrance and front. Then in the back. . . .”[226] Chouinard filed coded reports, substituting a subject’s name with the location of the operation, such as “‘Cambria Street came out of the house and chatted with the mailman and was given three envelopes.’”[227] Reports enumerating a girl’s every telephone conversation, complete with summaries of each, were prepared for Hughes daily.[228] Sometimes Hughes wanted his girls’ medical records.[229] The surveillance documents were channeled to Hughes via Bill Gay at Romaine Street.[230] According to Chouinard’s recollection, long-term case histories were kept on 108 girls.[231] He also recalled seeing many hundreds of photos of different women on file at Romaine Street.[232]

 

Chouinard worked for Hughes for 18 years. During the early years, when they had periodically met face-to-face, Chouinard noted that Hughes never looked him directly in the eye when they spoke.[233] During his tenure he employed 288 guards and detectives to carry out Hughes-related operations and spent $2 million.[234] When Chouinard told his story to newsman Richard Matheson for His Weird and Wanton Ways, the account included this surreal picture:

 

You never knew if he had someone following you, carefully chronicling your daily actions. One became paranoid out of one’s own knowledge of the Old Man’s ways and always wondered if the casual-looking fellow next to you at the table or bar might not just be a spy out to watch you while—just maybe—someone was watching him.[235]

 

Supersleuth Hughes was simply the exemplar of a trend sweeping through the back rooms of the film industry in the 1950s, as described by Hollywood historian Ezra Goodman: “Hollywod was a beehive of “private eyes”, tapped telephones and recording machines. It sometimes seemed as if every telephone had a tape recorder attached to it—you never knew whether your conversation was being recorded or not.”[236]

 

When news of Hughes’ harem broke in Confidential magazine in April 1953, Hughes ordered Chouinard to get his men to buy up every copy in Los Angeles. The magazine deemed Hughes “Public Wolf No. 1” with “164 girlfriends” under his control in the city.[237] In 1955, Celebrity magazine remarked, “So many women have strolled in and out of his life, that, if they were all to get together, they could form a full-size army.”[238]

 

During this strange decade, the girls were kept mostly to themselves. Some went wild and tried to escape. If a starlet made enough of a fuss, Hughes usually withdrew all of his interest and let her vanish from the scene.[239] Some sued Hughes, accusing him of ill-treatment of their careers. All settled out of court.

 

It was always a tremendously chilling day for a starlet when she discovered that she was not the only one in Hughes’ life. Sometimes studio hairdressers or make-up artists spilled the beans.

 

Jane Russell recalled Hughes’ starlet set-up without much condemnation. “Howard’s bachelor friends, like Johnny Meyer, Greg Bautzer, and Pat De Cicco, played their favorite game of trading girls. The girls who were under contract to Howard were simply being kept from the “wolves”. If a mother wanted her little girl to be safe, this was among the safest situations in Hollywood.” Russell went on to say, “One could die from boredom, but not from harrassment. I honestly think sometimes Howard forgot where these girls were.”[240]

 

A starlet might spend up to a year in a sort of isolation before the Great and Mysterious Hughes appeared. “He put people, as well as things, into suspended animation,” Faith Domergue recalled. “He let them sit on the shelf until he needed them.”[241] Then the whirlwind romance, then  the surprise plane ride to a flowery picnic spot. Gene Tierney noted, “Howard used his planes as an ultimate weapon in his courtship of women.”[242] Sometimes Hughes put the starlet’s mother or father on his payroll, in order to ‘close the deal’ of the girl’s sympathy for him, if not ‘twist the screw’ of her debt to him. (For example, Hughes had employed Faith Domergue’s father at Hughes Aircraft following his successful seduction of the girl; and gave Gene Tierney’s brother a summer job at Hughes Aircraft.) Hughes’ most tried and tested strategy was to drive a young woman to a secluded overlook above the San Fernando Valley, take hold of the girl’s hands by moonlight and promise to marry her. He might even perform there and then a betrothal with soulful eyes and high words.

 

MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Hughes and his date on a moonlight drive. Turning north off Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard leads them via a steep and winding incline to Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.[243] Here the lights of the city have fallen away from them leaving intimate darkness. Their heading leads them away from West Los Angeles, with Beverly Hills and Bel Air spread out beneath them to the left, and into the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, a largely undeveloped region of arid peaks, ridges, and canyons where coyotes roam amid poison oak and the remnants of ancient Indian settlements. Tough, spiny, combustible chaparral shrubs cover the slopes of the mountain district. Mulholland Drive flows generally west-east, skirting along the summit ridge south of the San Fernando Valley, rising above the metropolitian surface streets ofthe Valley. This excursion has the flavor of “getting away from it all”. Hughes’ automobile follows the narrow windings of Mulholland Drive on the outskirts of the action in between two urban districts, the penetration of the headlights revealing a rugged landscape of scrub growth and deadwood resonant with memories of the loneliness of the wild west. For much of its duration Mulholland Drive cuts between high sandy hills on one side and a sheer drop-off on the other.

 

On Mulholland Drive Hughes exchanged vows with no less than a dozen women over the years, including Terry Moore, Jean Peters, Gene Tierney, and Elizabeth Taylor. “God can marry us . . . above the lights and under the stars,” he told Terry Moore late in 1949. “Don’t you believe that God can marry us?”[244]

 

Hughes must have proposed marriage to hundreds of women over his lifetime. Here is a select list of some of the women Hughes proposed to: Linda Darnell, Yvonne De Carlo, Olivia De Havilland, Faith Domergue, Billie Dove, Joan Fontaine, Brenda Frazier, Kathryn Grayson, Katharine Hepburn, Terry Moore, Ginger Rogers, Irene Meyer Selznick, Yvonne Shubert, Lana Turner. . . .

 

Sometimes Hughes proposed to two women in a simultaneous time frame. For example, both Faith Domergue and Ginger Rogers were given diamond engagement rings in October 1940.[245] Sometimes Hughes might be ‘engaged’ to four women at one time.

 

“He used the same line and the same technique on many different women, apparently saving his originality for his business encounters,” wrote Suzanne Finstad. “Evidently, a ‘proposal’ from Hughes was worth about a much as a Confederate dollar.”[246]

 

Howard Hughes bought engagement rings like others buy groceries. Imagine the piercing hurt of each of those many women when received the realization—usually on the telephone—that they were not and were never going to marry their intended! It was how Marilyn Monroe had described Hollywood: “A place where they pay you 50,000 dollars for a kiss and 50 cents for your soul.”[247]

 

*

 

HUGHES’ STARLETS: FOUR CASE STUDIES. Hughes signed Nancy Valentine, 18, the latest New York fashion model sensation, to a Hughes Productions contract in February 1946. He flew both Valentine and her mother out to the west coast, where, as the Hollywood Reporter noted in the spring of 1946, Valentine was squired around Hollywood’s nightlife by Hughes’ press agent, Johnny Meyer. Though Hughes paid his newest starlet $500 a week, she appeared in no film for years. After Hughes acquired RKO, he finally found the kindness to put Nancy Valentine in a film—she had a walk-on part, uncredited, in the aptly-titled A Dangerous Profession (1949). That was her one and only appearance in a Hughes film.[248]

 

Gina Lollobrigida was a happily-married 23-year-old model working in Rome when she was contacted by a representative of Hughes Productions. A former art student with a talent for photography, Gina had placed third in the 1947 Miss Italy beauty contest. Her looks would certainly have appealed to Hughes’s taste: she was a dark-haired beauty with full lips and busty hourglass figure. She signed a seven-year contract with Hughes Productions and flew to Los Angeles in July 1950. Hughes installed her in a suite at the Town House Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and kept her under constant surveillance. Guards were stationed in the hallway to monitor her house-arrest. Gina was not to go out unless Hughes gave the say-so. If she was allowed out, a chauffeur was on call so that Hughes would be kept abreast of Gina’s movements. More than once she stormed out flinging epithets and objects, but she would return, still expectant that Hughes would make good on his promise to make her a film star. Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, when the hotel was quiet and still, Gina was led downstairs to the hotel’s dining room where she danced with the mysterious Howard Hughes to the orchestra that Hughes had hired purely for the two of them. Then she put back into her suite. She waited indefinitely for the call that never came that would have taken her to a movie set. Meanwhile she collected $86,000 from RKO without appearing in any of the studio’s films.[249] Gina stormed out of Hughes’ enterprise within six weeks. She flew back to her husband in Italy and became an international film star through the 1950s and 1960s.[250] “I was not free in the time I spent there,” Gina recalled.[251]

 

Sallilee Conlon, an 18-year-old student at Indiana University, was featured on the cover of Life magazine in May 1953. Almost as soon as the issue hit the newsstands, she was summoned by RKO, and flown—along with her mother, stepfather, and stepsister—to Hollywood, where she was given a screen test at the studio. Next, Sallilee and her family were flown to Las Vegas where they were installed in a suite at the El Rancho Vegas. She met with Hughes at the Flamingo. “I remember that he peeped out at us suspiciously, with the chain on the door, before he let us in,” Conlon recalled. “He was a kind, quiet, shy man, really quite sensitive.” Hughes led her on with promises of Hollywood glory yet did not want her to return to the studio just yet. He had a singing coach flown in from Hollywood and Conlon was given singing lessons in Las Vegas for the next six months. “Once he routed us all out at three in the morning and flew us over the Grand Canyon to show us the sunrise,” she said. “He flew us deep down into the canyon to show us a little hidden green valley he had discovered.” When Conlon and her family were finally relocated to Los Angeles, they were given “luxurious quarters” and her father was put on Hughes’ payroll at $25,000 a year. Sallilee Conlon continued to take singing lessons for the next four and a half years. During this time she was instructed not to go on dates. Every so often she and Hughes spoke on the phone while she waited in earnest for her big break. “One day, my voice teacher broke the news to me that I wasn’t the only girl being ‘groomed for stardom.’” Conlon demanded that her contract be torn up. Under contract to Hughes for five years, Sallilee Conlon never appeared in a single Hughes film.[252]

 

Gail Ganley was 18 years old when she signed with Hughes in 1958. She was promised featured roles in Hollywood films. For 22 months she was paid $6,600 in expense money while waiting around for a film role, any film role. She was led on with promises that Hughes was soon to meet with her, but he never did. She sensed that she was being followed by a private detective when she went out on the town. For one period of eight months, she was escorted by a Hughes aide for dinner at Perino’s up to seven nights a week. In the end, she never appeared in a single Hughes film. She finally sued him for $552,500, charging him with “fraud and deceit.”[253]

 

*

 

The actress Joan Fontaine was one of the many hundreds of Hollywood women Hughes pursued over the years.[254] In 1939, Hughes met and almost immediately proposed marriage to Joan (for the first time), in the same period that he had proposed to her sister, Olivia De Havilland.[255] Hughes had been trying to ‘marry’ her for a decade by the time he bought RKO and in the process her contract as well. Though Fontaine was already married to film producer William Dozier, Hughes hoped she would divorce Dozier and marry him, and in return Hughes would give her (now ex-) husband the job of running his new movie studio. (On May 10, 1948, the New York Times reported that Hughes had talked with Dozier, associate production chief at Universal Studios, about Dozier moving to RKO as head of production, but no job was announced.[256]) In her autobiography No Bed of Roses this is how Fontaine remembered the Hughes of the late 1940s:

 

I was never in love with Howard. As a matter of fact, I was a little afraid of him. Certainly one could not be relaxed and at ease with a man of so much wealth, power, and influence. He had no humor, no gaiety, no sense of joy, no vivacity that was apparent to me. Everything seemed to be a ‘deal’, a business arrangement, regardless of the picture he had tried to paint of our future together—but money is sexy and he certainly had a blinding overabundance of cash appeal.[257]

 

Hughes was pathological about his women. It was a psychosis. Hughes would become hell-bent on accumulating things, he would get a bee in his bonnet, whether it be cars, planes, women, Las Vegas casinos. He wouldn’t stop until distracted by the next grandiose design.

 

Betsy Drake, Cary Grant’s wife from 1949-58, recalled one woman Howard Hughes attempted—unsuccessfully—to seduce in the early 1950s: the luminous Grace Kelly. “When Grace tried to avoid Howard Hughes, she didn’t use any makeup and wore glasses. He came to the house specifically to go on the make for Grace, but he didn’t recognize her. Howard was on the make for every woman. He would make it a project. He went to such pains to get his various women, but he never got Grace.”[258]

 

GROWING MADNESS. One contributing factor to the RKO fiasco was Hughes’ growing mental instability. Hughes’ madness had been intensifying through the 1940s and became full-blown through the 1950s. Paranoia. Hypochondria. ‘Accumulation sickness.’ Fear of germs. Blackouts. Fugues. Rapid heart action. Insomnia. Going off his rocker from suffering the many physical afflictions left-over from his risky exploits. Supposedly syphilis was eating away at his brain. The later Hughes exhibited classic OCD symptoms before that condition was named as such, such as washing his hands deliberately for an hour or more at a time, or obsessing for hours over the distribution of hershey bars or paper pads or Kleenex boxes on a nearby table. Back in 1944 Hughes had repeated an order to Noah Dietrich over the telephone thirty-three times in a row; and similarly repeated the phrase “a good letter should be immediately understandable” over and again while dictating a memo. One of Hughes’ secretaries at the switchboard at Romaine Street recalled an experience with the Hughes of the early 1950s: “One night he spoke the same two sentences over and over from midnight to seven a.m. I must have typed it two hundred times.”[259] Similarly, in the later 1950s Hughes drafted a memorandum for one of his employees in which the second, third, and fourth paragraphs repeated word-for-word the instructions laid out in the first paragraph.[260]

 

KLEENEX DIRECTIVES. We well know the urban legend of Hughes’ pathological fear of germs and contamination, the inspiration for Creepshow’s Upson Pratt and The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns in the casino episode. All those ‘fear of germs’ rumors are not an aggrandizing of the truth. We know this because Hughes left a series of directives in his own handwriting from the mid-1950s onward, directives for the ‘opening of a can of peaches’, for example, which was close to three single-spaced pages of a nine-step process designed to keep the contents of the can from getting contaminated when exposed.

 

Be sure that no part of the body, including the hands, be directly over the can or the plate at any time. If possible, keep the head, upper part of the body, arms, etc. at least one foot away from the can of fruit and the sterile plate at all times. During the procedure, there must be absolutely no talking, coughing, clearing of the throat, or any movement whatsoever of the lips.[261]

 

Or Hughes’ “Operating Manual for Taking Clothes to HRH”, also from same period, one of the many “Kleenex Directives” over the years in his fight against “Killer Bacteria”:

 

. . . He wants you to obtain a brand new knife, never used, to open a new box of Kleenex using the knife to open the slot.

 

After the box is open you are to take the little tag and the first piece of Kleenex and destroy them; then using two fingers of the left hand and two fingers of the right hand take each piece of Kleenex out of the box and place it on an open newspaper and repeat this until approximately 50 sheets are neatly stacked.

 

You then have a paddle for one hand. You are then to make another for the other hand, making a total of two paddles of Kleenex to use in handling these three boxes.

 

Mr. Hughes wanted you to remember to keep your head at a 45-degree angle from the various things you would touch, such as the Kleenex box itself, the knife, the Kleenex paddles.

 

The thing to be careful of during the operation is not to breathe upon the various items . . .[262]

 

Or this, from 1958, “The Proper Way to Wash a Food Tin”:

 

The man in charge turns the valve of the bathtub on, using his bare hands to do so. He also adjusts the water temperature so that it is not too hot nor too cold. He then takes one of the brushes, and, using one of two special bars of soap, creates a good lather and then scrubs the can from a point two inches below the top of the can. He should first soak and remove the label, and then brush the cylindrical part of the can over and over until all particles of dust, pieces of paper label, and, in general, all sources of contamination have been removed. Holding the can at all times, he then processes the bottom of the can in the same manner, being very sure that the bristles of the brush have thoroughly cleaned all the small indentations on the perimeter of the bottom of the can. He then rinses the soap from the cylindrical sides and bottom of the can.[263]

 

Hughes’ directives in this vein would accumulate to thousands of pages and would become known as the Romaine Street Procedures Manual.

 

These are the rules for a driver delivering 16mm or 35mm film to Hughes’s bungalow:

 

Park one foot from the curb on Crescent near the place where the sidewalk dead-ends into the curb. Get out of the car on the traffic side. Do not at any time be on the side of the car between the car and the curb. When unloading film do so from the traffic side of the car, if the film is in the rear seat. If it is in the trunk, stand as close to the center of the road as possible while unloading. Carry only one can of film at a time. Step over the gutter opposite the place where the sidewalk dead-ends into the curb from a point as far out into the center of the road as possible. Do not ever walk on the grass at all, also do not step into the gutter at all. Walk to the bungalow keeping as near to the center of the sidewalk as possible. Do not sit the film cans down on the sidewalk or the street or anywhere elase, except possibly on the porch of the Bungalow area if the third man [a Hughes aide] is not there. While waiting for the third man to arrive, do not lean against any portion of the bungalow or the furniture on the porch, but remain standing quietly and await his arrival. When the third man clears the door, step inside quickly carrying the can (single) of film, just far enough to be inside. Do not move and do not say anything and do not sit the film down until you receive instructions where to sit it. If possible, stay two feet away from the TV set, the wire on the floor and the walls. When leaving, kick on the door and step outside quickly as soon as the third man opens the door.[264]

 

By 1958 Hughes will be irrecoverably insane. He will give up on Hollywood and his harem of captives and become the most famous private man in American history. After Hughes starts buying up Las Vegas in 1966, there aren’t many people on earth who can confirm that the guy is even alive, let alone in the state of Nevada. By the time of his death in 1976 you wouldn’t have even recognized Hughes. The impossibly handsome and charming young man ended up as a wreck of a human being, a grand Guignol vision of physical decrepitude, his mind and body ravaged by painkillers, his bone-thin arms a graveyard of drug tracks and broken needle tips, the loose skin on his body festering with sores. It’s said that in the years leading up to his death he weighed ninety pounds—and the man was six foot three inches tall. He looked as wizened and grotesque as E.T. dying on the bathroom floor.

 

 

 

---

[1] Hill, “No-Man in the Land of Yes-Man”, p. 14. For Grant’s home, see, for example, “The Mechanical Man”, Time, July 19, 1948.

[2] See Russell, Autobiography, p. 100.

[3] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 72; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 151; Real, Asylum, p. 29.

[4] See Woodward, Bob, Wired (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), p. 70. ¶ Since the 1940s one of the signature dishes of the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel has been the McCarthy Salad (a concoction of various lettuces, bacon, egg, beets and cheddar cheese), named, after Hughes’ old lawyer, Neil S. McCarthy, who died on July 25, 1972.

[5] See Stuart, Sandra Lee, The Pink Palace: Behind Closed Doors at the Beverly Hills Hotel (Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1978), p. 11; 139; 203-4; 211.

[6] See Stuart, Pink Palace, p. 15.

[7] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 79; Hack, Hughes, p. 189.

[8] See [HH:US], p. 247-8.

[9] Quoted in Hack, Hughes, p. 179.

[10] Born Vera Ralston in Boise City, Oklahoma, in 1929, blond-haired cutie-pie Vera Miles became “Miss Kansas” in 1948 and subsequently made a film career for herself through the 1950s, featuring in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), then in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1957) and Psycho (1960), before going on to a long career appearing in television shows. Originally cast in Hitchcock’s Vertigo as Madeline Elster, Mile bowed out due to pregnancy, giving Kim Novak the career-defining role.

[11] See [HH:US], p. 248-9.

[12] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 13.

[13] See Crawford, Christina, Mommie Dearest (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1979), p. 97-8.

[14] See Hill, “No-Man in the Land of Yes-Man”, p. 14; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 227; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 123.

[15] See Allen, Big Change, p. 210.

[16] See Jewell, RKO, p. 10.

[17] See Jewell, RKO, p. 10; Pickard, Roy, The Hollywood Studios (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1978), p. 394; Pickard, Hollywood Studios, p. 393; Maltby, Richard, Hollywood Cinema, p. 63.

[18] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 125; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 177.

[19] See Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 104; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 125.

[20] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 125.

[21] See “Odlum Denies Chance Of Early Sale of RKO”, New York Times, January 16, 1948, p. 34.

[22] See “RKO Control Sought by Howard Hughes”, New York Times, January 15, 1948, p. 35.

[23] See “Odlum Denies Chance Of Early Sale of RKO”, New York Times, January 16, 1948, p. 34; “Howard or Bob?”, Time, January 26, 1948; RKO: It’s Only Money, p. 126.

[24] See [HH:HLM], p. 164.

[25] Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 106.

[26] [HH:HLM], p. 164.

[27] See Cochran, Jackie, p. 154-5; see also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 133-4.

[28] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 126.

[29] See “Hughes RKO Deal Off”, New York Times, April 9, 1948, p. 36.

[30] See “U.S. Indicts Hughes Firms”, New York Times, April 23, 1948, p. 6. The other individuals named in the indictment were Edward J. O.’Connell, former official of the War Assets Administration; Charles A. Loring, Hughes attorney; and Pratt Woolley, an automobile dealer in Hawaii.

[31] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 228.

[32] “Hughes And Odlum Agree On RKO Deal”, New York Times, May 3, 1948, p. 32.

[33] See “Howard Hughes Buys Control of RKO Studios”, Washington Post, May 12, 1948, p. 17 (says RKO had “some 33,000 shareholders”); “Sale”, Time, May 24, 1948;  “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 126-7 (says 929,000); Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 177-8 (929,000); [HH:HLM], p. 165 (says 929,020).

[34] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 177-8. Brady, Thomas F., “Hughes Purchases Atlas’ RKO Stock”, New York Times, May 12, 1948, p. 33, says 3,934,000 shares outstanding.

[35] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 229.

[36] See Brady, “Hughes Purchases Atlas’ RKO Stock”, p. 33.

[37] See [HH:HLM], p. 165.

[38] See Brady, “Hughes Purchases Atlas’ RKO Stock”, p. 33; “Sale”, Time, May 24, 1948; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 180.

[39] See Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 11.

[40] Its entrance was located at the cross-streets of Burbank Boulevard and Louise Avenue. The ranch featured a series of standing sets (Paris boulevard, western town, and so on) which were used in many of RKO’s films over the years. The ranch closed in 1953, and Hughes sold the property in 1954.

[41] See Lasky, RKO, p. 217.

[42] For details, see Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 177.

[43] Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 23.

[44] See Brady, Thomas F., “Hughes Purchases Atlas’ RKO Stock”, New York Times, May 12, 1948, p. 33.

[45] See Lasky, RKO, p. 216.

[46] See “The Mechanical Man”, Time, July 19, 1948; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 124; 206; Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 11;  Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 71; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 180; Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 271; Lasky, RKO, p. 216.

[47] Jewell, RKO Story, p. 143.

[48] See Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 106.

[49] See Rogers, My Story, p. 257-8.

[50] Hughes went on to say “The only thing that could stop me would be my death—an event that would be a story.” Quoted in “The Mechanical Man”, Time, July 19, 1948; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 181; truncated quote in Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 71.

[51] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 124; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 261; Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 271; Jewell, RKO Story, p. 143.

[52] See Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 106; 103.

[53] See Jewell, RKO, p. 15.

[54] Some of the films made by other production companies and distributed by RKO would win Oscars, however: including She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (Best Cinematography, 1949), Mighty Joe Young (Best Special Effects, 1949), Cinderella (Best Sound Recording; Best Scoring; Best Song, 1950), and a series of Short Subjects and Documentary Features.

[55] Figures culled from Jewell, RKO. Also Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 181; 184; 186; 187; 189; also [HH:HLM], p. 168; 169-70.

[56] $4,200,000 loss for 1949, says “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208.

[57] “A net financial loss of $3,471,042 during 1950,” says “R.K.O. Halts Films To Weed Out Reds”, New York Times, April 7, 1952, p. 21. ¶ “$3,500,000 in 1950”, says “Midnight Sale”, Time, October 6, 1952. ¶ “Deficit of $5,800,000 for the year 1950.” “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 212. ¶ 1950: “For the first time in RKO history, not one release earned profits of $100,000 or more for the company.” Jewell, RKO, p. 246.

[58] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 212. ¶ RKO historian Richard B. Jewell called it “One of the major miracles in bookkeeping history.” See Jewell, RKO, p. 254.

[59] See Jewell, RKO, p. 262; Lasky, RKO, p. 226. ¶ 1952: “Overall, RKO recorded a net loss of more than $15 million, the largest deficit in the history of the firm.” Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 149. ¶ Between 1948 and 1953 Hughes’ RKO will lose over $20 million, according to “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 123; “Shootout at the Hughes Corral”, Time, December 21, 1970; Lasky, RKO, p. 226.

[60] See Jewell, RKO, p. 270; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 188; “Rashomon, Starring Howard Hughes”, Time, January 24, 1972.

[61] Jewell, RKO, p. 276

[62] McGilligan, Backstory, p. 62.

[63] Quoted in Pickard, Hollywood Studios, p. 405; also in Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 139. See also “Midnight Sale”, Time, October 6, 1952; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 71; Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 73; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 104.

[64] Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 11; also [HH:HLM], p. 165.

[65] See Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 11; Hack, Hughes, p. 184.

[66] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 136.

[67] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 127; also Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 11; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 179.

[68] Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 11; also [HH:HLM], p. 166; [HH:US], p. 238; Hack, Hughes, p. 185.

[69] Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 11; also [HH:US], p. 237.

[70] Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 12.

[71] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; [HH:HLM], p. 167; “New Broom”, Time, July 12, 1948.

[72] Friedrich, City of Nets, p. 348. ¶ Around 1950, Schary suffered a back injury and was admitted to a Manhattan hospital. When Hughes heard the news, he phoned Schary at the hospital and asked if he wanted air transportation back to Los Angeles. Schary declined the offer. A month later, back in L.A., Schary was resting at home when Hughes made an unexpected visit. “If you want anything or need anything,” he told Schary, “let me know.” See Schary, “I Remember Hughes”, p. 12; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 106.

[73] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 127. See also Lasky, RKO, p. 217.

[74] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; 208. ¶ For executives at Hughes’ RKO, see Lasky, RKO, p. 217-8; 220; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 136-7; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 106. ¶ According to actor Frank Mazzola, in the late 1940s film director Nicholas Ray “once turned down a $110,000 check that Howard Hughes gave him to run RKO.” See Kashner, Sam, “Dangerous Talents”, Vanity Fair, March 2005, p. 238.

[75] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 183.

[76] For this and the next two anecdotes, see Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 27-8; 37; 62. The second or third of these seems to be the same anecdote told in Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 350. ¶ For yet another anecdote regarding Hughes’ instructing of one of his associates to remain in a hotel room until further notice, see Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 128-9. ¶ “Typically, he called one of his executives, Perry Lieber, at home one night. The line was busy. He tried several times more, becoming increasingly more frantic. The next morning a telephone man arrived at the Lieber house with orders to install another phone in Lieber’s bedroom. Lieber was never told what the number was. Only Hughes knew.” Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 42. ¶ “Perry Lieber, public-relations director for all the Hughes hotels. Lieber, an unflaggingly cheerful man with sad eyes, had been with Hughes since the late 1940s, when Hughes owned the RKO studio in Hollywood.” Phelan, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels, p. 11. ¶ “‘I refuse to apologize, although I am willing now to explain.’ . . . That, my friend, is pure Howard Hughes. If I’ve heard him say that once, I’ve heard him say it twenty times.” Phelan, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels, p. 11; used in Melvin and Howard, a screenplay by Bo Goldman.

[77] See Barton, Flying Boat, p. 240.

[78] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 126; Lemon, “Mystery Of The White-Sneakered Millionaire”, p. 26; 71.

[79] See Phelan, “Howard Hughes: He Battles for an Empire”, p. 18.

[80] See Phelan, “Howard Hughes: He Battles for an Empire”, p. 18.

[81] Charlie Guest, golf pro; someone named Barry; Johnny Meyer; and Dick Davis, an associate of the Carl Byoir publicity agency.

[82] See Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 204.

[83] See Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 205.

[84] See Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 242-3.

[85] In January 1951, the verdict in Mitchum’s case was overturned by the Los Angeles Supreme Court, due to suspicions concerning the veracity of certain of the witnesses, and Mitchum was exonerated of all wrongdoing.

[86] See “Midnight Sale”, Time, October 6, 1952; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; Jewell, RKO, p. 143; Lasky, RKO, p. 219. ¶ Edith Lynch, a publicist at RKO, recalled that Hughes kept an office at RKO. For anecdote, see Russell, Autobiography, p. 113-4.

[87] Preminger, Otto, Preminger: An Autobiography, in Silvester, Penguin Book of Hollywood, p. 412.

[88] Rummel, Hughes and TWA, p. 152-3.

[89] Quoted in Pickard, Hollywood Studios, p. 406-7. ¶ By the way, John Sturges also reported that Hughes’ “favorite movie was The Frogmen. It sure doesn’t figure on any other people’s best-ever list. But he liked it. He loved the gadgetry and reckoned it was the best film ever made. He loved the machinery, the aqua lungs and all that.” Quoted in Pickard, Hollywood Studios, p. 407.

[90] See Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 258.

[91] Memo to RKO studio manager C.J. Tevlin, quoted in Parish, RKO Gals, p. 722; Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 157-9; Truffaut, Francois, Films of My Life (New York: De Capo Press, 1994); Lasky, RKO, p. 222. ¶ In the memo Hughes had ordered that the memo was to be burned after it was read by the wardrobe department, but it slipped through his tight security net. See Phelan, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels, p. 190.

[92] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 181; 184; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 719; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 106; Jewell, RKO Story, p. 261; Lasky, RKO, p. 223.

[93] Von Sternberg had been one of Hollywood’s supreme visual stylists in the 1920s and 30s. By early 1940 his successful career suddenly stalled and he lost all his power and influence. Before Jet Pilot, von Sternberg hadn’t directed a film in eight years. Hughes hired von Sternberg for Jet Pilot as nothing more than a glorified traffic cop. ¶ See Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, p. 163.

[94] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 144-6.

[95] “During Duke’s early years with Chata, Hughes occasionally flew him to Mexico City to see his lover, and they shared strong anti-Communist sentiments.” Roberts, John Wayne, p. 350-1. ¶ Chata was Mexican actress Esperanza Ceballos, Wayne’s second wife (from 1946 to 1954).

[96] See Lasky, RKO, p. 221; Roberts, John Wayne, p. 351-2. See also Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 108-111; 129-30.

[97] Quoted in Roberts, John Wayne, p. 351.

[98] See “Sophomoric ‘Jet Pilot’ Is Real Comical”, Washington Post, September 26, 1957, p. C19; Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 254.

[99] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; [HH:HLM], p. 168; Jewell, RKO Story, p. 290; Lasky, RKO, p. 223.

[100] See McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p. 51; also Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 133-4.

[101] Specifically, the clever gunplay between Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid.

[102] Quoted in McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p.  51.

[103] For quote, see McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p. 51. See also Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 338-9.

[104] Quoted in McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p. 51.

[105] See Mast, Howard Hawks, p. 337-46.

[106] Quoted in McBride, Hawks on Hawks, p. 51.

[107] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 95-6.

[108] LeRoy was the nephew of Jessie Lasky, one of the pioneers of the Hollywood film industry who had run Paramount in its earliest days. In 1937 LeRoy, while working at Warner’s, discovered Julia Jean Turner and hired her at $50.00 a week for a small role in They Won’t Forget. LeRoy gave Julia her stage name, Lana Turner. LeRoy was also one of the founders of the Hollywood Park horse race track in the 1930s.

[109] See Rogers, My Story, p. 102-3.

[110] LeRoy, Mervyn, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1974), p. 163-4.

[111] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 82.

[112] Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 88.

[113] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 91-3; [HH:US], p. 254-5.

[114] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 104.

[115] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 105. Also Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 244; [HH:US], p. 253-4.

[116] See Anderson, Jack and Les Whitten, “Hughes-Romantic Spy”, Washington Post, April 16, 1976, p. D15.

[117] See [HH:US], p. 257.

[118] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 107-9.

[119] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 110-1; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 145.

[120] Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 50.

[121] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 62; 74; 225.

[122] See Terry Moore interview in “Howard Hughes: The Real Aviator”, DVD documentary; also Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 20; 23; Finstad, Heir, p. 46.

[123] See “People”, Time, April 3, 1972; Phelan, Money, p. 180; Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 27; 54-6; Higham, Howard Hughes, 151.

[124] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 26.

[125] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 34; 40. ¶ “Hughes, who likes to bowl alone.” Myers, “Kaiser Will Find in Howard Hughes A Shy, Retiring Airplane Genius”, p. 3. 

[126] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 6; 33; 44.

[127] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 15.

[128] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 26; 41.

[129] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 21; 35.

[130] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 32.

[131] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 151; 173.

[132] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 38; 44; 47; 52-4.

[133] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 65, Finstad, Heir, p. 48; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 143; [HH:US], p. 251; Hack, Hughes, p. 193.

[134] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 58-9; Hack, Hughes, p. 193.

[135] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. ii.

[136] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 67.

[137] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 86.

[138] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 128.

[139] Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 80-81. See also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 151.

[140] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 132-3.

[141] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 50-1.

[142] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 67.

[143] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 112.

[144] See [HH:US], p. 251.

[145] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 76. For this paragraph and the seven preceding paragraphs, see also Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 7; 69; 76; 81-4; 87; 97; 99; 101; 109-115; 118; 158; 172; 174; 192; 197; 218; 234. For more on Barkley, see p. 175; 251-2.

[146] See Lasky, RKO, p. 221.

[147] See Lasky, RKO, p. 221. Primary financing for the Wald-Krasna production deal would come from the Mellon Bank, in partnership with Bankers Trust Co. of New York.

[148] Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 148.

[149] See “Big Deal”, Time, August 28, 1950; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 210; Lasky, RKO, p. 221.

[150] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 212.

[151] See Lasky, RKO, p. 223.

[152] See Jewell, RKO Story, p. 254; 260.

[153] Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 148.

[154] See Jewell, RKO, p. 242; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 253-4; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 180-1.

[155] See Leigh, There Really Was A Hollywood, p. 117-121; 130; [HH:US], p. 255; Jewell, RKO Story, p. 261.

[156] See Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, p. 35.

[157] Jewell, RKO, p. 254.

[158] McGilligan, Backstory, p. 61-2.

[159] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; Jewell, RKO, p. 143; Lasky, RKO, p. 220.

[160] See Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 254.

[161] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; [HH:HLM], p. 167. ¶ Hughes’ contract player Jane Russell starred in Montana Belle for Fidelity Pictures in 1948. When the film was completed, Hughes bought it for $600,000 then shelved it for the time being. In 1949, he sold the picture to RKO, which eventually released it in 1952. (Noted Richard Jewell, “Very few people would have been disappointed if the film had remained permanently under lock and key.”) See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; Parish, RKO Gals, p. 715;  Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 132; Jewell, RKO Story, p. 267 (which tells a slightly different story).

[162] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 206; 208; Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 148; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 184.

[163] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 148; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 185.

[164] See Jewell, RKO Story, p. 256; 274; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 208; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 184.

[165] She was born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas in 1915, and died of cancer in 1967.

[166] See Jacobs, Preston Sturges, p. 346; Brownlow, Kevin, The Parade’s Gone By (London: Abacus, 1973), p. 534-5.

[167] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 174; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 169; [HH:US], p. 242; Hack, Hughes, p. 208.

[168] “Miss Simmons’ attorney, Martin Gang . . . filed his own damage suit against Hughes, RKO, and a publicity firm, charging that they had acted to libel and slander him during the Simmons court actions.” Jewell, RKO Story, p. 262; see also p. 276; also “Jean Simmons” at the Reel Classics website.

[169] See “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 212.

[170] Quoted in Lee, “Hughes’ Empire Facing A Crisis”, p. 11; also in Stanley, Celluloid Empire, p. 149; and Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 189.

[171] Quoted in [HH:HLM], p. 185.

[172] See “‘Forgotten Man’ of Films Paid for Not Acting”, Washington Post, June 7, 1949, p. 15; “RKO: It’s Only Money”, p. 126; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 96-7; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 88; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 189.

[173] See Coe, Richard, L., “Hughes Once Owned Andes”, Washington Post, July 24, 1968, p. B5.

[174] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 347-8.

[175] See Bohus, Ted, “Interview: Mala Powers”, SPFX: Special Effects Magazine, #8, 1999, p. 17-8.

[176] Quoted in Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 254.

[177] See Barton, Flying Boat, p. 239.

[178] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 117; 118.

[179] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 116; 117.

[180] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 117. See also Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 157. 

[181] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 232; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 259; Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 252.

[182] See “Electronic Chicks”, Time, October 17, 1955. See also Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 259.

[183] See [HH:HLM], p. 171-2; see also Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p.  98.

[184] See “Electronic Chicks”, Time, October 17, 1955.

[185] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 118; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 259.

[186] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 117; 118; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 241; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 111.

[187] “Electronic Blow-Off”, Time, October 5, 1953.

[188] See Cook, Warfare State, p. 192-3.

[189] See Murphy, “The Blowup at Hughes Aircraft”, p. 190; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 262; Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 121. ¶ “Paralleling the eight-thousand-foot east-west runway and located on its south side was a large employee parking lot extending about half the distance of the landing strip. Further south above the Westchester bluff sat Loyola University. To the north was a large draining ditch, agricultural land, and a clump of trees next to Jefferson Boulevard. On the west end was more agricultural land, then Lincoln Boulevard, and a mile farther west, the Pacific Ocean. On the east end was a Culver City cemetery and the Baldwin Hills area of Ladera Heights. Surrounded by homes and businesses, a pilot had a minimum margin of error if he encountered an aircraft problem on takeoff or landing.” Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 119.

[190] Both Seymour and McDaniel, Jr. will fly with Hughes in a B-26 (upgraded with a Hughes celestial guidance system) in the early 1950s. See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 100-2; 106-8; 109; 158; 162.

[191] See Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 135; 159. Subsequent flight tests would take place at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

[192] Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 121.

[193] Marrett, Howard Hughes: Aviator, p. 121.

[194] See [HH:HLM], p. 170.

[195] See McGilligan, Backstory, p. 228.

[196] Dietrich, Amazing Mr. Hughes, p. 273.

[197] See Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 8.

[198] Quoted in Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 9.

[199] See Hack, Hughes, p. 217; Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 13; 62; Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 142; [HH:US], p. 258; Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 13; Maheu, Next to Hughes, p. 67-8. ¶ For hijinks with the starlets, see Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 145-52.

[200] Two of Hughes’ drama coaches were Florence Enright in the 1940s and Lillian Albertson in the 1950s. See Russell, Autobiography, p. 61; Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 253.

[201] Hughes kept at least one photographer on 24-hour call. He often used Jack Christi and Fred Shepherd. See Anderson “Hughes-Romantic Spy”, p. D15; Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 250; Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 144 (says “Christy Shepherd”).

[202] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 45; [HH:US], p. 258.

[203] Anderson, “Hughes-Romantic Spy”, p. D15.

[204] Hougan, Spooks, p. 331.

[205] See Bach, Steven, Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend (U.S.A.: De Capo Press, 2000), p. 355; Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 82.

[206] See Server, Robert Mitchum, p. 250.

[207] See Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 254.

[208] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 182; Fadiman, “Can The Real Howard Hughes . . .”, p. 254.

[209] See Dell, “The Howard Hughes I Knew”, p. 50.

[210] See Wickware, “Howard Hughes: Fabulous Bachelor”, p. 50; Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 182.

[211] Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 97.

[212] See Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 259; Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 52-61; Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 85; Hack, Hughes, p. 217; Lasky, RKO, p. 217.

[213] See Hack, Hughes, p. 217. See also Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 78.

[214] See Frehner, Hughes and Me, p. 250; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 168.

[215] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 168.

[216] See Maheu, Next to Hughes, p. 166.

[217] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 54-5; 59. Also Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 210-1.

[218] Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 150.

[219] Anderson, “Hughes-Romantic Spy”, p. D15.

[220] See “Shootout at the Hughes Corral”, Time, December 21, 1970.

[221] “Rashomon, Starring Howard Hughes”, Time, January 24, 1972.

[222] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 13; Phelan, Scandals, Scamps and Scoundrels, p. 197; Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 99; Anderson, “Hughes-Romantic Spy”, p. D15.

[223] For Chouinard’s background, see Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 14-21.

[224] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 37-8; [HH:US], p. 258.

[225] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 39.

[226] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 43.

[227] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 152.

[228] See [HH:US], p. 258.

[229] Thomas, Hughes in Hollywood, p. 56.

[230] See Phelan, Money, p. 33.

[231] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 13; [HH:US], p. 257. ¶ In 1950, Hughes will romance blonde beauty Barbara Payton, an actress at Universal-International. Of course, this involved Hughes compiling surveillance data on her. See Crivello, Kirk, Fallen Angels (New York: Berkeley Books, 1990), p. 34; Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 92-4; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 159-60.

[232] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 60.

[233] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 19.

[234] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 13.

[235] Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 188.

[236] See Goodman, Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, p. 51-2.

[237] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 140-2; [HH:US], p. 274.

[238] “The Lowdown on Howard Hughes and the Women,” p. 20.

[239] See Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 81.

[240] See Russell, Autobiography, p. 65.

[241] See [HH:US], p. 155.

[242] Tierney, Self-Portrait, p. 29.

[243] Alternately, if Hughes had been driving out of Beverly Hills, he might have turned north off Sunset Boulevard onto Beverly Glen Boulevard which connects with Mulholland Drive. ¶ In 1923 the City of Los Angeles honored William Mulholland—as the man who had brought water and power to L.A.—by lending his name to a newly cut highway that ran along the heights of the Santa Monica Mountains—Mulholland Highway, later referred to as Mulholland Drive.

[244] See Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 55-6; “Mrs. Hughes, I Presume?”, Washington Post, May 25, 1983, p. B17; Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 93; 142-3; Finstad, Heir, p. 46-7. 

[245] See Hack, Hughes, p. 128-9.

[246] Finstad, Heir, p. 32.

[247] Quoted in Walker, Who’s Who in the Movies, p. 528

[248] See document dated April 26, 1946 in the FBI Howard Hughes File #62-6282; www.imdb.com.

[249] See “Howard Hughes: Cash-and-Carry Casanova”, p. 10. 

[250] See Gerber, Bashful Billionaire, p. 296-7; Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 247-8; Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 176-7; Matheson, Weird Ways, p. 81-2; [HH:US], p. 266-7.

[251] Quote in Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 248.

[252] See Phelan, “Howard Hughes: He Battles for an Empire”, p. 21-2; [HH:US], p. 267-8.

[253] She asked for $40,500 in wages, $112,000 for loss of other earnings, and $400,000 punitive damages. See “Sues Hughes”, Washington Post, July 14, 1962, p. 7; Thompson, “Riddle of an Embattled Phantom”, p. 27; Garrison, Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, p. 99.

[254] Fontaine was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland in Toyko to British parents in 1917. A lady of great beauty and style, she hit it big in Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 1940, and won the Best Actress Academy Award the next year for Hitch’s Suspicion, with Cary Grant.

[255] See Higham, Howard Hughes, p. 90.

[256] See Brady, Thomas F., “Today Is Deadline On Hughes’ RKO Bid”, New York Times, May 10, 1948, p. 27.

[257] Fontaine, Joan, No Bed of Roses, in Silvester, Penguin Book of Hollywood, p. 409. ¶ In the end Fontaine squirmed out of that one. She starred in Born To Be Bad (1950) for RKO. ¶ Myrna Dell recalled, “He had a marvelous sense of humor, very dry.” See Dell, “The Howard Hughes I Knew”, p. 50.

[258] Nelson, Cary Grant, p. 189. See also Moore, Beauty and the Billionaire, p. 9.

[259] Quoted in Keats, Howard Hughes, p. 243; also in Demaris, “You and I”, p. 78.

[260] See Turner, Wallace, “Documents in Hughes Cases Show A Recluse Beset By Many Fears”, New York Times, December 4, 1977, p. 44.

[261] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 261.

[262] Quoted in [HH:US], p. 261.

[263] Quoted in [HH:HLM], p. 233.

[264] Quoted in [HH:HLM], p. 238-9.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

1–20

Titles, but no music. Is the show beginning? Is this the film? Is this a coming attraction? NO TRESPASSING. We are doing what we are not supposed to do. We are yielding to the cinematic mechanism. We are putting ourselves in its hands as we do an airline pilot when we buckle up inside the passenger cabin. The mood is sombre and creepy, as if we’re watching a Universal horror picture. We now know that the shot composition and editing are exactingly composed, so the upward movement of shots 1–3 is more than just the face-value getting over the fence. There is a symbolic (intuitive) value to the upward movement. We recall it in the “reaching for the sky” fixtures atop Xanadu’s roof; we see it in the stream of newspapers circulating; we see this motif culminated in the fireworks; we see this motif frozen in Xanadu’s reach for the sky. Already in 1 Kane is introduced via letters. At bottom : NO TRESPASSING. At top : the “K”. We move from the one at the start of the shot to the other at the end of the shot. The link between these two linguistic elements prompts the Spectator to think of any potential relationship between the two. At the top of the gate, we see, far in the distance, the lone shining light of Xanadu. Kane is inside that room. He is far from us. He is a light we are moving toward. (As in the last tunnel? “Go toward the light”?) The diagonals (top of gate and angle of Xanadu) contribute to the uneasy, unstable vibe. And the mist : as in the “out of the mists of time”? The mist contributes to the eerie feel, and is a symbolic component of the Time theme which we are well acquainted with by 12:30 of CK. Through these mists we might be seeing all times at once superimposed together, just as Xanadu is composed of a jumble of elements to make a whole. We’re in no immediate recognizable time period : perhaps because the story is timeless? We’re breathing the air of all the stories ever told, which include all the first-rate stories ever told by all the first-rate story-tellers. We are now out of ordinary time and are sharing a special Time with all art and artists : the Infinitude. All art and artists breathe the same air at the same time. The moonlit sky is mottled with dark clouds (eerie), but the night is peaceful, and the mist moves evenly and slow. Nothing much is stirring, except the camera : we’re skulking in, trespassers, not even knowing what we’re looking for. What is the common wisdom about cinema audiences? They watch movies to escape. But what is happening at the beginning of CK? We are moving beyond the gate into the incarceration! We’re escaping from one Situation only to allow ourselves to be caught in another. We’re entering a labyrinth. How we reckon with this may have positive ramifications—If we sharpen our eyes and mind on Art, we’ll be all the more ready to take on the world. Audiences have come to enjoy entertainment; but at the first they’re already turned into criminals (what about the Hays Code?) : they’re being brought where they’re not supposed to, they are trespassing. Why the sign NO TRESPASSING? Might a monster live in that high castle? Maybe the NO TRESPASSING sign is admonishing us for our own good! What are we getting into? The genre is indeterminate. Now that we know Xanadu’s prospect in the sunlight, and know of Kane’s last footage, we think about the palm tree and the bushes and the grass in light of their visual connection to Kane : We see nature in our first and last view of him in the first 12:30. Kane is a natural man. He is not pretense. Funny thing is, his nature led him to this eerie inhuman Situation. In shot 5 the primates are looking around, just as the audience is eyeballing the cinematic experience. The primates are in a cage, while what looks not ten feet away is a gate to a stream of water and an archway : what looks like an entrance to a fairyland. The primates are close to this passage, but cannot get there, because they are caught. Shades of the end of Paradise Lost? Adam and Eve know that what is behind them cannot ever again be before them. Here, the open gate is akin to an inexorable taunting. The primates can almost reach it—but not quite, and never. We see iron bars in 3, 4 and 5. Is there perverse humor in that? The human beings of the castle are inside iron bars just as the primates are. Iron is dark and hard and inflexible and cold. There is contrast between the cold iron and the cute primates, innocent and unwitting and caged up out of sight of the world for no good reason. In 5 a dark tree branch curves around the top of the frame from a tree trunk at bottom right, and circuits all the way round the frame, joining up via the iron bars to foliage at screen-left. This curvature reminds of the curvature of the photograph of mother and son in 62. The curve of the branch softens the hard iron and Xanadu's sharp pinnacles. The scrollwork of the iron cage and the winding tree branch are in accord : nature / primate-in-cage : cinematic short-hand for Kane himself? The dark curvature over Xanadu gives shot 5 the flavor of the Iris In. Fade to an upside down Xanadu in undulatory water. Note the forlorn detail of the pier messy with tools, all apparently long unused (6). The castle seems abandoned, but one light is shining, like a call from afar leading us on. Shot 7 has a strong flavor of the ancient world, with its stern, unadorned stone archway. The various iron chains have no favorable feeling about them. The audience moves forward whether it likes it or not. Like gods the audience leaps great distances without impediment. A stone figure stares at Xanadu : the ossified gaze occupying the central element of the screen : connection with the Spectator? The shabby golf course in 8 has two tattered flags on poles pointed in opposite directions : the uneasy vibe is sustained here in the dual diagonal composition, here once again : the fairway sign traces one diagonal while the two flags trace an opposing diagonal, generating visual unease : and the curve of the green recalls the curve of the tree branch in 5. Speaking of that : here again, in 8, the top of the frame is structured with overhanging leafage, a darkness looking somewhat like a mirror image of Xanadu in this shot. In 9, detritus of all kinds litters what may be a courtyard. It’s been a long time since anyone has given this property any due care. The eerie mist is thick here. We’re getting closer to something. Trees are visible, but stone predominates. This estate, for all of its nature, is heavy with iron and stone. In 10 Xanadu looks less like a castle than a fortress that Alexander the Great may have fancied. There is an epic vibe to the angle, the colossal scope of the castle captured in the lens : the castle is so large that its outlines must bleed outside the frame even at a considerable distance. We see dark stairways and statues of the human figure (with swords : more forbidding imagery); these stone statues emphasize all the more the desolation of the location. What do we see inside the room in 11? What is that wallpaper design? Printed on a lighter background is a repeating pattern of circles : like snowflakes? On the right—is that a simple fireplace, without mantlepiece? If so, there is no fire burning. Inside the window there is nothing readily apparent that cries out, “A human being is inside here!” There is no bric-a-brac visible. There is (a) the wallpaper; (b) the possible fireplace; (c) the bed (with blanket); (d) a bit of curtain; and no other personal or impersonal artifact of any kind. This is a sort of blank room. The cross-hatching in the window recalls the chain-link fence. Two thick metal poles divide up the window, possibly for preservation purposes, but at any rate they don’t look friendly, they don’t look “homey”. Nothing does : there’s more stone here, but no nature. Then the light inside goes out and the metal poles resemble prison bars in the darkness. Dissolve to 12, inside the room : the corpse’s torso and head are cut off by the framing. This character is introduced as just a body, an object in space. For all the majesty of the castle, for all the slow movement closer, for all the atmosphere, when we’re introduced to a human being, it’s framed in a more curious way than anything yet in the movie. The dying body of Kane is the most askew detail we’ve yet encountered in CK. A deep black commands the left third of the screen : an ominous evocation of the abyss. Next to it is the window of luminosity. Take your pick. Note the curtain that looks like elegant jacquard; its detailing catches the light. The body on the bed is wearing black and white : note the symbolic contrast. Note Kane’s feet under the blanket : here, too, a detail of aspirement, like the pinnacles atop Xanadu,  Xanadu’s own reach for the sky. Dissolve to the snowfall of 13. What is it we see? One wonders just as one would wonder if actually standing in the midst of such a snowfall, trying to find a passage forward through the obscurity. This is a close up of a colossal obscurity : something connected to the mind of the dying man? The obscurity resolves into another location : a snow-covered habitation. Then the zoom out to reveal the snowglobe in the wan hand. We see that the snow is not inside the snowglobe only, but outside as well : a surreal overlap. Just as we were able to violate physics by leaping over the fence, now we’re violating another unspeakable phenomenon : we may be catching something from another person’s mind (and emotions)? We are seeing into a mind? Or is the film itself superimposing the snow? What is going on? In death, who knows? The snowglobe is the emblem of all that is valuable. All that value is in a person’s grasp, for free, for a lifetime. And now here it is in the dying man’s hand : he’s appreciating what he has, at the last minute of everything. The snowglobe is the lens. The snowglobe is the bubble of art. The snowglobe is the memory of youth. The snowglobe is memory itself. The snowglobe is. . . . And so on. The hand twitches as the life passes from out of the body. The spoken word “Rosebud” in 14 : our theory is that we are witnessing the beatitudinous moment of Kane recapturing the blessed feeling of youth, just as he dies. A wonderful death, then? Perhaps he did have the last laugh then. In 15 the snowglobe slips from his dying grasp, while the snow still overlays the picture, as if, in death, everything is surreal, and who knows what is happening. The arm that held the snowglobe is wearing white : this white recalls the white of the snow, and also therefore evokes (doesn’t it?) the white of purity, of numinousness? The snowglobe rolls down a series of steps (echo of the motif of the staircase). The snowglobe is moving downward just as the audience moved upwards. Note the tiles of the floor. The snowglobe follows the trajectory of the most prominent tile visible, a triangle pointing (no surprise to us) upward to the top of the frame. But the floor is not so simple : it is composed of various geometrical designs : life is complicated and a person comes to grief against it. At least the hand looks comfortable on a rich-looking blanket. In 16 the snowglobe smashes and the water inside soaks the lens. A nihilist moment. The frame is emphasized. The illusion is already up. It’s all just a game. The lens is not a window. But let us think differently now. The water dousing the lens may be equated to a sort of baptism, a cleansing. Perhaps CK will be a sort of spiritual cleansing? The shattering is a fine cinematic metaphor for the breaking through into who knows where when consciousness shatters, revealing whatever on the other side. The carpet on the stairs is elegantly finished not with a rod at the bottom but with a twisted rope (twisted rope and water : echoes of a sea voyage?). The twists also recall knots : and both twists and knots evoke the complications of life. The nurse enters the room in a surreal manner in 17. Is the audience dreaming? Are we still seeing into someone else’s mind? Isn’t it said that the mind may live on after clinical death for some duration of time? What if Kane’s consciousness is floating around in that room? What if 17, the shot of the nurse entering, is another glimpse through Kane’s eyes, in the manner of the snowflakes? The carven door is elegantly wrought and framed by pillars. The distortion corresponds to the distortion of the moment of death. Reason enters : the nurse enters : but reason has no power against death. One cannot be reasonable when facing death : death always has the last word. A female in white. Emblem of an angel? A guardian angel? A memory of his mother? Notice the floor design in the doorway. (I will skip over 18.) The nurse is another in the sizable number of nihilist figures in CK : they seem human, but are drained of humanness. The nurse’s face is cut off by the top of the frame, and what we see of it is obscured in shadow. The nurse is drained of personality. We are in a cold spot. In 19 we see that the darkened profile of Kane is a noble profile. Darkened : all the lights inside him have gone out. The light shining in through the window may be taken as nothing more than a sort of mocking contrast : bright life continues, but Kane himself is at an end. We get a better view of the elegant drapes here : the tassels. What Kane collected over the years has outlasted him. Our possessions outlast us. But our Art does as well. In 20, the character Kane has died, but in dying has entered the immortality of Art.

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

Abstraction

(2:56)

(13:41)

(1:52:39)

Stagecoach (1939), 1:20:37. Welles remarked that he watched John Ford’s Stagecoach many dozens of times before filming CK.

 

Some examples after CK :

Secret Beyond the Door (1947), 21:43

The Magician (1958), 1:32:30

The Conformist (1970), 57:43

Shadows and Fog (1991), 12:24

Lost Highway (1997), 18:50

[Jeff Bernstein]

  Bernard Herrmann

  Citizen Kane. Vertigo. Psycho. Taxi Driver.

[Jeff Bernstein]

After the end

 

5:01 - 6:22

[Jeff Bernstein]

After the end

 

 

[Jeff Bernstein]

(12:30)

Alphaville (1965), 32:40

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

(12:30)

Persona, 1:22:42–1:22:48

And the Ship Sails On (1983), 2:02:53–2:03:31

Body Double (1984), 1:19:36

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by Jeff Bernstein

[Jeff Bernstein]

[Jeff Bernstein]

Joan Blondell looks as if she is speaking to the actual director of the film, William Beaudine (but she isn't). Make Me a Star (1932), 1:01:35.

Here, however, Marion Davies is indeed speaking with her actual director, King Vidor, during Show People (1928), 1:15:21

P.S. Look at the size of the camera in 1932! Was it encased here, to muffle its noise?

Make Me a Star, 34:59

[Jeff Bernstein]

During the climactic battle of Platoon (1986), its writer/director Oliver Stone gets blown up (1:43:55–1:44:11). This is a Citizen Kane dual moment : we watch the maker of the film get wasted, but the film still has a duration of running time left! So who's in charge now?

[Jeff Bernstein]

Writer/director Stephen King receives a message at the start of Maximum Overdrive (1986) :

[Jeff Bernstein]