Howard Hughes:secret - Softcover

Higham, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425142515 ISBN 13: 9780425142516

Publisher: Berkley, 1994

Synopsis

Draws on previously unavailable sources to provide a provocative, intimate portrait of the private life of billionaire Howard Hughes, from his affairs with Hollywood stars to his possible involvement with Nixon and Watergate to his shocking death. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Higham is the author of such bestsellers as The Duchess of Windsor; Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn; and Bette: The Life of Bette Davis. With coauthor Ray Moseley, he has written Elizabeth and Philip: The Untold Story of the Queen of England and Her Prince, and biographies of Cary Grant and Merle Oberon. A former New York Times feature writer, Mr. Higham lives in Los Angeles.

From Kirkus Reviews

An outing of the billionaire closet bisexual by Higham, whose bios include lives of Cary Grant, Brando, Orson Welles, the Duchess of Windsor, and L.B. Mayer, among others. Higham does his research an injustice by insisting on printing much sexual hearsay as fact (and hinting that Hughes died of an AIDS-like disease), especially since he has done as much homework on Hughes's business and monetary activities as he did on Wallis Windsor and Mayer. The first half of Hughes's life fascinates with his immense network of seductions as he forms one movie company to assuage his voyeuristic needs and buys another to continue them- -while also running Hughes Tool, TWA, and other businesses--and meanwhile breaking an around-the-world aircraft speed record and building the gigantic Spruce Goose military transport (a white elephant of no use whatsoever). This is all before his psychic collapse into fear of large-scale germ warfare via Kleenex, a mental illness that Higham suggests Hughes picked up from his mother, a monumental cleanliness nut. As for the bisexual hearsay, Higham says he got it from Lawrence Quirk, nephew of Photoplay publisher James Quirk, who got it straight from Hughes's bisexual uncle Rupert Hughes, who got it from Hughes himself during a confessional outpouring. Higham says that Hughes's ``sexual partners were not so much lovers as hostages, prisoners or victims of his will; he had to dominate in everything.'' The author tells of Hughes's descent into Hollywood S&M, and as for his news about Hughes paying off Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon: It may not be new, but it comes strongly documented. The recluse's last years are...ripe--he even takes to storing his urine in Mason jars. Undeniably a hypnotic portrait of a great American monster. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berkley
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0425142515
• ISBN 13: 9780425142516
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 1