Howard Hughes - the Secret Life

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330348132 ISBN 13: 9780330348133

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 1996

In his time, Howard Hughes was perhaps the richest man in the world, his fortune gained from motion pictures, aviation and engineering. He had romantic involvements with Katherine Hepburn, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Bette Davis, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner and many more. This book describes these relationships, as well as Hughes's little known homosexual life, including affairs with Cary Grant and Tyrone Power. Hughes made the films "The Outlaw", in total defiance of the censors, and "Scarface" in which there was a hint of incest. So obsessed was he with the details of his business that he controlled the actual cut of Jane Russell's brassiere. This book also describes Hughes's relationship with the politicans whom he corrupted and bent to his will, his business transactions and his involvement in Watergate, and his anti-semitism, as well as his round the world journey in 1937. The later years were ones of breakdowns and seclusion, with Hughes literally insulating himself from the world.

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.