I Was Howard Hughes Read online

  I Was Howard Hughes

  a novel

  STEVEN CARTER

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Extracts

  Women

  You’ve Got to Start Somewhere

  Operation Nevada

  Howard and Greta Garbo

  Howard and Kate

  A Gift Is A Gift

  Make Them Feel Special

  Marriage

  Odyssey

  American Airlines

  The Box

  Reasons Florida Will Work

  The Double

  Controversy Helps

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  A Note on the Author

  Imprint

  INTRODUCTION

  HOWARD HUGHES WAS the richest man in America in the 1960s and 1970s, during Vietnam and Watergate, a time when there was a conspiracy behind every rock, and most media accounts of him from these two decades describe him as a shadowy figure using his billions to control the country through subterfuge, or they poke fun at rumors of his odd habits and appearance. Now, there’s no disputing that for the last twenty years of his life Howard Hughes was troubled. He stayed isolated in a series of hotel suites in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Bahamas, London, Vancouver, Managua, and Acapulco, cared for (usually poorly) by a team of aides. He was emaciated— a man six feet four inches tall, at his death he barely weighed a hundred pounds— and unless he was cleaned up for the rare meeting with an outsider he kept long unwashed hair and a long beard and Mandarin-length fingernails and toenails. He was addicted to Valium and intravenously injected codeine. He rarely left his bed unless it was to use the bathroom and the last three or four years of his life he didn’t get up even for that. He almost never bathed, yet he was terrified of germs—he wouldn’t touch anything unless he covered his hands with several layers of Kleenex, which he called “paddles.” He watched movies obsessively— when he lived in Las Vegas he bought a television station simply so he could have it run movies all night instead of signing off at 1:00 A.M. And he wrote obsessively, sometimes filling two legal pads without stopping.

  This image of Hughes as an oddball hermit has stuck in our cultural consciousness to this day. However, that perception is slanted, one-sided, and just plain wrong, because even though his final years were tragic, Howard Hughes was still a great man.

  In the 1920s, Hughes got his start by going to Hollywood. He knew nothing about filmmaking, and his first movie was so bad it was practically laughed off the screen at its one and only showing, but his second movie won the Oscar, and before he was thirty, he had produced Scarface and The Front Page, and he both produced and directed Hell’s Angels, a movie about World War I fighter pilots and the first epic of the “talkie” era. It cost $4 million to make in a time when movies routinely cost under $75,000. Once, near the end of filming, Hughes wanted to get a particularly dangerous aerial dive on film but none of his pilots, some of the best in the world, would do it, so Hughes took the plane up himself. (How many directors would do that?) He waited until he was 750 feet from the ground before he tried to pull out of the dive— diving past 1,000 feet was considered impossible— and then he rode the screaming wooden biplane nose-first into the ground. To the amazement of all present he walked out of the wreck. He was taken to a hospital, where he fell into a coma, but on the third day he woke up and declared himself fine. HelVs Angels went on to become a success, and today film historians consider its aerial sequences some of the best ever.

  Hughes had started flying when he was fourteen. One day his father took him to see the boat races at Yale and on the way home they saw a man with a seaplane anchored in the river, selling rides. Young Howard wanted to go up, but his father said his mother wouldn’t like it and they drove on. However, with his characteristic determination Howard kept lobbying (for instance, when Hughes was twelve he had wanted a motorcycle but his father refused, so Hughes managed to attach a small gasoline engine to a bicycle and a photo of him riding his invention made it into the Houston newspaper); finally they turned around and went back for a fifteen-minute airplane ride. This lit a fire in Hughes, and, by the mid-1930s, he held every record of note in aviation: the airspeed record, the transcontinental record, and in 1938 he set the around-the-world record, cutting Wiley Post’s time almost in half. On that flight he had the world’s attention to a degree that has been equaled in our era only by the first moon shot. The radio networks carried hourly reports, newspapers published extras, reporters stayed camped outside the New York City town house of Katharine Hepburn who, it was rumored, would marry Hughes if he returned alive. When he finally landed in New York, Hughes was greeted at the airfield by a crowd of five thousand. Standing at a microphone, he mumbled a few words of thanks, gave most of the credit to his navigator and mechanic, and then, to the consternation of Mayor LaGuardia and the gathered reporters, he simply drove away in a Ford he had waiting. Two days later he was given a ticker-tape parade.

  Hughes wasn’t just a great pilot, though; he was also the greatest inventor of his era in aviation. He invented the retractable landing gear, the flush rivet (which made airplanes much more aerodynamically efficient) and the first oxygen-delivery system for high-altitude flights. He had a host of other more esoteric inventions only an aeronautical engineer would understand. Of course, it’s fairly well known that in the 1940s he built and piloted what is still the largest airplane ever to fly, the HK-1, or “Spruce Goose” as the press called it, though Hughes always hated that name. The HK-1 was as long as a football field, with a wingspan even longer than that. Hughes started building it during World War II as a possible solution to the problem of German submarines sinking ships crossing the Atlantic with supplies and troops, but the war ended and the prototype, although on schedule, wasn’t finished, and Hughes was losing money hand over fist. To most it seemed he was building an ark in the desert: the military no longer had any interest in the plane and there was no feasible commercial use for it. Hughes and his project were made a laughingstock in the newspapers and by radio comedians. However, in 1947, with a crowd of reporters present, Hughes finally flew the huge plane that no one but he, not even his engineers, thought would fly. He went a little over a mile, taking off from and landing in Long Beach Harbor.

  All right. If you had any of the usual misconceptions about Howard Hughes, I hope you now see him in a new light. However, we still have to face one unpleasant question: why did such a talented and gifted man end so tragically? There are a number of possible reasons. He suffered fourteen head injuries during his life, the first in the HelVs Angels crash, the last from a beating he received from fifties football hero Glenn Davis for pursuing Davis’s wife, actress Terry Moore. He contracted syphilis as a young man and never got rid of it completely, which caused damage to his central nervous system. He had hearing loss from a young age, the result of a rare genetic condition, otosclerosis, in which the bones in the ear continue to grow and produce a constant, maddening buzzing and ringing. After a near-fatal airplane crash in Beverly Hills in 1946, Hughes, against his will, was given morphine and codeine for his pain and developed the drug addiction that lasted until he died thirty years later. And, according to a psychological autopsy ordered by Hughes’s estate, he suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Of course, any one of these debilitating conditions would probably be enough to break a man, but I think there’s another reason for Hughes’s fall that’s just as important as any of these. The list of Hughes’s accomplishments we just examined (which just hits a few of the highlights, and doesn’t even include his business successes) shows that in whatever field he entered he tried to create something bigger, better, new and original, a
nd it seems likely that the cost of achieving these great aims contributed as much to his tragic end as any physical ailments did— Hughes finally just wore out. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, he was spent.

  Now, this isn’t going to be the usual narrative biography with its birth-to-death progression and high-above-it-all analysis by the writer. This is something different, a picaresque collection of interrelated stories, interviews, memos, and letters, that, taken together, describe a hero’s rise and fall. The story is divided into three sections. Just as Melville’s Moby Dick included a section titled “Extracts,” I do the same here with a collection of quotations by Howard Hughes, about Howard Hughes, and about the nature of the hero. The final two sections are called “Women” and “Odyssey,” and I have used these titles for good reason. A person often has an endeavor that serves as the locus for his or her life, and if we understand that locus, we go a long way toward understanding the person. During my research I tried to identify Hughes’s locus, and finally it seemed he had not one but two: his romantic relationships, and his lifetime propensity to go on extended journeys or odysseys. Of course, in examining these two areas of his life we touch on much else, such as his aviation career and his desire to build an empire in Nevada.

  Hughes’s story is told here through a number of voices. I often let Hughes speak for himself by printing his diary entries, memos, and letters— he was a prolific writer and a very good one, too. I interviewed people who knew Hughes, both celebrities and ordinary people, and printed the transcripts of those interviews. I used the transcripts of interviews done by Hughes biographers and since they were all twenty-five or thirty years old and had pages missing or seemed to have been haphazardly transcribed, and I had no way of retrieving the lost information, for clarity’s sake I worked the material I did have into narratives to cover the gaps. I used information from newspaper articles. I took the story notes— two hundred pages of half-formed thoughts, odd details and enigmatic quotes— of a reporter who covered Hughes for thirty years, Tom Lourdes, and worked them into narratives, though in one early chapter I used two of his old interviews in their entirety. In short, what I’ve done is let Howard Hughes and those who knew him tell his story. When I couldn’t do that, I took the material I had and created stories that told the truth about him.

  That’s it. I’ve got nothing else to say, except I hope this story is good enough to be worthy of the man it is about.

  Alton Reece

  Beverly Hills, California, 200–

  EXTRACTS

  I suppose I should have been more like other men; I was not nearly as interested in people as I should have been. But I’m not a robot, as some called me. I was merely consumed by my interest in science.

  Howard Hughes, four days before his death

  Whoever is on in the morning should call her at 7:30 a.m. Say that you are from Mr. Hughes’s office and that we would like very much to make some photos of her and have her work with our drama coaches. Tell her that we have something coming up— a part— and we may be able to use her in it… . Keep her in our clutches all day. Don’t tell her, but I would like to have her available so I can see her in the late afternoon. Don’t tell her that I am going to see her. Tell her we’ll have a car pick her up.

  Howard Hughes, giving instructions to the aides he

  used to keep tabs on women he was interested in

  I wanted some pistachio ice cream, and they weren’t doing anything anyway.

  Ava Gardner, recalling how she sent two Hughes

  aides doing surveillance on her from a car outside

  her house on an errand for ice cream

  It is not so much the technical purity or impurity, it is the revolting, vomitous unattractiveness of the whole thing. It is sort of like serving an expensive New York cut steak in one of our showrooms and having the waiter bring the steak in to a customer in a beautiful plate, but, instead of the usual parsley and half a slice of lemon and the usual trimmings to make the steak attractive— instead of this, there is a small pile of soft shit right next to the steak. Now, maybe technically the shit does not touch the steak, but how much do you think the patron is going to enjoy eating that steak?

  Howard Hughes, voicing fears about the

  possible effect of a wastewater treatment plant

  near Las Vegas on the city’s water quality and

  tourism business

  Perhaps you argue that nothing worse could happen to a man? I, on the contrary, maintain that it is no bad thing to be king.

  Telemachus in The Odyssey, Book I

  Although we have had reason to put into effect a program of isolation before, I want this to be ten times as effective as any we have ever set up before. With the present condition of my business affairs, which in my opinion are in a state of danger and hazard, I am sure if Jean, myself, you, or anyone else important in our organization were to acquire this disease, I just cannot even contemplate the seriousness of what the result might be. I therefore want a system of isolation with respect to Cissy [Cissy Francombe, who several years in the past had been wardrobe mistress to Jean Peters— ed.], the doctors attending her, nurses, or anyone in the past or future coming in contact with her, set up that is so effective and complete that anything we have done in the past will be nothing compared to it. I want this to go through the eighth or tenth generation, so to speak. This is one case where incrimination by association is definitely to be recognized. I consider this the most important item on the agenda, more important than our TWA crisis, our financial crisis or any of our other problems.

  Howard Hughes’s memo to an aide on the

  hepatitis of Cissy Francombe

  I feel that his confrontation with death after the XF-11 made him take stock of his life. And when he did, he was amazed by its emptiness.

  Noah Dietrich, who helped Hughes run his

  empire for more than thirty years, commenting

  on Hughes’s near-fatal 1946 plane crash in

  Beverly Hills

  He has the makings of a first-rate commercial pilot.

  Comment on a job evaluation of Hughes

  when he took on a false identity to work for

  American Airlines

  Freud thinks the hero is always sacrificed because he is too unlike the great mass of men and therefore too threatening. His murder is usually accomplished quietly and subtly, though, his neck placed in the noose even as the crowd is applauding his exploits, and then, suddenly— bang!— the trapdoor springs and there’s that terrible darkness we all dread. The hero cannot accept the inevitability of this darkness, this void, this destruction of the ego that comes with death, and according to Freud, during life he fights it by trying to gain immortality through his achievements in war, art, business, or science. Of course, while these ideas are reasonable, we must take them with a grain of salt. Freud expressed them during a time when his theories were being ridiculed.

  Excerpt from Alton Reece’s lecture on Freud’s

  conception of the hero delivered at Johns Hopkins

  University on March 2, 1992

  Nobody roots for Goliath.

  Wilt Chamberlain

  In university classrooms, a novel like Moby Dick becomes not an interesting expression of the human condition but a tedious collection of obscure symbols and indecipherable puzzles. However, heroes like Ahab and Ishmael and Queequeg are meant to be simply experienced at least as much as they are meant to be analyzed like a frog cut open in biology class. And don’t forget Melville. He’s a hero too. All writers are. Like other heroes, they make order out of chaos.

  Alton Reece in the introduction to Melville and the Whale

  First use six or eight thickness of Kleenex pulled one at a time from the slot in the box. Then fit them over the doorknob 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.
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br />   Howard Hughes in a 1948 memo on how

  an aide was to conduct himself when running Hughes’s bath

  Howard dressed like he worked for a living. Women found that very sexy.

  Cary Grant, Hughes’s friend, commenting on

  Hughes’s usual wardrobe of a plain white shirt,

  workman’s slacks, and tennis shoes

  … and why has he [textual clues in the memo, though not reproduced here, make it clear Nixon is speaking about Hughes— ed.] broken contact with us? What’s happening? Why is he providing women for the Kennedys? You tell Hoover to get his ass in gear and find out what’s going on. I consider this son of a bitch the most dangerous man in America.

  Richard Nixon in an April 11, 1911, memo to

  Bob Haldeman, obtained through the Freedom of

  Information Act

  When we were filming The Outlaw [a 1940s western Hughes produced and directed; it was scandalous at the time because of the amount of cleavage Jane Russell exposed— ed.], Howard was unhappy with the bras Jane was wearing. Nothing suited him. Some he thought looked too pointy, some too saggy— nothing we had would give both the skin exposure and the support he wanted— so he took matters into his own hands. He had dozens of bras brought to him for study. He tried different types of metal wires and cloth and fasteners and then had a model sewn to his specifications and had Jane come in and try it on. It was a wonderful bra.

  Elton Lake, production assistant

  The first half of the twentieth century was America and Europe’s golden age: despite the psychic devastation caused by World War I, the Great Depression, the new physics of Einstein, and the technological horrors of World War II, it was still the last age in which bureaucracy was not our organizing principle, men were not chained in lifelong pigeonholes euphemistically called specialties. One doctor delivered you and then, grizzled and wise, cut out your tumor when you were thirty-one; quarterbacks played on defense too; and a president, Truman, was human enough to take strolls down Pennsylvania Avenue and we were human enough to let him. A smart hardworking man with only a high school education could run a corporation or edit one of the great dailies. From Thomas Edison to William Faulkner, Winston Churchill to John D. Rockefeller, Howard Hughes to Humphrey Bogart— none of whom were degreed— it was an age of genius. It was an age of giants.