“Billie Dove’s waning popularity”: “Stage Show Helped ‘Bad One’ Out to $31,500 at Penn, Ptsbg; Wk Not Good.”
“Dove still needs better scripts”: “Louisville at 130, 6-Month Drought.”
“probably due to cast names”: “Fulton Opens in Ptsbgh to $8,200; Good Enough as Usual Thing There.”
“very bad”: “Frisco Spotty; Orph Up at $14,000; for $25,000.”
“weak in every department”: “Lady Who Dared.”
“I was in love with him”: Drew, “Billie Dove,” 50.
“the jealous type”: Ankerich, “Billie Dove,” 90.
Howard would follow Billie to the bathroom: Mutti-Mewse, I Used to Be in Pictures, 26.
“it hadn’t been used”: Ankerich, “Billie Dove,” 90.
“most eligible young men”: Spensley, “For the Love of Billie.”
Universal Studios: Los Angeles Paper, September 2, 1930.
United Artists: “Hughes Asserts United Artists Price Too High.”
acquire a doomed color film production company: “$10,000,000 Film Merger Completed.”
struck a deal with Joseph Schenck: Crowe, “Hughes After Multicolor.”
“defies traditions”: Lincoln Quarberg sample article.
“it could not be read”: Al Lichtman to Howard Hughes, September 10, 1931.
scale back on film production: Lincoln Quarberg to Garett Graham, September 30, 1931.
“!@$:*=x%-est”: Lincoln Quarberg, “General Ideas for Campaign on Front Page.”
“It burns Hollywood to a crisp”: Lang, “Hollywood’s Hundred Million Dollar Kid.”
“I would, of course, want babies”: Spensley, “For the Love of Billie.”
“CONSENSUS OPINION”: Hal Horne, telegram to Lincoln Quarberg.
“a first-ranking star”: Lincoln Quarberg, “Billie Dove bio.”
back and forth over whether to even include Dove: Telegrams between E. B. Carr and Al Lichtman, 1931.
“right eating”: Lincoln Quarberg sample articles.
full-page ads: Modern Screen, November 30, 1931, 5.
“SHACKLED!”: The Age for Love draft poster copy.
“namby-pamby”: Drew, “Billie Dove,” 49.
“feminine picture out and out”: “Screen News.”
tumbleweeds at the Rivoli: Telegrams exchanged between Hal Horne and Lincoln Quarberg, November 13–16, 1931.
pulled from release: “Shortest Run Record for ‘Age,’ Rivoli,” November 18, 1931.
“Of course I cannot stop the publicity”: Lincoln Quarberg to Hal Horne, November 19, 1931.
“the exhibitors do not want her”: Hal Horne to Lincoln Quarberg, December 28, 1931.
“fans are demanding better pictures”: Cock of the Air press book.
“obscene and immoral”: Doherty, Hollywood’s Censor, 252.
“Will Hays cut about 800 feet”: Ankerich, “Billie Dove,” 90.
“omit any suggestion of a bedroom”: Jason Joy to Howard Hughes, September 1, 1931.
“pointed motivation”: “Memorandum for the Files: Cock of the Air,” November 18, 1931.
her romance with Hughes was over: Drew, “Billie Dove,” 49.
“tearing ourselves away from Florida”: Billie Dove, telegram to Lincoln Quarberg, March 17, 1932.
the Dove-Hughes engagement was off: Hollywood Tatler, March 1932.
“terribly sorry”: Howard Hughes, telegram to Lincoln Quarberg, January 30, 1932.
“Will Hays and the Big-Shot Jews”: Lincoln Quarberg to Howard Hughes, January 30, 1932.
“It becomes a serious threat”: Los Angeles Paper, April 26, 1932.
“absurdities of film censorship”: “The Mighty Censor.”
they had been beaten by Hughes’s manipulation: McCarthy, Howard Hawks, Kindle locs. 2851–60.
“I really had never been alone with a man”: Rogers, Ginger, My Story, 67.
“third thumb”: Ibid., 69.
“wondered what he’d be like”: Ibid., 115–16.
horn in on their date: Albert R. Broccoli deposition, November 18, 1983.
Hughes entertained fourteen guests: Kingsley, “Airport Gardens Opens.”
“will not engage in the production of a motion picture”: “Agreement: Howard R. Hughes and Ella Rice Hughes,” May 25, 1932.
“greatly in excess of its assets”: Neil S. McCarthy deposition, December 13, 1940.
“the Caddo Company did not have any money”: Neil McCarthy, “Memorandum of Dove contract,” December 31, 1940.
“corporate fictions”: Neil S. McCarthy deposition, December 13, 1940.
$100,000 in cash: “Memorandum of Dove contract.”
“a damned good performance”: Ankerich, “Billie Dove,” 93.
“I couldn’t sue Marion and Mr. Hearst”: Ibid., 90.
“Let’s go”: Ankerich, “Dove Tails—Lee, Billie, and the Rest of the Story.”
show to virtual strangers: Mutti-Mewse, I Used to Be in Pictures, 32.
“I was happy all the time”: Ankerich, “Billie Dove,” 75.
CHAPTER 7: “A BITCH IN HEAT”
“Would things have been different”: St. Johns, Love, Laughter and Tears, 261.
“no producer in his right mind”: Ibid., 261–62.
“I feel like a bitch in heat”: Ibid., 258.
directed Mary Pickford’s first flop: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, 11.
“stupid little blonde”: Ibid., 191.
“never had to bother my head with business”: Ibid., 12.
“I’ll never leave you”: Ibid., 14.
“$3500 a week!”: Ibid., 15.
“make fun of the sex element”: Ibid., 34.
“Who is there for her to love”: Ibid., 39.
“refuse to cancel contract”: Stenn, Bombshell, 46.
“those wonderful breasts almost fell out”: Ibid., 51–52.
“Harlow’s breastworks”: Capra, The Name Above the Title, 134.
“shimmered in the light”: Arthur Landau to Irving Shulman, August 15, 1962.
“The guy’s so frightened of germs”: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, 40.
“Why not?”: Ibid.
“If men were stupid they’d fall for her”: Ibid., 41.
“our sex pirate”: Ibid., 43.
“she had no vanity”: Anita Loos oral history, June 1959.
“Here’s gratitude for you!”: Lincoln Quarberg, note, March 1932.
“buying up beautiful girls”: Howe, “So This Is Hollywood!”
“She was a little high”: Rice, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood’s Forgotten Rebel, Kindle locs. 885–87.
“shivering and shaking”: Ibid., Kindle locs. 1005–06.
“Quantity, not quality”: Ibid., Kindle locs. 1510–12.
“That’s not going to happen to Ann”: Ibid.
“There is little culture in Hollywood”: “‘Sold Down the River’ Declares Ann Dvorak.”
“some producers might be highly indignant”: Ibid.
Hughes vanished from Hollywood: “Color Plant Re-Acquired,” September 20, 1932.
difficulty making Ella’s alimony payments: Noah Dietrich to W. S. Farish.
“fuck, fuck, fuck”: Stenn, Bombshell, 74.
“what kind of person Paul was”: St. Johns, “Love, Laughter and Tears.”
impotent: St. Johns oral history, 1971.
“highest compliment”: St. Johns, “Love, Laughter and Tears.”
“Bern adored Jean”: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, 161.
“Bern had tried to drown himself”: St. Johns oral history.
haul of books: Stenn, Bombshell, 86.
“Dearest dear”: Ibid., 91.
“She was there in that house that night”: St. Johns, Love, Laughter and Tears, 262.
“he had killed himself”: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, 162.
“prominent and respected doctor”: Hopper, “That Harlow Book!”
“If she had hated herself before”: St. Johns, Love, Laughter and
Tears, 263.
“There’s the best gal that ever lived”: St. Johns, “Love, Laughter and Tears.”
CHAPTER 8: THE BOMBSHELL IMPLODES
“Now you are 16”: Donati, Ida Lupino: A Biography, 25.
“You cannot play naïve”: Whitaker, “Ida Lupino, at 17 Ooozes Confident Sophistication.” The headline shows that Ida was telling reporters that she was older than she was; at the time of the interview, she had recently turned sixteen.
“I wanted to look at the stars”: “Howard Hughes by Women Who Knew Him.”
cottage cheese, corn bread, and black coffee: Jean Bello letter to Gladys Hall.
“You don’t marry someone”: Stenn, Bombshell, 182.
“He’s breaking my heart”: Ibid., 186–87.
“I couldn’t interfere”: St. Johns, “Love, Laughter and Tears.”
“Thelma was very considerate”: Donati, The Life and Death of Thelma Todd, Kindle locs. 1677–78.
“death complex”: Ibid., loc. 1262.
“the biggest single blow”: “Irving Thalberg, Genius, Is Dead.”
“I am so constantly trying”: Parsons, “Jean Harlow Said Her Only Love Was Film’s Bill Powell.”
“virtually recovered”: “Jean Harlow Recovering; William Powell Is Visitor.”
“Fatty Arbuckle”: Stenn, Bombshell, 206.
“there does not seem to be much chance”: “Jean Harlow, Movie Star, Dies in Los Angeles.” Other details on Harlow’s last days from Stenn, Bombshell, 199–207.
“I don’t want to”: Ibid., 207.
“After Bill’s rejection”: Loos, Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, 163.
“a great shame about Jean”: St. Johns oral history.
CHAPTER 9: THE WOMAN WHO LIVED LIKE A MAN
“She’ll do better”: “Hughes sets 347 MPH Air Record, Foils Crash Death.”
“I wanted to go to New York”: “Nothing Sensational.”
landing at Newark on January 19, 1937: Barlett and Steele, Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness, Kindle locs. 13826–27.
“the best lover I ever had”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going: Katharine Hepburn: a Personal Biography, 108.
rumors about her lesbianism: Hepburn, Me, 129.
“Miss Hepburn was going Miss Dietrich one better”: Hoyt, “Running Away from It All.”
Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were beards: Mann, Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, 338.
“Hepburn was a lesbian”: Bowers, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, 96.
“part of a curious sub-genre”: Curtis, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Kindle edition, loc. 19131.
“a lot of sexual mischief”: Bowers, Full Service, 76.
assumed Grant would be assigned: Elizabeth Jean Hough (Jean Peters) deposition, January 23, 1984.
“straight as an arrow”: Bowers, Full Service, 98.
to describe Cukor as a “woman’s director”: Mayne, Directed by Dorothy Arzner, 62–63; Sarris, “The Man in the Glass Closet.”
“a very macho director”: Hepburn, Me, 178–80.
“a girl named Peggy Entwistle”: David O. Selznick, interdepartment correspondence to George Cukor, May 31, 1932.
Thirteen Women: Zeruk Jr., Peg Entwistle and the Hollywood Sign Suicide: A Biography. chapters 17–20.
“What legs!”: Berg, Kate Remembered, 86.
“out to make a statement”: Ibid., 87.
“Send her back to New York”: St. Johns oral history.
“dress like, talk like, and slouch like Greta Garbo”: “Bill of Divorcement,” The Hollywood Reporter.
“I was a man”: Anderson, “Katharine Hepburn’s Personal Scrapbook.”
“Hollywood and the curse it puts on all its marriages”: Martha Kerr, “The Truth About Katharine Hepburn’s Marriage” Modern Screen, October 1933.
“I look back in horror”: Hepburn, Me, 181–82.
“the gamut of emotions from A to B”: “The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan.”
“divorce ended her romantic dreams”: “Can Hepburn Ever Find True Love?”
“I thought she was the living end”: Russell, “They Sold Me.”
“superficial stuff”: Letter from “John” to Katharine Hepburn, no date.
“You are a full grown woman”: Russell Davenport to Katharine Hepburn, May 16, 1935.
“So staged”: Berg, Kate Remembered, 143.
“I must say it gave me pause”: Hepburn, Me, 192.
“affair of the minds”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 98–99.
“You might say I lived like a man”: Hepburn, Me, 189.
“always liked toasts”: Berg, Kate Remembered, 127.
“quite seriously deaf”: Hepburn, Me, 192.
“inevitable”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 10: BOX-OFFICE POISON
“Katharine is just one of those peculiar girls”: Jewell, RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan Is Born, 120.
“Listen, Kate”: Hepburn, Me, 236.
“got sorry for me”: Ibid.
“Kate always wanted her way”: Rogers, Ginger, 210.
“If it’s a real mink”: Ibid.
“Who do you think you’re fooling?”: Ibid., 207.
“felt dependent on her looks”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 112.
“We all wanted to be Katharine”: Berg, Kate Remembered, 138.
“poison at the box office”: “WAKE UP! Hollywood Producers.”
“Pandro Berman wired Hepburn”: Jewell, A Titan Is Born, 152.
“the poor uncle of a rich nephew”: Rupert Hughes,“Howard Hughes—Record Breaker, Part 1.”
“Howard was more glamorous”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 107.
“washing our hands”: Ibid., 120.
“sexually a good fit”: Ibid., 108.
“if no one noticed us”: Ibid., 113.
“appropriate companion”: Hepburn, Me, 201.
“pulling a rabbit out of a hat”: “‘Brushed Death 3 Times’—Hughes.”
$8,550.32: Stuart N. Updike to Neil S. McCarthy, December 3, 1938.
“burned approximately 175,000 magazines”: Lee Murrin to Neil McCarthy, March 13, 1939.
“Katharine Hepburn must decide which road”: Maddox, “What’s the Matter with Hepburn?”
“Ambition beat love”: Hepburn, Me, 201.
“I wanted Howard more”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 139.
“He’s part of this family”: Berg, Kate Remembered, 147.
“I slept with Howard Hughes”: Ibid., 129.
Dick had little choice: Leaming, Katharine Hepburn, 375–82.
“play about Howard and me”: Ibid., 260.
CHAPTER 11: A LOVE NEST IN MALIBU, A PRISON ON A HILL
“did you have a good trip”: Pat De Cicco interview, September 15, 1941.
“He seemed reserved”: Chandler, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography, 126.
“I was flattered”: Ibid.
“DIVORCE”: Bette Davis clippings, Scrapbook 21, Bette Davis Collection.
“vacation” from her marriage: Wickizer, “It Happened in Hollywood.”
Davis’s actual words: Clippings in Scrapbook 21, Bette Davis Collection; Peak, “True Story of Bette Davis’ Broken Romance.”
“finally admitted the separation”: “Walter Winchell on Broadway.”
“I don’t know any millionaires”: Parsons, “Success and Sorrow Mingle for Bette Davis.”
“Bette is a grand actress”: “Harmon Nelson Prepares to Divorce Film Star.”
“failed to perform her duties as a wife”: “Nelson Sues Bette Davis for Divorce.”
“I liked sex”: Chandler, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone, 128.
“Howard Huge”: Ibid.
“We sat down at the bar”: Keats, “Howard Hughes: A Lifetime on the Lam.”
“I have no intention of marrying”: Ibid.
“I didn’t expect him to be chaste”: Chandler, I Know Where I’m Going, 107.
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“What do you say to that?”: Rogers, Ginger, 169.
“dominated my personal life”: Ibid., 216–24.
“He knew I loved a view”: Ginger Rogers deposition, February 7, 1978.
“frequent illicit sex affairs”: Ceplair, Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical, Kindle edition, loc. 1827.
“highly suggestive and too lurid”: Rogers, Ginger, 264.
“This was too much for me”: Ibid., 265.
“the last time I ever saw Howard”: Ibid., 267.
“Howard Hughes cry”: Dietrich, Howard; photo insert caption.
CHAPTER 12: A NEW BOMBSHELL
“My name doesn’t mean much”: Demaris, “You and I Are Very Different from Howard Hughes.”
“A compelling identity”: Except where noted otherwise, all quotes from Birdwell in this chapter come from his autobiographical notes, Margaret Herrick Library.
“unknowns have walked”: Birdwell, “Heartbreak Town.”
professional dates for Selznick: Thomson, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, 262.
“that kind of picture”: Samuels, “Hollywood’s Most Fabulous Bird.”
“That’s a good answer”: Birdwell notes.
“I’ve seen a pair today”: Dietrich, “The Howard I Remember.”
“Howard hired me for The Outlaw”: “Howard Hughes by Women Who Knew Him.”
“She looks the type”: Russell, Jane Russell, an Autobiography: My Path and My Detours, 11.
“When Billy fell in love”: McCarthy, Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood, Kindle edition, loc. 5450.
“girls should walk from the hips”: McCarthy, Kindle locs. 5533–34.
“moving in slow motion”: Russell, My Path, 7.
“I couldn’t have been greener”: Russell, “They Sold Me.”
“I didn’t get any sympathy”: Ibid.
“Everybody got loaded”: Russell, My Path, 18.
“The reason Hawks was displaced”: Neil McCarthy to Noah Dietrich, December 13, 1940.
“revealing women’s bosoms”: McCarthy, Kindle locs. 5559–60.
“get some mileage out of her tits”: Fadiman Jr., “Can the Real Howard Hughes . . .”
“uncomfortable and ridiculous”: Russell, My Path, 58.
“scenes suggestive of illicit sex”: Joseph Breen, letter to Howard Hughes, December 27, 1940.
“The censors made suggestions”: Geoffrey Shurlock, memo, December 31, 1940.
“sounded fundamentally acceptable”: “Memorandum Re The Outlaw (Hughes),” April 10,1941.
“breast shots”: Breen office, memo dated March 28, 1941.
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