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Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood

Page 54

by Karina Longworth


  “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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