Howard Hughes

by Clifford Irving

  When I told her I was satisfied and she could get dressed, she said, ‘What do you think, Howard?’

  ‘I think they’re terrific, Jane.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  She said, a little sadly, ‘They’re not what they used to be, Howard.’

  ‘Nothing ever is, Jane. If anyone is living proof of that, I am.’

  What I didn’t tell her was that the one thing I felt that we had to have in Macao was pointed nipples, and she didn’t have them anymore. I don’t know how most men feel about pointed nipples, but I feel that pointed nipples are very exciting. And so I explained to Tevlin exactly what I wanted in Macao in the way of support and image. Here’s the memorandum, the part that deals with Russell. This will show you what I mean by ‘attention to details.’

  July 25, 1950 from: HOWARD HUGHES to: C.J. TEVLIN IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION

  Herewith are my comments on the Macao tests.

  I am sending to you 1 copy of these comments ex these opening explanatory paragraphs and ex the notes on Jane Russell’s wardrobe. This copy is for Sam Bischoff. I want him to carry out my instructions fully, and correct all the faults I have observed.

  I am also sending you 1 copy of my comments pertaining to Harry Wild’s photography.

  This copy I want given to Wild directly by you, or by Bischoff, with the request that he correct the faults I have observed.

  In addition, I am sending you 2 copies of my notes with respect to Jane Russell’s wardrobe.

  I want you to give one of these copies to Bischoff and the other to whomever I have instructed on this subject. I believe it is Perry Lieber and I believe he has assigned one particular wardrobe girl for this special job. If that is the case, then the copy of my notes mentioned above should be given to Lieber and he, in turn, should confer with the wardrobe girl so assigned and let her read my notes in his presence and see that she understands them thoroughly.

  These notes pertaining to Jane Russell’s wardrobe are vitally important. I want Bischoff to have a copy so that he can make the necessary changes in over-all wardrobe, and also that he can follow through and make doubly sure that my requests in connection with Russell’s bosom and brassiere will be followed exactly. However, I am sending you the 2nd copy of my notes on Russell’s wardrobe with the desire that it reach directly through Lieber to the wardrobe woman in charge of the Jane Russell bosom situation. I want to be very sure that the faults I have observed in this connection will absolutely be corrected.

  The 2 copies of my notes pertaining to Russell’s wardrobe I want to be returned by Bischoff and Lieber (or whomever I instructed to handle the Russell bosom situation) after they have made sure that my desires are fully and completely carried out. However, at that point, and when the mission is fully accomplished, I want the 2 copies of the Russell wardrobe notes returned to you and thence to me because I do not want these notes lying around in the files anywhere.

  In further clarification of the disposition of my notes on Jane Russell’s wardrobe, I want Lieber (or whomever I instructed in this matter) to call in the appropriate wardrobe girl to whom this responsibility has been given and make sure that she reads several times and digests thoroughly Russell’s bosom situation, but I do not want these notes taken out of Lieber’s office by the wardrobe girl as I do not want any possibility of her inadvertently allowing someone else to see them.

  1. I want Harry Wild notified that I feel the photography of Jane Russell’s nose was disadvantageous to her, and the defects of her nose which I discussed with him were quite apparent in this test.

  2. I think Russell’s wardrobe as displayed in this test is Christ awful. It is unrevealing, unbecoming, and just generally terrible.

  There is one exception, and that is the dress made of metallic cloth. This dress is absolutely terrific and should be used by all means.

  However, the fit of the dress around her breasts is not good and gives the impression, God forbid, that her breasts are padded or artificial. They just don’t appear to be in natural contour. It looks as though she is wearing a brassiere of some very stiff material which does not take the contour of her breasts. Particularly around the nipple, it looks as though some kind of stiff material underneath the dress is forming an artificial and unnatural contour. I am not recommending that she go without a brassiere, as I know this is a very necessary piece of equipment for Russell. But I thought, if we could find a half-brassiere which will support her breasts upward and still not be noticeable under the dress, or, alternatively, a brassiere made of very thin material, so that the natural contour of her breasts will show through the dress, it will be a great deal more effective.

  Please make very sure that you do not misunderstand me. She must wear something to support her breasts upward and all I want is that it be something which will not appear artificial through the dress.

  In addition to the brassiere situation, it may be that the dress will have to be retailored around the breasts in order that it will more naturally form to the proper contour.

  Now, it would be extremely desirable if the brassiere, or the dress, incorporated some kind of a point at the nipple because I know this does not ever occur naturally in the case of Jane Russell. Her breasts always appear to be round, or flat, at that point, so something artificial here would be extremely desirable if it could be incorporated without destroying the contour of the rest of her breasts.

  My objection to the present setup is that her breasts do not appear realistic in any way. The over-all shape is just not realistic and at the nipple instead of one point, which would be very desirable and natural, there appears to be something under the dress which makes several small projections, almost as if there were a couple of buttons on the brassiere or under the dress at this point.

  One realistic point indicating the nipple, if it could be incorporated realistically into the brassiere and show through the dress, would be very fine. The trouble with the setup now is that where her nipple is supposed to be there is more than one projection and it looks very unnatural. Also, the balance of her breasts from the nipple on around to her body appears to be conical and somehow mechanically contrived and not natural. This is difficult to explain, but if you will run the film I think you will see what I mean.

  What we really need is a brassiere of very thin material which will form to the natural contour of her breasts and, if possible, which is only a half-brassiere, that is to say which supports the lower half of her breasts only.

  This brassiere should hold her breasts upward but should be so thin that it takes the natural shape of her breasts instead of forming it into an unnatural shape. Then, if something could be embodied in the dress itself at the point of the nipple to give it just one realistic point there (which Russell does not have) and if this could be accomplished without putting anything into the dress which will disturb the contour except right at the point of the nipple, this would be an ideal solution.

  You understand that all the comment immediately above is with respect to the dress made of metallic cloth. However, this comment is equally applicable to any other dress she wears, and I would like this instruction followed with respect to all her wardrobe.

  Regarding the dresses themselves, the one made of metallic cloth is OK although it is a high-necked dress because it is so startling. However, I want the rest of her wardrobe, wherever possible, to be low-necked (and by that I mean as low as the law allows) so that the customers can get a look at the part of Russell which they pay to see and not covered by cloth, metallic or otherwise.

  3. In the test, both Jane Russell and Joyce McKenzie were chewing gum. If this was inadvertent and Russell merely did so because she considered it a wardrobe test, I suppose that is of no consequence. But, if von Sternberg intends to play these girls in the picture chewing gum, I strongly object as I do not see how any woman can be exciting while in the process.

  Sincerely, Howard Hughes

  20

  Howard is sued
by his stockholders at RKO, has a fling with Hedy Lamarr, and confesses to a sex experience under the eye of his father.

  RKO JUST WASN’T working out as an investment, so I put it up on the block. I’d had it for more than half a dozen years and it was time to cut my losses. In some ways I’d made a mistake – I’d bought the wrong studio. I should have bought Columbia Pictures. I tried to at one point, right after I bought RKO. I don’t mean that I would have bailed out of RKO. I would have kept them both. Columbia was just up the street – very convenient.

  And then in 1956 I bought about a quarter of a million shares in Twentieth Century Fox. But that was because I got a tip right from Spyros Skouras himself, and he was the head of the studio. He knew the stock was going up, so for me it was a straight plunge – in and out.

  We’d done some business together, but more than that – this is usually the case – I had something he wanted. It was a Greek artifact from Turkey, a figurine of a warrior, and I’d been told that it dated from the time of Alexander the Great. It was given to me many years ago by Estelle Sharp, Walter Sharp’s widow.

  Spyros saw it a few times and he had his heart set on it. Anything Greek, he loved. He wanted this statue but I didn’t want to sell it. For me it was something from the old days, from my youth in Houston. But when this thing came up with the Fox stock, Skouras tipped me to a fat profit. And then he said, ‘If you want to show your appreciation, Howard, as I’m sure you do, you can sell me that little Greek soldier.’

  I said, ‘Jesus, take it. If you want it that badly, it’s yours.’ I don’t know what the statue was worth, but it damn sure wasn’t worth the two-million-plus I made on the stock. So I was happy to do Spyros a favor.

  RKO, however, brought me one thing more than anything else, and that was lawsuits. I’ve been in court plenty, but I’ve never experienced anything like the barrage of subpoenas that came at me from my involvement with RKO. I was sued by the stockholders – that was the biggest suit, but it came last – and before that the first major suit came from Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger.

  I don’t like lawyers, I never have, and I don’t trust them. The last man on earth I trust is my own lawyer. I know that probably sounds odd to you, but I can tell you – watch out. You just have to think about how these people can get the goods on you with this ‘privileged information’ crap. They’ve done things behind by back, time after time, by misrepresenting my wishes – and worse. They’re in business to make money and I don’t kid myself about that. I call them vultures.

  Didn’t Gail Ganley sue you, too?

  For half a million dollars. Her father put her up to it. Her father stood there outside of my offices on Romaine Street and was taking photographs of the girl. We had her under contract, but I gave orders that she should not be allowed into Romaine Street. She would break up the place. She threatened mayhem, and she was capable of it.

  I gave orders that when she came round to pick up her paycheck she shouldn’t be allowed in the building. The money was lowered out of a window on a string to her, in a basket. She had to sign a receipt and that would be attached to the basket and pulled up to the people who were lowering the money. And her father came round to take photographs of that, as if it meant anything, as if it proved that I had cheated her in some way.

  Don’t you think that was a strange way of paying the girl?

  She got paid, didn’t she? It was cash was coming down, it wasn’t spaghetti. I couldn’t send her a check. She didn’t believe in checks. She was a redneck country girl. And a lousy lay, I might add. Tore up my back with her fingernails and made a lot of loud noise, to the point where the people at the next bungalow in the Beverly Hills Hotel, some English businessman and his wife, complained. She never saw shoes before I set her up with a contract. Finally I had to settle with her, but for a small amount of money, around a hundred thousand dollars.

  Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t think $100,000 is a small amount of money. The value of money is directly proportional to the intelligence of the man who has got it. I’ll give you my formula. E=MC squared – with apologies to Mr. Einstein. Ego equals Money times Confidence squared.

  But in any case the settlement was a small amount of money compared to what Ganley was asking.

  The actress Ann Sheridan sued me too, and we were friends, and had been lovers. I can’t even remember what she sued me for, or why, but I liked her, and so I said, ‘Ann, withdraw the lawsuit, or your lawyer will take most of what I give you, and I’ll give you a private payment of cash. I’ll give you every penny you’re asking, because I like you.’

  To finish up with the lawsuits, the big one came from the RKO stockholders. That was a lulu. They started pretty early on, around 1951, mostly because the stock had gone down to around three dollars a share. Nobody wants to admit they’ve made an error of investment judgment, and so they often try to pin it on management, which in this case was me.

  You can do things right for forty years, you can have the golden touch, but the moment you do one thing wrong, or even if it just looks like you’ve done one thing wrong, they’re lying in ambush to get you. The hammers are always cocked. I wasn’t even an officer of the company, you understand. I had no official position at RKO. I just ran the studio. I made the major decisions. That’s what control means.

  I didn’t take the suit too seriously. I was so used to being sued that it was like another bowl of Rice Krispies for me – I expected a new lawsuit on my breakfast table every morning or evening, depending on when I ate breakfast.

  But eventually it got a little too serious – it got up to about $40 million worth of different lawsuits from different stockholders, and it was also getting annoying. I was used to having my name smudged, but I didn’t like to have it colored black-and-blue the way these people were doing. They sued me for mismanagement, driving the studio toward bankruptcy, and also for putting actresses on the studio payroll for my own personal sexual pleasure, which, if you’ve listened to anything I’ve been saying to you, you’ll know is horseshit.

  First of all there was a fuss about Gina Lollabrigida. In 1947 she entered a beauty contest and was chosen Miss Rome. I saw a picture of her in a bikini and, as I think I told you before, I invited her to Hollywood for a screen test. I sent a TWA plane to Rome to fly her over. My people met her at the airport, bundled her in a car, and put her in a hotel room in Malibu. She said she was locked up there, but that was nonsense. She received English lessons, saw a slew of RKO films, and rehearsed for her screen test. Later she claimed that she was badgered by lawyers who wanted her to sign a contract written in English that she couldn’t understand. And she said that for six weeks I came by at one o’clock in the morning, hired the hotel orchestra and danced with her for several hours in the hotel’s ballroom. Well, why not? I thought I was being romantic. She was great in bed, when she was in the mood.

  After six weeks of this she signed a contract and flew back to Italy, where she stayed. I never put her in a picture because she was too temperamental. The stockholders sued me for wasting all that money on her.

  Then they said I’d signed Merle Oberon to a fat contract, $125,000 a year for six years, and never used her in a picture. That was true. I’d made a mistake. No mistakes are allowed. And there was a ballerina, Zizi Jeanmaire, a French girl, who I wanted in a picture about ballet. I hired the troupe as well, the Ballet de Paris, and the stockholders thought that was extravagant.

  Was there any justification to these lawsuits? What part of all these accusations was accurate? I don’t know. Half the time I didn’t know where half these people were or what they were doing, and the other half of the time half of them didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. I didn’t know who was responsible and nobody else did, either. All I knew was that I wanted these stockholders’ lawsuits off my back. That was accomplished, in the end, very easily. I simply bought all the stock. If the stockholders sold all their stock and weren’t stockholders anymore, there would be no more stockholders
’ suits. I’d be the only stockholder.

  I certainly wasn’t going to sue myself.

  And they sold it all to you?

  Of course they did. If you appeal to people’s greed you can’t lose. The stock was selling at three dollars a share, and I made a tender offer at six. Noah suggested five, but I said, ‘Come on, let’s give them six, because then each little guy will say to himself, ‘Yippee, I’m doubling my money overnight!’ and psychologically that’s better than him just thinking he’s making seventy percent.’ I owned about 25% of the stock then – I think there were about four million shares outstanding, and I had well over a million. It cost me $16 million and it saved me forty million in stockholders’ suits, not to mention the legal fees. But the public gobbled it up like pigs at a trough.

  You were buying a company on the edge of bankruptcy. I understand that you got rid of the lawsuits, but what else did you have then except a white elephant?

  I had a beautiful tax loss, a carryback, a tax credit I could have used any way I wanted to. Toolco and the Aircraft Division were making money hand over fist. I had the physical assets of the studio – the lot, the sound stages, the equipment, a corporate shell. They were valuable. And I had a backlog of movies I could dump into the television market for ten or fifteen million dollars if I wanted to hang on and wait for the right bid.

  I had plenty – but you’re right, it was a white elephant and I was tired of feeding it gold peanuts. I wanted to get out. So I put her up on the block, one fat old white elephant for sale. Well, pretty soon some syndicate boys came along with an offer. What’s commonly known as Cosa Nostra, Mafia, Organized Crime – you name it. Gangsters. Their money is as good as anybody else’s. Well, it’s as green as anybody else’s.