Howard Hughes

by Clifford Irving

  That phrase burned itself into my mind, I had repeated it so often so that years later, when things were really bad and that flash of despair came to me, which I suppose is common to all men, it was always overpowered by an echo of what I had said to myself in that hospital bed: ‘You’ve got to live.’

  The only time I thought seriously about doing away with myself, other after the breakup with Billie, was during my last marriage. It came then from a deep sense of shame at having failed – I don’t mean only in my marriage, but in my life. It was as if over the years, all the bad and wrong things I had done, the promises I had made and broken, welled to the top. I’m not just talking about promises where I said, ‘I’ll buy these planes from you’ and then I didn’t buy them. I’m talking about promises in human relationships, promises that are not given in words, but that you make by virtue of the obligations you take on. Time passes and you find you were unable to fulfil them because you’ve changed, the other person has changed, and life interferes. And yet, what it amounts to in the end is a mountain of lies and deceptions beyond your control. They pile up inside you – each one is a little hard stone that seems to grow. You feel the weight of them year after year as each one gets added to the pile, and there’s no way to get rid of them. You can’t vomit them out anymore because the weight is too great inside you.

  And then I suppose a moment comes when you feel this interior heaviness at the mistakes you made, and these personal failures, so much so that you think you just can’t go on. Cancer of the memory, you can call it.

  But I went on – for which, all things considered, I’m grateful. No man can be certain of this, of course, but I don’t believe I will ever commit suicide. I feel my spirit caged in this decaying carcass, yearning to get out. But I will do nothing to hasten that departure.

  INCIDENTS AND OPINIONS

  There’s a story I heard about you from a friend. It has to do with a man named Bob Balzer and a house you rented from him on Mulholland Drive.

  In West Los Angeles. Yes, I remember that I had a house up there. But I never met Balzer in my life.

  Correct. Your lawyer told Balzer you wanted to rent the house for a year. Balzer said he had just built it and wasn’t interested in renting it. Your lawyer said, ‘But Mr. Hughes will pay a year’s rent equal to the cost of the house.’ Balzer said, ‘Well… that offer is hard to resist.’

  It was a beautiful house, unusually secluded – suited me perfectly. I told you I had several houses I was renting, a few bungalows and a couple of larger ones like this man Balzer’s place. What’s the point of this story?

  Your lawyer met with Balzer at the Beverly Hills Hotel to sign the lease. Balzer said, ‘I’ll give you the keys tomorrow as soon as I’ve moved my things out, and then Mr. Hughes can move in.’ Your lawyer said, ‘Mr. Hughes has already moved in, and never mind the keys, the locks have been changed.’ Balzer turned pale and said, ‘What about my clothes?’ Your lawyer said, ‘Go buy a new wardrobe and send the bill to Mr. Hughes care of me.’ Balzer got furious, and charged up to the house. He knew a way over the garden wall and in through the back door. He climbed over, but two guards grabbed him and heaved him back over the wall. They said, ‘Mr. Howard Hughes is renting this house, we don’t care who you are, get out.’

  They never would have revealed that I was leasing it.

  Balzer knew who he’d leased it to. He went out, bought new clothes, and sent you the bill.

  In which case the bill was paid. I’m terribly sorry that the poor man was thrown over the garden wall. I had no knowledge that such a thing had happened.

  There’s a climax to this. A year later, a year to the minute that Balzer had rented it to you, he showed up at the front door with two bodyguards of his own, resolutely determined to get in and to throw you out on the dot. But the door was open, and his old locks had been reinstalled, and when he walked in, the house was empty. Not a soul there. He ran around, of course, inspecting for damage –

  There was no damage. Whoever said that is lying.

  Balzer didn’t find any damage. However, he walked into the bedroom, where he’d slept exactly one year ago, and the cufflinks that he’d worn the night before, a year ago, were on the dresser, and the same yellow striped sheets he’d slept in were still on the bed. Nobody had slept there. The liquor cabinet, the kitchen, the living room, all were untouched. You’d never used the house, never slept there in the entire year, and it cost you, according to my friend, about $200,000 to rent the place.

  It’s not true – I did sleep there. People tell ridiculous stories about me. They exaggerate terribly. I slept there several times.

  But the bed was untouched, they were the same sheets. Balzer’s shirt was still hanging on the back of a chair the way he’d left it a year ago.

  I didn’t sleep in the man’s bedroom. I slept in the maid’s room. I don’t need sunken bathrooms and a suntan machine. The servant’s quarters were much more private and quite comfortable, and nearer the back gate. I slept there at least three or four times, maybe more. That’s a while ago – I don’t remember.

  * * *

  I was recently in Palm Springs to see my aunt. She knew you years ago. Her name is Beabe Hamilburg and her husband was Mitchell Hamilburg. Do you remember them?

  He was a talent agent. And if I’m not mistaken, I met your father through Mitch.

  That could be. Beabe told me a story that I wanted to check on. She said that you flew her and Mitch and the actress Mitzi Gaynor and Mitzi’s mother down to Las Vegas for a weekend.

  When was this?

  In the Fifties. She didn’t know where she was going and they had no clothes packed, and she said you kept her virtually a prisoner in the Frontier Hotel for a week.

  Hardly a prisoner, since they had the best suite in the hotel and I made sure they had ample chips to gamble with. Besides, now that I’m recalling some details of this, they came down to Vegas inadequately equipped for a week, and I sent a big choice of clothes for them to pick over. And jewelry for your aunt. And they had a chauffeured limousine at their disposal.

  But Beabe said she never saw you the whole time they were there. What was the purpose of your inviting them if you didn’t see them?

  I saw them, I’m sure, but the purpose of the trip, as you probably guessed, was for me to get into Mitzi Gaynor’s pants.

  Did you need Beabe and Mitch to hold your hand?

  Maybe to hold Mitzi’s mother’s hand. I’ve always needed other people around. The point is that I didn’t want to spend that much time with Mitzi. It was an interlude, nothing more. I wanted Mitzi occupied when I wasn’t with her, because I had business down in Vegas at the same time. And if I’m not mistaken, your Uncle Mitchell was Mitzi’s representative at the time. He introduced me to Mitzi. Very wholesome girl. I needed chaperons, that’s another point to the way I did things. I had the mother along, as I’ve mentioned. Of course she knew what was going on. But I wasn’t interested in marriage. I’ve said many times since, and at that time I said, I wasn’t going to get married again until I was in my fifties. I had too many things to do.

  * * *

  During the war didn’t you have sunken gasoline tanks in the San Fernando Valley?

  Why would I do a thing like that? That’s ridiculous. Who told you such a thing?

  Gasoline was rationed and it was hard to get. I don’t remember who told me.

  It’s not true. One tank, that’s all – one five-thousand-gallon tank. That’s reasonable, I think. I owned a lot of Chevrolets.

  * * *

  Over-population is the over-riding critical problem today and it’s going to become more so as time goes on. And I don’t see any workable man-made solution to this problem.

  Do you think it’s a possible solution to populate outer space? Other planets, or satellites?

  No, I think that’s quite hopeless. It cost us the better part of several billion dollars to send three guys to the moon. I know a fair amount about this, because my equipmen
t, Hughes equipment, was used up there and was key to the project. It’s a losing battle. I know that guy, Armstrong, the astronaut, said, ‘One giant step for mankind.’ One step forward, two steps back, that’s about the size of it. Technology can’t solve this problem. It will be solved by nature, but not in a way that we’ll enjoy. New and virulent diseases can sweep away two thirds of humanity as they did in the time of the Black Death, before any solutions can be found and applied. I think that it’s a historical necessity that something of this sort will happen. The deck is stacked against humankind. The world is only able to hold a certain number of people and we’re fast approaching that limit. My vision of the world in a hundred years is one great big India. When I was out there I saw what could happen, and I know how horrible and frightening it is. And it could easily happen, even in the United States.

  You don’t think it’s possible to colonize outer space, in any form?

  Not for the next five to seven hundred years, that’s my estimate. But there certainly are observers from other planets down here, checking us out, putting us into the scheme of things. UFOs, most of them, are not optical illusions. I have a copy of the Air Force’s top-secret Blue Book that tells the true tale of the so-called flying saucers.

  I’m sure there are, at the very least, hundreds of inhabited planets in our galaxy alone, not to mention how many thousands of other galaxies, and some of them have been inhabited for millions of years.

  There is some doubt, at least in other people’s minds, that the beings on some of these other planets have evolved to a higher degree of civilization than we have. Man doesn’t want to believe it because for the most part he still thinks – not with his mind, but with his primitive instincts – that the earth is the center of the solar system and the solar system, our solar system, is the center of the universe. Never mind what he learns in school or what his common sense tells him – common sense is very much over-rated, it’s rarely the important factor in thinking and decisions. The average man still says, ‘the sun’s rising’ and ‘the sun’s going down,’ and whether he knows it or not, he believes it.

  I’m not in any doubt that these advance beings have been visiting us at irregular intervals for the last five thousand years or more. Observation trips, reconnaissance trips. Probably feeding all the information, from the rules of our wars and what we eat and the sounds we make when we screw, into some extraterrestrial computer about the size of a TV set. And maybe the only thing that’s saved our bacon so far is that they still can’t figure out what makes us tick. Because if you computerize everything about mankind, the computer still wouldn’t be able to figure it out. Man is an insane animal. Hypocrisy and denial are his two outstanding attributes.

  * * *

  You once mentioned that Noah Dietrich had told a story about you regarding cookies. You said the story wasn’t true, but you never said what it was.

  Noah Dietrich, now that he no longer works for me, has told story after story about our past business dealings where he’s twisted things around. Where I was the one who made the decision, he’s told other people, ‘I made it and Howard didn’t know what he was doing.’ Here’s an example of one of the things he did. The story itself is trivial, but I’ll tell it to you because you asked about it.

  It was a long time ago, just after I had finished shooting Scarface. I was working with the cutting editor and hadn’t slept for two days. At one point we sent out for food, but when we finished eating this guy was still hungry. I had sent out for milk and cookies, which was enough to keep me going. This man hadn’t sent out for any dessert, and when I started to eat my cookies, he said, ‘Mr. Hughes, could I have one of your cookies?’ I gave him one. It’s true that I hesitated, because I didn’t want to start a precedent. Cookies were all I had to eat. These other people would go out and gorge themselves on hamburgers and french fries, while I drank milk and ate graham crackers. I kept them in the studio or the cutting room, wherever I happened to be working. But I gave him a cookie. Noah twisted this all around. He told somebody that I refused to give the man a cookie. That’s absolutely not true. I gave him a cookie.

  The sequel to this incident was that for weeks afterward men would come up to me on the lot, whenever I went off to a corner to drink my milk and eat my cookies, and say, ‘Howard,’ or ‘Mr. Hughes, can I please have a cookie?’ They were kidding me. But I couldn’t very well refuse them, since I’d given this other man a cookie – so my cookie supply vanished before my eyes. I knew then that I was right in the first place, because if you give one man a cookie, you’ve got to give every man a cookie, and pretty soon you don’t have any cookies yourself. And you’re a poor man, cookiewise.

  You may think that’s funny, and I can see the humor in it too. But when you’re hungry it’s not funny. Besides, it might have been hundred-dollar bills next. I didn’t want to get the reputation of being an easy touch.

  * * *

  Let me explain my personal theory on the structure of the universe. You know the structure of the atom, with a nucleus, protons and electrons revolving about it, and so on. It must have struck you that this is similar to our solar system. My theory is that there’s a possibility for life in some form not only in the various systems in what we call outer space but in systems within ourselves. In other words, each cell within our body is composed of many atoms. I’m putting this very simply so that you’ll understand. I know you’re not a scientist.

  I believe that within ourselves, in any given cell, there are systems that are similar to the galaxies that we can observe in outer space, and that within, let’s say a cell that’s part of my pinky, there may be a universe, or what’s called a multiverse, and that perhaps in one of those miniature solar systems in my pinky there may be hundreds of planets supporting life in miniature – from our point of view. And right there, in my pinky, there may be a planet called X, but similar to our Earth in most details, in which two men are talking just as we’re talking today.

  There’s no way we can investigate this. We’re not advanced to that point. But it seems to me perfectly logical. And if you follow it through, as I have, you can come up with an interesting theory about disease.

  Let’s say that a nuclear device is detonated here on the planet Earth. That may be creating a cancer in the universe. It’s possible that cancer in ourselves, and other diseases, may be caused by wars, or natural disasters such as famine, in these other universes within ourselves. Suppose a famine strikes India or two African nations go to war on one of these tiny planets in your abdomen, and that famine or war spreads to other planets, the other systems in your abdomen – this may be the cause of ulcers, for all we know.

  I’m sure this sounds far-fetched to you, but if you think about it for a while, you’ll realize that we don’t really know the nature of disease – we may know the physiological reasons, but we don’t know why it all happens, why the body decays. And if it’s possible that the cellular structure of the human body is a replica of the universe, a microcosm as opposed to a macrocosm, then it’s also possible that our own solar system may be an atom in some giant’s lungs. And when we detonate a nuclear device…

  He coughs.

  Or worse.

  * * *

  There’s something we’ve got to talk about, and we’ve slid over it somehow in these sessions. That’s your phobia about germs. I’m not trying to offend you, but on various occasions you’ve mentioned precautions you’ve taken against germs – although I must admit you haven’t taken any in my presence.

  I dislike the word phobia. Anybody in his right mind would take the same precautions. And you’re quite wrong about my not taking precautions in your presence. We haven’t shaken hands very often, have we? Most men I wouldn’t shake hands with at all. The first thing I look at are someone’s nails. The man who doesn’t take scrupulous care of his nails probably doesn’t wash his hands often, either, and will probably just use soap.

  What do you use?

  I use antiseptic sprays both
in my throat and on my hands, and in my living quarters. I also have ultra-violet ray machines. I take large quantities of vitamins, especially vitamin E. That’s one of the vitamins that have not been fully analyzed. However, it does tend to break up the quantities of foreign matter that coat the lungs. Heavy smokers like yourself, of course, are killing themselves, and vitamin E won’t help them, but it will attack the normal particles of dust and crap that you take in from the atmosphere and which stick to the mucous membranes.

  I have emphysema, brought on by the smog in California, and the vitamin E reduces the need for oxygen in the system and makes it easier for me to breathe. I’ve taken other precautions over many years. For example, the properties inherent in simple white cotton gloves are not widely recognized. All the documents, memos, and so on, that came to me in past years were typed by secretaries wearing white gloves, so there were no oils and germs brought into my presence. I used to buy the gloves wholesale from an undertaker’s supply house.

  Used to? The past tense?

  I’ve modified my views somewhat, mainly because I’m not a well man and precautions of this sort are no longer of great significance. But there was a time, not long ago, when I was very careful about the people who came to visit me at any of my houses in California and Nevada. The places themselves were fully purified, the air cleaned and rendered antiseptic.

  But that wasn’t enough. I had to open the door for these people. Now please don’t think I’m a maniac. I’ve been called a maniac enough times. I don’t like to think that’s your opinion. I don’t believe it is, but I don’t even want to see the suspicion on your face. A great many of the precautions I took were on doctor’s orders. And if not doctor’s orders, then doctor’s suggestions, because of the damage to my lungs, and my skin condition, and my anemia, and various other ailments.

  You went a bit overboard on it, didn’t you?

  I’m a man who always goes the whole hog. These places of mine in Vegas and L.A. were very well protected against germs. Nevertheless, people did come to see me, by invitation, and when I opened the door for them, I admitted untold billions of harmful bacteria.