Howard Hughes: The Secret Life - Hardcover

Higham, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 028306157X ISBN 13: 9780283061578

Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1993

Synopsis

Draws on previously unavailable sources to provide a provocative, intimate portrait of the private life of billionaire Howard Hughes, from his affairs with Hollywood stars to his possible involvement with Nixon and Watergate to his shocking death. Reprint. LJ. K. PW.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles Higham is author of a number of biographies, such as Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart, Cecil B DeMille, Brando: The Unauthorised Biography, Rose: The Life and Times of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and Orson Welles: Rise and Fall of an American Genius. His biography of the Duchess of Windsor will be published in autumn 2004.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An outing of the billionaire closet bisexual by Higham, whose bios include lives of Cary Grant, Brando, Orson Welles, the Duchess of Windsor, and L.B. Mayer, among others. Higham does his research an injustice by insisting on printing much sexual hearsay as fact (and hinting that Hughes died of an AIDS-like disease), especially since he has done as much homework on Hughes's business and monetary activities as he did on Wallis Windsor and Mayer. The first half of Hughes's life fascinates with his immense network of seductions as he forms one movie company to assuage his voyeuristic needs and buys another to continue them- -while also running Hughes Tool, TWA, and other businesses--and meanwhile breaking an around-the-world aircraft speed record and building the gigantic Spruce Goose military transport (a white elephant of no use whatsoever). This is all before his psychic collapse into fear of large-scale germ warfare via Kleenex, a mental illness that Higham suggests Hughes picked up from his mother, a monumental cleanliness nut. As for the bisexual hearsay, Higham says he got it from Lawrence Quirk, nephew of Photoplay publisher James Quirk, who got it straight from Hughes's bisexual uncle Rupert Hughes, who got it from Hughes himself during a confessional outpouring. Higham says that Hughes's ``sexual partners were not so much lovers as hostages, prisoners or victims of his will; he had to dominate in everything.'' The author tells of Hughes's descent into Hollywood S&M, and as for his news about Hughes paying off Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon: It may not be new, but it comes strongly documented. The recluse's last years are...ripe--he even takes to storing his urine in Mason jars. Undeniably a hypnotic portrait of a great American monster. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 028306157X
• ISBN 13: 9780283061578
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400