How sex-obsessed Howard Hughes was hooked on screen siren Jane Russell’s 38Ds, made Jean Harlow feel like ‘a b***h in heat’ and Katharine Hepburn claim he was the best lover she ever had – but Ava Gardner bashed his head in with a bronze bell
- Hughes’ possessiveness is laid bare in the new book Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood by Karina Longworth
- Hughes was so obsessed with sex, power and publicity that it drove him to trap, abuse and even sometimes benefit women who dreamed of stardom
- The aviator became fixated on Jane Russell’s breasts, casting her to star in The Outlaw and shooting 100 film takes centered on her 38Ds
- The millionaire launched the career of Jean Harlow, typecasting her as a fantasy blonde bombshell and outfitting her in a provocative, cleavage-baring gown
- Katharine Hepburn had an intense love affair with Hughes, saying: ‘We weren’t inhibited people. He was not shy about sex’
- Ava Gardner caught Hughes’ eye, with the actress saying: ‘I couldn’t get rid of him for the next fifteen years, no matter who I was with or who I married’
- She said in a jealous fit of rage, Hughes started beating her, causing her to pick up a bronze bell and strike him in the face, splitting his forehead open
Legendary filmmaker Howard Hughes was so obsessed with sex, power and publicity that it drove him to trap, abuse and even sometimes benefit young women who dreamed of stardom.
The Texas multi-millionaire ruled Hollywood from the mid 1920s through the 1950s, building himself a harem of screen sirens such as Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers and Jane Russell.
Hughes, who was also a record-breaking aviator, became fixated on a young Jane Russell’s breasts, casting her to star in the provocative film The Outlaw and shooting 100 film takes – centered on her 38Ds.
The prolific playboy made Jean Harlow a star, typecasting her as a fantasy blonde bombshell making her feel like ‘a b***h in heat’, and chased after Katharine Hepburn, with the fiery actress admitting he was the best lover she ever had.
Hughes’ game was to sign hopeful young women to a binding contract, give them a free place to live, drivers, coaches – for them to never hear from him again or for him to sell their contract to a bidding studio.
‘Through the promotion of bombshells and a consistent antagonism of censorship standards for on-screen titillation and movie marketing, Hughes would aim to concentrate male desire into a commodity more blatantly than any mainstream filmmaker of his era,’ writes author Karina Longworth in her new book, Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood.
Legendary filmmaker Howard Hughes was so obsessed with sex, power and publicity that it drove him to trap, abuse and even sometimes benefit young women who dreamed of stardom
The millionaire launched the career of Jean Harlow (pictured together in 1934), typecasting her as a fantasy blonde bombshell and outfitting her in a provocative, cleavage-baring gown, which made her feel like ‘a b***h in heat’
Ava Gardner also caught Hughes’ eye (pictured together in 1946), with the actress saying: ‘I couldn’t get rid of him for the next fifteen years, no matter who I was with or who I married.’ She said in a jealous fit of rage, Hughes started beating her, causing her to pick up a bronze bell and struck him in the face splitting his forehead open
Longworth writes that the young women who Hughes scouted – sometimes aspiring actresses, sometimes girls he saw in a photo – were from around the country.
‘They all believed Hughes would make them into stars, but most of them were rarely if ever cast in anything while under contract to Hughes’, writes the author.
Using aggressive publicists, Hughes sold an image of himself as ‘a genius scout of female talent’.
Harlean Carpenter – who changed her name to Jean Harlow — was 12 years old when she first arrived in Hollywood from Kansas City with her mother who believed stardom was her daughter’s birthright.
Harlow ‘got attention everywhere she went for her milky white skin and cloud of blond hair and gorgeously curvaceous figure’, writes Longworth.
She was only pursuing an acting career because it wasn’t worth it letting her mother dominate her.
Hughes’ ways are revealed in the new book Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’ Hollywood by Karina Longworth
As chance would have it, Harlow was dating an actor in Hughes’ film Hell’s Angels. She was on the set with her boyfriend when they called for a new female lead.She was suddenly having a screen test.
Harlow was lousy at the seductive dialogue but Hughes decided to use her body moving through the room as the centerpiece of the movie.
He had a skintight gown designed, close to Harlow’s skin tone that would make her look naked and was cut between her breasts down to her waist.
A second outfit, a negligee, showed ‘a generous view of her large breasts’.
Harlow became the picture’s breakout star not for her acting talent but for what Photoplay called ‘sex in its most disgusting phase’.
She had dazzled the public through wickedness, one critic wrote.
Harlow hated being ‘forced to embody a sexual fantasy that felt to her nothing like the real her’, writes the author. But she skyrocketed to become an international femme fatale and helped invent the blonde sex goddess.
Now Hughes forbid her to work for anyone else and sent her on a never-ending publicity tour. If she didn’t comply, she would be held responsible for all her hotel bills.
With no films on the horizon, he began lending her out to other studios.
Appearing at a Chicago theater, she had only to bend over so that ‘those wonderful breasts almost fell out’.
Hughes eventually agreed to sell Harlow’s contract to MGM but she didn’t really have an act besides parading her body.
Harlow (pictured in the 1930s) hated being ‘forced to embody a sexual fantasy that felt to her nothing like the real her’, writes the author. But she skyrocketed to become an international femme fatale and helped invent the blonde sex goddess
‘But those wonderful breasts – worth any price of admission’, the author quotes Reginald Owen as saying.
It was a role Hughes would repeat — buying up beautiful girls, put them in expensive pictures, and sell to them a ‘paying’ studio, as he briefly turned his attention to his cockpit victories.
Katharine Hepburn arrived in Hollywood with her best female friend, heiress Laura Harding, two dogs and a mountain of Louis Vuitton luggage, sparking lesbian rumors.
A stage actress, Hepburn came out to Los Angeles on an invite by director George Cukor to be considered for RKO film, A Bill of Endorsement.
But first she had to meet production chief David O. Selznick.
Taken to meet him in the studio commissary, ‘he was allegedly so unnerved by her appearance that he turned his table over and stormed out’, writes the author.
Selznick called Cukor on the phone and told him: ‘Send her back to New York’.
Selznick didn’t believe Hepburn was good-looking enough to be in movies and her appearance would doom the film.
Cukor was ready to quit if Hepburn went back East, and so both ended up staying.
Hepburn’s first film appearance was a success and RKO cast her in more films.
Hepburn fell into an affair with her agent, Leland Hayward while her husband waited for her back in Connecticut.
Appearing in her first film with Cary Grant filming north of Malibu, an airplane circled overhead before landing too close.
It was Hughes who was anxious to meet Hepburn and Grant had suggested he come to lunch, but Hepburn was furious with the interloper.
Katharine Hepburn had an intense love affair with Hughes, saying: ‘Howard was the best lover I ever had. We weren’t inhibited people. He was not shy about sex’
Always persistent, Hughes repeated the biplane interruption while she was in the middle of a golf lesson at the Bel Air Country Club.
Hepburn moved on to director John Ford in ‘a relationship that wasn’t quite a romance but wasn’t entirely platonic’, writes Longworth, but it was still believed she was in a relationship with her agent Leland Hayward.
‘You might say I lived a man’, she said speaking of her many intimacies.
Touring with a stage production, in Boston she saw Hughes was in town and agreed to have dinner with him – night after night.
‘He had guts and he had a really fine mind, but he was deaf – quite seriously deaf – and he was apparently incapable of saying, ”Please speak up. I’m deaf”, Hepburn is quoted.
‘I think that this weakness went a long way toward ruining Howard’s life and making him into an odd-ball’.
Back in Los Angeles, she moved into Hughes’ house – along with her three servants.
But her career began a downward slide after some movies didn’t catch fire.
Hepburn now had to share billing with RKO star Ginger Rogers who viewed Hepburn as ‘the unimpeachable mean-girl queen of the RKO lot’, writes Longworth.
Hepburn represented a patrician privilege that was out of fashion during the late 1930s and became ‘a drag on grosses’ and box office poison.
She would need a comeback film but not before pursuing a mad love affair with Hughes.
‘Howard was the best lover I ever had,’ Hepburn disclosed.
‘We weren’t inhibited people. Howard was not shy about sex. He wasn’t short of testosterone. He didn’t like a fragile woman. I was practically a professional athlete’, the author quotes Hepburn.
Hughes would buy up beautiful girls, put them in expensive pictures, and sell to them a ‘paying’ studio, as he briefly turned his attention to his cockpit victories
Hughes made a round-the-world flight in a Lockheed Super Electra setting a world record and then headed back to LA — hungry for more action in film production
They chased private thrills, skinny dipping, diving off the wing of a seaplane into Long Island Sound. They shared obsessions with health and cleanliness, spending ‘a lot of time washing our hands.’
And both craved being famous and ‘wanted to be the most celebrated person in their respective fields’.
He had proposed to her and she repeatedly turned him down despite being madly in love with him – they chose serving their own careers first.
Hughes bought Hepburn the new lease on her film career when he advised her to buy film rights for the play, The Philadelphia Story. The play was a hit and Hughes bankrolled the option.
Hughes made a round-the-world flight in a Lockheed Super Electra setting a world record and then headed back to LA — hungry for more action in film production.
Actress Bette Davis, recently vaulted to a new level of stardom with the film Jezebel, was having an affair with the film’s director William Wyler and now pregnant.
She had a husband, Ham Nelson, her high school sweetheart but Bette wasn’t sleeping with him.
Davis opted for an abortion and moved on – only to meet Hughes. They quickly fell into a hot affair and rented a cottage in Malibu for their secret hideaway.
‘I liked sex in a way that was considered unbecoming for a woman in my time’, Bette stated.
Now Davis’ husband Ham wanted to be paid to go away and Bette had hoped that Hughes would offer financial help. He didn’t and she had to borrow from Warner Bros.
Hughes wasn’t proposing and the relationship didn’t survive.
‘I was the only one who ever brought Howard Hughes to a sexual climax, or so he said at the time’,’ Davis bragged.
‘I believed it when he told me that. It may have been his regular seduction gambit. Anyway, it worked with me, and it was cheaper than buying gifts’.
Hughes and Bette Davis (pictured together in 1940) quickly fell into a hot affair and rented a cottage in Malibu for their secret hideaway
‘But Howard Huge, he was not’, Longworth quotes the actress.
In 1939 Hughes had moved onto Ginger Rogers who he initially proposed to in 1936.
He was back with another marriage proposal and offered to build a house for her high in the Hollywood Hills.
He had her under surveillance and she believed he was tapping her phones – along with seeing other women.
Ginger was used to Hughes’ manipulations, his cheating and gaslighting her by telling her she was just imagining it all.
‘Howard wanted to get himself a wife, build her a house, and make her a prisoner in her own home while he did what he pleased’, Rogers is quoted. ‘Thank heavens I escaped that’.
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Jane Russell was next up to get a call from Hughes – and hired without ever meeting her in person. He heard about her breasts and listed measurements: 38-22-36.
The photograph that captured Hughes was of a 19-year old brunette, heavily made up eyes, top teeth bared.
It was the ‘picture of a girl who didn’t want to please you’.
‘Big breasts, brunette, high drama: this would, going forward, become Howard Hughes’ physical ideal’, writes the author.
Months would pass before Russell and Hughes met but she was up for a role in the film, The Outlaw where she gets raped.
But it was all about her 38D breasts, ‘perfectly round and floating on gravity’s momentum’.
The director had her bend over and pick up an apple, bounce up and down on a bed to see her breasts move.
Jane Russell (pictured on the set of The Outlaw, which was released in 1943) was next up to get a call from Hughes – and hired without ever meeting her in person. He heard about her breasts and listed measurements: 38-22-36
The photograph that captured Hughes was of a 19-year old brunette, heavily made up eyes, top teeth bared. It was the ‘picture of a girl who didn’t want to please you’. ‘Big breasts, brunette, high drama: this would, going forward, become Howard Hughes’s physical ideal’
Hughes didn’t want to possess Russell the way he tried with other woman. He just wanted to ‘get some mileage out of her tits’.
He wanted Jane braless but her breasts needed some support and he designed a new bra. Jane found it so uncomfortable she wore her own bra but let him think she was wearing his contraption.
He called for one hundred takes of something he couldn’t define and then spent days looking at the shots of what publicist Russell Birdwell called ‘the greatest display of mammary glands in the history of the universe’.
The film got hung up with Production Code enforcers and local censorship boards –which Hughes didn’t mind because he was in the spotlight.
The number of changes requested – 102 cuts — was brought down to six and Hughes still did not release the film – while Russell waited for her big film break.
‘At the core of The Outlaw and the centerpiece of its marketing, was a rape fantasy’, writes Longworth.
‘This publicity inspired men to think about having sex with a woman who didn’t want them, and the movie dramatized it.
‘It’s the ultimate dramatization of a man negating a woman’s personhood by using sex as a power tool’.
MCA super agent Lew Wasserman told Russell she was being exploited and didn’t need to obey his every order.
‘Howard Hughes would move from pursuing top female stars to pursuing young (sometimes very young) women whose careers had not yet gotten very far off the ground. More than ever, he would become obsessed with controlling these women, seeking to tie them up via marriage proposals or long-term contracts – or both – and taking ownership over their bodies and how they were presented to the public – or weren’t,’ writes Longworth.
Hughes had his spies watching Ava – even while she was married to Frank Sinatra
And then Ava Gardner caught his eye.
Their on-and-off involvement lasted almost two decades and began after she married Mickey Rooney.
She hadn’t been in a movie; Mickey was a huge star.
When Mickey asked her what he thought when he first saw her, he told her, ‘I figured you were a new piece of p***y for one of the executives’.
Ava was being used at MGM as an un-credited extra and believed it was punishment for marrying Mickey that Louis B. Mayer had tried to prevent.
The marriage fell apart after nine months and Hughes came calling.
‘I couldn’t get rid of him for the next fifteen years, no matter who I was with or who I married’.
She grew bored with his seduction act, hated dancing with him because he was a lousy dancer and was constantly trying to buy her.
The only gift that thrilled her was a German shepherd.
But Hughes ‘taught me that making love didn’t always have to be rushed’.
She wasn’t in love with Hughes; didn’t care about his money and didn’t believe his promises.
She carried on seeing other men and he had her surveilled.
They got into a terrible fight one night when she refused to meet Hughes at the airport. He came to her home, woke her up and demanded to know why.
She had been with Mickey.
By late 1944, Hughes exhibited obsessive-compulsive behavior and confusion repeating the same sentence 33 times
Livid, Hughes started pounding her face. When he started to walk away, she picked up an ornamental bronze bell and walked up behind him.
He turned around and she struck him in the face splitting his forehead open. She started beating him with a chair until her maid stopped it.
‘I thought I’d killed the poor bastard’, Ava later said.
But this wasn’t the end of her involvement with Hughes and the spies he had watching her – even while she was married to Frank Sinatra.
By late 1944, Hughes exhibited obsessive-compulsive behavior and confusion repeating the same sentence 33 times.
He had been in so many airplane crashes and now had a dependence on opiates – as well as an ‘increasingly compulsive collection of starlets, whom he’d stash away in apartments patrolled by bodyguards and spies’, writes the author.
There were more stars, a marriage to actress Terry Moore who gave birth to Hughes’ child.
Hughes died in spring of 1976 flying home from Acapulco.
His face was so withered away that the FBI had to run fingerprints to verify it was Hughes.
‘There were broken-off hypodermic needles in his arms. He was dehydrated and starving, and had possibly overdosed’, writes the author.
He was buried in an unmarked grave beside his mother and father in Houston.
Terry boasted that Hughes had told her he had been in love with three girls in his life – Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers and Terry Moore.
Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes’s Hollywood by Karina Longworth is out on Tuesday.
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