Description

“Set amid descriptions of the unimaginable changes that affected America between Hughes's birth in 1905 and his death in 1976, this book gives an insider's perspective about what money can buy and what it can't. Darwin Porter's access to film industry insiders and other Hughes confidants supplied him with the resources he needed to create a portrait of Hughes that both corroborates what other Hughes biographies have divulged, and go them one better.” Foreword Magazine. “Thanks to this bio of Howard Hughes, we'll never be able to look at the old pinups in quite the same way again.” He was a millionaire while still a teenager, thanks to his father's Texas tool-bit business. He owned Hughes Aircraft, TWA, and RKO. Yet Howard Hughes remains one of the most enigmatic, oddest, and most contradictory men in public life during the 20th century. Gore Vidal said he was boring, and called him an honest-to-God American shit. But Hughes had a lot more going on than Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated 2004 film, The Aviator, depicts.” (The Times of London). “Darwin Porter's new, exhaustive biography, Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel (from Blood Moon Productions), reveals that he bedded not only about every female beauty in Hollywood's Golden Era, but quite a few gorgeous males too. Born to a wealthy, libertine father, and cosseted by an incestuous mother, Hughes' life revolved around three obsessions: airplanes, movies, and sex. Porter, who is in his 60s, has had a long career in journalism; he started reviewing movies for the Miami Herald as a teenager, he's written many Frommer's travel guides, and he's published a biography of everyone's favorite nonlesbian, Katharine Hepburn. I recently chatted with Porter by telephone from his New York City home. We talked all about Hughes' dazzling, sometimes puzzling life, including those boys in the back room.” (Frontiers Magazine, Los Angeles). Howard Hughes, Hell's Angel was nominated for best biography in Foreword Magazine's Book of The Year Awards, and it was selected for serialization in the UK by The Mail On Sunday.

Chapter