Steel Magnate Friedrich Alfred Krupp

The multimillionaire German steel industrialist F. A. Krupp (1854-1902) loved the Italian island of Capri, off the coast of Naples, where he resided for several months each year at the Hotel Quisisana*. He kept two yachts there, Maya and Puritan, from which he entertained and pursued his hobby of oceanography. He could well afford to, since his father – Alfred, the Cannon King – had amassed the largest personal fortune in Germany. Alfred's power was so great that crowned heads negotiated directly with him.

While on the island, Krupp (known all his life as Fritz)  indulged his homosexual leanings in a big way. He set up a lavish private pleasure club in a grotto, where he entertained underage Italian boys, mostly the sons of local fishermen. Man on man sex was performed to the accompaniment of a live string quartet, and orgasms were celebrated with bursts of fireworks. Solid gold pins shaped like artillery shells or two crossed forks, both designed by Krupp, were given to the boys if they performed well. I'm not making this up.

When Krupp's wife, back home in Germany, heard rumors of what was going on, she went straight to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who promptly had her committed to an insane asylum in Jena. The thinking was that the Krupp industrialist empire (steel and arms manufacturing) was too vital to German national security to be compromised, even if such lurid stories were deemed true. Besides, Fritz was an important philanthropist who advanced the study of eugenics, which was later to become associated with the Nazis. The company lives on today as Thyssen-Krupp AG, the result of a controversial merger completed in 1999. The new company operates worldwide in steel manufacture, capital goods (elevators and industrial equipment) and services (specialty materials, environmental services, mechanical engineering, and scaffolding services).

But I digress. Krupp’s homosexual tastes predated his holidays on Capri. Conrad Uhl, proprietor of the Hotel Bristol in Berlin, related that he was charged with supplying Fritz with young boys when he stayed there. However, the German press eventually found out about Krupp's illicit private affairs, and printed the whole story, complete with damning photographs taken by Krupp himself inside the grotto on Capri. On  November 15, 1902, the Social Democratic magazine Vorwärts reported that Friedrich Alfred Krupp was homosexual, that he had a number of liaisons with local boys and men, and that his principal attachment was to Adolfo Schiano, an 18-year-old barber and amateur musician who lived on Capri. A week later, Krupp requested a meeting with his close friend, Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose circle of friends included many prominent gay men. On the day he was to meet the emperor, November 22, 1902, Krupp was found dead in his home. Rather than face disgrace, Krupp had committed suicide; he was 48 years old at the time.

The suicide was covered up, and his body was concealed in a casket with no autopsy, even though law required it. No one, not even close relatives, was allowed to see the body. After three days, Germany had a great memorial ceremony involving the Kaiser, who was closely allied to the family. When Fritz was laid to rest in the Krupp family cemetery in Essen, his tomb was guarded day and night.

Ten years ago, when I first visited Capri**, I looked down in wonder from the Gardens of Augustus to the switchback paved footpath known as the Via Krupp, a scenic walkway constructed by Fritz in 1900. Ostensibly Via Krupp was a connection for Fritz between his rooms at the Hotel Quisisana and Marina Piccola, the small port where his marine biology research ship (ironically named the Puritan) lay at anchor. Secretly, however, this path conveyed him to Grotta di Fra’ Felice, the grotto where sex orgies with local boys took place. When the scandal surfaced, Krupp was asked to leave Italy in 1902, and a week  after his return to Germany his life was over.

*The Grand Hotel Quisisana is today a member of Leading Hotels of the World.
www.quisisana.com/en/index

**At the time I had no knowledge of this lurid tale. Today there is a small family-run three star hotel called Villa Krupp on Capri which many people mistakenly believe was built by Fritz Krupp. However, this structure was built as a private villa in 1900 by Eduardo Settanni. By the way, Capri was then known as the gay capital of Europe, hosting hordes of lesbians and gay men, who could pursue their interests openly. Tip: remember to pronounce Capri with the accent on the first syllable (KAH-pree).

The Via Krupp descends 300 feet from the Gardens of Augustus to Marina Piccola, where Fritz hosted all male sex orgies in the nearby Grotta di Fra’ Felice. The iron gate pictured below leads to the grotto. He referred to this grotto as the "holy place of a secret fraternity," and he gave out golden keys to the private gate to waiters and fisherman. He wasn’t even trying to be discrete. This stone path, which had been closed for thirty years because of the danger of falling rocks, was reopened to foot traffic in 2009.

Photo below: On Capri Fritz Krupp satisfies his "needs," which leads to disaster (Auf Capri geht Fritz Krupp den Bedürfnissen nach, die ihm schließlich zum Verhängnis werden) – a scene from the 2009 three-part German TV miniseries, Krupp – Eine Deutsche Familie. In this scene Krupp (center) brings one of the local boys back to his hotel to "satisfy his needs."

James Deering's Vizcaya

UPDATE:
Since I first published this post (January 5, 2012), several resources have become available that provide much more detail, while correcting certain inaccuracies found in earlier sources.

I’m just back from a winter break in south Florida, and I visited the Vizcaya mansion on the shores of Miami’s Biscayne Bay last Sunday. Vizcaya, a fantasy, over-the-top Italian Renaissance-style villa, was built over a span of two years, 1914-1916, by James Deering (1859-1925), co-founder and vice president of International Harvester. It was used by Chicago-based Deering as a 34-room winter home, set adjacent to ten acres of formal gardens, which were not completed until 1921, because of the outbreak of WWI. During the construction, a full ten percent of Miami’s population worked at the Vizcaya site. The original 180 acres included a working farm, machine shop, staff residences, garages, greenhouse, a boathouse with docking facilities, canals, and a paint and carpentry workshop.

Portrait at right inscribed: "to Mr. James Deering from his friend John S. Sargent*, Miami 1917".

Deering was discreet about his private life, and is referred to only as a “life-long bachelor” in the printed materials available at the site. He never married, and I could find no reports of his showing romantic or physical interest in women. Occasionally he did have unmarried female houseguests (such as actress Lillian Gish), but they were friends, not people he dated. However, he hosted many homosexual men -- some for extended periods.

Another hint is revealed by having a look at the floor plan of the bedroom level. The only guest bedroom adjacent to Mr. Deering's own suite is accessed (as are all the bedrooms) from a hallway that rings the central, open courtyard, What is not apparent from the hallway, however, is that this guest bedroom has direct access to Mr. Deering's bedroom by way of an exterior loggia that borders Mr. Deering's stunning bathroom (both bedrooms have doors that open onto this loggia). What was the reason to hide this access from other house guests? Hmmm. At the time Vizcaya was built, it was common for wealthy husbands and wives to have separate bedrooms, but that was clearly not the case here. The large sitting room adjacent to Mr. Deering's bedroom is situated away from the guest bedroom, which is not of a scale that would make it suitable as quarters for a future wife. Peculiar indeed. This is a home designed for a "bachelor" owner without any plans ever to marry.

More evidence? After the Vizcaya project, his openly-gay decorator Paul Chalfin returned to New York City to continue his interior design practice, and he wanted to have a home that he could furnish lavishly, in a way that would attract more business from members of the upper class. How was he able to accomplish this? Mr. Deering lent him the money to buy a 30-acre estate in Connecticut.

Also, rumors circulated from the large staff of servants that Deering held all-male parties at Vizcaya, although I have not been able to find hard evidence as corroboration. Even so, my educated guess is that Deering was a closeted homosexual, and I consider that these facts are enough evidence to include Mr. Deering on this blog. But read on.

In addition to making a fortune from agricultural machinery, Deering was a socialite and an antiquities collector. When he was phased out of daily company affairs by J.P. Morgan interests in 1909, Deering decided to go on a buying spree with his gay decorator, designer Paul Chalfin (see portrait c. 1915 a few paragraphs below), who made sure that Deering’s winter home did not resemble his brother’s plain-Jane estate a bit farther south. Deering served as Vice President of International Harvester until 1919 and remained a company director for the rest of his life. But after the 1909 reorganization, he essentially retired – with a very fat wallet. The Deering family had come into $800 million (in today’s money) from the sale of a part of their company's interests to J. P. Morgan bank.

Together, Chalfin and Deering sailed to Europe, snapping up fabulous antiquities (including doors, wall panels, mantels and ceilings) that would be incorporated into the creation of an opulent, over-the-top, decadent, and ostentatious fantasy villa in what is today north Coconut Grove.

Paul Chalfin was a New York-based painter turned decorator who had worked as an assistant to celebrated designer Elsie de Wolfe. Chalfin was openly homosexual and affected in mannerisms and speech. Not to mention the flamboyant way he dressed. He and Deering bonded immediately and made numerous trips to Europe to inspect villas and procure furnishings, including wrought iron gates, fountains and antique chimneypieces (one was 20-ft. tall). Chalfin and Deering spent two years formulating the Miami villa before handing the project over to a young, unknown architect, F. Burrall Hoffman, who was in the unenviable position of having to please two clients: Chalfin, who was on-site in Florida, and Deering, who was based in Chicago. About the only thing Hoffman and Chalfin had in common was that both had attended Harvard and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

Chalfin (painting at left) and Deering had decided on a square Italian courtyard villa placed directly on the shoreline with gardens to the side. Hoffman soon found out that his job was to do as he was told. Since Chalfin was neither trained nor licensed as an architect, Deering’s choice of a younger, unknown architect – hungry for an important commission – meant that Chalfin could get his way, with Hoffman serving primarily as a brilliant draftsman charged with creating a livable home from the haphazard collection of architectural and decorative elements chosen by Chalfin. Hoffman even allowed Chalfin to take credit as his "associate" architect. Headed off to serve in WWI as the villa neared completion, Hoffman could hardly have contemplated that his good deed would be so rudely rewarded, as Chalfin steadily and gradually claimed more exclusive credit as the creator of Deering's widely publicized and critically acclaimed new estate. Chalfin's ego eventually led him to downplay Deering’s own influence on the project, which was considerable. It is revealing that Deering supplied a luxury houseboat, moored at the building site, for Chalfin's use during the construction of Vizcaya  – and that no such accommodation was made for Hoffman.

Althea Altemus, who served as a secretary to Mr. Deering at Vizcaya, was reviewing an article from a 1917 issue of American Weekly, which described the opening party at Vizcaya on Christmas Eve, 1916. She wrote next to a drawing of two seductive women looking down on Vizcaya (suggesting that Deering was a ladies’ man), “What’s this? No!” 

Althea described Paul Chalfin as a “very ladylike old dear” who lived with his boyfriend (Louis A. Koons) and chow dogs on “The Blue Dog,” the 74-foot houseboat provided by Deering. Blue Dog was described in detail in the July 1917 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Althea, however, described the boat as the scene for quite “unique” parties and recommended a certain actress as a source for details. Koons, who also served as Chalfin’s secretary and business partner, accompanied Deering and Chalfin on the many European art and furniture buying tours.

However, Diego Suarez, the garden designer, had less charitable words for Chalfin: “(He) was absolutely the worst pansy I have ever seen. He had a secretary (?), Koons, whom he used to kiss goodbye. He was always kissing his hand.” Suarez expressed disgust that Koons later resided in Chalfin’s house in NYC. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

As for James Deering, this description comes from one of his house guests, actress Lillian Gish:

"He was an astringent little man. I don’t think he was really comfortable with his guests. I remember very clearly the night we were there. It was an April night and the gardens were full of fireflies. I was probably very romantic, and I can remember that I wanted to get into a gondola and ride on the canals. It was such a lovely night. But we were taken right in after a look at the gardens to see a movie. It was a movie about microbes and germs. Can you imagine that? I suppose he thought it was entertaining. I had the impression that he was a man who wanted to have beauty around him in his house and gardens, but that he didn’t know what to do with it. He wasn’t able to live with it. It was simply there."

So the personalities of Deering and Chalfin must have been like oil and vinegar. At the very least Chalfin must have helped Deering come out of his shell, especially while in Europe, away from society's expectations of a certain decorum required of a man of his stature and social standing. Deering even requested that Chalfin provide a private place on Vizcaya's grounds where he could escape (alone) from staff and visitors. The man was truly not comfortable in his own skin.

All that off towards one side, Liberace would have felt completely at home at Vizcaya. Trust me. There’s a 3-manual pipe organ (a 3-ton Welte-Mignon behemoth with a player mechanism), tea house, garden theater, statuary walks, courtyards, loggias, bridges, canals, fountains, maze, indoor/outdoor swimming pool, terraces, mangrove swamps, grottos and a room whose entire function was for arranging flowers. Did I mention the carved stone breakwater "barge"?

The breakwater barge originally boasted a fountain, lattice structure
and a forest of palms.

*John Singer Sargent (discreetly gay), who painted clothed women and naked men, was an intimate friend. While staying at Vizcaya, Sargent painted a series of watercolors of male nudes, using the African-American workers on the premises as models (see watercolor below). A further clue to Deering’s sexual orientation is a statue in the gardens that depicts Ganymede, the mythological gay youth who was the lover of Zeus. A tapestry hung inside the villa depicts a male lion with a raging erection. I’m not making this up. James Deering, that life-long bachelor, is speculated by many to have had an intimate relationship with Sargent.

I’m just sayin’.

Although most of the original furnishings remain intact, the south Florida climate took its toll. During the 1980s the original open-air central courtyard was covered with a glass pyramid so that air conditioning could be installed, diminishing further deterioration of fabrics and furnishings. Innovations at the time of construction include a central vacuum system (in 1916!), an automatic electric telephone switchboard and a fire control system. Upon Deering’s death in 1925, while returning from France on an ocean liner, the house was maintained by minimal staff after it was inherited by two nieces. Following hurricane damage and escalating maintenance costs, the women sold Vizcaya much below value to Miami-Dade County in 1952 to operate as a museum. Today the house and gardens are designated a National Historic Landmark.

The boat house, where Deering’s yacht Nepenthe was docked, along with various lagoons and canals, were lost when some of the acreage was sold off piecemeal by the nieces. Today Mercy Hospital and a large Catholic church occupy the adjacent acreage where those features once stood.

Several movies (remember Pet Detective?) and documentaries have been shot here. Vizcaya is today a popular backdrop for quinceañera photos/celebrations by Miami’s huge Latina population and the scene of countless fashion photoshoots. During my visit several brides were being photographed in the tea house and gardens. The mansion and gardens may be rented for private functions.

Open daily at 3251 S. Miami Avenue. 305.250.9133.

www.vizcayamuseum.org

Sources for this update:

Big Bosses: A Working Girl’s Memoir of Jazz Age America – Althea McDowell Althemus

The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Woman’s Picture –  Rachel Zolf

Style and Taste: Beauty for Breakfast – Michael Henry Adams
LGBTQ America – Megan E. Springate


As opulent as the following color photos seem, black and white photographs from the 1920s indicate that the rooms contained many more decorative items and details than what visitors view today (see example of reception room photos below). A rich man's clutter.

From top:
1. Staircase fountain leading up to garden folly/casino
2 & 2a. Reception room today vs. b/w photo from the early 1920s
3. Bayfront (east) loggia
4. Mr. Deering's bathroom with tented ceiling & water views
5. Teahouse lattice & garden folly/casino interior

Howard Hughes

Bisexual Billionaire, Film Maker & Aviator

A recent magazine article made mention of the whitewashed version of the life of Howard Hughes as depicted in the movie, Aviator. I decided to go digging for a bit of dirt, and believe me, there was plenty -- too much for one post.  I was astonished by the sheer quantity of homosexual activity, so here goes:

Hollywood 1921: Bisexual film director William Desmond Taylor, Mexican born film star Ramon Novarro, Spanish born star Antonio Moreno, and a teenaged Howard Hughes were all involved with each other sexually – sometimes all at the same time. Taylor was mesmerized by Hughes, who was attending a private school east of Santa Barbara, and planned to star him in a film custom tailored for him. Howard’s uncle, Rupert Hughes, a powerful Hollywood screen writer, was to write the script. It was Uncle Rupert who had introduced Howard to William Desmond Taylor.

Included in their circle was silent film star Blanche Sweet, who regularly gave Howard blow jobs, marveling at the young man’s generous endowment. But it was Taylor who became completely obsessed with Howard. He knew he could make Hughes the biggest star in all of Hollywood, and he couldn't keep his hands off him. Unfortunately, Taylor was murdered in 1922, and the case remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of Hollywood.

Immediately after Taylor’s funeral, Hughes abandoned plans to become a movie star. He told Sweet and Moreno that he had decided to become a producer, a field in which he could be the boss. He also continued to pursue his passions for horses and airplanes. Howard was a magnificent rider and a fearless aviator.

He was also handsome, tall (6'3"), well-endowed and rich – and accustomed to getting his way. Howard lived a warped reality of instant gratification. He played by no one’s rules, sampling whatever drugs, alcohol, women and men he fancied. Hughes, the son of a fabulously wealthy father, lived on an open-ended allowance, enabling him to buy cars and wildly expensive clothes for his boyfriends. One of the most important of them, Dudley Sharp, was later involved in an affair with Howard’s doting mother, who became pregnant by Dudley. Based in Houston, Allene (Howard’s mother) died from complications of the pregnancy, and a day later Dudley, Howard's boyfriend from just a few years before, attempted suicide. Howard and his father took these unsavory complications in stride and immediately returned to California to live their lives of unbridled excess. Hughes Sr. continued his torrid affairs with Gloria Swanson and Eleanor Boardman, and had Howard moved into a private bungalow at a Pasadena polo club – all paid for by his father, of course. Howard was sixteen.

Howard’s father bribed officials at Cal Tech to accept his son, who did not have a high school diploma, as an uncredited student. Such was the power of money. Its corrupting influence was not lost on Howard. After accepting a blow job from silent film star Billy Haines (see post on August 5), Howard bragged to Haines that he had received intimate invitations from both Eleanor Boardman and Charlie Chaplin. Haines felt he should warn Howard that Boardman was one of Howard Sr.’s mistresses. Howard told Haines that he was aware of that, and “it would make taking her all the sweeter.” When Howard Sr. found out about it, he actually encouraged the affair, even telling Boardman that he was pleased by his son’s brazenness. Unknown to Boardman was the fact that Howard Sr. wanted to move on, focusing his attentions on Gloria Swanson. Morality of convenience – thanks, son!

Haines and Hughes forged a close friendship, even though Billy Haines was 100% gay and Hughes was bisexual. Billy knew everybody in Hollywood and made sure Hughes was invited to all the right parties. Haines was also a close friend of Eleanor Boardman. In fact, both Haines and Boardman had been winners of their respective divisions of the “New Faces of 1922" contest sponsored by Goldwyn Pictures. Both were sent from New York to Hollywood for screen tests, and both became big stars. Upon arrival in L.A., Boardman was already an established stage actress, but Billy Haines was 100% raw talent.

Note: Some readers might doubt that these photos are of Howard Hughes, since his appearance changed so radically from his mid-thirties. Both photographs in this post are from 1930-1931, when Hughes was 25-26 years old, before the plane crash and resulting plastic surgery.

At a New Year’s Eve party in Houston, Howard’s father had humiliated him in front of other guests. After a heated argument about aviation (it was Howard’s passion, but his father refused to support his son’s desire to fly), Hughes Sr. yelled at his son, “Just like your Uncle Rupert, you’re nothing but a queer.” Turns out Hughes Sr. knew all about both his son’s and brother’s sexual dalliances with men. Howard collapsed into tears as his father slammed the door and stormed off. It is important to note that the person into whose arms Howard collapsed was none other than Dudley Sharp*, father of his mother’s unborn child, as well as being Howard’s boyhood lover. For two weeks Hughes Sr. and his son kept an icy distance from each other. On January 14, 1924, Howard’s father died suddenly of an embolism while working in his Houston office. When Howard was approached on the golf course to be told that his father had died, the first thing he did was call the family attorney. He asked the lawyer to read him his father’s will. Howard had just turned eighteen.

*Sharp later suffered the humiliation of having to ask Howard for money in order to continue his studies at Princeton. Hughes refused. Dudley Sharp later married and became U.S. Secretary of the Air Force under Eisenhower.

To be continued...

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter

Howard Hughes, Part II

Hughes in 1930

According to his father’s will, Howard had been left with 75% of the Hughes Tool Company – not what Howard had in mind. He badgered his grandparents, aunts and uncles into selling him their stock so that he would have complete control of the company. He even engaged in homosexual activity with his Uncle Rupert in order to have Rupert petition his stubborn parents into selling.

This became the norm to Howard – he’d use whatever ammunition it took to accomplish his task – usually in the form of sex combined with lots and lots of cash. He was also young, rich, handsome and virile at a time when the Hollywood lifestyle was a temple to debauchery, and Hughes was at its epicenter.

As a school boy, Howard had been rebuffed by a young girl named Ella Rice, daughter of the prominent Houston family for whom Rice University is named. When Howard was six years old, Ella had humiliated him by returning his Valentine card. Howard vowed to get even with her some day. Fast forward to 1925, when Howard was back in Texas tending to business at the Hughes Tool Company. Ella was still around, and Howard hatched a plan to woo her, then humiliate her. Trouble was, she was now engaged to a fellow known as James Winston. James never knew what hit him. Howard focused all his attention on the boy, seduced him, gifted him with a yellow Duesenberg and an envelope containing $25,000. Worked like a charm. With James Winston out of the way, Ella and Howard were married on June 1, 1925. Dudley Sharp was Howard’s best man. At the age of nineteen years and seven months, Howard owned 100% of the Hughes Tool Company and had talked a young lady, who had humiliated him when a child, into marrying him. He was just getting warmed up.

Later Howard told his Hollywood pal Billy Haines (see post of August 5) that, on the day of the wedding, “I was so nervous I had to get sucked off by Dudley to calm my nerves before the ceremony.” Just after the ceremony, while embracing Dudley in private, Howard said, “You should never have let me go through with the ceremony. Ella will never mean as much to me as you do.” While on his honeymoon on Long Island, Howard wrote to Dudley, “My marriage is a disaster. Ella and I are not sexually compatible!”

A debonaire pilot:

Upon returning to Los Angeles, the first person Hughes called was Billy Haines, who asked, “Are you a staid old married man now, or can we go out on the town and raise hell?” Hughes answered that he was married “in name only.” Upon checking into the same hotel where his father had bedded countless women, Howard asked to be placed in a suite with separate bedrooms, instead of the honeymoon suite, which had been reserved. Hughes left his newlywed to her own devices and went out with Haines, not returning until eight o’clock the next morning. Thus began a time of protracted humiliation of Ella (she should never have returned that Valentine!). By this time, Hughes was already displaying eccentric traits that would dominate his later years. He seldom shook anyone’s hand for fear of germs. He was later to display obsessive-compulsive behavior of such exaggerated proportion that it boggles the mind. He was also dealing with a serious loss of hearing.

Hughes had a brief affair with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who went on to marry Joan Crawford. After their divorce, Miss Crawford forever rebuffed Howard’s requests for a date. Said Joan, “I adore homosexuals, but not in my bed after midnight.”
   
Howard was somewhat alarmed to learn that he had quite the reputation as a bisexual around Hollywood. When he was approached by actress Madge Bellamy (who famously turned down the female lead in Ben-Hur, Ramón Novarro’s greatest triumph), she said, “I hear you’ve already had Ben-Hur (a reference to Novarro), so why not sample the actress who turned down the picture?”

Hughes formed a Hollywood film production company and scoured the town for star material. He had uncompromising taste in beauty. He didn’t care if a person was male or female – Howard just had to have whoever was the handsomest, the most beautiful. For three years Hughes maintained a sexual relationship with a young, upcoming Gary Cooper, buying him cars, clothes and other lavish gifts along the way. Cooper’s eventual replacement was a young, blond William Boyd*, later known to millions as Hopalong Cassidy.

*Bisexual actor Richard Arlen was hosting an all male nude beach party at a secluded cove on Catalina Island, and Hughes asked William Boyd to tag along with him. Somehow a photographer got close enough to snap nude photos of Hughes and Boyd, which became the talk of Hollywood. RKO, Boyd’s studio, was having apoplexy (an interesting aside is that later, in 1948, Hughes took over the reins at RKO and ran it into the ground; they were out of business ten years later). When Hughes and Ben Lyon were having an “off-the-record” weekend in Mexico, they were photographed engaging in a torrid kiss. It took thousands of dollars to buy back the negative. Pocket change for Hughes.

Howard Hughes as film director, wearing his trademark argyle socks:

Obsessed with aviation and movie making, in 1927 Hughes began shooting an epic film about fighter pilots, Hells’ Angels, that would not be completed until 1930, an astonishing circumstance at a time when the average film was completed in three or four weeks. Hughes, who made the film with $3.8 million of his own money, directed the dogfight scenes himself and performed some of the aerial stunts. Amazingly, the film went on to earn a $4 million profit and made Jean Harlow a star.

The next years were a blur of activity. By 1928 Hughes had his pilot’s license. Two Arabian Nights, a film Hughes produced, won an Academy Award in 1929. Howard and Ella, who had been separated for over a year, divorced in 1929. Hughes decided that Hell’s Angels would have to be a talking film and reshot all the scenes with dialogue, doubling the film’s cost. He was seriously injured in a plane crash while making Hell’s Angels (he did some of the stunt flying himself). Moving on, Howard founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, and  Hughes was chasing fame and fortune with unbridled zeal. He was twenty seven years old.

By the 1930s Howard learned that sharing details of his private life could get him into trouble. Soon Cary Grant (photo at right) became his only confidant, a friend to whom he could tell anything. Since Grant himself was miles deep in the closet, this was a safe policy (insiders say that Cary Grant was the one great love of Howard’s life). Hughes soon became obsessed with his own privacy, and like most things in his life, he carried it to wild extremes.

To be continued...

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter

Howard Hughes, Part III

After the plane crash, Hughes had plastic surgery, and his looks changed considerably – and not for the better. Even so, Hughes was able to entice the 6'4" tall newcomer to Hollywood, Randolph Scott, into an affair. Turns out their fathers had been friends back in the day. When Scott was out trolling for male flesh one night in Griffith Park (a popular place for gay cruising), he propositioned a vice cop and was arrested. Hughes bailed him out and paid a $3,000 bribe to make the arrest disappear. Scott was grateful, but eventually moved on to Cary Grant, with whom he would have a long-term, volatile relationship. However, Jean Harlow claimed that Hughes had three signed photographs of Randolph Scott in his bedroom and stared at them in order to become aroused while having sex with her. During a heated argument with Billie Dove, whom Howard intended to marry, she called him an impotent bastard and a faggot – and she wasn’t kidding. Jean Harlow called him a “deaf faggot.”

Things started to go south for Howard in a big way. After the plane crash he started having debilitating migraine headaches, and his hearing loss worsened. He was having more and more frequent bouts of impotence, especially with women. He started to use cocaine, and he suffered a nervous breakdown, to boot. Once the best dressed man in Hollywood, Hughes began to appear in public in wrinkled, sloppy clothes. Hughes was also becoming involved in dealings with the mob, particularly Bugsy Siegel. Even worse, Howard turned into a scathing bigot, disdainful of Jews and blacks. A rare bright note was the enormous success of The Front Page, a film Hughes produced in 1931.

Howard was blackmailed by Billie Dove’s husband to the tune of $350,000 (Hughes paid up). By the early 1930s Hughes had blown through most of the profits of the Hughes Tool Company. He had used the company’s earnings to bankroll a string of money-losing projects in aviation and film production.

However, his taste in the handsomest men in Hollywood continued unabated: Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, George O’Brien, Johnny Mack Brown and many, many others. When Clark Gable first arrived in Hollywood, he dropped trou for several influential men, including Billy Haines and Howard – anything to get ahead and become a star. When über-gay George Cukor was directing Gable in Gone with the Wind, he teased him about his earlier dalliances with Haines and Hughes. Gable never spoke to Cukor again while on the set, and he led a successful effort to get Cukor fired (Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming).

Howard’s attention drifted away from making films to the field of aviation. He became more and more eccentric. For example, all he would eat was rare steak and peas (but they had to be very small peas), and he started buying his clothes from thrift stores. He became hopelessly paranoid and insanely jealous of anyone who threatened to topple him from the mountaintop. His jealousy over the feats of aviation by Charles Lindbergh manifested itself into fits of screaming and profanity. After the kidnaping of Lindbergh’s child, Hughes became obsessed with security.

And that’s where I’m going to stop. Hughes went on to design and manufacture aircraft and forever change the face of Las Vegas. However, his life from this point was a sad lapse into mental illness, self destruction and bizarre behavior, much of it too unsavory to relate. A second plane crash in 1946 left him scarred and addicted to morphine. He ran RKO Pictures into the ground, and did much the same with Trans World Airlines. He later fled to the Bahamas and Mexico to have easier access to codeine, which he personally injected into his arms. He also suffered the effects of tertiary syphilis. His legacy was that of the world’s most eccentric billionaire, and today only his medical research institute carries his banner in a positive light.

Because of his wealth and power, his homosexual proclivities were not well known to the public during his lifetime. However, enough of his employees and colleagues survived after his death in 1976 to be able to speak openly about the subject without fear of reprisal. Turns out they had plenty to talk about.

Sources:
Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (1993) by Charles Higham
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel (2005) by Darwin Porter