Speaker 1: Pushkin. In the middle years of the twentieth century, Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes was one of the richest and most famous people
Speaker 1: in the world. He was tall, he was handsome. He
Speaker 1: took his father's drill bit business and turned it into
Speaker 1: a corporate colossus. He owned half of Las Vegas. He
Speaker 1: designed some of the most technologically advanced planes of his era,
Speaker 1: and once after he flew around the world in record time,
Speaker 1: he was given a ticker tape parade down Broadway. He
Speaker 1: drives sloudly through the man made canyons of Manhattan while
Speaker 1: paper streams from off his windows of loud Broadway. Thus
Speaker 1: New York pays honor to the pilot who has carried
Speaker 1: the name of its fair round the world and herm again.
Speaker 1: Hughes even owned a Hollywood studio, directed his own movies,
Speaker 1: and squire every famous actress of the day around town.
Speaker 1: Ava Gardner, Katherine Hepburn, Londa Turner. Today we have a
Speaker 1: category for the celebrity playboy, a category for the entrepreneurial genius,
Speaker 1: a category for the eccentric billionaire. In his day, Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes was all those things all in one. But over
Speaker 1: the last twenty years of his life Hughes became a
Speaker 1: reckless He vanished from sight, never seen, never heard, with
Speaker 1: the exception of an interview he gave in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies where he was asked about his relationship with
Speaker 1: a man named Clifford Irving. Yeah. I actually knew his dad, Jay.
Speaker 1: He was a funny guy, a cartoonist. I think maybe
Speaker 1: him in LA when he was at on a publicity trip.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when this was nineteen or maybe forty one.
Speaker 1: I was shooting The Outlaw with Jane Russell. Jay came
Speaker 1: on the set. We stayed in touch on and off.
Speaker 1: He had a little boy with him, eighty Clifford. I
Speaker 1: always thought that was an old man's name. Strange to
Speaker 1: see a hid Clifford. The kid Clifford grew up to
Speaker 1: be a writer. One day sent me one of his books,
Speaker 1: Out of the Blue, biography of some painter. God knows
Speaker 1: how he found me. This must have been sixty eight,
Speaker 1: sixty nine, a good thirty years later, and I thought,
Speaker 1: but that, hell, every other son of a bitch has
Speaker 1: told my story, Why not me? Hughes wrote back, dear
Speaker 1: mister Irving, thank you for the gift of your book,
Speaker 1: which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. It's seems to me that
Speaker 1: you portrayed your man with great consideration and sympathy, when
Speaker 1: it would have been tempting to do otherwise. For reasons
Speaker 1: you may readily understand, this has impressed me yours truly,
Speaker 1: Howard R. Hughes. The note was handwritten, undated on yellow
Speaker 1: legal paper. Hughes always wrote by hand on yellow legal pads.
Speaker 1: Clifford Irving recalled years later that Hughes's handwriting quote extended
Speaker 1: well over the ruled left hand margin, the way a
Speaker 1: schoolboy might write. Clifford Irving read that note and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this isn't a thank you for a book. It's an
Speaker 1: invitation to write a book. Hughes wants me to help
Speaker 1: him tell his story, and so Clifford Irving did in
Speaker 1: an insane and wonderful work called The Autobiography of Howard Hughes.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Glaboe. You're listening to Rbisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
Speaker 1: a book report like the kind you did in middle school,
Speaker 1: only with a twist. Actually a lot of twists, so
Speaker 1: many twists. Like I said, the book is kind of insane,
Speaker 1: but also wonderful. From all of us here at Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: the autobiography of Howard Hughes gets two thumbs up. When
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes disappeared from sight in the last decades of
Speaker 1: his life, it set off a frenzy of tabloid speculation.
Speaker 1: He was the most famous man in the world, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden he was just gone. There were
Speaker 1: rumors that had gone crazy, had hair down to his waist,
Speaker 1: was living in squalor in a Vegas hotel. He'd become
Speaker 1: the American Lockness Monster, a giant exotic creature submerged in
Speaker 1: the murky depths of his own celebrity. As you can imagine. Then,
Speaker 1: the publishers at McGraw hill were dumbfounded when Clifford Irving
Speaker 1: told them that he'd been in touch with Hughes and
Speaker 1: that Hughes wanted to collaborate on his memoirs. Irving was
Speaker 1: a minor novelist, why on earth would Hughes have picked him?
Speaker 1: But then Irving explained the family connection and reminded them
Speaker 1: of Hughes's known eccentricity, and mc graw hill realized they
Speaker 1: had been handed the publishing coups of the decade. They
Speaker 1: offered a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars advance for
Speaker 1: the book. This was in nineteen seventy one. That was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary sum of money. Irving told Hughes the news.
Speaker 1: Hughes responded immediately told Irving to check into a hotel
Speaker 1: in Manhattan and wait for a call. At three o'clock
Speaker 1: the next morning, Hughes was on the line. He summoned
Speaker 1: Irving to Wahaka in southern Mexico. There, Irving waited in
Speaker 1: a hotel for two more days until a man named
Speaker 1: Pedro called him. Pedro said, please meet me in front
Speaker 1: of the hotel. At dawn. The two men drove to
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain, pulling up alongside another car,
Speaker 1: Irving got out, slid in on the passenger side, and
Speaker 1: there he was. Irving would later write this of his
Speaker 1: first encounter with the mysterious Hues. He wore a cheap,
Speaker 1: short sleeved shirt of nondescript color, a tan cardigan with
Speaker 1: a button missing, creaseless brown slacks, and a pair of
Speaker 1: loafers into which his socks somehow always managed to slip
Speaker 1: and vanish, so that when he crossed his legs. There
Speaker 1: was a gap of bony white chin between the sliding
Speaker 1: sock and the trouser cuff. The two men then began
Speaker 1: an extraordinary partnership. Over the next few months, they would
Speaker 1: meet for mammoth interview sessions in Paradise Island and the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: Palm Beach, Puerto Rico. Irving recorded hours and hours of
Speaker 1: Hughes's recollections. The result was a book told entirely in
Speaker 1: Hughes's voice that in manuscript form ran to more than
Speaker 1: a thousand pages. Anticipation for the autobiography ran so high
Speaker 1: that Irving was booked on sixty minutes for a sit
Speaker 1: down with Mike Wallace. Is he a good looking man still?
Speaker 1: He has the good looks of a man who once
Speaker 1: was extremely handsome and has dignity in his face. Does
Speaker 1: he wear a beard? Not a real one? Not a
Speaker 1: real one. What I mean is he has on occasion
Speaker 1: worn false beards and false mustaches and wigs. With you, Mike,
Speaker 1: I said, there's a James Bond set up here that
Speaker 1: that's out of the worst possible detective novel you could
Speaker 1: ever read. Everyone was hungry to know about the mysterious
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes. Clifford Irving held press conferences. Life Magazine paid
Speaker 1: a fortune to run excerpts of the forthcoming biography. The
Speaker 1: bidding for paperback rights went through. The roof the world
Speaker 1: thought the Autobiography of Howard Hughes would sell millions upon
Speaker 1: millions of copies, except mcgrahill never published it. No one
Speaker 1: did until nineteen ninety nine, when a now defunct outfit
Speaker 1: called www dot Terrific Books dot Com out of Santa Fe,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, printed it up and put it for sale online.
Speaker 1: I found my copy in the Hues bookstore in England.
Speaker 1: The Autobiography of Howard Hughes all but disappeared. And why
Speaker 1: because just as the book was about to come out,
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes called a press conference. He was in his
Speaker 1: penthouse suite at the Britannia Beach Hotel on Paradise Island
Speaker 1: in Nassau, speaking to an assembled group of journalists by phone. Because,
Speaker 1: of course, Howard Hughes never showed his face in public.
Speaker 1: Hughes declared that he'd never met Clifford Driving ever. Well,
Speaker 1: this must go down in history. I only wish I
Speaker 1: was still in the movie business because I don't remember
Speaker 1: any scripts as wild or a stretching of the imagination.
Speaker 1: Is this yarn has turned out to be. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about the biographies over because I've never read it.
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes says he's never read or seen, or participated in,
Speaker 1: or even heard of the book that's supposed to be
Speaker 1: his own autobiography. I don't know what's in it, but
Speaker 1: I mean, this episode is just so fantastic that it
Speaker 1: taxes your imagination to believe in a thing like this
Speaker 1: that happened. No, I never saw him. I never even
Speaker 1: heard of him until days ago, when the thing first
Speaker 1: came of my attention. Can you believe it? Everything was
Speaker 1: made up? The autobiography was a work of fiction. Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes never wrote Clifford Irving a letter on a yellow
Speaker 1: legal pad. The two of them never met in Wahaka
Speaker 1: or Palm Beach or Puerto Rico. And as for the
Speaker 1: interview with Hughes about meeting Clifford Irving as a kid,
Speaker 1: I made that one up just to get in a
Speaker 1: spirit of things for a brief moment in the literary
Speaker 1: life of nineteen seventy two America. Clifford Irving was a
Speaker 1: major scandal. He wound up in prison, his marriage fell apart.
Speaker 1: He tried to capitalize on his hoax with a memoir
Speaker 1: called The Hoax. It was made into a movie with
Speaker 1: Richard Gear, which Irving hated in yet another of Irving's
Speaker 1: many feats of hutzpah, because he thought it took too
Speaker 1: many liberties with the truth. But I'm not all that
Speaker 1: interested in Irving the hoaxer. I'm more interested in the
Speaker 1: hoax e Howard Hughes. This entire book report is really
Speaker 1: just a meditation on those two absolutely baffling sentences from
Speaker 1: the real Howard uses phone call with the media. I
Speaker 1: never read it. I don't know what's in it. An
Speaker 1: accomplished writer writes a fake autobiography of you, and you
Speaker 1: set out to squash it. You make it disappear, turn
Speaker 1: it from what would have been an enormous bestseller into
Speaker 1: something you can only get years later from terrific books
Speaker 1: dot com. And you didn't even read it, Oh, Howard,
Speaker 1: you idiot? Well what a fact made you decide to
Speaker 1: pulice hoax? After he was discovered, Clifford Irving sat down
Speaker 1: with one journalist after another, trying to explain himself This
Speaker 1: is an interview with the BBC, but all the interviews
Speaker 1: he did at the same Basically, Irving can't explain himself well.
Speaker 1: Undoubtedly some streak of lunacy, a screw loose somewhere, spirit
Speaker 1: of adventure agreed. The literary challenge involved middle aged bored
Speaker 1: him a whole combination of things. It's a lot easier
Speaker 1: after the event to analyze why you did what you did,
Speaker 1: but generally you're wrong. I don't really know deep down
Speaker 1: why I did it. Irving wasn't desperate or broke. He
Speaker 1: was a pretty successful writer. He had a four book
Speaker 1: deal with McGraw hill for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which should be close to a million today. Irving lived
Speaker 1: in a charming seventeenth century finka on the island of Ibiza.
Speaker 1: He was handsome and dashing. He had a beautiful wife
Speaker 1: and two small boys, plus a mistress, a blonde Danish
Speaker 1: aristocrat who was also a world famous calypso singer. Apparently,
Speaker 1: because in nineteen seventies you could be a blonde Danish
Speaker 1: aristocrat and still plausibly call yourself a clypso singer. So
Speaker 1: why did Irving risk at all for a hoax. Irving
Speaker 1: died in twenty seventeen, but he planted some clues scattered
Speaker 1: throughout the various autobiographical accounts he left behind. For instance,
Speaker 1: there's his run in with Chief Red Fox. Chief Red
Speaker 1: Fox was a Sioux Indian actor and performer who was
Speaker 1: a kind of minor celebrity in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies. He claimed to be the nephew of the
Speaker 1: famed Sioux Chief Crazy Horse, and he made no less
Speaker 1: than five appearances on the Johnny Carson show. Huh ask
Speaker 1: when you were born? Chief? I had born June eleventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy. This was nineteen sixty seven, which would have
Speaker 1: made Chief Red Fox ninety seven years old. Yes, you
Speaker 1: want to know what kept me so young? The show biz? Yes,
Speaker 1: park me, but smoking eighteens good cigars each day. Eighteen
Speaker 1: Chief Red Fox got a big book deal from McGraw
Speaker 1: hill for his memoirs, But when Irving met him at
Speaker 1: Red Fox's book party in Manhattan, he came away convinced
Speaker 1: the Chief was neither a chief nor close to a
Speaker 1: hundred years old. And in fact, and I'm quoting now,
Speaker 1: he resembled nothing so much as an old retired shopkeeper
Speaker 1: sitting on the stoop of a Brooklyn tenement, rattling on
Speaker 1: about his youth. Just imagine what must have gone through
Speaker 1: Irving's mind. This guy can get a big publishing deal.
Speaker 1: Then there's the book Irving wrote just before his Hughes autobiography.
Speaker 1: That one was called and you can't make this up fake,
Speaker 1: It's non fiction, the biography of one of Irving's friends
Speaker 1: from Abiza, an accomplished art forger named elmir de Horri,
Speaker 1: whose real name, it turns out, was probably not Elmier Dohrri,
Speaker 1: but whatever, in one of the many Byzantine twists to
Speaker 1: the Irving story. And as I warned you, there are
Speaker 1: a mountain of twists here. Orson Wells option fake and
Speaker 1: did a kind of postmodern documentary on Dahari. It's Wells
Speaker 1: is next to last film, maybe his least watchable. But
Speaker 1: there's a fantastic moment where Wells interviews Irving about Dahore's technique.
Speaker 1: And I asked Elmia had to do three drawings for
Speaker 1: me to Matis and Amodiliani, which he did before lunch,
Speaker 1: and put a little coffee stain on the edge of
Speaker 1: the Modiliani to make it look really as if Modiliani
Speaker 1: had done it in some Paris cafe. I then took
Speaker 1: the three drawings to the Museum of Modern Art. The
Speaker 1: museum examined them for two hours and came back with
Speaker 1: the verdict that they were absolutely genuine, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we're horrified that I wanted to sell them. Two Matiss's
Speaker 1: and Amadigliani painted before lunch by Elmer Dahi and verified
Speaker 1: by the Museum of Modern Art. The point is Clifford
Speaker 1: Irving did not have good role models. He was surrounded
Speaker 1: by people who got away with making things up. So
Speaker 1: one day he gets together with one of his best friends,
Speaker 1: a writer named Dick Suskind, and he says, hey, Dick,
Speaker 1: why don't we try this forgery thing for ourselves. Let's
Speaker 1: forge an autobiography of the most famous man in the world. Why,
Speaker 1: if hot, did you choose Hughes. He was there, like
Speaker 1: Mount Everest to be climbed. He was inaccessible. No one
Speaker 1: had interviewed him in the last twenty years, and he
Speaker 1: could not step forward in public, in court or in
Speaker 1: person to the media or anybody to deny it. Irving's
Speaker 1: gamble was that Hughes wouldn't say anything. The man was,
Speaker 1: after all, a complete reckless and if he did write
Speaker 1: an angry denial, no one would believe him. Irving could
Speaker 1: simply say, that's not really Hughes, that's an impostor. And
Speaker 1: who would know. When I said that Hughes was like
Speaker 1: the Locknest monster, I meant it. There was a constant
Speaker 1: swirl of tabloid gossip and innuendo and speculation about him,
Speaker 1: and no one knew what was true or what was
Speaker 1: made up. Worst case scenario, Hughes does come forward and
Speaker 1: denounces the autobiography and convinces everyone that he is, in
Speaker 1: fact Howard Hughes. But then Irving figures it's still okay.
Speaker 1: He can say I was duped. Irving tells his publisher
Speaker 1: that Hughes has strict conditions for co operating on the book.
Speaker 1: One condition is it only he Irving connect as go between.
Speaker 1: Irving will handle the money. Then he tells mc graw
Speaker 1: hill to make out the seven hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars advance to h R. Hughes initials. Only crucial detail
Speaker 1: because once he has the check, Irving then takes one
Speaker 1: of his wife's old passports she Swiss, and he forges
Speaker 1: a new name in it, Helga na A Hughes, and
Speaker 1: has her used that fake passport to open a Swiss
Speaker 1: bank account in the name of H. R. Hughes, And
Speaker 1: just like that they're rich. It's so brilliant he could
Speaker 1: easily have gotten away with it. How do you set
Speaker 1: about writing a book inventing the story? Well, my collaborator
Speaker 1: Dick Saskin, and I did an awful lot of hard research.
Speaker 1: We traveled back and forth across the United States and
Speaker 1: wherever we could through libraries, newspaper files to get information
Speaker 1: on Hughs. We amassed a huge amount of data, and
Speaker 1: we had access to Time Life Secret files, which were excellent.
Speaker 1: What they're interested in most is Hughes's speech patterns, his
Speaker 1: expressions and inflections. The book was written as one long
Speaker 1: conversation between Irving and Hughes, so they wanted their fake
Speaker 1: Q and A with Hughes to feel real, particularly to
Speaker 1: those who had years ago met the real Hughes and
Speaker 1: knew how he talked. Irving would come up with a
Speaker 1: story about how Hughes had summoned him Palm Springs, the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: Then he and Dick suskind would fly there, check into
Speaker 1: a hotel, generate receipts, go through all the motions in
Speaker 1: order to have the most perfect cover story, and then
Speaker 1: hang out in their hotel room and actually conduct the
Speaker 1: quote unquote interview. I mean, what do you do? Sit
Speaker 1: down and talk to each other? Just sat down, put
Speaker 1: a tape recorder going. I said, I've got to hang
Speaker 1: over today. You be Howard, I'll be Clifford. And after
Speaker 1: a while, when that turnstale, we'd switch roles. And then
Speaker 1: we edited the tapes, erased them because we didn't want
Speaker 1: them to fall in the hands of anybody else. And
Speaker 1: then after it was all typed and transcribed, we edited
Speaker 1: it to make it even more interesting. And the result
Speaker 1: fools everyone everyone. His publishers at McGraw hill read the manuscript,
Speaker 1: go over it with a fine tooth comb, give it
Speaker 1: to their lawyers, show it to optics, irving forges letters
Speaker 1: that are supposed to be from Hughes. Mcroyhill asks handwriting
Speaker 1: experts to verify their authenticity. They do. People who read
Speaker 1: the manuscript who no Hughes come away saying, this is Howard.
Speaker 1: It could only be Howard. It's Howard's voice, his phrases
Speaker 1: his way of thinking. Only a handful of people expressed
Speaker 1: any doubts, like Mike Wallace of sixty Minutes, famously the toughest,
Speaker 1: most skeptical, most unrelenting journalist in America. Were there any
Speaker 1: witnesses to your meetings with Howard Hughes any other human beings? Yes?
Speaker 1: There were? Who my researcher, my name, a man named
Speaker 1: Richard Suskind Irving says, Dick Suskind, Mike collaborator, and then
Speaker 1: he adds a little perfect whimsical touch, and who accidentally
Speaker 1: happened to be sitting with me in a room when
Speaker 1: Hughes arrived too early? Suskind stood there, Hughes stood there,
Speaker 1: eyes stood there. And finally I said, well, this is
Speaker 1: Dick Suskind, who's doing some research for me on a project.
Speaker 1: And Hugh said, I suppose you know who I am? Suskin. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: instead of taking that opportunity to slip out of the room,
Speaker 1: said yes I do, mister Hughes, how do you do?
Speaker 1: He started to stick out his hand and withdrew it
Speaker 1: instantly because Hughes is not very keen on shaking hands.
Speaker 1: And then, after another moment of awkward silence. He was
Speaker 1: reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag. We
Speaker 1: still disagree. I say it was a cellophane bag. Suskin
Speaker 1: says it was a paper bag. And he said to
Speaker 1: Dick Suskin to have a prune. Hughes carries a bag
Speaker 1: of prunes in his pocket, of course he does. Irving
Speaker 1: tells the story to Mike Wallace as they sit in
Speaker 1: overstuffed armchairs in front of a fireplace. Wallace then turns
Speaker 1: to the audience and concludes, is the autobiography genuine? Well?
Speaker 1: I can only say that it is laced with detail
Speaker 1: that one would think that only Howard Hughes could know.
Speaker 1: Mike Wallace can't shake irving story. Irving's that good. Now,
Speaker 1: if you detect a certain affection in my voice for
Speaker 1: Clifford Irving, you won't be wrong. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: thing is just so audacious. He's pranking the whole literary world,
Speaker 1: plus one of the world's richest men, the stuffed shirts
Speaker 1: of sixty minutes, the Swiss banking system, on and on.
Speaker 1: This is the irresistible temptation with the Irving hoax to
Speaker 1: get caught up in the wild genius of Clifford Irving.
Speaker 1: But like I said, this episode isn't about Clifford Irving,
Speaker 1: It's about Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes was born outside of
Speaker 1: Houston in nineteen oh five. His father was in the
Speaker 1: oil business and made a fortune by inventing a new
Speaker 1: drill bit for oil wells. Hughes's mother died when he
Speaker 1: was sixteen, and his father died when he was eighteen,
Speaker 1: turning Hughes into one of the wealthiest orphans in America,
Speaker 1: making news then as now millionaire sportsman and industrialist. Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes unveiled his new mystery plane to Los Angeles Racer,
Speaker 1: most of the thousand horsepower motor, and outstrip any plane
Speaker 1: ever built in America. Almost immediately, Howard Hughes moved to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and there he took up the three great
Speaker 1: passions of his life airplanes, movies, and women. He founded
Speaker 1: an aviation company, he bought a movie studio, Archao Pictures,
Speaker 1: and he pursued beautiful actresses obsessively and compulsively. How much
Speaker 1: genuine charm and crisman does he have and how much
Speaker 1: is it simply a transaction on both sides of the relationship.
Speaker 1: I think it depended on the woman I'm talking with.
Speaker 1: Queena Longworth, author of the most fascinating of the Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes biographies of which there are many, Hers is called seduction, sex, slies,
Speaker 1: and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood, and certainly I think
Speaker 1: later there was very little true feeling in these relationships.
Speaker 1: But Billy Dove, the silent film actress who was his
Speaker 1: first major girlfriend in Hollywood, she reported feeling like they
Speaker 1: were really in love. Katherine Hepburn and her memoirs paints
Speaker 1: a picture of them being really in love, which I've
Speaker 1: chosen to believe, even though there has been some skepticism
Speaker 1: about Katherine Hepburn in terms of her relationships with men,
Speaker 1: just seems to be just on reading your book. Deterioration
Speaker 1: and the quality of his relationships over time, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think he got the part of his personality
Speaker 1: that was more of a collector started to take over,
Speaker 1: and so it became less about being associated with one
Speaker 1: woman one usually one very famous woman, and more about
Speaker 1: making sure his bases were covered so that if he
Speaker 1: lost one, he'd have three more. Ostensibly, Hughes was looking
Speaker 1: for actresses to star in movies, but his studio really
Speaker 1: didn't make that many movies, and after he sold his studio,
Speaker 1: he still kept collecting young actresses. He would stash them
Speaker 1: around Los Angeles in houses and apartments, each with their
Speaker 1: own minder. Longer says that sometimes people compare Hughes to
Speaker 1: Harvey Weinstein, but to her, that's an inexact comparison. Hughes
Speaker 1: wasn't a predator. He's something else. You talk about how
Speaker 1: there were so many of these starlets under escort who
Speaker 1: would go out. They would go out to restaurants, and
Speaker 1: they would be the restaurant, the fancy restaurant, and wherever.
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills would be full of tables made up of
Speaker 1: his various starlets with there. He's like crazy, and they
Speaker 1: were always being escorted by the chauffeur or whoever he
Speaker 1: had sort of assigned to look after them. None of
Speaker 1: them were there with Hughes, I think. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was at a point where he wasn't really going out
Speaker 1: to dinner much at all, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: women who were under contract to him never met him,
Speaker 1: never saw him. They were just sort of in the stable,
Speaker 1: you know, if he perchance decided at one point to
Speaker 1: put them to pay them a visit, and they all
Speaker 1: thought that they were going to be in movies, but
Speaker 1: by that point he had not made movies and years.
Speaker 1: Hughes was deeply weird in other ways too. He was
Speaker 1: a germophobe. He was emotionally arrested. He once proposed to
Speaker 1: the actress Faith Demaric by saying, I love you, Faith,
Speaker 1: I want to marry you. You're the child I should
Speaker 1: have had. Another time, he puts his head in the
Speaker 1: lap of the mother of the actress he's dating, starts
Speaker 1: crying and says, Helen, has you. I don't have anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm an orphan. And then there's this story from the
Speaker 1: act Trisgenet Lee. All I know is that when I
Speaker 1: would if you and I had a date, right and
Speaker 1: we went out to dinner, suddenly there would be a
Speaker 1: third place there and Howard's Hughes would show up. Ye.
Speaker 1: Lee was once one of Hollywood's biggest stars, which meant
Speaker 1: naturally that she was pursued by Hughes. She talked about
Speaker 1: it later with a journalist Skip Low, And you know,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I go on a date with
Speaker 1: a with a with a gentleman and and we're supposed
Speaker 1: to go sailing, and we end up on his plane
Speaker 1: in Grand Canyon and then Las Vegas, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: I thought the nightmare would never end. He drove me crazy,
Speaker 1: and finally, at one time, I said, for god sakes,
Speaker 1: why why do you manipulate that? I hated that. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, I said, if you want to ask me out,
Speaker 1: ask me out like a man, don't sit there and
Speaker 1: arranged like you know. And he said, all right, will
Speaker 1: you go out with me? And I said, no, mister Hughes,
Speaker 1: There's something else I think a great many people would
Speaker 1: like to know about. There have been some very absurd
Speaker 1: descriptions of your physical appearance. Even in the press conference
Speaker 1: that Hughes gives in nineteen seventy two, where he's just
Speaker 1: there to denounce Irving, the matter of his weirdness keeps
Speaker 1: coming up, like his fingernails. A former Hughes associate had
Speaker 1: once told the press that Hughes never cut his fingernails,
Speaker 1: that they had grown to six inches long. Hughes responds
Speaker 1: to this allegation in two parts. To be merciful, I'm
Speaker 1: only going to play you part two as I not
Speaker 1: ever have manicures. I do it myself. I never have
Speaker 1: had manicures. I don't know. Maybe it's an outdroves of
Speaker 1: my childhood when he is to teach people about having
Speaker 1: that is males about having manicures anywhere. I never had
Speaker 1: them ever. But I've always kept my fingers and nails
Speaker 1: are reasonable length, and I tape them with clippers, not
Speaker 1: with scissors and nail till the way some people do.
Speaker 1: I use clippers because they don't leave her up edge afterwards. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I take care of them the same I always have.
Speaker 1: And then someone asked him if he's happy, and Hughes
Speaker 1: starts up again. I'm not. I'm not very happy, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that. And one of the primary reasons is
Speaker 1: because of some of the things we've been discussing here tonight.
Speaker 1: That is to say, in other words, the impediment impediments
Speaker 1: upon my freedom and activity is imposed by allis litigation,
Speaker 1: and these overhanging corps of various types, this threatened autobiography
Speaker 1: and so forth. All these matters are very graving him.
Speaker 1: And if you your question, why am I happy and content?
Speaker 1: The Andrews No, there's something tragic about Hughes orphaned, lonely
Speaker 1: compulsive damaged. Do you think that he had a kind
Speaker 1: of was suffering from metal some kind of mental illness
Speaker 1: throughout his life? And what's your sort of broader explanation
Speaker 1: of some of his behavior. So I'm not a medical doctor,
Speaker 1: and so I can you know, only only state my
Speaker 1: opinion based on what I've read. I think that he
Speaker 1: exhibited signs of obsessive compulsive disorder over the course of
Speaker 1: his whole life. Um, But I think that the bigger
Speaker 1: factor in what we could call the deterioration of his
Speaker 1: personality and his mental state seems to be the head injuries.
Speaker 1: Hughes survived multiple plane crashes, including one where he crashed
Speaker 1: into a house in Beverly Hills and nearly died. And
Speaker 1: I think, especially what we know now about head injuries,
Speaker 1: based on what we've learned from football and other sources,
Speaker 1: we can really see the impact of these things in
Speaker 1: a way that it wasn't understood during his lifetime. Howard Hughes,
Speaker 1: famous player and sportsman, was dragged out of this wreckage
Speaker 1: of an experimental plane he was testing. He was seriously injured.
Speaker 1: America's aviation trailbagers willingly pay the price in man's conquest
Speaker 1: of the air. But as weird and damaged as Hughes was,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be seen as weird and damaged.
Speaker 1: He wanted to be seen as heroic, swashbuckling, a brilliant entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: And from the moment he arrived in Hollywood he took
Speaker 1: great pains to create that mythical version of himself. He
Speaker 1: put together a mass of publicity operation. In the Hughes
Speaker 1: archives at the University of Las Vegas, which incidentally aren't
Speaker 1: actually his archives, but the archives of his PR firm,
Speaker 1: there's a transcript of a conversation between Hughes and a
Speaker 1: magazine writer. The writer is working on a story about him,
Speaker 1: and Hughes is basically going through the draft line by line,
Speaker 1: dictating what should and shouldn't be said. He's one of
Speaker 1: the richest men in the world, and he's line editing
Speaker 1: some pushmuck's copy when he first gets to Hollywood and
Speaker 1: successfully builds his PR machine to put this image out there.
Speaker 1: What is is it possible to kind of describe precisely
Speaker 1: the image he is trying to create for himself. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is actually somewhere where a comparison to
Speaker 1: Trump is useful because you know, what does Trump want
Speaker 1: us to know about him or to think about him,
Speaker 1: That he's rich, that he's a ladies man, that he
Speaker 1: lives in a golden castle. And these are very similar
Speaker 1: things to to what Hughes wanted out there. You know,
Speaker 1: he wanted people to think that he was the richest
Speaker 1: man in America, if not the world, that he was
Speaker 1: a ladies man who could have any woman that he wanted,
Speaker 1: when in fact, you know, he did have wealth, but
Speaker 1: his wealth was entirely dependent on his father's tool company,
Speaker 1: which he kind of helped run into some financial straits
Speaker 1: and which they were really only saved because of World
Speaker 1: War Two when they became defense contractors. And then in
Speaker 1: terms of women, he certainly dated a lot of women,
Speaker 1: but they report that he was awkward and not a ladiesman,
Speaker 1: not suave. From the very very early on, he was
Speaker 1: having you know, sort of private detectives follow women around
Speaker 1: and and he would use sort of go betweens to
Speaker 1: do the flirtations so that he wouldn't have to bother
Speaker 1: with it. So, yeah, but he didn't want any of
Speaker 1: that out there. He wanted just this image of him,
Speaker 1: you know, at the coconut grove with Ginger Rogers or
Speaker 1: whoever it was out there. Hughes His myth making works
Speaker 1: to perfection for years, and then after the war, the
Speaker 1: machinery starts to falter. The world begins to see little
Speaker 1: glimpses of a very different Howard Hughes, and so he retreats,
Speaker 1: almost in embarrassment and shame. And just as that retreat
Speaker 1: seems permanent, a minor novelist from Abiza named Clifford Irving
Speaker 1: decides to write a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, to do,
Speaker 1: in a sense, the very thing that Hughes himself has
Speaker 1: been trying to do for most of his life, create
Speaker 1: a new version of Howard Hughes out of whole cloth.
Speaker 1: Clifford Irving does a Howard Hughes on Howard Hughes. The
Speaker 1: genius of the Autobiography of Howard Hughes is that everything
Speaker 1: checkable is true, dates, timelines, key figures. It's a genuine biography,
Speaker 1: but mixed in amongst the truths are small, unverifiable details
Speaker 1: that are entirely imaginary, and it is not easy, at
Speaker 1: least at first, to tell which is which, such as
Speaker 1: Hughes on the set of the outlaw personally designing a
Speaker 1: special brazier to maximize the ample endowments of Jane Russell.
Speaker 1: That's actually true, but Irving throws in a memo written
Speaker 1: by Hughes, stipulating in highly technical engineer's language just how
Speaker 1: the bespoke Jane Russell brazier was to be constructed. I
Speaker 1: don't know whether that's true, could be who knows. Or
Speaker 1: that there was once a ticker tape parade down Broadway
Speaker 1: in Hughes's honor. Totally true, but Irving's book adds that
Speaker 1: Hughes ducked out of the parade early and jumped in
Speaker 1: a cab uptown in order to have sex with Catherine Hepburn.
Speaker 1: Don't think that's true, But then again, Hughes actually was
Speaker 1: the kind of shy, self absorbed type who would think
Speaker 1: nothing of ducking out early on a ticker tape parade
Speaker 1: in his honor, particularly where Katherine Hepburn was involved. About
Speaker 1: a hundred pages into the autobiography of Howard Hughes, I
Speaker 1: figured it out. Here's how to untangle fact from fiction.
Speaker 1: In Irving's book, Hughes was so creepy and strange that
Speaker 1: if you run across. Any detail that makes Hughes out
Speaker 1: not to be creepy and strange, then Irving and Suskind
Speaker 1: probably made it up. In real life, Hughes pursued very
Speaker 1: young Buxham starlets in vast quantities and to ill effect.
Speaker 1: But in Irving's book, Hughes has a real adult relationship,
Speaker 1: a true love, a sophisticated woman named Helga trapped in
Speaker 1: an unhappy marriage with a diplomat. Helga is neither young,
Speaker 1: nor Buxham nor starlet. Hughes happens to sit next to
Speaker 1: her on a flight from San Francisco to New York,
Speaker 1: exchanges a few magical charged words with her, then falls asleep.
Speaker 1: Let us return to our fictional Howard Hughes to hear
Speaker 1: from the fictional autobiography of Howard Hughes. After dark, I
Speaker 1: fell into a kind of doze, and I swear I
Speaker 1: don't know how this happened. But when I woke up,
Speaker 1: this woman and I were holding hands. Isn't that incredible?
Speaker 1: We talked and one thing led to another. This is
Speaker 1: not true. Irving made this up. Now, if you'll remember,
Speaker 1: Clifford Irving forged his wife's Swiss passport in the name
Speaker 1: of Helga R. Hughes, so she could cash checks made
Speaker 1: out to HR Hughes. So the Helga in the book
Speaker 1: is a kind of insurance policy in case things go
Speaker 1: badly wrong. But that's not the important thing here. The
Speaker 1: key fact is that, as far as we know, Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes had exactly one fulfilling romantic relationship in his life,
Speaker 1: and that relationship took place in the pages of Clifford
Speaker 1: Irving's fake autobiography. Irving gives Hughes a friend as well,
Speaker 1: another obvious invention, because the real Hughes didn't exactly have friends. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were Irving and Suskin sitting in the sun
Speaker 1: and Abiza trying to come up with a perfect friend
Speaker 1: for Hughes, who would you choose? It would have to
Speaker 1: be someone famous and interesting, because otherwise why bother right,
Speaker 1: And also someone dead, because otherwise they just deny it
Speaker 1: or maybe even sue. So they pick the most dead,
Speaker 1: most famous person they can think of. Ernest Hammingway The
Speaker 1: occasion arose just after the war, sometime in the winter
Speaker 1: of nineteen forty eight. But I went out to look
Speaker 1: over Sun Valley, Idaho, with the idea and mind of
Speaker 1: buying it and making it into a popular resort area.
Speaker 1: I flew out there in my bomb a converted B
Speaker 1: twenty five. I knew Ernest was there with his family
Speaker 1: and he was hunting, and so I found out where
Speaker 1: he was living. I did something wholly uncharacteristic. I marched
Speaker 1: right up to his door, knocked on it. He opened it.
Speaker 1: In a brilliant move, Irving has Hughes use a fake
Speaker 1: name with Hemingway Tom Garden, so the reader understands that
Speaker 1: Hemingway liked Hughes for who he really was, not because
Speaker 1: of his fame and fortune. Hemingway loves Tom, and Tom
Speaker 1: loves Hemingway calls him Hem. They talk for hours. Then
Speaker 1: they go up in the B twenty five bomber, and
Speaker 1: Hemingway says to him at the end, with a touch
Speaker 1: of awe in his voice, Tom, you're a hot pilot.
Speaker 1: Hughes goes to visit Hemingway in Cuba. They go out
Speaker 1: on the water and Hemingway's boat and this is maybe
Speaker 1: my favorite passage in the whole book because it is
Speaker 1: so ludicrou Chris Lee gloriously brilliant leap and Danis. After
Speaker 1: a while, Ernest said, let's go for a swim bare ass.
Speaker 1: Tom I pulled off my skibbies and we dove over
Speaker 1: the side into the gulf, which was perfectly flat and
Speaker 1: beautifully blue. That was an extraordinary experience for me because
Speaker 1: we were grown men. I was forty eight years old
Speaker 1: and Ernest was somewhat older. And there we were in
Speaker 1: the water naked, and Ernest started playing games. He would
Speaker 1: dive under the water and come up under me and
Speaker 1: tip me over by the ankles. One of us had
Speaker 1: to be a shark and the other had to be
Speaker 1: a killer well or a swordfish. And we would fight, yell, shout,
Speaker 1: warn each other, watch out well here I come, splash
Speaker 1: around like children, and it was marvelous. We let our
Speaker 1: imaginations run a mark. We created a portrait of the
Speaker 1: billionaire in search of his soul, which was a hell
Speaker 1: of a damp side. More exciting I think than Howard
Speaker 1: Hughes his life. I think Papa, or straight biography of
Speaker 1: how It Hughes could ever be with and goold it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the man himself is a mythic creature, product
Speaker 1: of press clippings and seems to be the best biography
Speaker 1: or autobiography would simply be the most interesting. That's right,
Speaker 1: I believe that, and perhaps we, in our wild imagination,
Speaker 1: got closer to what he was like his dreams, than
Speaker 1: his fantasies, than the reality of the manam sold. Two
Speaker 1: writers got together and created a better version of the
Speaker 1: Hughes fantasy than Hughes himself could create. Of course, they
Speaker 1: did this without Hughes's permission, and along the way they
Speaker 1: violated every known journalistic standard and code, raising questions about
Speaker 1: their moral fiber in the line between truth and fiction
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah. Enough, I think we should reserve
Speaker 1: our outrage for outrages that are truly outrageous. If someone
Speaker 1: attacks you, you don't always have to retaliate, And if
Speaker 1: discretion is the better part of valor, sometimes doing nothing
Speaker 1: at all is the better part of discretion. At the
Speaker 1: time Irving's hoaxed biography appeared, the real Hughes was sitting
Speaker 1: in the dark in a hotel room in the Bahamas,
Speaker 1: addicted to pain killers, watching the same movies over and
Speaker 1: over again, and worrying about his finger nails. Meanwhile, what
Speaker 1: did Clifford Irving have Hughes doing in the twilight of
Speaker 1: his life? It's all in the last chapter of the
Speaker 1: greatest unread autobiography of the twentieth century, Irvings Howard Hughes
Speaker 1: went to India, had a darshine with a guru, where
Speaker 1: he at last found a measure of peace and self understanding. Then,
Speaker 1: Irvings Howard Hughes, famous germophobe, stripped down to his underwear
Speaker 1: and sat by the Ganges in the lotus position, joining
Speaker 1: all the other beggars on the river bank. And I
Speaker 1: was deluged with money, with dollars, with rupees, with English pounds,
Speaker 1: with yen, with marks and franks. People couldn't pass by
Speaker 1: without giving me something. Indians, Asians, Europeans, everyone gave you. See,
Speaker 1: money just gravitates to some people, whether they're accumulating twa
Speaker 1: stock or sitting by the side of a muddy river
Speaker 1: in India, their money magnets and money is like metal shavings.
Speaker 1: I'm one of those people. Clifford Irving elevated Howard Hughes
Speaker 1: into something other than a broken down old man in
Speaker 1: a hotel room. He turned him into the richest beggar
Speaker 1: the Ganges had ever seen. Everyone who read Irving's book
Speaker 1: believed that passage. They thought it was real. Everyone at
Speaker 1: McGraw hill. People who had known Hughes for years believed it.
Speaker 1: Everyone and the whole world would have believed it too.
Speaker 1: All Howard Hughes had to do was read the book,
Speaker 1: Oh Howard, you idiot. Revisionist History is produced by Mia
Speaker 1: LaBelle and Leaming Gissed You, with Jacob Smith, Eloise Linton
Speaker 1: and Anna Naheim. Our editor is Julia Barton. Original scoring
Speaker 1: by Louise Garah, mastering by Flan Williams, fact checking by
Speaker 1: Beth Johnson. Special thanks to our voice artist Alex Robertson
Speaker 1: and the Pushkin Crew, Heather Fane, Carl Migliori, Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Jason Gambro and of course Lafe
Speaker 1: Jacob Wiseberg. I'm multin dabbo