Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes was born in Texas on 24 September 1905.  It may be that when he was fifteen he was seduced by his elder brother Rupert.  Bisexually prolific throughout his adult life, with men he preferred oral sex, with women inter-mammary.  While filming Hell’s Angels in the late 1920s he is thought to have had an affair with the actor John Darrow.  He brought James Whale over to Hollywood from London to help re-shoot the part-completed Hell’s Angels using the new sound technology.  He courted the newly-arrived Randolph Scott and helped him kick-start his career.  Scott’s next male lover was Cary Grant.  Hughes is thought to have had an affair with Grant, too, while they went on extended sailing expeditions together.  He also had a sexual relationship with Tyrone Power and another with the actor Richard Cromwell, but both Robert Taylor and Errol Flynn turned him down.  In the early 1950s he was arrested on Santa Monica Boulevard for forcing a hustler to fellate him in his car.  At the police station he is said to have written out a cheque for a million dollars, whereupon he was released.  William Haines claimed to have witnessed many instances of Hughes enjoying (as top) sadomasochistic scenes.  In 1970 Hughes developed a mysterious cluster of illness, including pneumonia, with such consequences as emaciation.  By the time he died, on 5 April 1975, he had lost his sight.  There has been some speculation that he had what would later come to be called AIDS.

[Source: Charles Higham, Howard Hughes: The Secret Life (London: Virgin, 2004)]