Wow, I thought as I read Howard Hughes: The Secret Life, was there anyone Howard Hughes didn’t have sex with?

Actually, I  imagine there was.  Charles Higham’s 1993 biography, which I found in a used bookstore in Pensacola, is full of all sorts of “scandalous” details about Howard Hughes’s life and the decadent Golden Age of Hollywood but it’s not always convincing.  Hughes, who was the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, was undoubtedly an eccentric and I have no doubt that he treated a lot people badly but the book itself tends put a lot of faith in gossip and rumors.  As such, we get the established stories of Hughes bringing his control freak tendencies to Hollywood and having affairs with Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner mixed with stories about Hughes’s being involved with the Watergate break-in and also carrying on clandestine affairs with everyone from Errol Flynn to Tyrone Power, Jr.  The book goes as far as to suggest Hughes died of AIDs, using an evidence the word of a doctor who didn’t examine Hughes but who did apparently read a list of symptoms that Hughes was rumored to have during his final days.  That’s really the way that Higham approaches the majority of Hughes’s life.  The established facts are mixed with rumor and speculation on the part of the author.  It’s not always convincing but then again, since when does gossip have to be believable?

In short, the book is trashy but readable.  It’s one of those books that one should probably read with a healthy sense of skepticism but, at the same time, one can appreciate the sheer number of personalities that Higham manages to weave into his narrative.  Hughes goes from aviation to Hollywood to politics and he meets everyone who was anyone.  It’s a history nerd’s dream.