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Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood
In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom.
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
1128294420
Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood
In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom.
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
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Seduction: Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood
In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous golden age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power and publicity trapped, abused, or benefitted women who dreamt of screen stardom.
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
Karina Longworth is the creator, writer, and host of You Must Remember This, a podcast on the secret and forgotten history of twentieth-century Hollywood. A former film editor of LA Weekly and critic for the Village Voice, she is the author of four previous books, including Hollywood Frame by Frame and Meryl Streep: Anatomy of an Actor. She lives in Los Angeles.
Table of Contents
Cast of Characters ix
Part I Hollywood Before Hell's Angels, 1910-1928
Introduction: The Ambassador Hotel, 1925 3
Chapter 1 Hollywood Babylon 11
Chapter 2 The Many Mrs. Hugheses 24
Chapter 3 No Town for a Lady 43
Part II Billie and Jean, 1928-1936
Chapter 4 The Girl with the Silver Hair 63
Chapter 5 A Body Like a Dustpan 80
Chapter 6 A Cock vs. the Code 95
Chapter 7 "A Bitch in Heat" 116
Chapter 8 The Bombshell Implodes 132
Part III Hepburn and Rogers and Russell, 1932-1940
Chapter 9 The Woman Who Lived Like a Man 145
Chapter 10 Box-Office Poison 162
Chapter 11 A Love Nest in Malibu, a Prison on a Hill 175
Chapter 12 A New Bombshell 188
Part IV Life During Wartime, 1941-1946
Chapter 13 The New Generation 203
Chapter 14 "The Goddamnedest, Unhappiest, Most Miserable Time" 218
Chapter 15 Divorce, Marriage, and Rape Fantasy 232
Chapter 16 Disappearing Act 247
Chapter 17 An American Hero 262
Chapter 18 A Mogul and His Crows 280
Part V Terry, Jean, and RKO, 1948-1956
Chapter 19 Marriage, Howard Hughes-Style 299
Chapter 20 "Mother" and a Male Idol 318
Chapter 21 The Morals Clause 341
Chapter 22 Rivalry at Fox 357
Chapter 23 "A Movie Studio Filled with Beautiful Girls Who Draw Pay but Seldom Work" 378
In the past decade, podcasts have gone from background noise to a major part of the pop-culture soundscape. More people are listening to them, and every media company is producing them (not to mention companies like, say, Barnes & Noble). Podcasts are making their presence felt in the book world too, with a growing number of […]
