Howard Hughes (36 page)

Now is this a horror story or isn’t it? Lon Chaney never starred in anything to match this one. ‘Howard Hughes, who brought you
Hell’s Angels, The Front Page, The Outlaw, Toolco Versus the Relatives
, and
Hercules Versus the Dragon from the State of Maine
, proudly presents:
Trans World Airlines Versus the Wolves of Wall Street
. The plot: a simple Texas boy turned pilot, financier and medical benefactor, loses his head, and from his secret laboratory in the mountains high above Los
Angeles inadvertently looses upon the unsuspecting world a monster of his own creation. Is it a man? Is it a bird? No! It’s TWA! But all is not lost. The heroes –Prudential, Irving Trust, and First National Bank of Boston – charge to the rescue to protect the American public from this raving monster. Battling singlehandedly against tremendous odds, with only $20 trillion in assets and a ragtag army of 7,500 lawyers to help them, they vow to achieve a just solution.’

That’s the script they tried to play. I was desperate. And I felt I had to have a man on the inside to know what those guys were really up to. I had to sign by the last day of 1960. I stalled as much as I could until I could find someone who I knew was going to be on that board, someone I could trust, so I could get access to the private meetings of the board.

Greg Bautzer had power-of-attorney for me to sign and I had to get him to pretend he was sick. He was staying at the Hampshire House in New York and just before the signing I said, ‘Greg, tell them you’re dying. And if they don’t believe you, if you feel that there’s the slightest doubt on their part, check into some hospital.’

He claimed he had stomach ulcers and back pains. You can never diagnose back pains. He went into Roosevelt hospital.

Why did you have him delay in this way?

Because I was still trying to get to one of those trustee guys. I would never have agreed to the whole arrangement if I didn’t feel that I’d know what they were going to be doing behind my back. I thought of Breech at first, because I’d known Ernie Breech for years. When I came back from my trip around the world there was some dinner in New York and Breech was the toastmaster and I remembered he had been very friendly to me.

I checked out his financial position and my men reported to me on his personal and family life, and I realized there was no leverage. I needed leverage.

That left Arnold Oldman. He was vulnerable, in his bank account. I don’t mean to say he was a poor man, but for reasons of his own, which I won’t go into, he needed money. There are only two things in
the long run which will appeal to a man in a situation like this – one is money, and the other is the satisfaction of any perverse desires he may secretly harbor. As far as I was able to find out, Oldman was not a secret pervert. And in any case that’s not my style. I won’t stoop to that. But everybody needs a little extra cash, and if it’s tax-free and out of the country, so much the better. Oldman was no exception. So we had a little talk.

Face to face?

This wasn’t something I could do over the telephone or trust to Bautzer. I flew to New York in a private jet with a few of my aides. Oldman and I arranged a meeting out on Long Island one evening, at East Hampton. We drove around near Georgica Beach, where a high wind was blowing that kept anybody from eavesdropping. We came to an agreement. We both knew that he couldn’t overtly function as my man on the board, that was never even suggested, but he could let me have word in advance of any moves that were planned and I could take steps to counter them. And he could help me that way.

How much did you pay?

A lot of money, in cash, deposited to a special offshore account.

A lump sum or spread out?

In this kind of deal there are no time payments. I don’t reveal this to blacken Arnold Oldman’s reputation. The reason that Oldman was willing to do this for me was that he didn’t have the prejudices that all these other guys had accumulated over the years. I hardly knew him and he hardly knew me, and he was able to take me at face value for the man that I was. I probably could have gotten him on my side without paying him at all, but a man is worth his salt. In fact, let’s say for the record that the money was not for services rendered, but in appreciation of his understanding of me. Because Arnold Oldman was a fine man.

And what did Oldman do for you?

He did a few little things, and then one thing which made the payment almost worth it. Well, it might have, but it didn’t work out – we couldn’t foresee that. He got word to me, in advance, that TWA’s
new counsel, Cahill, Gordon, Reindel & Ohl, had recommended that TWA sue me and Toolco for violating some obscure anti-trust laws – and that they’d do it if I didn’t come up with some money right away. But Oldman let me know they were going to sue me. It gave me the chance, at the time, to make a counter-offer.

Unfortunately, my counter-offer boomeranged. They panicked. They had to sue before I paid them back. The last thing in the world they wanted was their money. They wanted control of TWA.

What else did Oldman do for you besides that?

The poor man died before anything else of major interest came up. The timing of his death was disastrous. By then TWA was suing me and I was suing TWA, and I was counting on Oldman, and he got sick and died.

Why exactly did TWA sue you?

All those banks and insurance companies had been telling me for years that I’d endangered the financial security of TWA by buying too many jets, and the first thing that the new management did was place an order for twenty-six new Boeings – that meant $200 million more debt – which they were going to finance through another loan of $147 million. The hypocrisy of these people was so blatant that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Three insurance companies were going to put up the money. You won’t need three guesses; they were Equitable, Metropolitan, and Prudential. That was enough to make me see red, but then I found out – through Arnold Oldman – that one of the covenants of the new loan stated that if the voting trust of my stock was ever terminated the $147 million had to be paid back immediately in cash.

Of course that arrangement was completely against TWA’s interests. It was aimed at me alone. I was still the majority stockholder. The purpose of the covenant was to keep me from making any legal effort at any time to terminate the voting trusteeship over my stock. Because if I succeeded, it would throw TWA into bankruptcy and wipe out my equity overnight. That’s how far these people went to tie my hands behind my back. So I fought the expansion program. I got my lawyers
to raise a stink – I said it would ruin TWA financially and the Board of Directors was acting out of total irresponsibility. If they wanted new jets, I said, why don’t they buy the ones I’d already ordered from Convair when I was still the boss? I raised such a fuss that one of the insurance companies, the Prudential, got cold feet and pulled out. I went out on a limb, in TWA’s interests and in my own, and that’s when they decided to sue me.

The other reason – maybe the main reason, although it was never spelled out in their arguments, because it would lay them open to too many counter-charges – was that there was a merger in the works between TWA and Pan American, which I unalterably opposed. They feared that I could put a stop to this if I still had control. The only way to get me out was to sue me and vilify me. They sued me for all sorts of anti-trust violations, interlocking directorates between Hughes Tool and Hughes Aircraft and TWA, and they also claimed that I had personally mismanaged the airline to the brink of ruin.

That hurt me in the deepest way. Really, whatever was good about TWA was my doing. I countersued on the grounds that the whole deal they had set up was a conspiracy to defraud me and my companies of our rightful interests. I also accused Metropolitan Life and Equitable Life and Irving Trust of conspiring to gain control of TWA and make it a captive outlet for high-interest loans. The man behind it all, I believe, was Juan Trippe of Pan Am, who happened by coincidence to be a director of Metropolitan Life.

This all came to a head when I was supposed to appear in court in Los Angeles. I didn’t show up, and that cost me $137 million.

The reason I didn’t show up is that I was fed up. I didn’t care about the money anymore. What had money ever brought me other than more money and more headache? I talked it over with someone whose opinion I respected, and that person helped me to see that it wasn’t worth demeaning myself in front of these people in public. I could have fought and I might have won, but even that didn’t make it worthwhile. As for TWA, by that time I was able to say to myself, ‘It’s only an airline. Just another company.’ I was able to say that because
many things had changed in my life. My marriage had become a failure. Jean had moved out. She was starting to say things like, ‘Howard, you’re losing your mind,’ and, ‘I can’t stand this kind of life anymore.’ So the handwriting was on the wall. I knew it was a matter of time before she filed for divorce.

And I thought, why am I involved in all this lunacy? I used to design planes, and fly them, and make good movies. My companies and I used to be creative. Now all we’re doing is fighting to make money or borrow money or hold on to the money we’ve got. It’s demeaning, it’s destructive, it’s disgusting. It’s not what I want to do with my life, with what’s left of it.

My view of the past had changed completely. This was partly the result of new feelings I had about my life, and new insights into life in general. It’s time I told you about them, and how I acquired them.

IT’S TIME FOR me to clear up a mystery of my own creation. I’ve thought about it and really there’s no reason for me not to, provided that I exercise a little discretion.

You remember I discussed a woman I’d met once on a plane flying to San Francisco? Woke up holding her hand? And then I told you that when I flew with Cary Grant to Mexico in the winter of 1947, I was meeting someone in Acapulco. That was my friend – the wife of the man in the diplomatic corps, the one I’d met on the transcontinental flight.

I didn’t tell the full truth about her, and I realize this story of my life will be incomplete if I don’t, just as my life itself would be incomplete without Helga.

That’s her name. Helga. She’s of Scandinavian origin. We’ll skip her last name. Maybe Helga isn’t her first name. Maybe it’s a pseudonym. Names aren’t important.

I was seeing Helga fairly regularly until just about a year ago, because she filled a special place in my life. She’s not a famous person and she’s not a glamorous woman, not like the various movie stars I squired around in my Hollywood years. She wasn’t a beautiful woman in that sense. In fact she has a slightly hooked nose and imperfect teeth – I wanted to get her teeth fixed, I wanted to pay for it, but she said no.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not implying that she’s ugly or even odd-looking. She’s an unusually attractive woman, but she hasn’t got the conventional good looks that Americans usually associate with being beautiful. I’d call her handsome and strong-featured. Great jaw,
great neck. Her blood is German and Norwegian; she’s got dark hair and green eyes with small hazel specks.

She’s an educated woman, far more educated than I am. Some of the ideas that I’ve had in recent years have in many ways been due to her influence. Helga has given me lists of books to read, from Plato to Tolstoy and up through Isaac Bashevis Singer, and for the most part I’ve read them and I’ve discussed then with her. She thinks clearly, which is a rare trait, and expresses herself simply, which may be even rarer.

Helga put herself through school in the face of great difficulties. You know, the Horatio Alger stuff, but in this case it was true, and I think even more admirable because she was a woman. When she was a teenager, one of her sisters committed suicide, hanged herself in the family garage. I tell you this just to show you the odds against such a woman making something of herself. But she did. She pulled herself up by her bootstraps. Right from the beginning he had this keen intelligence and determination. She worked her way through Columbia, and then she went to Europe for a year, lived in Paris and Mykonos, a Greek island.

At one point she wanted to be a lawyer but I’m not sorry that she didn’t achieve that. I told her some stories about the vultures that made her realize it’s not the noblest profession in the world. But she wasn’t able to do that because she met a man and got married and raised two kids.

Lovely children, by the way. Now, of course, they’re grown up, married, have children of their own. I knew them when they were very young, and I was very fond of them. In fact, it’s the only relationship I’ve ever had with children.

Do you miss not having children of your own?

Well, for some years – because there were periods in her marriage when she was apart from her husband – I spent a fair amount of time with Helga and the children. And, as I said, it was the first real contact I’d had with kids. I gave the boy a few flying lessons and taught him a lot about aeronautical engineering. He didn’t become an engineer or a pilot. He’s in another business entirely, with a brokerage house, but not in New York.

What I’m getting at is that I enjoyed teaching him, and I can see the pleasure a man can take in seeing his children grow and playing a vicarious part in their lives and having the responsibility of shaping a growing human being. I had it, as I say, very briefly in my life, during this on and off relationship with Helga. So I wish in a way that I had children, because there’s something missing from a man’s life if he doesn’t. It’s probably one of the major experiences in a man’s life. I missed it, and, yes, I’m sorry.

Mind you, in everything that I’ve seen, even with Helga’s two children, there’s so much heartbreak involved in the child-rearing process that I’m not sure the game is worth the candle. Those children have treated her very shabbily in the last ten years. For the most part they’ve taken their father’s side in the obvious deterioration of the marriage. She wanted a divorce but he was a professional diplomat and he claimed it would ruin his career. She stayed married to him only under duress, with the understanding that when she wanted a period of independence she took it, which is something the children never could fathom.

But the general breaking away of children from their home – not just Helga’s children, but all children – I should imagine is extremely painful to a parent. You don’t like to invest your emotional capital and never get a stockholder’s report or a decent dividend. Your children, Clifford, are much younger, and you haven’t experienced that yet, but it’s a good bet that you will.

And yet I sense that you would have liked to have had children of your own, despite this inevitable breakaway when they get older.

In the long run, yes. Any kids of mine would have had the best of everything, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to be happier in life and considerate of other people when you have money to fall back on. The cold wind of poverty may be a fine instructor in the realities of life, but it’s still cold.

But for me to have had children it would have been necessary to have a marriage that worked. The one thing I would never have done in my life is have children with a woman where I knew the relationship
would end in divorce, as both my marriages have done. With my first wife, with Ella, I was just a harebrained kid, and the marriage never stood a chance. I knew that from the beginning. I’ve never been sorry we didn’t have children because Ella would have got them and they would undoubtedly have looked at me as that crackpot in Las Vegas who sent them – or never sent them – a million dollars a year.

And with Jean – well, we tried, and nothing happened, and I’m glad nothing happened because of what I’ve already told you. We’re divorced now, as you know, and she’s remarried and it would have been much more painful if we’d had children. Not only because of the broken home they would have had, but because I’m getting to be an old man and I’d have been gone before they would have reached their adulthood.

But Helga is one of the main reasons I’m sitting here today. She planted the idea in my head to write a book.

This was years ago. I was up to my eyeballs in lawsuits. I said to her, ‘I don’t have the time.’

‘Make the time,’ she said. ‘A man like you has to face up to himself and define himself, even if he does it badly.’

‘I don’t have to apologize for anything,’ I said. ‘That’s what most autobiographies are – apologies and cover-ups, full of half-truths and wishful thinking. I don’t want to do that, and I know I’m not clever enough to avoid the trap.’

‘How do you know until you try?’

I allowed her to nag at me, because the challenge was appealing. That’s my nature. Give me a challenge and I can’t resist taking a crack at it.

One day I started to do it. This actually was when I was living in Marty Nosseck’s screening room on Sunset Boulevard. I had an IBM electric typewriter of my own. And I started to write the book on my own. I knew plenty of journalists but I didn’t trust a single one of them, except maybe Frank McCulloch, and he was hooked up with the Luce publications so that was too dangerous. I wrote fifteen or twenty pages about growing up in Houston and about my father. I waited a few weeks and then read them, and they were awful. I showed them to
Helga and she said, ‘Yes, they’re evasive, and there’s an underlying anger. Wait a while. The right time will come.’

Now, as you know, it’s come. I’ve faced my father. I’ve tried to see him in a clear light. I’m not angry at him anymore. I see that we are what we are, and what we do to other people is a function of our fundamental character. Almost unavoidable. That’s very liberating to know.

Did you ever show those pages to Jean, your wife?

No, Jean was wonderful, but that was something I couldn’t bring myself to share with her. Perhaps I should have, but I didn’t.

How often did you meet with Helga during all the years since you woke up holding her hand on the transcontinental flight?

Oh, two or three times a year – sometimes less, sometimes more. It all depended. I saw her in Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, when I was out there in ’48. She was living in Europe then. Her husband was posted there. She was able to get away for a week, and I showed her the country. I flew her all over. In some ways that was the happiest single week of my life.

She also… well, I’m not sure if I told you the reason I went down to Lambaréné to see Schweitzer.

You told me something about having visited a leper clinic in Ethiopia, and that started you thinking about him.

That was part of it, but only a minor part. Helga had told me about Schweitzer. He was a man she admired enormously, and so I read one of his books. It may have been his only book, the story of his early life. Helga said, ‘Why don’t you go down and see him and talk to him?’

So I went. Not that time, but the next time. But it didn’t work out, as I’ve told you.

On other occasions I rented a house on the outskirts of Oaxaca, in Zapotec Indian country in southern Mexico. That’s the place where we spent the most times together. She took me to all the Indian ruins and gave me a crash course not only in pre-Columbian history but in archeology. In fact, it was to Oaxaca that she brought her children to meet me for the first time, although it was done very discreetly. She stayed in a hotel in town with the children. I was in the bungalow and
she came to see me there. But she wanted me to meet the kids. She felt that our relationship was important enough that I couldn’t understand her unless I knew her children and how she felt about them.

I went skiing with her once. She taught me. I fell down more times than I cared to, so I never became a real skier. I’ve never been fond of the snow or cold weather, but I went for many walks with her in the mountains. That was in Sun Valley. We kidded around, threw snowballs, and I was able to relax with her more than I had ever in my life with a woman. She reminded me of Ruth Elder. She was very much like Ruth, in the sense that she was interested in many of the same things I was interested in, and if she knew something I didn’t know she wasn’t overbearing or superior about it. In fact her belief, and mine too, is that the basis for any marriage is friendship of equals. Partnership. Sharing of knowledge.

Did you ever discuss with her the possibility of marriage?

It was out of the question. I came to the belief that the success of the relationship was based on the fact that we weren’t married and only saw each other on rare occasions. After I married Jean, I wasn’t free. And Helga was never free. Her husband would never have granted her a divorce. I didn’t mean to imply that she hated her husband. They were friendly, just incompatible. He smoked in bed, which is a disgusting habit – got the ashes all over the sheets, smelled up the house. And he resented her intelligence. He wanted to be in command and feel superior.

Then too, I often felt that she really didn’t want to get divorced, and if I’d suddenly said to her, ‘Helga, get rid of that dumb son of a bitch and marry me,’ she would have run for the hills. Because I would have been twice as difficult a husband as the one she was stuck with, even if I don’t smoke in bed. I’m no bargain in the husband department. Ask Jean.

I don’t have to. I believe you. Did her husband ever suspect that she was seeing you?

He knew that she was seeing somebody but I’m sure she never told him who. The kids found out after a while who I really was – you can’t keep children in the dark for too long a time, they have better noses for
ferreting out mysteries than adults do. This wasn’t serious at first but unfortunately the kids were old enough to be, well, I’ll call it thrilled at the idea that Mommy was seeing someone like me – and also, unfortunately, not old enough to keep their mouths shut. They gabbed and the word got around, at least in a limited circle of people. I think finally what kept it from being accepted as the truth was that everybody believed I was a total recluse and incapable of having a real relationship with a female of the species. Sometimes it pays to be a professional eccentric. But I would never have been surprised in those years to pick up a newspaper and see some gossip columnist asking, ‘Who is Howard Hughes’s new secret love?’ or some sort of maudlin romantic crap like that. Thank God, it never happened. Helga herself was a completely discreet woman. She could arrange things on the q.t. almost as well as I could. Women often have that knack. If you care for a woman you call it discreet, if you can’t stand her you call it sly. Most judgments in life depend on where you stand and what mood you’re in when you make them.

Are you still seeing Helga?

If you don’t mind, I’ll save that story for its proper chronological place in this narrative – or maybe I won’t tell you at all. A little mystery has its place in every man’s life, don’t you think?

Cut me a little slack on this one. We’ll see.