Howard Hughes was an industrialist, aviator, and eccentric, but he was also the most important movie producer during the golden age of Hollywood. At a time when filmmaking was tightly controlled and highly formulaic, Hughes used his enormous wealth to challenge the dictates and restrictions that defined the motion picture industry. Tackling subjects that were explicitly forbidden, he pushed the boundaries of onscreen sex and violence. He pioneered production and marketing techniques that were revolutionary, including the multimillion-dollar blockbuster and the promotion of scandal. When Hughes became the first person to completely own a major Hollywood studio, he continued his maverick approach to filmmaking as a mogul. Most importantly, Hughes's role in the federal government's antitrust case against the industry led to the collapse of the entire studio system and the transformation of American cinema. Although his contributions are often overlooked, Hughes was instrumental in shaping the motion picture industry that exists today.

Traces the development of Howard Hughes' career as a movie maker and surveys the films produced by him.

This newly revised and expanded edition of Howard Hughes chronicles the life and legacies of one of the most intriguing and accomplished Americans of the twentieth century. Hughes, born into wealth thanks to his father’s innovative drill bit that transformed the oil industry, put his inheritance to work in multiple ways, from producing big-budget Hollywood movies to building the world’s fastest and largest airplanes. Hughes set air speed records and traveled around the world in record time, earning ticker-tape parades in three cities in 1938. Later, he moved to Las Vegas and invested heavily in casinos. He bought seven resorts, in each case helping to loosen organized crime’s grip on Nevada’s lifeblood industry. Although the public viewed Hughes as a heroic and independent-minded trailblazer, behind closed doors he suffered from germophobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and an addiction to painkillers. He became paranoid and reclusive, surrounding himself with a small cadre of loyal caretakers. As executives battled each other over his empire, Hughes’ physical and mental health deteriorated to the point where he lost control of his business affairs. This second edition includes more insider details on Hughes’ personal interactions with actresses, journalists, and employees. New chapters provide insights into Hughes’s involvement with the mob, his ownership and struggles as the majority shareholder of TWA and the wide-ranging activities of Hughes Aircraft Company, Hughes’s critical role in the Glomar Explorer CIA project (a deep-sea drillship platform built to recover the Soviet submarine K-129), and more. Based on in-depth interviews with individuals who knew and worked with Hughes, this fascinating biography provides a colorful and comprehensive look at Hughes—from his life and career to his final years and lasting influence. This penetrating depiction of the man behind the curtain demonstrates Hughes’s legacy, and enduring impact on popular culture.

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.

The first major biography of one of Old Hollywood’s greatest directors. Sometime partner of the eccentric Howard Hughes, drinking buddy of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, an inveterate gambler and a notorious liar, Howard Hawks was the most modern of the great masters and one of the first directors to declare his independence from the major studios. He played Svengali to Lauren Bacall, Montgomery Clift, and others, but Hawks’s greatest creation may have been himself. As The Atlantic Monthly noted, “Todd McCarthy. . . . has gone further than anyone else in sorting out the truths and lies of the life, the skills and the insight and the self-deceptions of the work.” “A fluent biography of the great director, a frequently rotten guy but one whose artistic independence and standards of film morality never failed.” —The New York Times Book Review “Hawks’s life, until now rather an enigma, has been put into focus and made one with his art in Todd McCarthy’s wise and funny Howard Hawks.” —The Wall Street Journal “Excellent. . . . A respectful, exhaustive, and appropriately smartass look at Hollywood’s most versatile director.” —Newsweek

One of the most intriguing and controversial figures of the 20th century, billionaire Howard Hughes's bizarre life, torrid celebrity affairs, and shocking death have become the stuff of legend. Now this new, definitive biography, based on unsealed court documents, secret FBI reports, and countless new interviews, explores the mystique and truth behind Howard Hughes--a man who continues to grip the world's imagination. Includes 16 pages of photos.

The life that inspired the major motion picture The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese. Howard Hughes has always fascinated the public with his mixture of secrecy, dashing lifestyle, and reclusiveness. This is the book that breaks through the image to get at the man. Originally published under the title Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes.