Howard Hughes Page 4

  The three of us stood awkwardly by the door. Finally I said: ‘This is Dick Suskind. He’s doing some research for me, uh, on the project…’

  Howard stood for a moment, then said quietly, ‘Well, I suppose you know who I am.’

  It was Suskind’s moment to claim ignorance and make a swift getaway, but he missed the signal. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, ‘and I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Hughes.’ He started to extend his hand, then drew it back quickly; he’d remembered my telling him Hughes was not a keen handshaker.

  The man stood for a few agonizing seconds – agonizing for me, in any case. I can see now that we must have looked like three miscast characters in an Oscar Wilde drawing-room comedy; we had all forgotten our lines and a hush had fallen over the theatre. He finally reached deeper into his pocket. His right hand came out with a cellophane bag, which he pushed toward Suskind. ‘Have a prune,’ he said.

  Dick took and examined a prune. ‘That’s an organic prune, isn’t it?’

  ‘Correct,’ Howard said. ‘The other kind are poison.’

  For three or four minutes they discussed the merits of various organic fruits and vegetables and the superiority of natural vitamins over the chemically-processed kind. When the subject was exhausted, Dick said he had to go. The door closed behind him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Howard,’ I said immediately. ‘You told me ten o’clock. We’d just had dinner and we were sitting around playing chess –’

  He waved his hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. Bright guy, very clear-thinking. Doesn’t smoke, I noticed – I had a good look at his fingertips. Good man to have around as a bodyguard. You may need one. Let’s get to work.’

  The final session of interviews occurred on the East Coast of Florida during the months of August and September. I was staying in a motel bungalow on the beach and Howard was staying in a private home some twenty miles to the north. In June he had given me the typed transcripts of the Bahama interviews and I had spent six weeks checking out the details and correcting some names and dates. Howard refused to identify the transcriber-typist, except to refer to him good-humoredly as ‘The Abominable Snowman.’

  ‘I can understand why you call him that.’ I said. ‘He must have typed with all four paws.’ Whoever it was, he could neither type or spell. There were four notations in nearly three hundred pages to the effect that ‘tape broke; sorry; part missing.’ The phrase ‘unclear’ had replaced a dozen names and phrases, and the overlaps that naturally occur when two men are speaking were usually omitted. In general the manuscript was a mess. I said, ‘Howard, it won’t do. You’ve either got to find someone else or you’ve got to let me do it.’

  He eventually decided there was no one else he trusted other than The Abominable Snowman, but he admitted the Snowman was incompetent. So I was awarded the job. It was coolie-labor, brutally boring. By the second week in Florida I was sick of hearing Howard’s voice repeating the same phrases – to catch a muttered monologue or a sharp exclamation the tape had sometimes to be run backwards and forward half a dozen times – and even sicker of hearing my own badgering and apologetic questions. Between transcribing and wrapping up the interviews I was virtually self-imprisoned in the bungalow. Now and then I would step out and swim some laps in the pool under the sulky September sky or drive over to Route 1 to work up a sweat banging golf balls on the driving range, but during those weeks I had no time to learn the first name of a single Floridian other than the maid. Moreover, for the first time I had the precious tapes in my possession, which made Hughes uneasy. ‘If you see a man with a cane hanging around outside the bungalow,’ he said, ‘don’t jump on him. He’s there for your protection. (He meant, of course, for the protection of the tapes.) If there’s anyone else hanging around who doesn’t have a cane, tell your bodyguard to jump him or call the security guard. But get it straight – if he’s carrying a cane, he’s okay.’

  ‘This is Florida, Howard. There are thousands of people who walk with canes.’

  ‘Not men under thirty five years of age.’

  In September we reached what ultimately proved the major decision about the book: the switch in character from authorized biography to autobiography. Howard, at the onset of the project, had wanted a biography because he felt that the outside objectivity would balance what otherwise might have been called by unfriendly critics an apologia; he was always meant to retain control and final approval or the text, but my authorship would obviously set up a system of checks and balances. However, when I read the mounting pages of transcript, I realized that the same objectivity, and more, had been achieved through dialogue and argument. I felt that what he had achieved was an honest and dramatic personal statement. Given a minimum amount of editing and re-shaping, it would be a viable concept in autobiography. To tamper with it might be a historical crime. I made the suggestion to my publishers, who were enthusiastic about the change to an autobiography but less so when I used the words ‘book-length interview.’ It was a form, someone remarked, that never had much luck in the marketplace. But they agreed to read it before they came to a decision.

  Howard agreed instantly to the change. He had said what he had wanted to say. ‘It’s my autobiography,’ he said, ‘and I’m damned if I’ll have you or anyone else monkeying around with my words. I’m not a writer, I’m a talker – at least I’ve been a talker for the last six months. You go up to New York and tell them that’s how I feel.’

  We met once more on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and then I flew to New York, lugging two copies of the thousand-page transcript. As per our secrecy agreements they were read by the various publishers in a five-day marathon session in the living room of my suite at the Hotel Elysée, while I sat around emptying ashtrays and ordering pots of coffee. I heard no one cough, I saw no one’s attention begin to flag. The opinion was unanimous. The book-length ‘interview’ worked.

  Go with the book as is, they said.

  I flew south once again for a wrap-up interview, and Howard drafted what became the Preface to this book. Then I left for Europe. A copy of the transcript had been placed in escrow in a safe deposit box at the Chase Manhattan Bank in case I crashed en-route. But I reached Ibiza safely, doffed my capped to my wife, chucked my children under the chin, and went back to work, because there remained the massive job of editing and organizing the transcripts. Since certain significant discussions had taken place while the tape recorder was not running, Howard agreed to let me work from the many notes I had taken and weave these into the manuscripts at the appropriate places, provided that I reproduced his words with reasonable accuracy. This I did, and he checked them out at a later date, approving or disapproving, changing them or letting them stand; but such interpolations form a minuscule part of the manuscript.

  To keep the flow of the narrative and also remove a certain inanity from the dialogue, I also eliminated as many of my questions as possible. For example, in the midst of a monologue about his tenure as boss of RKO, if I interrupted to ask, ‘When did such-and-such incident take place?’ and he replied, ‘The summer of 1949,’ I deleted my question and put into his mouth the words: ‘This took place in the summer of 1949.’ Similar questions such as, ‘But how did you feel when so-and-so left you?’ have been deleted, since usually the reply encompassed the intent of the question and rendered the latter gratuitous. Certain personal exchanges have also been omitted; but I have retained many of them because they give the character of the man and triggered some unusual exclamations and opinions. Nothing has been added that Howard didn’t say or that I didn’t say. All the footnotes (and the Appendix) are my own responsibility; I hope the reader will keep in mind that Hughes in his Preface remarks that he doesn’t agree with all my commentary.

  The major editing was done in the interests of a reasonable chronology and clarity. A human life is as much thematic as it is chromographic and any man relating his own history tends naturally to wander through time and space. One thought sparks another: the telling of
a tale that took place in 1930 in Hollywood may remind him, for whatever reason, of something that happened in Las Vegas in 1965. This was certainly the case with Hughes – in this instance I’m referring to kidnapping attempts – and I made little effort during the interviews to check the free flow of anecdote and recollection. But in the final editing I shifted some things around to achieve a more chronological narrative.

  However, there was a quality of mounting and cumulative revelation in the original interviews which I had decided was an integral part of the way Howard Hughes had told his life story, and to sacrifice that for the sake of chronology would have meant missing the point of the whole exercise. Hughes on several occasions told stories and later corrected them, or deliberately left a gap which he filled in when the mood suited him. In these instances the method again revealed the man, and I have not tampered with the way he worked his way round to nailing down the truth as he saw it. He says in his Preface, ‘I believe the reader will see I have tried very hard to tell the truth,’ and the revelatory and corrective passages in the text constitute a proof which I had no right to destroy.

  When the cutting and pasting was done and the book had reached a near-final form, I found a number of anecdotes, conversations and lengthy statements of opinion that seemed to have no obvious historiographic slot in the narrative. They took place at various times and referred to different periods; some of them were in response to stories I had heard about Howard which I retold to him, so that they were more dialogue than narrative and would lose their meaning if the form were bastardized. Rather than omit these bits and pieces, I pulled them together into a section called INTERLUDE: CONVERSATIONS AND OPINIONS, which follows Part III of the book. The arrangement of the book into four parts, by the way, is my responsibility and does not necessarily conform to the three major interview sessions. The breaks in the text, however – the unnumbered chaptering and the spaces separated by three asterisks (***) – generally represent either a separate night-session of talk or a switching-off of the tape recorder.

  As for other omissions from the orginal verbatim transcript, they have been made only for legal purposes – to avoid libel and unwarranted defamation of character – or because Hughes for some reason specifically requested it. But the latter instances are very few.

  III

  SOME FINAL APPRAISAL on my part may seem obligatory, but I am going to duck it. Howard Hughes can speak for himself, so for the moment I will leave the field to the critics and historians. One thing I know: the real Hughes will care very little what they say. I only hope that by telling as much as I have told I have not cheapened in any way the flesh, bones and heart of this book, which lie in Howard’s words and not in my own. He said toward the end, ‘This has been one of the most extraordinary events in my life. Talking with you has been an adventure. It’s cleared the air for me. I don’t regret it for a minute.’

  I have related my part of the tale in the interests of clearing up the mystery of how the autobiography came to be and dispelling the inevitable gossip concerning authenticity. But when the book is read the importance of the mystery will vanish, as will the gossip. Howard Hughes may become a mythic figure in American history, but the myths surrounding him will be laid to rest.

  Just as the dry business articles dealing with Hughes have undoubtedly prepared the reader poorly for the man who reveals himself in these pages, so my correspondence with him a year ago prepared me poorly for the human being I met. I expected a certain stiltedness, a stiffness of manner. Instead I found a warmth and dry humor, as well as an acuteness of insight into American manners and ethics, which brought me up short again and again. Several times, at the end of the talk session, I found myself musing about the America that Howard Hughes had revealed to me in the course of our conversatiion, an America I was only aware of second- or third-hand. I knew little of high finance or of the interplay between business and politics – things that were of everyday familiarity to Hughes. But he never condescended to me, and I think the reason was that he was too anxious to explain and reflect. No one, after meeting him or reading his autobiography, could call him innocent; and yet there was about him, in the interstices between his stubbornness, his pride, his selfishness and cynicism, his eccentricity, his arrogance and sadness, a quality of innocence that may be uniquely American. He was a Texas boy, the ‘Sonny’ of his childhood who had suddenly awakened from a dream to find himself with two billion dollars and the consequent paradox that he was both slave and free man. In some ways he was like the narrator of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, looking in from the outside at a world of money and opulence, finding it unsatisfactory, and dreaming, in the end, of ‘that fresh green breast of the New World that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes’ and was no more. Howard had his dreams too.

  One afternoon in Florida toward the end of the many interview sessions that form the basis of his memoirs, he telephoned me. I was transcribing the tapes; I was tired and a little fed up. We had been wrangling for several days about something – the subject is unimportant – and there was no question but that our personal relationship had momentarily suffered. He was sniping at me and I was sniping back. After a 48-hour break he called and said, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ I told him I didn’t have any plans. ‘Well, I thought I’d come down and visit you,’ he said, ‘if you weren’t busy. Not to do any more interviewing. I just thought maybe we could sit around and talk… you know, about this and that. Like friends do. No discussions about my sex life and business deals. No arguments. We’ll just chat.’ He asked hesitantly, ‘Would that be okay?’

  I replied that it would be a pleasure and he said he would be driven down by his driver between seven-thirty and eight. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘is your television set working?’ I said it was, and he arrived a few minutes before eight o’clock. I had turned off the air-conditioner, which was required for Howard’s visits even though the temperature was in the 80s, and the fridge was stocked with beer for me and Poland Springs mineral water for him. I stubbed out my last cigarette when I heard his tap on the door, dumped the ashtray in the wastebasket and sprayed the room quickly with Lysol disinfectant to kill the odor.

  Howard sat down in an easy chair and stretched out his long legs beside his briefcase. He always carried an oversized battered brown leather briefcase filled with various papers, graham crackers, packages of Kleenex, ballpoint pens, sanitary paper cups and paper toilet-seat covers. If he ever blew his nose he went immediately to the bathroom and flushed the Kleenex down the toilet. He wore the usual getup of sport shirt, cardigan, rumpled slacks and loafers. Without preamble, he said, ‘You like baseball, don’t you? Let’s turn on the TV. There’s a good ball game on. Giants against the Dodgers.’

  I had been a Dodger fan in my youth, before they deserted Brooklyn for Los Angeles and before I deserted New York’s West End Avenue for Ibiza, so I said, ‘Sure.’ I switched on the TV and Willie Mays’ grave smile filled the screen in a pre-game interview. The Dodgers were challenging the Giants for the Western division pennant in the National League. Mays explained the situation and Howard listened intently, straining forward to hear although the volume was turned up high enough to back me into a corner on a couch on the far side of the room. Howard turned to me and said, ‘Let’s put a bet on the game. I always like to root for one team or the other, and a little bet makes it easier.’ I asked him which team he wanted. No, he explained, that was up to me.

  ‘Okay, I’ll take the Dodgers – for old time’s sake.’

  Howard smiled; the Giants were favored. Then the terrifying thought hit me: what did ‘a little bet’ mean to Howard Hughes?

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  He thought for a minute. ‘Well, let’s make it interesting. Let’s bet a dollar.’

  We settled back to watch, all nine innings, and the Dodgers beat the Giants, 4 to 2. Howard stuck it out, muttered against the inanity of the commercials, and from time to time when Mays was at bat or taking a long lead off first he
would say, ‘Watch him carefully. He’s a professional. It’s a pleasure to watch anything he does.’ He even commented on the way Willie swung his bat in the on deck circle. ‘The rest of those guys, he remarked, ‘are just black and white trash. All those black players,’ he explained, ‘have really made the grade in sports since I was a kid. The white man threw them a bone so he wouldn’t have to throw them any meat and potatoes.’

  It was almost eleven o’clock when the game was over. I switched off the set and sat down for the chat between friends that Hughes had suggested when he called. I could see he was tired, though, and a little ill at ease. He kept drinking mineral water and clearing his throat. Finally I told him a few tales about how I’d sailed the Atlantic in a three-masted schooner with five other people who’d also never sailed an ocean-going yacht before, and then at eleven-thirty he yawned and said he’d better be on his way, he had some work to do where he was staying – something to do with a few million shares of stock of some company he was trying to buy or sell, I don’t remember which.

  I said, ‘What about the dollar you owe me for the bet?’

  Howard blushed. He explained that he didn’t have any cash with him – no small bills. He had ‘a large bill’ sewn into the lining of his trousers, but it would be hard to get at. He would pay me the next time we met, he promised.

  I took him to the door, from which point he would skulk his way through the darkness to the parking lot of the motel where his driver waited in a five-year-old Chevrolet, and there he turned to me and said, ‘That was a pleasant evening, wasn’t it? Did you enjoy yourself?’