Howard Hughes Hells Angel: Americas Notorious Bisexual Billionaire

by Darwin Porter

"Set amid descriptions of the unimaginable changes that affected America between Hughes's birth in 1905 and his death in 1976, this book gives an insider's perspective about what money can buy and what it can't. Darwin Porter's access to film industry insiders and other Hughes confidants supplied him with the resources he needed to create a portrait of Hughes that both corroborates what other Hughes biographies have divulged, and go them one better." Foreword Magazine. "Thanks to this bio of Howard Hughes, we'll never be able to look at the old pinups in quite the same way again." He was a millionaire while still a teenager, thanks to his father's Texas tool-bit business. He owned Hughes Aircraft, TWA, and RKO. Yet Howard Hughes remains one of the most enigmatic, oddest, and most contradictory men in public life during the 20th century. Gore Vidal said he was boring, and called him an honest-to-God American shit. But Hughes had a lot more going on than Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated 2004 film, The Aviator, depicts." (The Times of London). "Darwin Porter's new, exhaustive biography, Howard Hell's Angel (from Blood Moon Productions), reveals that he bedded not only about every female beauty in Hollywood's Golden Era, but quite a few gorgeous males too. Born to a wealthy, libertine father, and cosseted by an incestuous mother, Hughes' life revolved around three airplanes, movies, and sex. Porter, who is in his 60s, has had a long career in journalism; he started reviewing movies for the Miami Herald as a teenager, he's written many Frommer's travel guides, and he's published a biography of everyone's favorite nonlesbian, Katharine Hepburn. I recently chatted with Porter by telephone from his New York City home. We talked all about Hughes' dazzling, sometimes puzzling life, including those boys in the back room." (Frontiers Magazine, Los Angeles). Howard Hughes, Hell's Angel was nominated for best biography in Foreword Magazine's Book of The Year Awards, and it was selected for serialization in the UK by The Mail On Sunday.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

841 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Darwin Porter (1937-) is an American travel writer, producing numerous titles, mostly for the Frommer guidebook series, over a 50-year career span.

Reviews

[GoldGato · Rating 2 out of 5]

Knowing little to nothing about Howard Hughes, I picked up this book which had been sitting on the counter of the tiny bookshop I had been visiting. In my innocence, I thought it would be a biography about Mr. Hughes since it is an 800+ page tome. Silly, silly me.

What this huge book is really about is the sex life of Howard Hughes and his various partners. It claims he was intimate with both men and women and starts with a detailed account of his mother, a bowl, and...well, you really don't want to know. There is very little factual information, almost all of it being interviews with dying, bitter, showbiz has-beens who denigrate everything and everyone. In many cases, it is a memory told by a friend of a friend of an aunt of a one-hit wonder. Most amazingly, Hughes apparently never worked. He simply flew airplanes and had lots of sex. Somehow, I very much doubt this.

"See any filly you'd like to brand?"
(Howard Hughes Sr. to little Howard Hughes Jr.)

"But you're a bit long in the tooth for Chaplin. Usually he doesn't like his meat aged."
(Billy Haines to Howard Hughes)

Yeah, that is pretty much the whole book. Homo-erotic fantasies written as fact but reading like fiction. There are misspellings all over the place, paragraphs that don't end (literally), long spaces between words, incorrect grammar, missing punctuation, you name it. Pretty bad.

page 180 = 'contacted syphilis' instead of 'contracted'
page 200 = Joe Engel becomes Joe Angel in the same paragraph

So why do I even give this book two stars? Well, the author was obviously a fan of old silver screen players, so the reader gets to learn the names and histories of long-gone and long-forgotten actors, writers, directors, and producers. It's a tabloid version of desperate folks who reached for the Hollywood dream and fell hard. I ended up going to Wikipedia to see if these people had been real and then learning how drugs and hubris pretty much destroyed all of them. So, I learned something, even if it wasn't about Howard Hughes.

Book Season = Winter (you can always throw it into the fireplace)

[Charmaine Ladd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as well written as should have been, as if the author had been in a big rush to get it on the shelves. I can understand that! More of an "National Enquirer" recap with all the quirky tendencies of Howard Hughes (especially sexualky). But perhaps that's part of the intrigue of the book... who did he NOT go to bed with in Hollywood? According to the author, very few, if not just ONE PERSON, and I won't spoil that for you (though you probably already know). I didn't really learn much not already known; some parts though were quite entertaining. Lots of great pictures and a trip down Old Hollywood's Memory Lane. And what a LANE!

[Shishir Jakati · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never hate read a book before, but there's a first time for everything.

[Jeff Russo · Rating 3 out of 5]

So sordid, it makes Charles Higham read like Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Beyond the standard goal of adding another notch to my Hughes stable, I was inspired to grab this after reading Porter's Sinatra book for Blood Moon. It was in line with what I was expecting.

I hate to play the too-long card, but it is too long - at first I was not sure as this was my first ever Kindle book, but the dead tree version is in fact 800+ pages.

So for a really, really long and trashy read, you can grab this.

See all my Howard Hughes book reviews.

[Matt Payne]

Not exactly what I was looking to glean from a book about Howard Hughes! Not for the faint of heart or closed of mind, it is an incredibly salacious work that delves deeply into his sexual relationships with Hollywood's leading men and women. So abstract and scandalous, I had to search as to whether it was actually a biography and not fan fiction! It delivers very little insight into his business acumen and dealings. It is a LONG book. If you were looking to learn about Hughes the inventor and businessman - I would suggest something else. It would seem something like this is right up Porter's alley with other books that he has written to uncover the after dark stories of Hollywood greats.

[EvilSpace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Your grandma's version of TMZ