From Time magazine, 1976: Howard Hughes once sat on a toilet for 72 hours...and other stories of his final years

The joke is that a poor person is crazy, a rich person is eccentric. Such seems to be true of Howard Hughes and his mental illnesses, which led to his seclusion and bizarre behavior during the final years of his life. He was often referred to in the press as “an eccentric billionaire.”

His problems had always been there, usually manifested in his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

According to some biographical information about Hughes, his germophobia could have been brought on by his mother, who was in deathly fear of her young son developing polio. She reputedly checked him every day for signs of illness.

Other sources speculate that Hughes’ late in life habits of sitting naked in the dark watching movies, his poor hygiene and disregard of personal appearance (hair and beard grown long and tangled, finger-and-toenails uncut) may have been as a result of allodynia, which is pain upon being touched. Hughes survived several air crashes over the years, and some think that as a trade-off for his survival the crashes may have left him with a lifetime of pain. It would also have contributed to his addiction to codeine, with which he injected himself. Codeine would explain his chronic constipation (mentioned in the article below), and the famous story of him sitting on a toilet for 72 hours.

Hughes died weighing 90 pounds, in an emaciated state resembling survivors of the Nazi death camps. Official cause of death was kidney failure, but his death was also caused by neglect and not being under medical care. His quality of life might have been improved had he allowed himself to be put under the care of professionals. That would be where the eccentricity of a rich person’s mental illness would come in. He could afford to live like he chose to live, and no one could do anything about it. He gave orders, others obeyed them. Hughes seems more like an emperor with whom no one dares disagree. If one of the richest men in America wants to sit naked in a dark hotel room watching Ice Station Zebra over and over, then by golly, who is going to tell him he can’t?

The article from Time, December 13, 1976, has an excerpt from the book, Howard Hughes, the Hidden Years by James R. Phelan, published shortly after Hughes’ death. It uses descriptions of those years by two aides who were with Hughes at the time. There were rumors in the years leading up to Hughes’ demise as to his physical deterioration. It took his death and the attendant interest in Hughes, which had pretty much accompanied his whole life as a playboy, movie-maker and aviator, to bring the public the full picture and details of his serious medical problems, including mental illness.

Author James R. Phelan died in 1997 at age 85. Over many years he wrote extensively of Hughes and his business affairs. The book excerpted in the article, Howard Hughes, The Hidden Years, was a best seller in its time, but is now out of print. Various editions are available through third party booksellers on Amazon.com and other sites that offer out-of-print books.

Copyright © 1976 Time, Inc.

Found bookmark — the busty snapshot

I wrote this originally in 2006. I have revised it slightly for this re-posting.

A few years ago I found a book at a thrift store. Well, that's not a big deal...I've found hundreds of books at thrift stores.  It took me over a year to get around to actually opening this book* but when I did out fell this snapshot:

On the back of the snapshot is the notation “Taken in May, 1953. Marlene C. and me. Same gym class.”

I took the picture to my friend Sherry, who works in the school district accounting office.

“Say,” I said to her after handing her the picture, “there are a couple of points of interest in this picture.”

“There sure are,” she snorted.

“First of all, they had some great gym outfits 50 years ago, huh? And then, isn't that Joan, who works down the hall from us in the public relations department? Joan approximately 50 years younger, that is.”

Sherry said, “Sure looks like her.“

I have to mention we weren't talking about the Marilyn Monroe/Mamie Van Doren/Jayne Mansfield wannabe, we were talking about the girl to her left, grinning her toothy grin, cat-eye glasses on beaky nose. We think it is the lady who had worked with us for years...who had a doctorate, was a teacher, writer, and all around smart lady. I looked at the picture, again. I didn't want to take it to Joan and have her say, “That's mine! I wondered where that was! Give it back to me!” So I never actually asked her if it was her, and if her booby buddy was actually a friend, or if this photo was someone’s idea of a joke.

Over the years I've had some experiences like this. Finding things, I mean. Some mean something, some don't. Sherry's other comment about the picture was, “What's up with the pointy bra?” What's “up,” indeed! Sherry isn't old enough to remember pointy bras, courtesy of the inventor, Howard Hughes, as we were always told. Nowadays the mechanical engineering on those things is amazing, but in those days it was a little more primitive.

The lady on the left, who we supposed was Joan, retired a few years ago. By my reckoning, if in 1953 she was 17 or 18 as she appears in the picture, she'd be about 80 now, which would certainly be the same age as our Joan. As for the other girl, well...I hope gravity has been kind to her. Usually what goes up after a time comes down. Maybe I knew her, too, but at 80 wouldn't have recognized her.

As it is, I have this, once a forgotten bookmark, now a great found item, a gem of a snapshot pinned onto a corkboard in my computer room.

*The Savage God by Al Alvarez.

All choked up from watching The Godfather

Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), not very articulate to begin with, doesn’t have anything intelligent to say in this scene.

I watched The Godfather on DVD the other day. I have seen it several times since its original theatrical release in 1972. Since it is in my all-time top ten list of great movies, I watch it every few years to reassure myself it hasn’t lost anything.

Something I read years ago was the impact the movie had on the real Five Families of New York. They took it as a template for how a Mafia family should be. Life imitated art, when everyone supposed it was the other way around. Even The Sopranos, which updated the Mafia for a nineties audience, referenced The Godfather many times. Steven Van Zandt as Silvio Dante did an impression of Al Pacino from The Godfather Part II: “Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.”

All things considered, Pacino did a very reserved performance in The Godfather. I don’t believe director Francis Ford Coppola allowed him to chew scenery as he has done in several movies. This was Pacino’s star turn and put him in the upper ranks of movie actors.

Michael Corleone gets to think about his next move while eating dinner with Capt. McClusky and Solozzo, who has already tried to hit Michael’s father, unsuccessfully. Michael is wondering, "Did Clemenza tell me to drop the gun first or shoot first and then drop the gun?” It’s Michael’s first hit. You can’t blame him for being nervous.

In one incredible anecdote about the movie I read years ago, Rod Steiger contacted the casting director about a part. Assuming he was aiming for the part of the Godfather, they told him the part of Don Corleone had already been taken by Brando. Steiger said he was looking to play Michael. The last time he and Brando were in a movie together was On the Waterfront in 1954, and I think he may have been just a tad too old — by at least a few decades — for Michael.

Corrupt Captain McClusky meets his demise by being shot by Michael. Sterling Hayden, who played McClusky, was something of a reluctant star. He had been in a lot of movies, always a wonder to me since I don't think he could act. But he kept getting offers. I think he took the jobs in order to get money for his true love, his sail boat.

Michael escapes to Italy to lie low until the heat dies down. While there he is “hit by the thunderbolt” and falls in love with and marries the fresh young Apollonia.

Honk! Tweet! Yow-za! Michael gets a first glimmer of his bride’s nubile beauty. Poor Apollonia has a bad end in the movie, getting blown up in Michael’s car. I tried to say something significant about the idea of dragging an innocent virgin into the seedy world of organized crime, and ultimate retribution by her new husband’s enemies, but frankly I couldn’t come up with anything interesting enough to say.* Especially after seeing actress Simonetta Steffanelli’s 18-year-old boobs, which say it all. When Steffanelli was asked why she didn’t make more Hollywood movies she said, “They just wanted to expose my body, and I wouldn’t do that.” Instead she posed for Penthouse in 1973. Hey, it is always good for an actress to have high standards.

Something I noticed about The Godfather is the absence of a lot of profanity. Unlike later movies where the word ‘fuck’ stands in for nouns, verbs, adjectives and all other forms of speech, this movie does not descend to that level. I was glad of it. The word is seriously overused in movies and cable TV shows nowadays. I haven’t seen Wolf of Wall Street but heard that they used the word over 500 times. I was in the Army for two years, and I bet I didn’t say that word half that many times in my whole Army career. My feeling is that it is a word that should be reserved for when it is really needed,* not used every other word  in every sentence.

The Godfather does have some violent scenes, which still have impact even though the movie is 42 years old. It’s because it isn’t an action picture, where the hero can have twenty guys shooting machine guns at him and not be hit, yet hit a villain with every shot he takes.

In the real world of 1972 we saw some criminal activity on the very highest levels, which made the Corleone family look like amateurs.

The Godfather holds up well. But I believe it is in the shadow of its sequel, The Godfather Part II. Robert De Niro as the young Vito Corleone had his own star turn in that movie. The scenes shot in Italy and later in New York’s Little Italy are masterpieces. De Niro had been getting attention before that movie. I first saw him in Bloody Mama in 1970, then Bang the Drum Slowly in 1973 and was impressed.

But, Godfather Part II will be the subject of another posting, another time. Until then, “Don’t ask me about my business...don’t ever ask me about my business...”

*Is it interesting if I say that Michael was something of a virgin himself, in the ways of his criminal family that is, when he made his first hit?

*Don’t ask me to describe when the word is really needed. I know it when an occasion presents itself.

Fun has more blondes: Marilyn Monroe and more movie blondes of the fifties

For a time in the fifties Marilyn Monroe was the blonde bombshell of the movies. So it was no surprise when producers threw out casting nets for another Monroe. Not so easy, was it? There were women who had the attributes, right down to the peroxide roots, who were soon pushing their chests out for photographers. As I recall, except for Bardot, none of the women whose pictures I’m showing today ever had that star turn that Marilyn did. And Lord knows they tried. But they tended to be known for their boobs and not their brains. Those boobs, plus sexy, smouldering looks and pouty lips may look great on a movie screen, but in the end they are no substitute for talent.

These are women who competed (if anyone could compete) with Marilyn for sex goddess.

Joi Lansing was a devout Mormon girl from Utah who got into movies and television by showing her heavenly features. I used to see her on The Bob Cummings Show and also Love That Bob, also starring Cummings.

 Diana Dors was very sexy and had the Marilyn look down.

I can say the same for Mamie Van Doren.

Jayne Mansfield had success as an actress, model and singer, but was more notorious for appearing at occasions where she spilled out of her dress. In this famous picture Sophia Loren checks out the competition.

Maybe nowadays Jayne Mansfield is just as famous for being the mother of actress Mariska Hargitay (Law and Order: SVU).

Brigitte Bardot appeared in steamy French films. I remember Bardot well. I clipped her pictures out of newspapers and magazines and kept them under a rug in my closet...until my mother found them, that is.

Trying to replace the reigning blonde goddess of tinseltown was an impossible task, as it turned out.

Woman bites son’s penis, mistakes it for penis of alleged rapist

You have to believe this story because no one could make it up. It's too strange.

On Friday, May 13, 2014, Efrey Guzman was found not guilty of assault, including biting the penis of a 20-year-old man, and attempted rape of the man’s mother. A jury in a Salt Lake courtroom turned him free after hearing a very bizarre story during the course of a 5-day trial.

In August, 2012, Mr Guzman, who is a branch president of the LDS Church, approached the home of a family in order to offer help. The family, emigrants from Haiti, had been through a very disturbing experience. In May, 2012, the family’s 13-year-old daughter was groped by a family friend whom the family could not describe to police beyond his name, Frank. Guzman was mistaken for Frank when he came to the family’s door some months later. The woman who answered knocked Guzman unconscious with an umbrella, then proceeded to bite him up and down his body.

Guzman’s defense attorney, Bel-Ami de Montreaux said, “There was a 911 tape where the girl was screaming to 911, ‘We have him; we’re not going to let him go. Hurry up! I know my mama, she’s going to kill him,’” de Montreaux said. “President Guzman left that day covered in bite marks even a pit bull could not administer to a human being.”

  Photo of girl biting corndog for illustration purposes only.

The story the mad mama told was quite different. She claimed Guzman came to her door crazed with desire to get at the 13-year-old. He pushed the mother up against the wall, tried to kiss her, tore her shirt and fondled her breast. While she was fighting him off she called for her son, who came out dressed only in boxer shorts. She said Guzman bit the boy’s penis.

Mr de Montreaux explained, “Our contention is in the process of biting the crap out of him, after they knocked him unconscious when he opened the door, the woman, thinking she was biting [Guzman’s] penis, ended up biting her son’s penis. That’s what happened. That’s what the jury believed. They came back in two hours with a not-guilty verdict on all counts.” The mother defended her story, although she admitted biting Guzman “only after what had allegedly been done to her son.”

“I bit him on his face after I saw [my son’s] injury,” she claimed last year. “I was punching him and biting him, and when his hand was on my breast I bit his arm, and I would do it again, too!”

Guzman, who had been released from his job as a branch president when the accusations were made, hopes to get his old job back. My hope is if he does the LDS Church will remove the responsibility for that family.

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.

The Marilyn Monroe photo scam

In the fifties the United States Post Office was charged with protecting the morals of the nation by prosecuting pornographers who sent their wares through the U.S. Mail.

Seems strange today in an era when, with a few clicks of a mouse and an Internet connection, anyone can access more porn that anyone in the fifties could see in their lifetime. But it was a serious offense to be sending dirty pictures through the mail. Even advertising sexy pictures for sale, and then sending non-porno pics to someone who paid for them was a crime. It was fraud and misrepresentation. A good porn producer was stymied at every turn.

At one time in this country it could cost an actress her career to be photographed in the nude and have the pictures distributed. That is what made the famous Marilyn Monroe calendar so unique. The picture was taken before Monroe became a movie star. What it did was enhance her as being a sexual person. Quoting Marilyn when asked if she had anything on during the photo session she is reported to have said, "I had the radio on." Or how she also (allegedly) said she liked to avoid the sun because she "wanted to feel blonde all over." Wow. Hot stuff! Just bound to corrupt a young person’s morals, no doubt.

 Feel corrupted by looking at this famous calendar picture? It is so corrupting that this particular 1954 calendar went for £298 in an auction by Bonham’s.

Exposed magazine was another of the fifties rags (begun by Confidential) that exploited the public desire to read about scandals and the ongoing peccadillos and dalliances of their favorite movie stars. Nowadays with the Internet and cable television we can check up 24/7 on what stars are doing what with whom. But in those days it was necessary to put it in print and put it on the newsstand for the public to see.

Things are so wide open right now it is smart for a young actress to show it all in order to get attention. Want to see Lindsay Lohan nude, from a Playboy photo shoot impersonating Marilyn? Go here.* What was once scandalous behavior that could have scuttled a career is now de rigueur.

The article, reproduced below from Exposed Vol. 1 No. 1, from 1955, uses the famous Marilyn calendar as a hook for a story about a couple of con men who were soliciting suckers to send them money for hot photos of Marilyn. Their approach, sending a handwritten letter purportedly from Marilyn, offering a variety of photos for only $7.00, is incredible on its face. Marilyn Monroe was a top movie star. Why would she need $7.00 for a handful of photos of herself, and why did she write to you to offer them for sale? But the suckers, as suckers do, lined up and sent their 7 bucks. It was up to the Postal authorities to run down the crooks.

In reminds me of a very low-tech version of those infamous e-mails from Nigeria, people unknown to you who want you to share in a $5,000,000 fortune, and all you have to do is send the e-mailer $5,000. I don’t know why anyone would be dumb enough to bite on such an obvious fraud, but they did, and still do. As con men like the ones described in this story well know, the world is full of suckers.

*Just a note to explain that the blog I am directing you to may be gone by the time you go to access it. It was posted on December 14, 2011, and is still up as I write this (May 18, 2014), but if you click on the link and draw a blank, well, sorry about that. It has been removed through none of my doing. You really missed out!

…are we reading the last chapter for Barnes & Noble?

The rumor has it that Barnes & Noble will be no more after 2014. The stores will be closed, employees laid off, and the company that was the cause of small American bookstores being driven to extinction will join its former rivals.

Like many a casualty of technology, B&N was a company that ran just a bit slow in catching up with the changing habits of consumers. Amazon.com, which for several years operated in the red until it became the go-to shopping experience, has changed the business of shopping for books, or most anything else, for that matter.

I was a part-time bookstore employee for four years in the late seventies-early eighties in a full-service store that started as a head shop. Our customers treated the store as if it were almost a holy place. I know from personal experience how much bookstores mean for their loyal customers.

I was shocked when Cody’s Books in Berkeley, California, went out of business in 2008. That was a bellwether, because like the store where I worked, Cody’s was more than a bookstore. It was an institution, and world famous. A chill wind blew across the bookselling landscape when that happened. When bookstores started to have problems in a changing retail world the locally owned bookstores were the first to feel the effects.

I think my own experience with the chain booksellers is shared by other customers. I found that certain titles were discounted, but most of the books I wanted were not.

And I didn’t realize I was in on this trend early on: In 1998 I saw the book, Wondrous Strange, The Wyeth Tradition, featuring the art of the Wyeth family, at Barnes & Noble, but balked at the $45 price. I got an idea to check it on Amazon.com and see if I could get it cheaper. I could and did. That deadly action, multiplied thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of times over the past few years by other B&N and Borders customers is what has sunk traditional bricks and mortar bookstores. 

The Amazon.com success story begat other online businesses that lured shopping dollars away from walk-in stores with high overheads.

As a society I wonder how much of this we will be able to absorb until everyone just stays home and buys everything they need online until the whole retail industry becomes a ghost town of empty stores and unemployed store clerks.

I look back on the pre-Internet era with a newfound sense of nostalgia. Christmas shopping was never fun for me, in fact I hated it. But it was a diversion during the season to do actual shopping in actual stores. Especially bookstores like several local booksellers that have since closed their doors, B. Dalton, a bookseller now gone, if I was at a mall. In that season I was around people with a common purpose. There was a feeling in the air, the completion of a yearly ritual, done the same way it had been done for generations. How wondrous strange I feel for admitting that.

It is a lot more convenient to just sit at home or the office and with a few strokes of a keyboard complete one’s Christmas shopping, (and a hell of a lot safer than charging into Walmart at midnight on Black Friday with hundreds of bargain-seekers). But it is a tragedy for those businesses that have fallen as a result of changing buying habits of their former customers, and a loss for a decades-old way of life for shoppers.