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Authors: Clifford Irving
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branch of the Hughes Tool Company in Los Angeles. My Uncle Rupert invited us and introduced us out there. He was writing for the movies then, although he had already made a name for himself with a biography of George Washington. It was prettyexciting for me as a kid, going out to the West Coast, because even as early as that, Hollywood meant only one thing to me: movies. I’d been to see many of them at the nickelodeon in Houston when I was a kid. Rupert took me around to the studios, and I loved it.
In 1921 we went out to California again. That second time I went only with my father, and he put me in the Thatcher School, just north of Los Angeles in Ojai. I was fifteen. That trip, although I didn’t fully realize it, was due to the fact that my father had said to my mother, ‘I need a long vacation from you and marriage, and I’m taking Sonny.’
I was aware that things weren’t right between my parents. There was an atmosphere of bitterness in the house, and on more than one occasion when I was alone with my father, who was usually a talkative man, he would become silent and moody. Once I was in the workshop with him on a rainy day. He stood at the window watching the rain come down, and I could feel the bitterness oozing from him like pus.
He said to me, ‘When you grow up, Sonny, make sure you find a woman who doesn’t pick holes in you and try to change you, and tell you how to dress and what not to say, and tie you down with a ball and chain.’
I couldn’t cope with that. I certainly couldn’t sympathize with him openly, or even inwardly, and I didn’t dare defend my mother to him because I wouldn’t have known how to do it.
My mother never mentioned any of these problems to me. She was a repressed woman. I realize now that my mother loved me more than she loved my father. In a sense I had taken his place as the object of her love. My father knew this; he was a warm-hearted man, and my mother presented a very cool exterior. Many times I saw my father throw his arm around her shoulder and try to be affectionate, and she would stiffen up. I guess she knew she wasn’t the only one, anymore, who was the object of his affection, and over the years this had hurt her too much, and she crawled into a shell. But I have to be fair to Daddy too: he had a wider capacity for love, and if he loved many people it didn’t diminish has love for the few he loved the most.
Out in California I could see what my father was doing: there was.always a pretty woman around. We stayed at Mickey Nielan’s house in Hollywood. That was Marshall Nielan, the film director. One day Daddy went out with Mickey Nielan and left his Buick there in the garage, and I decided to play hookey from school and take a little spin in it. I had a girl with me, not a classmate but a waitress from one of the joints around there. I wasn’t having an affair with her –I was still a little too young and unsure of myself to fool around that way. Although according to my father I wasn’t too young. In fact he thought I was a little backward in that department.
Had he made any attempt to introduce you to sex?
Yes, he made an attempt, but I’d rather not talk about that – not yet.
I was with this girl, driving around in my father’s Buick. I was going to show her one of the film studios, the old Metro lot where Uncle Rupert had taken me on my first trip two years before. But we drove up to the gate and they didn’t know who I was – the name Howard Hughes didn’t mean anything then – and the guard wouldn’t let me in.
I was embarrassed, because I had given this girl a big line about my uncle, and I couldn’t even get past the guard at the Metro lot. To make matters worse, on the way home I banged into a traffic stanchion and put a dent in the fender of the Buick. This didn’t please my father, until I told him about the girl, and then he eased up and said, ‘Okay, Sonny, it was for a good cause.’
But the fact that I couldn’t get
In 1921 we went out to California again. That second time I went only with my father, and he put me in the Thatcher School, just north of Los Angeles in Ojai. I was fifteen. That trip, although I didn’t fully realize it, was due to the fact that my father had said to my mother, ‘I need a long vacation from you and marriage, and I’m taking Sonny.’
I was aware that things weren’t right between my parents. There was an atmosphere of bitterness in the house, and on more than one occasion when I was alone with my father, who was usually a talkative man, he would become silent and moody. Once I was in the workshop with him on a rainy day. He stood at the window watching the rain come down, and I could feel the bitterness oozing from him like pus.
He said to me, ‘When you grow up, Sonny, make sure you find a woman who doesn’t pick holes in you and try to change you, and tell you how to dress and what not to say, and tie you down with a ball and chain.’
I couldn’t cope with that. I certainly couldn’t sympathize with him openly, or even inwardly, and I didn’t dare defend my mother to him because I wouldn’t have known how to do it.
My mother never mentioned any of these problems to me. She was a repressed woman. I realize now that my mother loved me more than she loved my father. In a sense I had taken his place as the object of her love. My father knew this; he was a warm-hearted man, and my mother presented a very cool exterior. Many times I saw my father throw his arm around her shoulder and try to be affectionate, and she would stiffen up. I guess she knew she wasn’t the only one, anymore, who was the object of his affection, and over the years this had hurt her too much, and she crawled into a shell. But I have to be fair to Daddy too: he had a wider capacity for love, and if he loved many people it didn’t diminish has love for the few he loved the most.
Out in California I could see what my father was doing: there was.always a pretty woman around. We stayed at Mickey Nielan’s house in Hollywood. That was Marshall Nielan, the film director. One day Daddy went out with Mickey Nielan and left his Buick there in the garage, and I decided to play hookey from school and take a little spin in it. I had a girl with me, not a classmate but a waitress from one of the joints around there. I wasn’t having an affair with her –I was still a little too young and unsure of myself to fool around that way. Although according to my father I wasn’t too young. In fact he thought I was a little backward in that department.
Had he made any attempt to introduce you to sex?
Yes, he made an attempt, but I’d rather not talk about that – not yet.
I was with this girl, driving around in my father’s Buick. I was going to show her one of the film studios, the old Metro lot where Uncle Rupert had taken me on my first trip two years before. But we drove up to the gate and they didn’t know who I was – the name Howard Hughes didn’t mean anything then – and the guard wouldn’t let me in.
I was embarrassed, because I had given this girl a big line about my uncle, and I couldn’t even get past the guard at the Metro lot. To make matters worse, on the way home I banged into a traffic stanchion and put a dent in the fender of the Buick. This didn’t please my father, until I told him about the girl, and then he eased up and said, ‘Okay, Sonny, it was for a good cause.’
But the fact that I couldn’t get
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