The Aviator

On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 08:25:43 -0800, "C J Campbell"
wrote in
::

"Howard Hughes, the Secret Life" by Charles Higham. Several of the movie
reviews mention it also. For example, OC Weekly describes Hughes'
bisexuality as now proven, but they seem to question whether Hughes ran into
as many "dark handsome men" as Higham alleges. Some of the reviews mention
Hughes' relationship with Cary Grant.

Thanks.

Some of the reviews even go so far as
to suggest that Hughes' death was AIDS related.

Given the fact that Hughes died in 1976*, and AIDS wasn't discovered
until 1986**, that is an unlikely cause of his death.

One reviewer goes the other way -- saying that Hughes' germ phobia must have
prevented him from having sex with anyone, ever, which seems unlikely.

Perhaps 'effeminate' is the wrong choice of words. (What is 'effeminate,'
anyway? Any definition of it must be subjective.) Perhaps I should have said
"decadent."


In a word, 'swishy' is the one I would use. However Merriam-Webster
has this to say:

Main Entry:1effeminate
Pronunciation:-n*t
Function:adjective
Etymology:Middle English, from Latin effeminatus, from past
participle of effeminare to make effeminate, from ex- + femina
woman more at FEMININE
Date:15th century

1 : having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in
appearance or manner
2 : marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement *effeminate
art* *an effeminate civilization*


Your revised word choice seems more appropriate.



* http://www.retroplanet.net/3hughes.html
... but the ultimate downfall of Howard Hughes was self-inflicted.
When he finally died in 1976, the billionaire recluse had spent
decades shooting up morphine with hypodermic needles that he never
bothered to have sterilized. Some fragments of the needles Hughes
injected over the years were found still lodged in his arms after
his death!


** http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/InSite.jsp?doc=2098.3cce

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...

Some of the reviews even go so far as
to suggest that Hughes' death was AIDS related.

Given the fact that Hughes died in 1976*, and AIDS wasn't discovered
until 1986**, that is an unlikely cause of his death.


Yeah, the reviewers and biographers who think this say that it might have
been an early form of AIDS. Who knows how many people died before AIDS was
discovered? The theory does not seem consistent to me, either, FWIW.

Larry Dighera wrote:

Given the fact that Hughes died in 1976*, and AIDS wasn't discovered
until 1986**, that is an unlikely cause of his death.

The first *known and proven* death associated with AIDs occurred in the mid-50s
in England. They did not know it was AIDs at the time.

George Patterson
The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 01:47:54 GMT, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote in ::



Larry Dighera wrote:

Given the fact that Hughes died in 1976*, and AIDS wasn't discovered
until 1986**, that is an unlikely cause of his death.

The first *known and proven* death associated with AIDs occurred in the mid-50s
in England. They did not know it was AIDs at the time.

Thanks for the data point, but it would be more useful to know when
the first AIDS associated death occurred among Hughes' likely
consorts.

I suppose I was thinking of Hughes' bisexuality.


This is the first mention of that I have heard. Do you have a source
to cite?



It would appear that you are correct:
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/15/film-taylor.php

Well, there you go! It was written,on the internet, in a movie review, that
HH slept with women and men. Must be TRUE! Give me a break.

Got any FACTUAL cites, anyone?
--
Jim in NC

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 00:12:29 -0500, Morgans wrote:

Well, there you go! It was written,on the internet, in a movie review, that
HH slept with women and men. Must be TRUE! Give me a break.

does it really matter if he srew men and women or only men or only women?

#m
--
Oh. God. What have we done.

On Sat, 01 Jan 2005 16:08:35 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

It would appear that you are correct:
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/15/film-taylor.php

I don't know who the writer is. She's certainly entertaining, but when
she says that Hughes inherited a fortune from his father and spent
huge chunks of it making films etc, then she is wildly inaccurate.

Hughes inherited millions of dollars and turned them into billions of
dollars. He was a very, very successful businessman. The movie catches
the wild nature of some of his bets. What it doesn't catch (and what
Ms Taylor chooses to gloss over) is that many of them were hugely
successful.

Ah, come on! Hughes died at 70 or 71. How can we talk about a
self-inflicted death for a man in his seventies? With his diet, his
mental instability, and his drug habit, that he lived so long is a
testament to human endurance. How many of his contemporaries outlived
him? Even for a boy born to a rich family, I'll bet he lived longer
than his life expectancy for one born in 1905 or thereabouts. (I don't
have a birth date for him, but he became CEO of Hughes Tool in 1924 at
the age of 19.)

In any event, I enjoyed the movie, and I also recommend George
Marrett's biography of him, which confines itself to the aviator part:
www.warbirdforum.com/hughes.htm

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 02:21:10 GMT, Larry Dighera
wrote:

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 01:47:54 GMT, "G.R. Patterson III"
wrote in ::



Larry Dighera wrote:

Given the fact that Hughes died in 1976*, and AIDS wasn't discovered
until 1986**, that is an unlikely cause of his death.

The first *known and proven* death associated with AIDs occurred in the mid-50s
in England. They did not know it was AIDs at the time.

Thanks for the data point, but it would be more useful to know when
the first AIDS associated death occurred among Hughes' likely
consorts.

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 00:12:29 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote in ::


I suppose I was thinking of Hughes' bisexuality.


This is the first mention of that I have heard. Do you have a source
to cite?



It would appear that you are correct:
http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/15/film-taylor.php

Well, there you go! It was written,on the internet, in a movie review, that
HH slept with women and men. Must be TRUE! Give me a break.

Got any FACTUAL cites, anyone?

The link I cited is from the newspaper, Orange County Weekly, and it
gives its source:

The movie glides tactfully over his bisexuality, now proven,
though Charles Higham’s hastily written and mostly hostile
biography of Hughes ...


Howard Hughes: The Secret Life
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846


So in this case, it wasn't only written on the Internet.

On Sun, 02 Jan 2005 07:20:48 -0500, Cub Driver
wrote in
::

How can we talk about a
self-inflicted death for a man in his seventies?

I agree. It would seem that you are the only one arguing that point.