Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters; The Definitive Biography of the First American Billionaire
Beverly Hills, CA: New Millennium Press, 2001. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xii, 444 pages. Frontis Illustration. Illustrations. Footnotes. Source Notes. Index. Richard Hack (March 20, 1951) is an American writer best known for his biographical books and screenplays. Hack moved to Los Angeles where he was hired by TV Guide magazine as its West Coast national programming editor. By the 1980s, Hack began writing the TeleVisions column for The Hollywood Reporter. Hack often appeared on The Tonight Show and Today reporting on Hollywood. During the same period, he was a frequent guest on Oprah Winfrey, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose, Tomorrow, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood. In 1990, Hack left The Hollywood Reporter to become Vice President of Creative Affairs at Dove Audio and Entertainment, a production company that specialized in miniseries and books-on-tape. While at Dove, Hack adapted Sidney Sheldon’s The Sands of Time, Memories of Midnight, and The Stars Shine Down as mini-series, which he also produced, and wrote his first book, Next to Hughes with Robert Maheu. His bestseller Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters was released on September 11, 2001. Hack was being interviewed live on the Today show by Matt Lauer when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. The abrupt ending of their interview and the early reports of the attack from the Today show, is shown, as part of an exhibit in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. His book, PuppetMaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover was the basis of the 2011 film J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood. Howard Hughes is legendary for his success as an industrialist, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, philanthropist and for much of his lifetime, was the richest man in the USA. In HUGHES, Hack shatters the illusion of his life and exposes the man behind the myth. Hughes was a man without compassion and an entrepreneur without ethics. Newly uncovered personal letters, over 110,000 pages of sealed court testimony, recently declassified FBI files, never-before-published autopsy reports and exclusive interviews reveal a man so devious in his thinking, and so influential that his impact continues to be felt even today. From entertainment to politics, aviation to espionage, the influence and manipulation of this billionaire has left an indelibly unique mark on the cultural landscape. Hughes wrote over 8000 pages of memos, letters and personal notes. Impeccably researched, here is the definitive story of Hughes. From a Publishers Weekly article: Was ever a life more incredible than that of Howard Hughes? Record-setting aviator, fabled lover, celebrated film director and producer, genius financier and industrialist, the nation's first billionaire. who at one time or another owned TWA, RKO Studios and most of Las Vegas, Hughes (1905–1976) also suffered from severe psychological afflictions that led him to spend his last years in isolation, naked in blacked-out rooms on several continents, devoting days at a time to screening grade-Z movies, dictating long memos to his staff about the proper procedures to keep his room and person free of germs, mostly through the liberal use of Kleenex as a prophylactic, even as he ingested titanic amounts of codeine, his hair and fingernails growing to grotesque length and his back running with untreated sores. Hughes's story has been told before, of course, but never with the overview, insight and, most important, extraordinarily diligent research applied by Hack in this riveting biography. The author of biographiess of Ron Perelman and Michael Jackson, Hack has his own second-degree connection with Hughes; he co-wrote the autobiography of Hughes's longtime lieutenant, Robert Maheu. To separate fact from rumor in detailing Hughes's life, Hack read more than 8,000 pages of Hughes's private papers, 2,500 pages of recently declassified FBI and CIA documents, over 100,000 pages of previously sealed legal briefs, corporate papers and inventories, and spoke with hundreds of players, key and minor, in Hughes's drama. What Hack has uncovered is an astonishing tale of rampant ambition, obsession and madness. While his prose doesn't match the poetic heights of, say, a Nick Tosches, he presents his chronicle with bold certitude, not only illumining the amazing events of Hughes's life in a captivating manner but penetrating deep into the billionaire's twisted psyche. Readers will be nailed to these pages as, in the most exciting biography of the year, Hack presents the American dream curdling into the American nightmare, personified in a legend who at last has an accounting worthy of him. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Howard Hughes, Entrepreneur, Billionaire, Aviation, Noah Dietrich, Bill Gay, Robert Maheu, Hollywood, Hughes Aircraft, TWA, Motion Pictures, Jean Peters, RKO, Katharine Hepburn, Jane Russell, XF-11, HK-1
ISBN: 189322435X
[Book #77640]
Price: $55.00