Cinema: Midnight Sale

With his talent for exploiting all the theatrical possibilities of the female bosom, plus some solid moviemaking savvy, RKO Boss Howard Hughes made his mark in Hollywood years ago. His famed Hell’s Angels (1930) made a star of Jean Harlow. He ballyhooed the charms of Jane Russell so successfully that she was a national celebrity long before the public ever saw her first movie, The Outlaw. In its day, too, RKO has been known for making both its audiences and its stockholders happy. As releasing agent for Walt Disney productions, it has gladdened the hearts of both; and such RKO-produced pictures as Top Hat and Kitty Foyle have clicked with both critics and box office.

Hughes, who also keeps busy with airplane and guided-missile production and a tool company, is the kind of personality that Hollywood understands. But he and RKO, which he took charge of in 1948, did not turn out to be a winning combination. Recently he admitted that he had been on the lot only once—and then only suggested that the place be painted.* His offices were located about a mile from RKO; his decisions were announced by telephone or messenger, frequently after midnight. Always elusive and wary, he liked doing business in off hours; frequently dressed in tennis sneakers, old slacks and a sport shirt, he would hold conferences in cars, planes and on street corners.

With all his knack for rough-tough, sexy, spectacular productions, Hughes seemed unable to cope with the complex operations of a big studio. His insistence not only on policy-making but on such details as film-editing slowed RKO production to the extent that it lost $3,500,000 in 1950, has not started a new picture in the last three months.

Last week Howard Hughes decided to call it a day. He agreed to sell his control of RKO Radio Pictures to a buying group headed by Chicago Promoter Ralph Stolkin. The price: $7,345,940. (The sale did not include Actress Russell, who is under contract to Hughes’ tool company.) Even during his last hours as boss of RKO, Hughes remained in character: the signing took place around midnight; Hughes, in tennis shoes, temporarily misplaced the down payment check (about $2,000,000); he insisted on a last-minute conference with his lawyer in a clothes closet.

*Some RKO staffers prefer another version of the story: Hughes flew over the lot early one morning on his way to Tucson, noticed that the buildings looked shabby, phoned his instructions from Arizona.