Seduction

Sex, Lies, and Stardom in Howard Hughes's Hollywood

By: Karina Longworth

Narrated by: Karina Longworth

In this riveting popular history, the creator of You Must Remember This probes the inner workings of Hollywood’s glamorous Golden Age through the stories of some of the dozens of actresses pursued by Howard Hughes, to reveal how the millionaire mogul’s obsessions with sex, power, and publicity trapped, abused, or benefited women who dreamt of screen stardom.

In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins, there was Howard Hughes - the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.

His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes - perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era - commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women.

Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’ grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.

Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its Golden Age - a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

©2018 Karina Longworth (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

A must listen for classsic movie fans

Karina Longworth is a phenomenal story teller. I have been a Classic Movie since I was 10 years old so have knowledge of the stories she tells and she is right on...she makes them so interesting. She also has a Podcast "You Must Remember This" and if you are not familiar with it you must give it a listen....I guarantee you will "binge" listen...Thank you Karina for the many hours of extraordinary fun with your Podcast and now this book.....

Hughes - stranger than any fiction

Fans of Longworth's Hollywood history podcast "You Must Remember This" will obviously love this audiobook, but for the uninitiated, Longworth does a very in depth historical look into Howard Hughes history, his pathology,and the impact he had on Hollywood and 20th century popular culture at large. She takes a deep look at the people who were in orbit and the roles they played in his life, and his deep seated need to obsessively control them (from famous to non-famous actresses, directors and his aids at large). As gender roles were expanding in the 20th century with the motion picture business redefining what it meant to be a working woman, Hughes had a pattern of courting women into either relationships and/or the studio with promise of fame and wealth, and then evasively keeping them hostage for a long time, decades in some cases (hence the "sex' and "lies"). Famous faces show up (like Ava Gardner, Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers) and she makes sure to separate fact from fiction, often which, the truth becomes way stranger than fiction. She really does quite a lot of extensive research into the man very few knew, but keeps the narrative lively and interesting. Rather than watch the Aviator for the umpteenth time - this book is an amazing portrait of man who went to surreal lengths to push or publicize projects, and who also changed history, often unintentionally.

Wonderful book!

A great and unique take on an interesting time, place and people. Karina did an amazing job and picked a winner of a topic.

An old Hollywood must listen

Great listen - interesting topic - if you love old Hollywood and the podcast “you must remember this” you won’t be disappointed

Excellent,

Excellent, and not a minute too long. Ms Longworth has a keen eye and writes (and reads) well. After listening to her fine podcast I was interested to see how she'd do with a book length treatment in the same subject area. Exceeded my already high expectations. She writes with a modern sensibility but a thorough understanding of the past. Uses sources well.

Karina Longworth is a national treasure.

Protect Katrina Longworth at all costs. We need more of her and her books/podcasts in this world.

Listen at 1.2x speed and you’ll love it

Any quibbles with the author’s narration are probably either among those who haven’t listened to YMRT, or who don’t know that the trick to listening to Karina Longworth is to speed her up a little. This book was fun and fascinating and lovingly researched. I had fun listening this book and wished it could have gone on longer.

fabulous read

a book about a schizophrenic megalomaniac near pedophile nymphomaniac control freak with OCD. it was fantastic absolutely fabulous

Please don't let her read another book aloud.

While the actual content of the book is interesting and insightful, the author's reading is enough to make me want to set my hair on fire. With her slooooow cadence, ultra-clipped pronunciation, bizarrely staccato "Ts," and stilted "I am reading aloud" self-awareness, listening to this for hours on end became tortuous. I, too, had to increase the speed in order to tolerate the weirdness of the pace. Wish I'd bought the physical book instead.

Really wanted to like this

Want to start out by saying that I am a huge fan of Karina and am an avid listener of her podcast, You Must Remember This and I respect her research process so much. I’ve never took issue with her voice before, however this book is read at such a slow cadence I had to speed it up to 2x it’s pace and still, I hate to say, it was unlistenable. I will be purchasing a hard copying and enjoying her wonderful work in print. So sorry!