In 1943 Howard Hughes directed and released a highly controversial movie name "The Outlaw" staring the stunningly beautiful bombshell, Jane Russell.
The Outlaw launched Jane Russell's career and turned her into a Hollywood movie-star. The western genre movie is about a fictional relationship between Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid and their feud over a beautiful woman named Rio.
Howard Hughes was obsessed with Jane Russell's beauty, breasts and cleavage and wanted to sleep with her but she was happily married and devoutly Catholic. I know this because when I was a child, I asked Jane about this. More on that later.
To make a long story short, the film was considered to be way to racy and was censored in theaters across the United States. Howard turned to my Grandfather Jake and asked him to take the case. When they first discussed the case they had a huge ego clash.
Howard being a strong alpha male told Jake that he was close friends with William Randolf Hearst and he thought they should try and embarass the censors in the court of pubic opinion through the media.
Jake disagreed and told Howard the only way he would take the case was if Howard allowed Jake to handle the case in any way he saw fit. Howard was shocked because he was used to dictating to everybody. Jake and Howard argued back and forth and Howard finally agreed to trust Jake.
Jake subpoenaed paintings from the San Francisco De Young Museum that were considered to be classical masterpieces and had them placed under cloth covers in the court room.
When the trial began, Jake addressed the jury and said, "Ladies and Gentlmen of the jury, we bring our children and grandchildren to the De Young Museum and expose them to these paintings and tell them they are masterpieces that have marked the upward surge of mankind!!!"
He then had all the cloth covers removed to expose paintings of completely naked men and women in all kinds of strange and awkward sexual postions.
Then Jake said to the jury "Do you mean to tell me that we expose our children to this artwork where they see completely naked women, yet the fact that Howard has exposed a few inches of Mrs. Russell's bosom is somehow pornographic!?!"
The just immediately stopped Jake and dismissed the case. The judge then apologized to the jury for wasting their time.
On the surface the case may have seemed to be inconsequential, but the first ammendment implactions were deeply profound. Had this case gone in the opposite direction, the entire sexual revolution of the 60s may not have occurred.
Decades later in 1956 Jake took on the case of the Howl and the Censor which also had deeply profound long term first amendment implications.
Back to the Jane Russell story. When I was a child, members of my family were friends with Jane Russell. One day we were getting ready to go out to dinner with Jane and I asked my Aunt, Dora Jane, who was Jake's daughter, why Jane Russell was so famous and what her background was.
My aunt said she was a huge Hollywood Movie star and that there was a huge contravereay about whether or not she had an affair with Howard Hughes. Keep in mind at the time, i was twelve years old.
We were all sitting at the dinner table at a San Francisco restaurant named the Brazen Head in the San Francisco Marina. I was bored out of my skull with the adult conversation taking place which I could not relate to.
I kept staring at Jane Russell and I remember thinking to myself, "She is supposed to be some gorgeous sex bomb?" All I really new of Jane was that I used to see her on TV doing bra commercials which was just about as interesting to my 12 year old mind as walking on broken glass barefoot.
This just did not make sense to me because at the time I remember Jane had short hair almost cut like a man. There was a quite break at the table and I turned to Jane and said "So is it true that you had an affair with Howard Hughes?"
You should have seen the expression on Jane's face!!! and the table went completely silent. You could have heard a pin drop. I caught her and everybody at the table completely off guard!!
Jane starred at me with this look of shock on her face and then suddenly realized I was just a naive child with apparently no sense of fear around touchy subjects. She started to giggle and then everybody at the table started to laugh. I could not figure out what was so funny?
After Jane stopped laughing, she turned to me and said "No. We did not have an affair. I am not saying he did not want to, but I was happily married and not interested.
