To Kill the Duke by Sam Moffie, Vicki Contavespi Page A

don’t mind. Have my girls given you any inspiration in your quest to find an actress with big jugs for the picture?” asked Hughes.
    Powell let out another sigh and then pointed at his boss’ crotch.
    Hughes looked down at the part between his legs and started laughing, which in turn made Powell laugh.
    “Now that’s what I call low flying,” Hughes cackled as he tucked in his penis and buttoned up his fly. He then excused himself to wash-up.

    “Well?” asked Oscar later when Powell and Millard were talking about the fly over.
    “Well what?” answered Dick Powell.
    “His penis. What about his penis?”
    “He has one,” quipped Powell.
    “I’m definitely right about you. You’re not funny.”
    “Anything I know about Hughes is serious. Funny is for Jack Benny,” Powell said.
    Oscar Millard rolled his eyes. He would have loved to have found out something about Howard Hughes’ penis that he could have used as gossip around Hollywood, especially given how people in high places trade information with people in low places like him for something down the line… and as Oscar Millard knew, all writers need something down the line — especially screenwriters.

    After spending about 15 minutes in the bathroom, Howard Hughes emerged and informed Dick Powell that the vintage red cliffs and soil of Southern Utah would be coming into view shortly.
    “Glad we are filming in color, Howard,” Powell said as he wondered if Hughes had used the sandpaper on his penis and then held back a gag at
that
thought (he’d had enough gagging.)
    “Me, too, since black-and-white went out with the silents,” Hughes said matter-of-factly. “Know what the best thing is about sound and color film?”
    Powell shook his head no.
    “Got that cheapskate Joe Kennedy out of Hollywood,” Hughes said with a huge grin.
    Powell disagreed with the statement about silent movies, but agreed with the statement about Kennedy. Dick Powell was a big fan of Hollywood and everything that made it the dream factory for all Americans. He loved the silent films, knowing that they were the pioneers for the talkies. He wished that most of the people around during the silent film era could have profited from what they developed and realized a lot of money instead of ending up broke. He loved the black-and-white talkies even more than the silent films.
    A lot of that was very personal because Dick Powell had become a big star during the heady days of film noir. Now, it was color films and Dick Powell and many others would adapt. Because if they didn’t adapt to the new technology others would, and Dick Powell would be on the outside looking in. He had no desire to do that. Filmmaking was his life. To Hughes and the other money people it was an investment that might or might not pay off. If the film didn’t make a profit, the worst thing that happened to men like Hughes was that they tripped over their money and received a paper cut. To Dick Powell… failure meant ruin by the Chinese water torture method.
    “Drip by drip the scripts stop. The investors go away. The phone calls stop. The phone calls are never returned. The invites stop. The reporters forget how to spell your name,” Powell had told his wife, June Allyson,once when they had spied a desolate D.W. Griffith walking down Sunset Boulevard a long time ago.
    “Sometimes I think it’s called the dream factory by the fans, because to all of us in the business it can become the nightmare factory,” she replied as they pulled up and gave Griffith a lift to a restaurant and $200 pocket money.

    “Do you know what they grow in this part of Utah, kid?” Hughes asked as the plane flew so low that Dick Powell could see the sweat forming on the wild horses as they raced away from the roar of Hughes’ aircraft.
    “Red riding hoods,” Powell guessed, totally clueless about what was grown in Southern Utah but in awe of the vintage red coloring of the cliffs and soil.
    “You’re weird, Powell,”