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Exposing Some of the Meanest and Pettiest Men in History

Khalid Elhassan January 20, 2021 32 min

Jane Greer - Out of the Past — Jane Greer with Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past. Associated Press

28. Howard Hughes Went Into Jealous Jerk Mode When He Lost the Object of His Affection to Another Man

Howard Hughes taking Jane Greer out to amusement parks was all well and good – for a while. Things got awkward, however, when Greer welcomed the attentions of other men who saw her as a woman and not a child, and had more in mind than taking her to amusement parks. Hughes wasn’t the only one captivated by Greer’s 1942 modeling photo. Star Crooner, Rudy Vallee, was also smitten. He tried unsuccessfully to get her address from Life magazine. When he eventually found it, things got complicated.

Greer might have liked hanging out with Hughes, but a wealthy eccentric treating her like a child with trips to amusement parks was no competition to a star singer romancing her like a woman. Rudy Vallee swept Greer off her feet, and after a whirlwind courtship, they wed in 1943. That left Hughes seething with jealousy. Whatever the legality of the “no marriage” clause in the personal contract that Greer had signed, Hughes had meant it, and felt betrayed. So he went from doting to destructive and set out to wreck Greer’s career.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.