There’s Lavish Spending, Then There’s Collecting People Level of Lavish Spending
Howard Hughes liked to collect people – especially beautiful women – like normal folk collect stamps. So he signed the teenager to a personal contract. “Personal contract” was as creepy as it sounds: soon after she signed, Hughes told the teenaged model that he never wanted her to marry anyone. At first, that was no problem for Greer, who initially liked Hughes. As she put it years later: “I found him rather endearing, like a child. His idea was to go to the amusement park … He won a large collection of Kewpie dolls for me“. When Greer welcomed the attentions of other men, however, Hughes was furious.
Greer was fine with Howard Hughes taking her out to amusement parks – at least for a while. Things got awkward, however, when she welcomed the attentions of other men who saw her as a woman and not a child, and had more in mind than amusement park trips. Hughes wasn’t the only one smitten by Greer’s 1942 modeling photo. Star crooner Rudy Vallee was also infatuated, and tried to get her address from Life magazine. The magazine refused, but Vallee persisted, and when he eventually found it, things got complicated. Greer might have liked hanging out with Hughes, but a rich man who treated her like a child with trips to amusement parks was no competition to a star singer who romanced her like a woman. Rudy Vallee swept Greer off her feet, and after a whirlwind courtship, they wed in 1943.
