“My wife wept for hours over this thing”: Ben Lyon in a personal snapshot sent to a fourteen-year-old fan in 1928. Lincoln Quarberg papers/photographer unknown
Jean Harlow and Ben Lyon in a publicity still for Hell’s Angels. Harlow is wearing the evening gown that Hughes designed to turn her body into a spectacle on par with the film’s airplane stunts. John Springer Collection/Getty Images
Billie Dove in Cock of the Air. Bettmann/Getty Images
Ginger Rogers and Howard Hughes, on a date in the early 1930s. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
An extravagantly feminized Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), her film debut. Bettmann/Getty Images
Bette Davis met Hughes at a charity ball in 1938, shortly after his flight around the world. They then embarked on an affair that ended her first marriage. Bettmann/Getty Images
After countless photo shoots for The Outlaw, after being asked to jump on a bed in a nightgown, Jane Russell felt she had been pushed too far. Gene Lester/Getty Images
The photo that launched a phenomenon: Jane Russell shot by master photographer George Hurrell to promote The Outlaw. Donaldson Collection/Getty Images
After years of buildup, Faith Domergue got her best role for Howard Hughes in Where Danger Lives, opposite Robert Mitchum. Bettmann/Getty Images
Richard Jaeckel and Terry Moore in Come Back, Little Sheba, for which Moore was nominated for an Oscar. Archive Photos/Getty Images
Jane Russell’s costume in The French Line drew protests from the censors—and from Russell herself. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images
Marilyn Monroe, Jean Peters, and Max Showalter on the set of Niagara (1953). Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images
Jean Peters and Richard Kiley in Pickup on South Street, a film that sexualizes domestic violence. John Springer Collection/Getty Images
Hughes and Ava Gardner in 1946, in between her marriages to Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In The Barefoot Contessa, Ava Gardner played a character she believed was based on herself, opposite Warren Stevens as an emotionally distant tycoon clearly modeled after Howard Hughes. Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images
“Legitimate widow”: Terry Moore at her 1983 press conference to announce her settlement with the Hughes heirs. Bettman/Getty Images