Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [82]
Hughes watched it all in grim silence. By the time the show was over, he knew he had made a terrible mistake.
“That’s it for tonight,” declared the emcee, throwing a kiss. “Thank you, goodnight, and we hope you always get the date you want! Now make sure to stay tuned for ‘The Newlywed Game,’ next on ABC.”
Hughes continued to stare at the screen. But as he watched the newlyweds bicker, his thoughts kept returning to the outrage he had just witnessed. He reached for his bedside legal pad.
“I just got through watching ABC’s Dating Game and Newlywed Game,” he wrote, “and my only reaction is let’s forget all about ABC.
“Bob, I think all this attention directed toward violence in TV dramatic shows is certainly misplaced. These two game shows represent the largest single collection of poor taste I have ever seen.”
But it was more than mere poor taste that riled the recluse into his sudden about-face. It was the horrendous immorality—the shocking violation—he had witnessed on “The Dating Game.”
“The first show—‘Dating Game’ consisted of a small negro child selecting, sight unseen, one of three girls (adult girls) to make a sexually embellished trip to Rome with his father.
“Two of the girls were negro and one was a very beautiful and attractive white girl. The child chose the white girl, who then was introduced to the negro father of the child and informed that she (the white girl) was to make an all expense paid vacation trip to Rome on TWA.”
Talk about adding insult to injury. Not only did they dare to arrange this sinful interracial assignation, but they were using—no, defiling, TWA—his airline—to boot.
“Bob, the entire handling of the show was, in every way carried out in a manner best calculated to titilate and arouse the sexual response of the audience. The whole show was of such a marginal character, sex-wise, that, if it had been presented as a motion picture to the governing body of the movie industry, its acceptance would have been very uncertain at best.
“But, let me explain that I make the above comment based upon the subject matter and the treatment of the show, without any consideration whatsoever of the racial issue.
“Then, on top of the very marginal show of miserable taste, which I have attempted to describe above, they have to compound the abuse of any conceivable moral standard by arranging a sexual rendezvous between a beautiful white girl and a negro man in Rome, which may even be in violation of the law.
“And all of this is done solely for one purpose: to shock and arouse the sexual response of the audience so as to obtain a higher rating from the TV polls for the benefit of the sponsors.
“Please consider this entire affair most carefully, Bob, to see if it gives you any ideas.”
The two-hundred-million-dollar ABC deal was dead.
After months of frenzied effort, after all those sleepless nights, after plotting to collar a president and seize the balance of power, after planning to auction off the most profitable part of his empire, Howard Hughes had finally abandoned his grand quest for a national television network over a game show.
It was the collision of pure kitsch with pure power, a twilight-zone encounter between low camp and high finance.
Everything had come full circle. His struggle to control television, his dream of controlling the world through television, all came to nought because, in the end, Hughes was himself controlled by television.
It was as if the billionaire had finally entered the TV set he watched so compulsively, passing through its screen like Alice through the looking glass, the real “mystery bachelor” stepping out of his offstage isolation booth to join “The Dating Game,” only to discover that his chosen “dream date”—ABC—was soiled merchandise.
There was, however, one last twist, an irony that Hughes himself