To Kill the Duke (59 page)

Where the hell are the costumes and props from all my naval movies
, he wondered as he ran from aisle to aisle searching for what he had come to find.

“Everything is a blur!” he yelled out to the huge building, full of every imaginable piece of clothing and prop item that had ever had been in a RKO motion picture. “Nothing is in order,” he said as he began tossing all sorts of items into the isles in search for what he had come for.

He did find a regulation U.S. Army canteen. He swished it around and was surprised that there was some liquid in it. He removed the cap and took a whiff. It smelled like vinegar. Hughes noticed that the pills had given him cotton mouth and he had a mini debate with himself to drink what was inside the canteen.

“What the hell,” he said as he downed what was in the canteen. “Not bad, not bad at all.”

At least his cotton mouth was cured for the moment.

He frantically ran around looking for what he knew was inside this vast museum of movie artifacts, when he slipped on something he had already tossed into the aisle and crashed into some shelves. A lot of clothes and miscellaneous props fell on and around him.

“Fuck!” Hughes screamed… and then he started laughing, for right next to him was the very costume he had been trying so hard to locate.

It was an outfit from the 1948 Republic Studios’ film
The Wake of the Red Witch.
Howard had bought this suit, along with other costumes and props, from the founder and president of Republic Studios, Herbert J. Yates.

Yates was the epitome of a cheap Hollywood studio head. He had formed Republic Studios by merging other studios that operated
on shoe-string budgets. The nickname for those studios in and around Hollywood was ‘Poverty Row.’

Yates always needed quick operating capital. Hughes was always looking for a deal.

“Yates makes ‘B’ movies,” Hughes told Powell after Howard had purchased what he wanted from Yates. “However he is always running out of ‘A’ money.”

One of Howard’s favorite movies was
The Wake of the Red Witch;
coincidentally; it starred John Wayne.

Hughes had been hearing the critics harping about RKO’s lack of ‘water pictures,’ so he had made plans to develop some screenplays and see if any good ‘water pictures’ could be put together by his staff.

“After all, the 50s haven’t been very good to ‘water pictures’ other than war ones,” Hughes told Dick Powell, who silently groaned.

And with good reason
, Powell thought.

Howard Hughes wanted to remake
Red Witch
which itself was essentially a partial remake of the 1942 Paramount Pictures’
Reap the Wild Wind.

This was one of the reasons that Howard bought as much as he could from Herbert. Hughes knew that he could outfit his remake on the cheap from the killing he would make on giving Yates ten cents on the dollar for the many costumes and props he owned, and that included a lot of items from
Red Witch
.

Hughes looked at the helmet that went with the armored diving suit that Wayne had worn during the filming of
Red Witch;
it was the object of his desire for the night.

An armored diving suit comprised of helmet with glass viewing ports, waterproof cloth, waterproof gloves and waterproofed, weighted boots.

Being an inventor, an engineer and a daredevil (but not much of a scientist), Howard believed that by wearing this suit, he could walk on the red sand he had trucked in to finish the post-production work on
The Conqueror
and be protected from any radioactivity. He quickly found the rest of the armored diving suit and put it on.

“Now all I need is a Geiger counter, and I know where that must be,” he said gleefully.

He went back to the isle where he had found the official U.S. Army canteen. He found the canteen and shook it, hoping there might be some of that liquid in it. It was empty, but he quickly found a Geiger counter amongst the other official U.S. Army items that were near each other, and walked as fast as he could in the heavy suit holding the helmet in his right hand and the Geiger counter in his left hand.

“Well, at least someone must have liked the army and put army stuff together,” he remarked as he exited the costume and prop warehouse and headed for building number seven, where
The Conqueror
was wrapping up post-production work.

It took Hughes a lot longer to get to building number seven, but he made it and was quite proud of himself for not only doing that, but for also coming up with the idea of protecting himself while he found out for himself about the red sand.

“Should have done something like this way back when I found out about it years ago, you dummy,” Hughes accused himself.

“Yeah, but I am a
rich
dummy!” he shouted back to himself as he put on the helmet and went into the building.

He turned on the lights and was amazed at what he saw.

“It’s like being in a time machine, except that I’m alone, which is how I like it to be,” Hughes said as he started walking, or staggering, towards the part of building number seven that had the most red sand spread around. He clicked on the Geiger account and it registered nothing. Hughes sighed, but then stopped dead in his tracks.

“What if it’s broken?” he asked himself out loud, after all he had bought it from that cheap bastard Yates. He then did something that one of his most trusted and respected engineers had taught him about mechanical devices.

“When in doubt, hit it, Mr. Hughes,” the man directed.

So, Hughes did just that and the Geiger counter went nuts as Hughes tramped all over the sand. The counter jumped so much that Hughes found himself jumping all over and around the sand, kicking it everywhere. Then he completely lost his balance and fell onto one of Genghis Khan’s tents knocking over everything and making a worse mess than he had in the costume and prop warehouse. Once he got back to his feet and
surveyed the damage he promised himself he would never, ever pop pills and put on an armored diving suit again.

Hughes now had verified what he always knew — the damn sand was radioactive and was going to, at best, make some people very sick and at worse kill others.

He left building number seven as he had left it — knocked-over tent and spilled contents untouched. He went to the costume and prop warehouse, took off his diving suit and left it in a heap on the floor by the door. He maintained the Geiger counter and slowly walked to his office where he left a memo for the RKO maintenance people to clean up both places. He jumped into his roadster and drove to the gate where he told his security people to stay the night and make sure everything was back to normal at RKO when the place opened for business in the morning. He sped off… at a very high speed of course.

As he drove up, in and around the mountains high over Malibu, he thought about what had happened to him with all this nuclear fallout.

What should I do?
he thought.

He saw a scenic pull-over just up the road and eased his car into it. He got out of the car with the Geiger counter still in his hand. He looked out over the city and marveled that everyone down below him was blissfully ignorant about the coming nuclear age. He tossed the Geiger counter over the edge.

“The future is yours, you lousy Geiger counter,” he yelled as he knew now he had to do two things. One was to get rid of the red sand after post production was wrapped up. The second was going to be a lot harder — he had to tell the truth to Dick Powell.

There was a loud knock at the Powell’s front door… a really loud knock. June Allyson Powell, who had just gotten the children off to school and was busy planning the Powell family’s weekly agenda, got up from the kitchen table and walked to the door.

She wasn’t expecting any visitors and was thinking that her husband had probably sent her
more
flowers because of the time he was spending on wrapping up the
The Conqueror
at RKO.

At least he is closer to home, and donating the flowers to the local veterans’ cemetery is worth its weight in gold
she thought as she opened the door.

“Duke Wayne!” she screamed as she jumped up into his massive chest.

The Duke was used to this, and of course easily grabbed ahold of June, carried her into the house and gently placed her on one of the couches in the Powell’s family room.

“Wait a minute June, I have to go get something out of my car,” Wayne said as he jogged to his car.

Early morning flowers delivered by John Wayne… not too shabby Dick
, she thought as she eagerly awaited the Duke’s return.
I don’t think these flowers are going anywhere
.

John Wayne was delivering something to the Powell’s house, but it wasn’t flowers.

The Duke had decided to pay Dick Powell’s plumbing bill after all… but in unwrapped quarters.

He came back into the house and dropped a large cardboard box with a thud on the Powell’s living room carpet.

“What’s that, Duke?” June asked.

“My payment in full,” Wayne answered.

“Payment for what?” she asked him.

“The plumbing bill that your husband has been hounding me about for months. Hell, June, he even threatened to withhold it from my pay,” Wayne told her.

“What are you paying us in, new plumbing parts?” she asked as she got up from the couch to peek into the box.

“You’re not a good guesser, either,” Duke told her. “Take a look-see.”

And June Allyson looked into the box and started laughing.

“Only you,” she said as she went up and hugged the Duke again.

“You think Dick will accept my tribute?”

“Of course, but he’s going to be pissed about getting paid in quarters.”

“Good,” declared Wayne. “I have to report back to RKO to finish up some post-production work. What has Dick told you about the movie?”

“It’s a western set a very long time ago and should do very well for everyone. Did you like sand skiing?”

“Hated all that sand, but I loved the raspberry lime rickeys,” Duke said.

“I hear you tell a good ghost story,” June said.

“I do. We’ll have to swap ghost stories some night
after
this picture is done,” Wayne said. “Good-bye for now.”

June took another look at the big box of unwrapped quarters and went to the phone to call her husband.

“He did
what
?” an agitated Dick Powell said into the phone after Miss Burchett had passed his wife’s call through.

“He paid off the plumbing bill in quarters,” June said. “He looks great, too,” she teased.

“He always looks great to a bored housewife,” he replied sarcastically.

“Someone’s grumpy,” she replied.

“I have to meet Howard at some out-of-the-way hotel later today. He said it was a matter of life and death.”

“Everything is life and death with that man. He sees no middle,” she pointed out. “Tell you what, pick up some quarter wrappers and I’ll make some raspberry lime rickeys and tonight we can have some fun rolling the quarters,” she said.

“Love it and love you, too,” Dick Powell told his wife June Allyson.

“But of course,” she replied.