The Carpetbaggers is the title of a 1961 bestselling novel by
Harold RobbinsHarold Robbins was an American author.Robbins, born Harold Rubin in New York City, claimed to be a Jewish orphan raised in a Catholic boys home; actually, he was the son of well-educated Russian and Polish immigrants. He was reared by his pharmacist father and stepmother in Brooklyn...
, which was adapted into a
1964 film of the same titleThe Carpetbaggers is a 1964 movie based upon a novel by Harold Robbins also called The Carpetbaggers. The film stars George Peppard as a character based largely on Howard Hughes and Alan Ladd as a former western gunslinger turned actor with the pseudonym Nevada Smith, played the following year in...
.
The term "
carpetbaggerIn United States history, carpetbaggers was the term southerners gave to northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877. They formed a coalition with freedmen , and scalawags in the Republican Party...
" has the generic meaning of a presumptuous newcomer who enters a new territory seeking success. It derived from ambitious Northerners who flocked to the Post-Civil-War South (carrying their clothes and possessions in a handbag made of carpet material), seeking opportunities to help newly-enfranchised black citizens run for political office—in return for various favors. In this novel, the territory is the movie industry, and the newcomer is a wealthy heir to an industrial fortune who, like
Howard HughesHoward Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer, film director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big budget and often controversial films like Hell's Angels,...
, simultaneously pursued aviation and moviemaking avocations.
Roman à clef
Ian Parker described the book as "a
roman à clefA roman à clef or roman à clé is a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction...
—it was generally thought to have been inspired by the life of Howard Hughes." In an interview with Dick Lochte, Robbins said "The airplane manufacturer in
The Carpetbaggers was
Bill LearWilliam Powell Lear was an American inventor and businessman. He is best known for founding the Lear Jet Corporation, a manufacturer of business jets...
, not
Howard HughesHoward Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer, film director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big budget and often controversial films like Hell's Angels,...
, by the way." TV Guide Online's capsule summary of the movie says, however, "Deny it though he might, Harold Robbins obviously used parts of the life of
Howard HughesHoward Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer, film director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big budget and often controversial films like Hell's Angels,...
as the basis for his major character, Jonas Cord." One must agree with Parker and TV Guide, since Lear, developer of the Lear jet and the 8-track tape player, was more famous as an engineer than as an aviator, and had no connection with Hollywood.
Parallels between Cord and Hughes include:
- Cord is the heir to his father's Cord Explosives Company, Hughes to his father's Hughes Tool Company
Hughes Tool Company was established in 1909 as Sharp-Hughes Tool Company when Howard R. Hughes, Sr. patented a roller cutter bit that dramatically improved the rotary drilling process for oil drilling rigs. He partnered with longtime business associate Walter Benona Sharp to manufacture and market...
.
- Cord personally sets aviation records, as did Hughes.
- Much of the novel concerns itself with Cord's ventures into movie production; Hughes produced twenty-six films.
- Cord owns an airline named ICA; Hughes owned TWA
For the Jordanian cargo airline, see Transworld Aviation.Trans World Airlines renamed TWA Airlines LLC in 2001 was a major United States-based airline with hubs in St. Louis, New York , with focus cities in Kansas City, Missouri; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Los Angeles, California. The airline...
.
- Cord personally pilots a gigantic flying boat called the Centurion, "the biggest airplane ever built," to prove its airworthiness in order to meet a naval contract condition. Hughes personally piloted the Hughes H-4 Hercules or Spruce Goose, by some criteria the largest aircraft ever built, to prove its airworthiness in order to deflect Congressional criticism of his war contracts.
Ian Parker and others identify the character Rina Marlowe with
Jean HarlowJean Harlow was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Platinum Blonde" and the "Blonde Bombshell" due to her platinum blonde hair, Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute...
, whom Howard Hughes had under personal contract for a few years and who many believe had an affair with Hughes, although actual evidence of said affair is patchy at best, and Harlow often complained about Hughes making a fortune loaning her to other studios and paying her a paltry salary (her contract with Hughes was eventually bought out by M-G-M). Hollywood must have perceived the similarity, too, for actress
Carroll BakerCarroll Baker, is an American actress who has enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and, particularly in the 1960s, a movie sex symbol...
, who played Rina Marlowe in
The Carpetbaggers, was chosen a year later to play the title role in the biopic
Harlow. Fictional Rina Marlowe's husband, cinema director Claude Dunbar commits suicide shortly after their marriage, as did Jean Harlow's second husband, producer
Paul BernPaul Bern was a German-American film director, screenwriter and producer for MGM.- Early life and career :...
. Marlowe dies tragically of encephalitis circa 1934, Harlow of kidney failure in 1937.
As is typical of Robbins's novels, correspondences between his fictional characters and real individuals are imprecise. In the novel, Jonas Cord's first movie production is entitled
The Renegade; is released in 1930; and stars Rina Marlowe in her screen debut. Marlowe has a 38C bust and Cord has one of his aeronautical engineers design a special brassiere for her. There is a brief reference to his producing a movie four years later entitled "Devils in the Sky." These movie titles bear an unmistakable similarity to two famous movies produced and directed by Hughes:
The OutlawThe Outlaw is a 1943 American western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. The supporting cast includes Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director...
and
Hell's AngelsHell's Angels is a American epic war film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, Ben Lyon, and James Hall. The film, which was produced by Hughes and was written by Harry Behn and Howard Estabrook, centers on the combat pilots of World War I...
.
In historical fact, it was the 1930
Hell's Angels, rather than
The Outlaw, that came first. It starred
Jean HarlowJean Harlow was an American film actress and sex symbol of the 1930s. Known as the "Platinum Blonde" and the "Blonde Bombshell" due to her platinum blonde hair, Harlow was ranked as one of the greatest movie stars of all time by the American Film Institute...
, but it was not her debut; she was an established actress with seventeen earlier screen credits. Jean Harlow was famous as (in the words of her official estate-sponsored website), "Hollywood's Original Blonde Bombshell," but her bust measurement was not extraordinary. The real-life person who
did make her screen debut as a star,
was famous for her large bust, and for whom Hughes really
did have an engineer design a special brassiere, was Hughes' later discovery (and model for the character "Jennie Denton"),
Jane RussellJane Russell is an American film actress.-Early life:Born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell in Bemidji, Minnesota, she was the only daughter of Roy William Russell and Geraldine Jacobi...
, who starred in
The Outlaw in 1943.
Further confusing the situation, the names of real people whom Robbins' fictional characters resemble are often mentioned briefly within the novel, as if they inhabited the fictional world alongside their fictional doubles. When Rina Marlowe dies, a studio official says that, to replace Marlowe in an upcoming picture, "I'm already talking to Metro about getting Jean Harlow." A fictional Charles Standhurst, who owns "more than twenty newspapers stretched across the nation," is said to be "second only to Hearst."
The character Nevada Smith is a cowboy who breaks into the movies by volunteering to perform a risky stunt, becomes fabulously wealthy as a movie cowboy star, and becomes proprietor of a Wild West show. In these details he bears a vague resemblance to
Tom MixThomas Edwin Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
, who was a star performer in the 101 Wild West Show and became in turn a movie extra, stunt man, and major star. Some also see a resemblance between Nevada Smith and
William BoydWilliam Lawrence Boyd was an American film actor best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy.-Biography:Born was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, located 26 miles east of Cambridge and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1918, he went to Hollywood, where he became famous as a leading man in silent film...
, who became famous as
Hopalong CassidyHopalong Cassidy is a cowboy-hero, created in 1904 by Clarence E. Mulford and appearing in a series of popular stories and novels. In print, the character appears as a rude, rough-talking "galoot". Beginning in 1935, the character, played by William Boyd, was transformed into the clean-cut hero of...
. Others say that Smith was based on cowboy actor
Ken MaynardKen Maynard was an American motion picture stuntman and actor.-Biography:Born Kenneth Olin Maynard in Vevay, Indiana, he was one of five children. His younger brother, Kermit Maynard, also became a stuntman and actor.Working at carnivals and circuses, starting at age 16, Maynard became an...
. A 1966 movie entitled
Nevada SmithNevada Smith is a 1966 American Western film made by Embassy Pictures and Solar Productions, in association with and released by Paramount Pictures. It was produced and directed by Henry Hathaway with Joseph E. Levine as executive producer, from a story and screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on...
starring
Steve McQueenTerrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor nicknamed, "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination for his...
was based on his role in this book. The role of
Billy the KidHenry McCarty , better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney, was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the so-called Lincoln County War...
in Hughes'
The OutlawThe Outlaw is a 1943 American western film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell. The supporting cast includes Jack Buetel, Thomas Mitchell, and Walter Huston. Hughes also produced the film, while Howard Hawks served as an uncredited co-director...
was played by
Jack BuetelJack Buetel was an American film and television actor.Born Warren Higgins in Dallas, Texas, Buetel moved to Los Angeles, California in the late 1930s with the intention of establishing a film career...
, who, prior to his movie career was neither an outlaw nor a cowboy, but an insurance clerk.
Reviews
Murray Schumach's review in
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded in 1851 and published in New York City. The largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States, "The Gray Lady"—named for its staid appearance and style—is regarded as a national newspaper of record...
on June 25, 1961 opens: "It was not quite proper to have printed
The Carpetbaggers between covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory." He complains that the plot is merely "an excuse for a collection of monotonous episodes about normal and abnormal sex—and violence ranging from simple battery to gruesome varieties of murder."
In this respect,
The Carpetbaggers resembles the novels of the
Marquis de SadeDonatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary and writer. His works include novels, short stories, plays, and political tracts; in his lifetime some were published under his own name, while others appeared anonymously and Sade denied being their author...
, which interleave philosophical disquisitions, (mostly-abnormal) sex scenes, shocking violence, and fiendish torture, all repeated
ad libitem and—to some—
ad nauseam.
On the day the review was published,
The Carpetbaggers was already at number 9 on the
Times bestseller list.
The most successful of Robbins's many successful books, it was eventually to sell, as of 2004, over eight million copies. The profile of Robbins in Gale's
Contemporary Authors Online makes the startling claim that
The Carpetbaggers "is estimated to be the fourth most-read book in history."
Artifact of the sexual revolution
Published at the onset of the
sexual revolutionThe sexual revolution encompasses the changes in social thought and codes of behaviour related to sexuality throughout the Western world.-Overview:...
,
The Carpetbaggers demonstrates Robbins's skill at judging the exact boundaries of permissibility. Only two years earlier, the
U.S. Postmaster GeneralThe United States Postmaster General is the executive head of the United States Postal Service. The office, in one form or another, is older than both the United States Constitution and the United States Declaration of Independence...
had banned
D. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's
Lady Chatterley's LoverLady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence written in 1928.Printed in Florence, Italy, in 1928, it was not printed in the United Kingdom until 1960...
from the mails as obscene. In 1960, publisher
Grove PressGrove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an influential alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the...
won the Supreme Court case contesting the ban, but even in 1961 booksellers all over the country were sued for selling
Henry MillerHenry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
's
Tropic of CancerTropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller, first published in 1934 by Obelisk Press in Paris. Its publication in 1961 in the United States by Grove Press led to an obscenity trial that was one of several that tested American laws on pornography in the 1960s...
. Parker quotes a professor of English as saying "
The Carpetbaggers could have sent any retailer handling it to prison before 1960."
The Carpetbaggers never landed in court. It did not extend the boundaries of what was acceptable. But it vigorously (and profitably) exploited the territory that Grove Press had opened up. On the second page of the novel, as aviator Jonas Cord approaches the landing strip of his father's explosives factory, we read: "The black roof of the plant lay on the white sand like a girl on the white sheets of a bed, the dark pubic patch of her whispering its invitation into the dimness of the night." In 1961, this was explosive indeed.
The Carpetbaggers was also perhaps the first
New York Times bestseller to include scenes of fellatio.
While it may have been just within bounds in the United States, in 1963 it was still one of 188 books prohibited from import into Australia, along with
Vladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer....
's
LolitaLolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris, later translated by the author into Russian and published in 1958 in New York...
,
D. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's
Lady Chatterley's LoverLady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence written in 1928.Printed in Florence, Italy, in 1928, it was not printed in the United Kingdom until 1960...
,
Grace MetaliousGrace Metalious was an American author, best known for her controversial novel Peyton Place.-Early life:...
's
Peyton PlacePeyton Place is a 1956 novel by Grace Metalious. "Peyton Place" has become an expression to describe a place whose inhabitants have sordid secrets....
, and no fewer than seven books by
Henry MillerHenry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
.
External links