As detailed in Karina Longworth's book cited below, movie mogul Howard Hughes (1905-76) was an expert in manipulating the women in his life, and kept them constantly at his beck and call. He was also furiously possessive and abusive when he thought they were seeing anyone else, which was of course the height of hypocrisy given all his myriad affairs. But few of his girlfriends were as brave as Ava Gardner (1922-90), who was determined not to be anyone's punching-bag and retaliated with gusto:
Ava had never seen Howard angry. Now he got really angry. He swung at her, and the next thing she knew she had fallen back into a chair. Then, she recalled, Hughes "jumped at me and started to pound on my face until it was a mess."
Ava, stuck in the chair, couldn't fight back. Satisfied that he had made his point, Hughes gave up and started to walk away. Then, Ava recalled, "I looked for some weapon to attack him." She spotted an ornamental bronze bell on the mantelpiece. Knowing the partially deaf Hughes wouldn't be able to hear her coming, she followed behind him, and just as she caught up, she shouted his name. He turned, and she struck him down the front of his face, splitting his forehead open and knocking loose two teeth. Livid at what he'd done to her, Ava couldn't help but continue the beating while Howard was down. She grabbed a chair and started hitting him some more. Finally her maid walked in and put a stop to it.
"I thought I'd killed the poor bastard," Ava later said. "There was blood on the walls, on the furniture, real blood in the bloody Marys."
- Karina Longworth, Seduction: Sex, Lies & Stardom in Howard Hughes' Hollywood, New York, 2018, p.248
See also:
Movies: The refreshingly brutal candour of 'The RKO Story', 27 July 2021
Movies: The Aviatrix, 21 December 2009
Movies: The greatest vampire film ever, 28 October 2009
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