VILLA VOLARE

Forget Howard's "Spruce Goose." His Villa Volare was the biggest thing that ever flew, the only Spanish-style home with pool and tennis courts and 13 acres of manicured grounds to ever file a flight plan, and to do it in utmost secrecy. Not even the house staff knew the truth until the thing was airborne on its one and only flight, from Long Beach to Malibu. How could they, when the cockpit was way up in the attic behind barred doors? Villa Volare is still there in Malibu, just off the beach where Howard pancake-landed it that day in 1949— arguably the single most amazing feat of pure seat-of-the-pants flying skill in history. (With no tailplane, the stubbiest of wings, and radio reception drowned out by crashing crockery and falling roof tiles, pilot control depended mostly on prayer.) This was Howard's love life wrought in technological overkill; he knew any lady friend would simply melt when he flew his place to her place for a weekend tryst. But the dame Howard intended to dazzle on the estate's maiden voyage wasn't home, and this so irked him that he just climbed down from the cockpit and walked away for good. In a petulant life, it was probably the most petulant thing Howard ever did.

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THE PERFUME SENSOR

Below, a page from the handbook Howard issued to all his personal staff. It spells out how to shadow a dame who might be two-timing him. Howard ran a fleet of dummy taxicabs all over Los Angeles for just this purpose. Each one was fitted with a tiny perfume sensor he'd invented, an inconspicuous little grille-mounted gadget that registered the wispiest trace of a perfume Howard had developed and insisted his lady friends always wear. Lilac and cloves or something—he didn't give a damn about the scent, it was all about catching any dame who was running around behind his back. The rooftop TAXI sign concealed a driver-operated camera, so when the double-crossing doll reached her clandestine destination—click! Caught red-handed! Which goes to show what a stickler Howard was for total loyalty, and how this deeply held principle could stimulate his truly remarkable inventive powers.

H.H. ADVISES THAT HE DESIRES:
A. 24-hr. watch be placed on the front entrance of the Hoyden Arms, 6666 N. Cucamonga Blvd. until ...
B. Subject identified in enclosed foto as "Miss X" leaves building, day or night, whereupon ....
C. Driver of taxi idling at curbside activates
(1) radiator-mounted Perfume Sensor and
(2) camera mounted in rooftop Taxi sign.
D. Driver must NOT drink from fire hydrant. (Water microbes fatal to H.H.)
E. Perfume Sensor tracking gauge on dashboard leads driver along subject's route until ...
F. Perfume-scent trail ends. (Gauge glows green.) Subject has reached destination. Camera records her entering building, car, etc.
G. Driver rushes film to H.H. Assistant (man in mask) waiting at corner of Hollywood and Vine. Resets Perfume Sensor and camera, and stands by for next assignment. Reminders: Driver must take bath, change clothes, destroy gloves and shoes, scrub down seat upholstery, wash taxicab in Hot Water, PRIOR to handing over film. To avoid touching Assistant, throw him the film. Immediately report via special telephone if you have been breathed upon by a Chinaman in past 24 hrs.

THE GERM-FREE MONEY CLIP

Yes, the germ-free money clip was a chilling foretaste of the pathology destined to torment his later life, but let's not allow this to obscure the technical wizardry Howard poured into designing it, or his humanitarian goal of stamping out currency-transmitted diseases. Turning a three-by-six-inch steel box (with internal rollers and ejection tray) red-hot in seconds-thus zapping the greasiest paper bill surgery-clean while also sterilizing the user's hands, necktie, shirt, and underwear— was an epic achievement, albeit on a miniature scale. This should have endeared the germ-free money clip to every male American with a fat roll, a bacteria phobia, and $700 to spare. The severe skin burns and scorched pants pockets should have whispered, "Howard, keep on working!" But by then, of course, his attention had already hopscotched ahead to the next urgent challenge.

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THE SELF-MAKING BED

Howard gave Ava Gardner's "slobbiness" as the reason for their breakup, a slobbiness that came down, he later confessed, to un' ironed sheets. Neat-freak Howard shuddered all his life at the sight of rumpled bedclothes. Add to this his hectic social schedule, mix in his mechanical proclivities, and his invention of the self-making bed seems almost inevitable. Almost fatal too, when he got his neck caught in the right-side sheet tucker on the first trial run; but the man never, ever quit, so even with the complication of 63 electric motors—22 of them just for making hospital corners—and the sheet-fitting nightmare of that H-shaped mattress he'd dreamed up, he actually got the damn thing to work. Then he fixated on the pulsing-bed-frame concept, and the last anybody heard of the self-making bed was that he'd given it away to his masseur. But nobody ever accused Howard of having a particularly long attention span.

THE NIGHT CRAWLER

There's a weather-beaten old Lincoln Zephyr clamped to the side of a certain apartment house on Doheny today because 64 years ago Howard visited a lady friend an hour or so too long. He'd come up with an ungulate-based adhesive for aircraft components, a thousand times stickier than flypaper, and one night on a brilliant hunch he coated the tires of his car with the stuff. Presto—he drove straight up to said lady friend's window on the 11th floor (while evading the prying eyes of her doorman). At dawn when he tried to back down to the street, the tires wouldn't turn. The glue had set. The L.A.F.D. had to send a hook-and-ladder. But you didn't talk about this with Howard. Not proud, vain, thin-skinned Howard.