The Carpetbaggers

The Carpetbaggers is a 1961 bestselling novel by Harold Robbins, which was adapted into a 1964 film of the same title. The prequel Nevada Smith was also based on a character in the novel.

The term "carpetbagger" refers to an outsider relocating to exploit locals. It derives from postbellum South usage, where it referred specifically to opportunistic Northerners who flocked to pillage the occupied southern states. In Robbins' novel, the exploited territory is the movie industry, and the newcomer is a wealthy heir to an industrial fortune who, like Howard Hughes, simultaneously pursued aviation and moviemaking avocations.

Ian Parker described the book as "a roman à clef—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 Lear, not Howard Hughes, 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 Hughes as the basis for his major character, Jonas Cord." 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:

Ian Parker and others identify the character Rina Marlowe with Jean Harlow, 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 MGM). Carroll Baker, the actress who played Rina 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 Bern. Marlowe dies tragically of encephalitis c. 1934; Harlow died of kidney failure in 1937.

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