On-screen, gorgeous brunette actress Gene Tierney helped to invent the femme fatale in movies like Laura and Leave Her to Heaven, and off-screen, she had serious romances with four of the great playboys of the 20th century: John F. Kennedy, Howard Hughes, Prince Aly Khan and costume/fashion designer Oleg Cassini. I haven’t found a Hughes biographer who categorizes Tierney as one of the aviator’s great loves, but like Ida Lupino, Tierney was a woman who moved in and out of Hughes’ life over the course of a couple of decades. But this episode had to be told from Gene Tierney’s perspective, and not Howard Hughes’ — or Oleg Cassini’s, or John F.