What made The Carpetbaggers a hit?: Americans have long been fascinated with the lifestyles and misadventures of the filthy rich. While the wealthy and powerful may have the same urges and appetites we do, their affluence allows them to exert these on a much grander and more ambitious scale, and in more lavish settings. It was this idea that drove the lurid, sex-soaked novels of Harold Robbins, one of the most popular novelists of the 1950s and 1960s. And for The Carpetbaggers he took his inspiration from perhaps the most famous millionaire of the day, Howard Hughes. Even more than in real life, the book’s Hughes surrogate Jonas Cord Jr. collected companies by day and female conquests by night, with no regard for the damage he caused. And while few readers would want to know Cord in real life, many of them enjoyed his exploits on the page, and the book would end up being the most-read novel of Robbins’ career.
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