The rumble from a low-flying, single-engine plane made Bel-Air Country Club's golf gentry squint in dismay toward the sun, their play interrupted, nerves frayed. But not Katharine Hepburn.

It was a Thursday in October 1936, and the Oscar-winning actress was enjoying a round with her instructor, Joe Novak. She dismissed the approaching plane with a flutter of her hand, as if waving away a mosquito. And she may have wished that she could wave that plane away, for piloting the two-seater was Howard Hughes--playboy, flyboy, movie mogul and Hepburn's relentless suitor.

Hughes, 30, was tall, rich, handsome--and strange. Nearly deaf from a congenital inner-ear disease, he had spent their earlier dates listening intently as Hepburn expounded on politics, civil rights and golf. Always golf. A devoted player, Hepburn often shot in the 70s. Hughes, himself a 2 handicap, had been hooked on the game since his teens.

Even as Hughes guided his Sikorsky amphibian between two towering pines and touched down on Bel-Air's eighth fairway, Hepburn refused to acknowledge that anything was amiss. Secretly, though, she was in awe. She knew of his daredevil flights, his movie credits and his conquests: the moonlight tryst at Wilshire Country Club with actress Ida Lupino; the mink-lined negligee he gave to silent-film star Billie Dove; a bed full of orchid petals for Bette Davis. That Hughes would now pursue the willowy, 29-year-old redhead was only appropriate. "He was sort of the top of the available men," Hepburn later wrote, "and I of the women. And we both had a wild desire to be famous."

Both were loners, though solitude was the furthest thing from Hughes's mind. After climbing from his plane, clubs in tow, he approached Hepburn on the 10th tee and coolly asked, "Mind a third?" They played the back nine while club officials fumed.

"Can I drop you somewhere?" Hepburn asked after the round. So began a three-year affair.

It was typical Hughes. He got what he wanted, and he wanted Hepburn. He loved her spontaneous nature. She once interrupted him mid-haircut and demanded they play golf; off they went, his head only half trimmed. She was also maternal, personally packing turkey-and-cheese sandwiches for his record-breaking flight around the world in 1938. And she in turn found him thrilling. How many men could fly a girl over New York City in a Sikorsky and let her steer the plane under the 59th Street Bridge?

By the end of 1936, Hepburn had moved into Hughes's Spanish villa at Wilshire Country Club, a mere fence-hop from the eighth hole.

Their on-course goals were different, she later said. "I played for fun and exercise. Howard played always to improve his game. He was slow...I finally used to be almost a hole ahead of him. I was busy admiring the sky--the flowers--the relaxation. He would be utterly disgusted with me: 'You could be a really fine golfer if you would only practice.' I used to think, 'And you could be fun if you weren't so slow.' "