let me tell you about dreams,
dreams are made
get up in the mornin
and put on your shoes
and you can read about Howard Hughes"
Howard Robard Hughes (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business tycoon, entrepreneur, investor, aerospace engineer, aviator, inventor, filmmaker, and philanthropist.
He is perhaps the most legendary tycoon of the 20th Century, simply for the drastic contrast between his public profile at the height of his fame in the 1930s and '40s and the absolute recluse he'd become by the time of his death. Once known for his good looks and playboy reputation, along with an assortment of gorgeous movie star girlfriends, when his body was found, he was unrecognizable, his fingernails having grown enormously, his hair being uncut and his appearance haggard and shabby, his arms were filled with broken-off hypodermic needles. His body had to be identified by fingerprints. The circumstances of his death, the unusual levels of control he kept on his staff, and the revelations of his eccentricities and mental illnesses made Hughes a source of enduring fascination and conspiracy theory to this very day.
Hughes had two major careers, one in aviation and one in filmmaking. They overlapped briefly when he directed Hell's Angels, a World War I combat film with impressive footage of aerial combat. As an aviation pioneer in the 1930s, he set many records for flight times. But in the 1940s, he became notorious for his rather impractical plane designs on government contracts, many of them proving to be Awesome, but Impractical in terms of being unsafe and expensive to enter mass production. The famous Spruce Goose (a name which Hughes hated, preferring its official designation "H-4 Hercules")note was the definitive example. The Spruce Goose was commissioned to be made of non-strategic materials, intended to transport a mammoth number of troops and materiel across the Atlantic, safe from German submarines. It is the largest flying boat ever built and still boasts the longest wingspan of any plane. It also took so long to build that the war ended by the time it was complete, rendering its purpose meaningless. In the same period, Hughes also took a test flight of another design, the XF-11 which crashed in Beverly Hills. Hughes barely survived the incident, and it is believed that the cocktail of drugs that he took in this time accelerated his mental breakdown. That his hearing had also been severely damaged through other accidents, to the point where he was at least partially deaf and had great difficulties leading conversations with more than one person at the time, is also believed to have contributed.
As a filmmaker, Hughes' most important film was Howard Hawks' Scarface which he produced. His reputation after that is significantly more ambiguous. His 1943 Western The Outlaw caused a scandal for its lewd sexualization of actress Jane Russell, earning the disapproval of The Hays Code. Hughes was insistent that the camera focus on Russell's large chest and went the extra step to design a bra, using aviation design principles, to better accentuate her bust. (Russell later said that the bra was so uncomfortable that she couldn't wear it, so she just padded her own.) He also took over RKO Pictures in the '40s and during his time, he came into conflict with several filmmakers, Preston Sturges (who was briefly Hughes' friend), Max Ophuls, Josef von Sternberg among others. He also became a rabid anti-communist, producing the notorious The Woman on Pier 13, better known as I Married a Communist. His eccentric business practices became the stuff of Hollywood legend, including: meetings at 3:00 in the morning at a gas station several miles outside of Los Angeles, whimsical changes ordered to the editing of a film, and the constant hiring, firing, and rehiring of directors (the 1950 film Vendetta had four directors and Hughes later contributed some pick-ups, because why not). This later culminated in a bunch of tacky '50s spectacles that led to RKO, one of the most creative and enterprising of the Big 7 studios, to be reduced to a shell of its former self, described by one historian as a "systematic seven-year rape". The most notorious is The Conqueror starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan, in which Hughes' irresponsible production led to the film being made near a nuclear testing site in Nevada. Exposure on the set is believed to have caused the cancer-related deaths of many of the cast members.
This was also a period where Hughes started withdrawing from public life, returning briefly in the '70s when a biography by Clifford Irving was denounced by Hughes as a hoax at a teleconference. Since his death, Hughes became a Historical Domain Character, the subject of many films and books. Likewise, most eccentric tycoons in comics and fiction are usually heavily based on Hughes: see Howard Hughes Homage.
Selected Filmography:
- Two Arabian Knights (1927, producer)
- The Racket (1928, producer)
- The Mating Call (1928, producer)
- Hell's Angels (1930, producer/director, though the dialogue scenes were done by an uncredited James Whale)
- The Front Page (1931, producer)
- Scarface (1932, producer)
- The Outlaw (1943, producer/director)
- His Kind of Woman (1951, producer/writer)
- The Conqueror (1956, producer)
Films about Hughes:
- Caught, 1949 Film Noir by Max Ophuls with Robert Ryan playing a No Celebrities Were Harmed version called Smith Ohlrignote , intended by Ophuls as a Take That! over his treatment by Hughes on the film Vendetta.
- Melvin and Howard by Jonathan Demme, with Jason Robards as Hughes
- F for Fake by Orson Welles which tackles the Clifford Irving scandal. Welles also notes that initially he wanted to model Kane from Citizen Kane on Hughes.
- The Amazing Howard Hughes is a 1977 TV movie starring Tommy Lee Jones as Hughes.
- Tucker: The Man and His Dream by Francis Ford Coppola features Dean Stockwell as Hughes appearing in a small but memorable cameo where he voices encouragement for Tucker, displays his Spruce Goose, and gives him advice on where he can get the steel he needs to build the contractually obligated number of cars and suggests a new engine to replace Tucker's now unviable original choice.
- The Rocketeer features a brief appearance by Hughes, who built the jet pack used by the titular hero.
- The Aviator by Martin Scorsese, a biopic starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes.
- The Hoax, a fictional film about the Clifford Irving scandal.
- Rules Don't Apply, a 2016 film directed by Warren Beatty, who also plays Hughes.
Tropes associated with Hughes in fiction and his own films:
- Author Appeal: Planes, girls with large breasts, and, in the case of Jet Pilot, his Red Scare story with John Wayne and Janet Leigh, both at the same time.
- Captain Ersatz: To the point where he has an entire trope dedicated to him.
- Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, was modeled on Hughes and later versions of Batman also take the eccentric millionaire from him. Howard Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a direct allusion with Dominic Cooper channeling the Leonardo DiCaprio portrayal from The Aviator well.
- Howard Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a combination of Hughes' engineering genius and the showmanship of Walt Disney.
- Robert House of Fallout: New Vegas was also inspired by Hughes, and even has an in-game photo
◊ mirroring one of Hughes' most famous pictures. - Horace Derwent from The Shining, a former owner of the Overlook Hotel turned into one of its supernatural denizens, is heavily based on Hughes and has a background in aviation.
- The Simpsons occasionally referenced both his later life and the H-4 Hercules, often with Mr Burns, such as Burns opening a casino and becoming a germaphobe and paranoid recluse (visually resembling Hughes at the time of his death), creating a plane he calls the "Spruce Moose", while a much later episode reveals Burns built a massive transport dubbed the "Plywood Pelican".
- Diamonds Are Forever features Jimmy Dean as a reclusive businessman, who also made his money in the oil business, living in the penthouse of one of his casinos.
- Andrew Ryan from the first BioShock is partially based on Hughes, specifically his background as an industrialist, and his eventual descent into paranoia and madness.
- Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, was modeled on Hughes and later versions of Batman also take the eccentric millionaire from him. Howard Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a direct allusion with Dominic Cooper channeling the Leonardo DiCaprio portrayal from The Aviator well.
- Dirty Communists: Being a vehement anti-communist, he helped create the trope in his '40s and '50s productions.
- Eccentric Millionaire: He was the Trope Codifier in popular consciousness. His real-life paranoia and weird activities still lead to snarky jokes about urine collected in bottles in popular culture.
- Historical Domain Character: He appears quite often, usually shown sympathetically as a Byronic Hero.
- Rich Recluse's Realm: The most famous real-life example. During his decline into seclusion, moved into the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, began using the eighth floor as his business headquarters, and eventually bought the entire hotel. From there, he expanded his influence across the city, buying casinos and hotels in an attempt to remake Las Vegas into something more to his liking. And throughout all of this, Hughes remained cloistered in his rooms, with his business dealings conducted entirely by a panel of chosen representatives.
- Saw "Star Wars" Twenty-Seven Times: He is said to have watched the film Ice Station Zebra 150 times in the years leading up to his death. Initially, he bought a Las Vegas TV station (KLAS) so he could have the film (among others) aired on demand; he would even call up the station and order that a technician rewind the movie if he wanted to see a scene again. He eventually traded up to a private screening room, in which the movie played in a continuous loop.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He often got into fights with the MPAA centering around his flagrant disregard of The Hays Code. He wanted his films to have big guns, big sets, and big-breasted women, all of which the Hollywood censors detested. Hughes, however, had the monetary capital to withstand their assaults and more often than not had his movies released the way he wanted them.
- The Wonka: Aside from RKO, the other businesses he was involved in, such as casinos and Hughes Electronics, did rather well, despite having him at the helm. It helped that as he became more reclusive, he left the operations of those businesses to others.
