Hughes, Howard (1905-1976)

When he passed away on August 16, 1976, billionaire financier Howard Hughes was considered the world's most mysterious man. Rumors abounded about the strange way he looked, his eccentricities, and the odd way he lived. But before he became a man on the run, moving from continent to continent with his cadre of Mormon aides, Hughes was the embodiment of the Jazz Age wealthy playboy, the 1930s-era aviation hero, the 1940s and 1950s millionaire-as-super-star, and the 1960s Las Vegas casino mogul. Along the way, he also riled censors and packed movie houses with several milestone films that pushed the boundaries of sex and violence.

Born in Houston on Christmas Eve, 1905, Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was the son of an oilman who had developed a drill bit that revolutionized oil drilling the world over. The Hughes rock bit, or rollerbit, was the foundation of the family fortune that Hughes Jr. inherited at age eighteen. That fortune financed Hughes's earliest Hollywood ventures, which began in 1926 and climaxed with the monumental World War I aviation epic Hell's Angels in 1930. Because its production spanned the silent and talkie eras, the early sound movie required reshoots and a new leading lady. Hughes chose the unknown starlet Jean Harlow. He also took over as director. By the time of its lavish premiere, "Hughes's Folly," as it was called, was the costliest movie of its time. With its dazzling aviation sequences and Harlow's presence, it also proved a crowd-pleaser, establishing Hughes as a major filmmaking force. But after producing several significant films of the early 1930s, including The Front Page and the violent Scarface, he turned his attention to the skies.

His love of aviation had begun at age fourteen with a five dollar flight in a Curtiss flying boat. An astute flight student, he made headlines in 1932 when he was discovered working under an alias for American Airlines as a baggage handler. With Hughes Aircraft Company, he developed and built the planes in which he made various speed records. Those efforts led to the development of the first retractable landing gear, flushed rivets, streamlined airplane designs, and advances in high-altitude flying. His July 1938 flight around the world, in three days, nineteen hours, enshrined him as a ticker-tape hero and the country's most famous aviator since Charles Lindbergh. Hughes's romances with Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, and others gave the matinee-idol-handsome Hughes a reputation as a ladies' man.

His interest in women, and the female figure, was evident when he returned to filmmaking with the audacious western The Outlaw. Producer-director Hughes was so determined to glorify his leading lady's bustline that he once stopped production in order to design a better brassiere for newcomer Jane Russell. He spent two years editing the movie and battling censors, and finally opened The Outlaw in 1943. Inexplicably, he pulled it from distribution after eight record-breaking weeks. Rereleased in later years, the film, which remains noteworthy for its early depiction of cleavage, denoted Hughes's obsessive nature and eccentricities.

The 1940s saw Hughes wielding his power and wealth to romance a "Who's Who" of Hollywood luminaries, including Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, and Lana Turner. Expanding his empire, he became principal shareholder of TWA Airlines in 1947. That same year he also defiantly faced a Senate subcommittee hearing involving the HK-1, Hercules. Popularly known as the Spruce Goose, the government-funded, eight-story plane had not been completed in time to ferry soldiers over the ocean during World War II. When government sources doubted it would fly at all, Hughes personally proved them wrong. Though the flight of November 2, 1947, lasted less than one minute, it was a benchmark in aviation history.

Yet Hughes was already on a dark, downward spiral, as symbolized by his July 1946 crash while test piloting an XF-11 photo reconnaissance plane. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder had not yet been diagnosed, but Hughes has since been identified as a classic OCD sufferer. This biologically based condition led to his dependence on drugs, which were first given to him following the 1946 crash.

Hughes ventured back into filmmaking in 1948, purchasing a controlling interest in RKO Pictures. The studio legacy included such revered titles as King Kong, Citizen Kane, and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. Under Hughes, filmmakers were dismayed to learn that they had to cast Hughes's assorted girlfriends, including Terry Moore. But during his tenure, Hughes personally salvaged a career that became legendary: following a notorious September 1948 marijuana arrest, Robert Mitchum thought his career was over, but Hughes stood by the actor and went on to cast him in a string of enjoyable crime thrillers. Hughes, who never did set foot on the studio lot, eventually became sole owner of RKO, which he sold in 1955. Shortly afterward, he became so reclusive that when he and actress Jean Peters secretly married in 1957, both used assumed names.

In the 1960s, as his companies pioneered space and satellite ventures, Hughes lived behind the blackened windows of the Desert Inn penthouse suite, amassing a then-unsurpassed Las Vegas desert kingdom of casinos and hotels. He left the city in the dead of night in November 1970 and thereafter was a man on the run. Pursued by various government agencies, attorneys, process-servers, and the media, he was so isolated that the publishing world fell for an elaborate hoax perpetrated by writer Clifford Irving, who claimed he was working with Hughes on his autobiography.

Following Hughes's death and the ensuing battle for his money, revelations detailed his germ phobia, food fetishes, and drug usage. That the once dashing, adventurous Hughes had died weighing just ninety-three pounds, with broken hypodermic needles imbedded in his arms, was proof that money does not buy happiness. Meanwhile, the hoaxes continued, most notably that of the "Mormon will." The fraudulent document left money to gas station attendant Melvin Dummar, whose saga was the impetus for the 1980 film Melvin and Howard.

—Pat H. Broeske

Further Reading:

Bartlett, Donald L., and James B. Steele. Empire: The Life, Legend and Madness of Howard Hughes. New York, W.W. Norton, 1979.

Brown, Peter Harry, and Pat H. Broeske. Howard Hughes: The Untold Story. New York, Dutton, 1996.

Dietrich, Noah, and Bob Thomas. Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes. Greenwich, Connecticut, Fawcett, 1972.

Phelan, James. Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years. New York, Random House, 1976.