Multi-millionaire businessman, film producer, film director, and aviator, born in Houston, Texas. He studied at prestigious Rice University and the even more prestigious California Institute of Technology. Inherited his father's machine tool company in 1923. In 1926 he ventured into films, producing Hell's Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw. He also founded his own aircraft company, designed, built and flew his own aircraft, and broke several world air speed records (1935-1938). His most famous aircraft, the Hercules (nicknamed "The Spruce Goose"), was an oversized wooden seaplane designed to carry 750 passengers, which was completed in 1947 but flew only once over a distance of one mile. Throughout his life he shunned publicity, eventually becoming a recluse but still controlling his vast business interests from sealed-off hotel suites, and giving rise to endless rumors and speculation. In 1971 an "authorized" biography was announced, but the authors wound up in prison for fraud, and the mystery surrounding him continued until his death.


Ice Station Zebra (1968) is reported to have been his favorite movie. (The 2005 DVD release was packaged with a trailer for The Aviator (2004) (see below). Nephew of actor/screenwriter Rupert Hughes. He bought Las Vegas television station KLAS (Channel 8), so that he could watch movies into the night. If he fell asleep during a film, he would call up the station and order that the scene he missed be replayed. His father was the inventor of the "Hughes Rock Eater," a self-sharpening drill bit used for drilling oil wells that is still in use today. Hughes inherited several million dollars but earned the vast majority of his wealth from his own business ventures. Hughes Aircraft and Hughes Helicopters alone were worth $5.5 billion when they were finally sold in the early 1980s. He once had an air purifier installed into a car with sealed windows. The purifier cost more than the car, and took up most of the trunk. Attended the prestigious Rice University in the 1920s, before dropping out and moving to Hollywood. After Hughes died, Terry Moore claimed that the pair had secretly married on a yacht in international waters off the coast of Mexico in 1949 and never divorced. Despite the fact that Moore married two other men while she was still "married" to Hughes, his estate paid her an undisclosed settlement in 1984. Humble, Texas, where he was born, is pronounced "UM-bull." The 'h' is silent. In the 1950s, Robert Mitchum was selected by Hughes to appear in a series of films he was producing. Hughes considered Mitchum a "friend," but (as a paranoid recluse) hardly met the actor. Mitchum was half-way put-off and half-way amused by this "crazy, old man" and clearly saw that he was a surrogate for Hughes as the strapping actor "romanced" young starlets on screen. It has variously been hypothesized that his crazed behavior in his later, reclusive years was caused by brain damage resulting from a series of accidents, OCD, bipolar disorder, or even paranoid-schizophrenia. His reported appearance when he was found dead was extremely bizarre. He was covered in uncut, matted hair, had extremely long toenails, and the once strapping, 6' 4" man weighed an incredibly low 90 pounds. Houston, Texas, has two major commercial airports: William P. Hobby Airport, and Houston Intercontinental Airport. For a brief period, Hobby Airport was renamed Howard Hughes airport. Houstonians objected to it being named after a living person, so this change was short lived, and the name eventually reverted back to being Hobby Airport. In 1997, Intercontinental Airport was renamed Bush Intercontinental, after the still-living President George Bush, whose son was Governor of Texas at the time. Became obsessed with Communism during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era. His film The Whip Hand (1951) was originally about a group of Nazi scientists who smuggled the body of Adolf Hitler into the U.S. and worked to revive Hitler in order to try to take over the world again. After it was finished Hughes had it reshot, at great expense, to change the villains into Nazi scientists who are now working for the Communists and have taken over a small American town in order to test germ warfare experiments on its citizens before they unleash the deadly viruses in the U.S. Is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator (2004), by Victor Holchak in Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1978), by Tommy Lee Jones in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (TV), by Jason Robards in Melvin and Howard (1980), by Terry O'Quinn in The Rocketeer (1991) and by Dean Stockwell in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) Leonardo DiCaprio and Jason Robards received Oscar-nominations for portraying Hughes in a movie. He was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party and an active anti-communist.