Since I couldn't find a post on this movie, I'll start one.
It was ok. Howard Hughes had such freaky habits that I forgot about Leonardo playing him and spent more time on trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with him.
He did well in the female companionship department. It was nice of Ava Gardner to clean him up near the end of the movie. If that's how it actually went down, she was very nice to do that.
The movie was too long and while Howard Hughes' oddities required attention, I think the movie should have been more balanced with his business pursuits.
It's a good thing that Howard controlled his mental issues long enough to defeat the Pan Am monopoly bill.
I sometimes use a paper towel to open the bathroom door in a public place after washing my hands and am about to eat. Am I heading down the same path of lunacy as Howard?
78/100 Rent or See the the Box Office
-lacks drama and character development besides the focus on Howard's mental issues but his life was interesting enough to make the movie watchable.
25/100 (rewatchability)
15/100 Don't buy the DVD
10/100 hooter value
add +20 to the scores if you're over the age of 60.
The Aviator
Moderators: Abelard, Drolgin Steingrinder
There's quite a bit of story left to Howard Hughes' life after the end of the movie. Here's a timeline:
1948
Hughes purchases 929,000 shares in RKO Studios. He cuts staff from 2,500 to 600. His ‘micro-management’ of the studio and his absurd behaviour – for instance, he shuts down the operation for weeks at a time to try to control dust or to redraft his will – will eventually lead to its downfall (see 1955).
1949
Former starlet Terry Moore later claims that this is the year in which she is secretly married to Hughes on a yacht in international waters off Mexico, never to be divorced.
1950
Hughes announces that Hughes Aircraft will move from Culver City, California, to a 25,000-acre tract west of Las Vegas. However, his key executives and technicians refuse to be exiled to the desert, and the property remains vacant.
1952
Hughes leads a ‘red hunting’ crusade at RKO, closing the studio after laying off more than 1,000 employees to implement a ‘screening’ system so he can weed out Communist sympathisers.
1953
Hughes is becoming increasingly reclusive. The executives at Hughes Aircraft often can’t reach him and he cuts off contact with the US Air Force. When the secretary of the Air Force goes to see Hughes at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Hughes keeps him waiting for over an hour. When he finally sees him, the secretary gives Hughes 90 days to put the company under the control of someone he, the secretary, nominates or the USAF will remove all their contracts from the company.
17 December: As the 90-day deadline is reached, Hughes founds the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in Delaware, with himself as its sole trustee. He turns over all 75,000 shares of the Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, thus making his billion-dollar-a-year armament factory a tax-exempt charity. In this way, he is also able to get out from under the USAF ultimatum.
1955
Having continued his systematic disruption and dismantling of RKO, he splits it into two entities: RKO Pictures Inc. and RKO Theatres Corporation. He then sells RKO Pictures to a subsidy of General Tire and Rubber.
1956
Hughes places an order for a fleet of 63 Boeing 707s for TWA at a cost of $400 million. Although immensely wealthy, he still needs help to cover this huge expense. However, outside creditors require him to give up total control of the airline in return for providing the money. Unwilling to relinquish his power, and yet unable to cover the cost, Hughes' aviation empire slowly begins to crumble.
1957
Hughes (52) marries actress Jean Peters (30) at the L&L Motel in Tonopah, Nevada.
Hughes fires his long-time associate Noah Dietrich. The vacancy he leaves is gradually filled by Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent whose private security firm fronts for the CIA on ultra-sensitive missions (including an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Castro in 1960). He works for Hughes freelance, intimidating would-be blackmailers and spying on dozens of Hollywood starlets for him.
1958
Hughes gives what turns out to be his last interview, to Frank McCulloch of Time Life.
1960
Hughes is forced out of power at TWA. However, he still owns 78% of the company and spends the next few years battling to regain control.
During the US presidential race, it is reported that the Hughes Tool Company has loaned $205,000 to Richard Nixon's brother Donald (who is attempting to revive his failing Nixonburger restaurants). Disclosure of the Hughes loan, which is never repaid, damages Nixon in the final days of the campaign.
1961
Hughes Space and Communications is founded.
The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins is published. It is loosely based on the life of Howard Hughes, who is represented by the character Jonas Cord. In the 1964 film version, Cord is played by George Peppard.
1966
A US federal court rules that Hughes must relinquish control of TWA. He sells his shares in the airline for $547 million, making him one of the richest men in the world.
Hughes and his wife Jean Peters move to Las Vegas. Having reserved the top two storeys of the Desert Inn for 10 days, Hughes refuses to leave when co-owners Moe Dalitz and Ruby Kolad ask him to (they can make more money renting the two floors to gamblers). Hughes finally resolves the issue by buying the Desert Inn for $13.25 million – twice its valuation.
Hughes eventually buys the Sands (a deal that also includes 183 acres of prime Las Vegas real estate), the Castaways, the Silver Slipper and the Frontier. He makes a deal to buy the Stardust for $30.5 million, but is prevented from finalising it by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is worried about Hughes having a monopoly on Las Vegas lodging.
Hughes and Peters communicate at arm’s length – for example, via notes such as these:
From Hughes: ‘Dearest sweet love. On channel 4 is a new movie all about Injuns – I mean really all about them so if you are watching the big eye [the CBS television logo], I hope you see it so you can tell 2 fedders about it. I love you.’
From Peters: ‘Dearest Two Feathers – I will watch the redskins – but only for you – I hate Heston. I love you very much & hope to see you soon after 11:00 – if you can. Love Again.’
Robert Maheu (see 1957) begins to work for Hughes fulltime, with an annual salary of $520,000 and an unlimited expense account. Hughes instructs him to offer President Johnson $1 million in cash to stop the underground nuclear tests taking place 150 miles from Las Vegas. He tells Maheu to repeat this offer to President Nixon after the latter enters the White House in 1968. Maheu later claims to have ignored both orders.
1968
Hughes buys KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. Now living in seclusion in the Desert Inn, he seldom sleeps and spends the night watching old movies aired on the channel. Occasionally, he will nod off and miss parts of the film being screened. He buys the station so that he can have the chunks he misses rebroadcast.
5 June: Robert Kennedy is assassinated. Hughes tells his chief adviser Robert Maheu to put all of Kennedy’s key staffers on the payroll, believing that they can put a man acceptable to Hughes into the White House. Maheu is able to get Larry O’Brien, chair of the Democratic National Committee, to sign up, paying him $15,000 a month.
1969
Hughes buys the Landmark in Las Vegas for $17.3 million. A fat concrete cylinder with an oversized saucer, it has too few rooms and too little casino space, but at 31 storeys, it is slightly taller than the International, owned by Hughes’ Las Vegas rival Kirk Kerkorian.
Following an investigation by Texas congressman Wright Patman, powerful chair of the House Banking Committee, the Tax Reform Bill is drafted, which will make it illegal for companies to give their stock to charities to avoid tax, as Hughes has done with the Hughes Aircraft Company (see 1953). However, Hughes’ new adviser Larry O’Brien (see 1968) lobbies his cronies in the Senate and succeeds in having an amendment added to the bill that creates an exemption for charities that are ‘medical research organisations’ – like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Hughes takes over the regional airline Air West (renaming it Hughes AirWest), which brings many tourists to Las Vegas where Hughes’ empire continues to flourish.
1970
5 November: The ‘struggle within the Hughes organisation for control of Hughes – now a complete recluse and suffering from extreme obsessive-compulsive disorder – and his assets comes to a head. Company executives, led by Bill Gay, the Mormon administrator who has shrewdly handpicked the billionaire's attendants, put Hughes on a stretcher and move him from his ninth-floor penthouse in the Desert Inn, down the fire escape and into a waiting private jet, which takes him to the Bahamas.
This ends Robert Maheu’s stint as Hughes’ public face and controller of his Las Vegas empire. During their 13-year association, they never met face to face, always communicating via telephone or memo.
1971
Hughes is divorced from Jean Peters. Except for a brief period in 1961, they have lived more or less apart. He agrees to pay her between $70,000 and $140,000 a year for 20 years (the actual amount to be determined by the cost of living index) and deeds a home in Beverly Hills to her. She waives all claims to Hughes' estate, and immediately marries Stanley Hough, a 20th Century Fox executive. The usually paranoid Hughes surprises his aides when he does not insist on a confidentiality agreement from Peters.
Peters later tells Newsweek magazine: ‘My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.’ She states only that she didn’t see Hughes for several years before their divorce.
President Nixon accepts an unreported $100,000 in cash as a campaign contribution from Hughes. In return, Hughes receives extremely favourable treatment on antitrust issues, which helps him to corner the market in Las Vegas casinos. H R Halderman, Nixon's chief of staff, will later write: ‘On matters pertaining to Hughes, Nixon sometimes seemed to lose touch with reality. His indirect association with this mystery man may have caused him, in his view, to lose two elections.’
Writer Clifford Irving creates a media sensation when he claims that he has co-written with Hughes the latter’s authorised autobiography. Hughes is so reclusive that he hesitates in condemning Irving, which, in the view of many, lends credibility to Irving's account.
1972
7 January: Prior to publication of the Irving ‘memoirs’, Hughes, in a rare telephone conference to seven journalists, denounces Irving, exposing the entire project as an elaborate hoax. Irving later spends 14 months in jail for conspiracy to defraud, forgery and perjury.
Hughes agrees to help the CIA secretly recover a Soviet nuclear submarine that sank near Hawaii four years before. The Hughes Glomar Explorer, a special-purpose salvage vessel, is developed for this purpose. Hughes' involvement provides the CIA with a plausible cover story: this is simply civilian marine research at extreme depths. Hughes is supposedly given the codename ‘The Stockholder’ by the US intelligence community.
17 June: Burglars break into the Democratic National Committee’s offices in the Watergate hotel in Washington DC. It is believed by many that the purpose of the break-in (which ultimately led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation) is to discover whether Hughes was involved in the financing of the Democratic National Committee (see 1968). This is certainly the opinion of Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis when he is interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1977.
Hughes sells Hughes Tool Company's stock and renames his company the Summa Corporation, ending any remaining role in his business.
23 December: Hughes is in Managua, Nicaragua when a massive earthquake levels the city, killing 5,000. After the quake, he stays at the country palace of dictator Anastasio Somoza before fleeing to Florida the next day.
1973
10 June: A naked Howard Hughes spends the day buzzing around Hatfield Airport near London, piloting a Hawker Siddeley 748 aircraft.
9 August : Still in London, Howard Hughes fractures his hip during a nocturnal bathroom run. He refuses to accept specialist advice that he exercise to get better. He remains bedridden, which leads to his living in even more squalor and filth.
1974
Hughes’ Glomar Explorer finally successfully raises the Soviet submarine, harvesting two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines for the CIA. It is reported that, during the recovery, a mechanical failure caused half of the submarine to break off, falling to the ocean floor. This section is said to hold many of the most sought-after items. However, others say that the entire submarine was recovered and the CIA released this disinformation to let the Soviets think that the mission was unsuccessful.
5 June: Hughes’ Romaine Street headquarters in Los Angeles are burgled. According to some conspiracy theorists, the theft of about 10,000 secret documents sends shockwaves through the US intelligence community.
1975
According to gas station attendant Melvin Dumar, he has picked up an extremely dishevelled Hughes who was hitch-hiking in the Nevada desert, and at the end of the ride, the billionaire has made Dumar his sole heir. However, subsequent court proceedings prove Dumar's claims to be fraudulent. This episode (fictional or not) will be explored in the 1980 film Melvin and Howard (with Jason Robards as Hughes).
1976
5 April: The 70-year-old Hughes, who has already been in a coma for three days, dies at 1.27pm, en route by private jet from Acapulco in Mexico to a hospital in Houston. The official cause of death is chronic kidney disease, but it is just as likely to have been from dehydration, malnutrition and neglect. Much of the strange behaviour that Hughes demonstrated in later life is attributed by some biographers to tertiary stage syphilis. X-rays taken at autopsy reveal broken hypodermic needles lodged in his arms, and his six-foot-four frame weighs less than 90lb (41kg).
Because Hughes’ appearance has changed so drastically and he has been seen by so few people for so long, his fingerprints are taken and sent to the FBI to establish his identity.
Hughes leaves no will. His estate, estimated at $2 billion, is claimed by 400 prospective heirs, but it is eventually inherited by 22 cousins on both sides of his family. Texas, Nevada and California claim inheritance tax in disputes that are reviewed by the US Supreme Court three times.
1984
The Hughes estate pays Terry Moore (see 1949) an undisclosed settlement. She now writes a book – The Beauty and the Billionaire – detailing her secret life with Hughes from 1947 to 1956.
1985
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute sells Hughes Aircraft to General Motors for $5 billion and becomes the richest charity in the US.
2004
July: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has become the US’s second-largest philanthropic organisation (after the Bill & Melinda Gates’ Foundation), with an endowment of $11 billion and annual spending of about $450 million. The 330 ‘Howard Hughes Investigators’ include seven Nobel Prize winners. Among much else, the institute funds stem cell research, which is no longer eligible for US federal grants.
The film The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese, depicts Hughes’ career and personal life from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Its tagline is: ‘Some men dream the future. He built it.’