Howard Hughes Biography

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. Hughes was an ingenious American businessman, movie producer, aircraft inventor, mine owner, and casino owner who rose to fame during his later years as an eccentric recluse.

Hughes was also a record-breaking pilot, flying around the world in just over 91 hours in 1938. Hughes' most renowned aviation achievement was the construction of the Spruce Goose, the world's largest aeroplane, an eight-engined wooden flying boat that flew only once, in 1947.

He also had a reputation as a "ladies' man," dating Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn, among many other Golden Age movie stars.

Hughes' business ventures began to dramatically grow his personal wealth in the 1960s, bringing it to ＄1 billion, a staggering number by 1960s standards. Hughes' behaviour, however, began to be dominated by certain oddities, and his mental state became progressively imbalanced. The reclusive billionaire faded from view, reappearing in 1972 to make a phone call claiming that a biography authored by Clifford Irving was a fake. Hughes' condition, movements, and conduct sparked widespread speculation until his death in 1976 when a number of parties challenged his will in court amid widespread media coverage.

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Information About The Recluse Howard Hughes

Birthdate: December 24, 1905

Birthplace: Humble, Texas, U.S

Death date: April 5, 1976

Death place: Houston, Texas, U.S.

Age: 70 years

Howard Hughes spouse(s): Ella Botts Rice ​(m. 1925; div. 1929)​; Jean Peters ​(m. 1957; div. 1971)

Howard Hughes movies: Scarface, The Outlaw, His Kind of Woman, Hell’s Angels etc.

Howard Hughes children: None

Early Years

Hughes was born on September 24, 1905, in Humble, Texas. Allene Stone Gano Hughes (a descendant of Catherine of Valois, Dowager Queen of England, by her second husband Owen Tudor) and Howard R. Hughes, Sr. (the inventor of the tricone roller bit, which permitted rotational drilling for oil in previously unreachable areas) were his parents. Hughes, Sr. launched Hughes Tool Company in 1909 to commercialise his family's fortune-making technology.

Hughes' mother, who was obsessed with safeguarding her son from all viruses and infections, had a tremendous influence on him as a child. Hughes inherited an interest in all things mechanical from his father. Hughes was reputedly photographed in the local press at the age of 12 as the first boy in Houston to have a self-built' motorized' bicycle.

Hughes inherited 75% of his father's multi-million dollar inheritance, which included rising sums of cash flow derived from oil drilling royalties when his parents died while he was still in his teens. Following his father's death, Hughes dropped out of Rice University. Hughes married Ella Rice in June 1925, when he was 19 years old, and the couple went from Houston to Hollywood, where Hughes planned to build a career for himself as a film director.

Howard Hughes Movies and Hollywood

Hughes was initially viewed as a rich man's kid by Hollywood insiders. However, both his first and second films, Everybody's Acting (1927) and Two Arabian Knights (1928), were commercial hits, with the latter winning an Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. The Front Page (1931) and The Racket (1928) were both nominated for Academy Awards.

Hughes spent an unprecedented $3.8 million of his own money on Hell's Angels, an epic aviation film chronicling the air combat of World War I over Europe that was released in 1930 and went on to become a major blockbuster after overcoming numerous challenges. In 1930, he developed Scarface, which was released in 1932 and was based on the life of Al Capone, the mafia chief, and starred Paul Muni. One of his most well-known pictures is The Outlaw, which made Jane Russell a star. Industry censors paid close attention to both Scarface and The Outlaw, with Scarface receiving special attention for its severe violence and Russell's revealing clothing in The Outlaw. The Library of Congress has designated Scarface as a "culturally significant" film for preservation in the National Film Registry.

The then Howard Hughes spouse was secluded at home for weeks at a period, and she returned to Houston in 1929 to petition for divorce. Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Gene Tierney, Ava Gardner, and Olivia DeHavilland were among the many renowned and attractive women he spent time with. According to Joan Fontaine's autobiography, No Bed of Roses, he proposed to her multiple times. During his first marriage, Bessie Love was his mistress.

Hughes released "The Conqueror" in 1956, which was a huge disappointment and was notably noteworthy for miscasting American actor John Wayne, whose reputation was built on portraying actual heroes, as the infamous Genghis Khan.

Howard Hughes Aviation

Hughes was a self-taught aircraft engineer, pilot, and lifelong aircraft enthusiast. While running Hughes Aircraft, he achieved numerous world records and developed and built several aircraft himself.

Howard Hughes Records

The Hughes H-1 Racer was the most technologically significant aircraft he developed. Hughes established the airspeed record of 352 mph on his test track at Santa Ana, California, on September 13, 1935, while flying the H-1. (The previous high-speed record was 314 miles per hour.) Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds a year and a half later (January 19, 1937), flying a slightly re-designed H-1 Racer.

The H-1 Racer included a variety of design features, including retractable landing gear and rivets and joints that were flush with the plane's body to reduce drag. Although this has never been verified, the H-1 Racer is thought to have inspired the design of a number of World War II fighter planes, notably the Mitsubishi Zero, Focke-Wulf FW190, and F6F Hellcat. The Smithsonian Institution received the H-1 Racer in 1975, and it is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

Hughes achieved a new record on July 10, 1938, when he flew around the world in 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours), surpassing the previous record by more than four days. He did not fly a plane of his own design for this voyage, instead opting for a Lockheed Super Electra (a twin-engine plane with a four-man crew) outfitted with the most up-to-date communication and navigational equipment. Hughes envisioned the journey as a technological achievement, demonstrating that safe, long-distance air travel was possible.

As an aviator, Hughes was honoured with numerous prizes, including the Harmon Trophy in 1936 and 1938, the Collier Trophy in 1938, the Octave Chanute Award in 1940, and a special Congressional Gold Medal in 1939.

Hughes Aircraft

Hughes Aircraft Company was created by Hughes in 1932 in a rented corner of a Lockheed Aircraft Corporation hanger in Burbank, California, to carry out the costly conversion of a military plane into the H-1 racer. Hughes built his company into a significant defence contractor during and after WWII. Hughes Helicopters began in 1947, when Kellett, a helicopter manufacturer, sold their most recent design to Hughes for manufacturing.

Hughes established the Hughes Aerospace Group, a new branch of the corporation, in 1948. In 1948, the Hughes Space and Communications Group and the Hughes Space Systems Division were separated to form their own divisions, which eventually merged to become the Hughes Space and Communications Company in 1961.

Airlines

Hughes surreptitiously purchased a majority stake of TWA shares for over $7 million in 1939, at the request of TWA president Jack Frye, and gained control of the airline. Hughes was unable to manufacture his own planes after acquiring TWA due to a federal law prohibiting him from doing so. Hughes approached Boeing's competitor, Lockheed, in search of a jet that would outperform TWA's fleet of Boeing 307 Stratoliner. Hughes had a good working connection with Lockheed because they manufactured the plane he flew around the world for the first time in 1938. Hughes insisted that the new jet be created in complete secrecy, and Lockheed agreed. TWA bought the first 40 of the new planes off the assembly line, resulting in the innovative Constellation.

Hughes secured an order for 63 Convair 880s for TWA for ＄400 million in 1956. Outside creditors asked that Hughes give control of TWA in exchange for the money, despite the fact that Hughes was enormously wealthy at the time. Hughes was thrown out of TWA in 1960, despite owning 78% of the corporation and fighting in court to reclaim control.

Due to worries about a conflict of interest between his ownership of TWA and Hughes Aircraft, he was ordered to relinquish his interests in TWA by a US Federal Court in 1966. He made a $547 million profit on the sale of his TWA stock. Hughes returned to the airline business in the 1970s, purchasing Air West and renamed it Hughes Airwest.

RKO

Hughes took control of RKO, a faltering major Hollywood company, in 1948 by purchasing 25% of the outstanding stock. RKO was already embroiled in a scandal after two of its top stars, director Edward Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott, were revealed to be leftist (communist) supporters and "blacklisted" as members of the so-called Hollywood Ten. Hughes fared significantly worse as a studio owner than he did two decades earlier as a film producer.

Hughes fired three-quarters of the workforce within weeks of taking over, and production was halted for six months in 1949 while he investigated the politics of all remaining studio personnel, fearing Communist infiltration. If he felt his star (especially a female) was not properly displayed, or if a film's politics were too left-leaning in his eyes, completed films would be sent back for reshoots.

Hughes acquired nearly complete control of RKO by the end of 1954, at a cost of about ＄24 million, putting him closer to being the sole owner of a studio than anyone in Hollywood for more than three decades. Hughes sold the studio to the General Tire and Rubber Company for ＄25 million six months later. He kept the rights to the films he produced himself, including those filmed at RKO. Jane Russell's contract was also kept by him.

This marked the end of Howard Hughes' 25-year career in the motion film industry. Many believe he ruined RKO because of his anti-communism. He was vilified in Hollywood for his anti-communism. Others feel he spared the company from near-certain demise and preserved his reputation as a financial expert. He apparently walked away from RKO with a personal profit of ＄6.5 million.

Medical Institute

Hughes handed all of his Hughes Aircraft Company stock to the newly founded Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in 1953, thereby turning the aerospace and defence contractor into a tax-exempt nonprofit. Hughes Aircraft was sold to General Motors for ＄5.2 billion in 1985 by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Hughes and the Internal Revenue Service fought a long legal struggle over the sale, which Hughes eventually won. Many assumed that the remainder of Hughes' inheritance would go to the institute after his death in 1976, but due to the lack of a valid will, it was finally divided among his cousins and other heirs.

With a ＄16.3 billion endowment as of June 2007, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is America's second-largest private foundation and the largest dedicated to biological and medical research. Richard Axel and Linda Buck, two Institute researchers, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 for their work.

Glomar Explorer

Despite his increasingly reclusive lifestyle, Hughes became involved in a covert operation with the US government in the late 1960s involving the building of the Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea mining barge. The ship was created ostensibly to retrieve manganese nodules from the ocean floor, but it was instead used to recover the Soviet submarine K-129, which had gone missing in deep water in April 1968. The Hughes Glomar Explorer, as the ship was known at the time, cost more than ＄350 million to build between 1973 and 1974. On June 20, 1974, it set sail.

While the ship was able to collect some of the submarines, a mechanical breakdown in the grapple caused half of it to break off during the rescue. Many of the more sought-after objects, including the code book and nuclear weapons, are alleged to have been kept in this lost sector. Two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic devices were later discovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners, who were formally buried at sea.

How Did Howard Hudges Die?

Hughes died on April 5, 1976, while en route from his penthouse in Acapulco, Mexico to The Methodist Hospital in Houston on an aeroplane owned by Robert Graf. It's also been said that he died in Mexico before departing. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails had grown outrageously long, his once-stout 6-foot, 4-inch physique now weighed only 90 pounds, and the FBI had to rely on fingerprints to identify the deceased due to his reclusive behaviour and drug usage.

An autopsy revealed that renal failure was the cause of death. Hughes was in horrible physical condition when he died, with broken hypodermic needles still embedded in his arms and severe malnutrition evidenced by X-rays. Hughes died as a result of neglect, according to the first doctor who examined him. While his kidneys were injured, his other internal organs were found to be in good working order.

Hughes is interred in Houston's Glenwood Cemetery.