Howard Hughes

Early life

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was the only child of Allene Stone Gano Hughes (1883–1922) and Howard R. Hughes Sr. (1869–1924), a successful inventor and businessman from Missouri. He had English, Welsh and some French Huguenot ancestry, and was a descendant of John Gano (1727–1804), the minister who reportedly baptized George Washington. Through John Gano's sister Susannah, Hughes was a fifth cousin once removed of the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, who invented the first successful airplane.

Hughes Sr. patented the two-cone roller bit in 1909, which allowed rotary drilling for petroleum in previously inaccessible places. The senior Hughes made the shrewd and lucrative decision to commercialize the invention by leasing the bits instead of selling them, obtaining several early patents, and founding the Hughes Tool Company in 1909.

Hughes's uncle was the famed novelist, screenwriter, and film director Rupert Hughes.

A 1941 affidavit birth certificate of Hughes, signed by his aunt Annette Gano Lummis and by Estelle Boughton Sharp, states that he was born on December 24, 1905, in Harris County, Texas. However, his certificate of baptism, recorded on October 7, 1906, in the parish register of St. John's Episcopal Church in Keokuk, Iowa, listed his date of birth as September 24, 1905, without any reference to the place of birth.

At a young age, Hughes Jr. showed interest in science and technology. In particular, he had a great engineering aptitude, and built Houston's first "wireless" radio transmitter at age 11. He went on to be one of the first licensed ham-radio operators in Houston, having the assigned callsign W5CY (originally 5CY). At 12, Hughes was photographed for the local newspaper, which identified him as the first boy in Houston to have a "motorized" bicycle, which he had built from parts of his father's steam engine. He was an indifferent student, with a liking for mathematics, flying, and mechanics. He took his first flying lesson at 14, and attended Fessenden School in Massachusetts in 1921.

After a brief stint at the Thacher School, Hughes attended math and aeronautical engineering courses at Caltech. The house where Hughes lived as a teenager at 3921 Yoakum Blvd., Houston, still stands, now known as Hughes House on the grounds of the University of St. Thomas.

Business career

Hughes enjoyed a highly successful business career beyond engineering, aviation and film-making; many of his career endeavors involved varying entrepreneurial roles.

Entertainment

Ralph Graves persuaded Hughes to finance a short film, Swell Hogan, which Graves had written and would star in. Hughes himself produced it. When he screened it, he thought it was a disaster. After hiring a film editor to try to salvage it, he finally ordered that it be destroyed. His next two films, Everybody's Acting (1926) and Two Arabian Knights (1927), achieved financial success; the latter won the first Academy Award for Best Director of a comedy picture. The Racket (1928) and The Front Page (1931) were also nominated for Academy Awards.

Hughes spent $3.5 million to make the flying film Hell's Angels (1930). Hell's Angels received one Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.

He produced another hit, Scarface (1932), a production delayed by censors' concern over its violence.

The Outlaw premiered in 1943, but was not released nationally until 1946. The film featured Jane Russell, who received considerable attention from industry censors, this time owing to her revealing costumes.

From the 1940s to the late 1950s, the Hughes Tool Company ventured into the film industry when it obtained partial ownership of the RKO companies, which included RKO Pictures, RKO Studios, a chain of movie theaters known as RKO Theatres and a network of radio stations known as the RKO Radio Network.

In 1948, Hughes gained control of RKO, a struggling major Hollywood studio, by acquiring the 929,000 shares owned by Floyd Odlum's Atlas Corporation, for $8,825,000 ($118 million in 2025). Within weeks of acquiring the studio, Hughes dismissed 700 employees. Production dwindled to 9 pictures during the first year of Hughes's control; previously RKO had averaged 30 per year.

That same year, 1948, he was able to arrange for his previous films with United Artists (UA), The Outlaw, Mad Wednesday, and Vendetta to be transferred to RKO. In exchange for the three completed being removed from UA distribution, Hughes and James and Theodore Nasser of General Service Studios would provide the financing of three independent films for distribution by UA. In terms of negotiations directly with RKO, the company agree to remove the production of the film Jet Pilot from David O. Selznick to Hughes. Hughes produced the film during the years 1949-1950 and owned RKO and in turn the distribution for the film. However, the film was not released until 1957 by Universal Pictures due in part to the subsequent events that would take place at RKO Distribution, and largely due to the extra aerial film footage that had been filmed over the years after the film's 1950 completion. Hughes was undertaking a final edit before the 1957 release.

Real estate

According to Noah Dietrich, "Land became a principal asset for the Hughes empire". Hughes acquired 1200 acres in Culver City for Hughes Aircraft, bought 7 sections [4,480 acres] in Tucson for his Falcon missile-plant, and purchased 25,000 acres near Las Vegas. In 1968, the Hughes Tool Company purchased the North Las Vegas Air Terminal.

Originally known as Summa Corporation, the Howard Hughes Corporation formed in 1972 when the oil-tools business of Hughes Tool Company, then owned by Howard Hughes Jr., floated on the New York Stock Exchange under the "Hughes Tool" name. This forced the remaining businesses of the "original" Hughes Tool to adopt a new corporate name: "Summa". The name "Summa"—Latin for "highest"—was adopted without the approval of Hughes himself, who preferred to keep his own name on the business, and suggested "HRH Properties" (for Hughes Resorts and Hotels, and also his own initials). In 1988 Summa announced plans for Summerlin, a master-planned community named for the paternal grandmother of Howard Hughes, Jean Amelia Summerlin.

Initially staying in the Desert Inn, Hughes refused to vacate his room, and instead decided to purchase the entire hotel. Hughes extended his financial empire to include Las Vegas real estate, hotels, and media outlets, spending an estimated $300 million, and using his considerable powers to acquire many of the well-known hotels, especially the venues connected with organized crime. He quickly became one of the most powerful men in Las Vegas. He was instrumental in changing the image of Las Vegas from its Wild West and, later, Mafia / organized crime roots into a more refined cosmopolitan city. In addition to the Desert Inn, Hughes would eventually own the Sands, Frontier, Silver Slipper, Castaways, and Landmark and Harold's Club in Reno. During his four years in Las Vegas, Hughes became the largest employer in Nevada.

Aviation and aerospace

Another portion of Hughes's commercial interests involved aviation, airlines, and the aerospace and defense industries. A lifelong aircraft enthusiast and pilot, Hughes survived four airplane accidents: one in a Thomas-Morse Scout while filming Hell's Angels, one while setting the airspeed record in the Hughes Racer, one at Lake Mead in 1943, and the near-fatal crash of the Hughes XF-11 in 1946. At Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, he learned to fly from pioneer aviators, including Moye Stephens and J.B. Alexander. He set many world records and commissioned the construction of custom aircraft for himself while heading Hughes Aircraft at the airport in Glendale, CA. Operating from there, the most technologically important aircraft he commissioned was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On September 13, 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set the landplane airspeed record of 352 mph (566 km/h) over his test course near Santa Ana, California (Giuseppe Motta reaching 362 mph in 1929 and George Stainforth reached 407.5 mph in 1931, both in seaplanes). This marked the last time in history that an aircraft built by a private individual set the world airspeed record. A year and a half later, on January 19, 1937, flying the same H-1 Racer fitted with longer wings, Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to Newark in seven hours, 28 minutes, and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of nine hours, 27 minutes). His average ground-speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).

The H-1 Racer featured a number of design innovations: it had retractable landing gear (as Boeing Monomail had five years before), and all rivets and joints set flush into the body of the aircraft to reduce drag. The H-1 Racer is thought to have influenced the design of a number of World War II fighters such as the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, Focke-Wulf Fw 190, and F8F Bearcat, although that has never been reliably confirmed. In 1975 the H-1 Racer was donated to the Smithsonian.

In 1932, Hughes founded the Hughes Aircraft Company, a division of Hughes Tool Company, in a rented corner of a Lockheed Aircraft Corporation hangar in Burbank, California, to build the H-1 racer.

During and after World War II, Hughes turned his company into a major defense contractor. The Hughes Helicopters division started in 1947 when helicopter manufacturer Kellett sold their latest design to Hughes for production. Hughes Aircraft became a major US aerospace- and defense contractor, manufacturing numerous technology-related products that included spacecraft vehicles, military aircraft, radar systems, electro-optical systems, the first working laser, aircraft computer systems, missile systems, ion-propulsion engines (for space travel), commercial satellites, and other electronics systems.

Business with David Charnay

Hughes made numerous business partnerships through his friend, the industrialist and producer David Charnay, beginning with their work on the film The Conqueror (1956). Though the film made money at the box office, its themes, dialogue, and casting were ridiculed. It was shot in St. George, Utah, which had been badly affected by the testing of more than 100 nuclear bombs. Many of the cast and crew were later diagnosed with cancer, leading it to be called an "RKO Radioactive Picture". Hughes eventually bought every copy of the film he could, and is reported to have watched the film at home every night in the years before he died.

Charnay later bought Four Star, the film and television production company that produced The Conqueror.

Hughes and Charnay's most published dealings were with a contested AirWest leveraged buyout. Charnay led the buyout group that involved Howard Hughes and their partners acquiring Air West. Hughes, Charnay, as well as three others, were indicted. The indictment, made by US Attorney DeVoe Heaton, accused the group of conspiring to drive down the stock price of Air West to pressure company directors to sell to Hughes. The charges were dismissed after a judge had determined that the indictment had failed to allege an illegal action on the part of Hughes, Charnay, and all the other accused in the indictment. Thompson, the federal judge who made the decision to dismiss the charges, called the indictment one of the worst claims that he had ever seen. The charges were filed a second time by US Attorney DeVoe Heaton's assistant, Dean Vernon. The federal judge ruled on November 13, 1974, and elaborated to say that the case suggested a "reprehensible misuse of the power of great wealth," but in his judicial opinion, "no crime had been committed." The aftermath of the Air West deal was later settled with the SEC by paying former stockholders for alleged losses from the sale of their investment in Air West stock. As noted above, Air West was subsequently renamed Hughes Airwest. During a long pause between the years of the dismissed charges against Hughes, Charnay, and their partners, Howard Hughes died mid-flight while on the way to Houston from Acapulco. No further attempts were made to file any indictments after Hughes died.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Miami (currently located in Chevy Chase, Maryland near Washington, D.C.), with the express goal of basic biomedical research, including trying to understand, in Hughes's words, the "genesis of life itself," due to his lifelong interest in science and technology. Hughes's first will, which he signed in 1925 at the age of 19, stipulated that a portion of his estate should be used to create a medical institute bearing his name. When a major battle with the IRS loomed ahead, Hughes gave all his stock in the Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, thereby turning the aerospace and defense contractor into a for-profit entity of a fully tax-exempt charity. Hughes's internist, Verne Mason, who treated Hughes after his 1946 aircraft crash, was chairman of the institute's medical advisory committee. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's new board of trustees sold Hughes Aircraft in 1985 to General Motors for $5.2 billion, allowing the institute to grow dramatically.

In 1954, Hughes transferred Hughes Aircraft to the foundation, which paid Hughes Tool Co. $18,000,000 for the assets. The foundation leased the land from Hughes Tool Co., which then subleased it to Hughes Aircraft Corp. The difference in rent, $2,000,000 per year, became the foundation's working capital.

The deal was the topic of a protracted legal battle between Hughes and the Internal Revenue Service, which Hughes ultimately won. After his death in 1976, many thought that the balance of Hughes's estate would go to the institute, although it was ultimately divided among his cousins and other heirs, given the lack of a will to the contrary. The HHMI was the fourth largest private organization as of 2007 and one of the largest devoted to biological and medical research, with an endowment of $20.4 billion as of June 2018.

Glomar Explorer and the taking of K-129

In 1972, during the Cold War era, Hughes was approached by the CIA through his longtime partner, David Charnay, to help secretly recover the Soviet submarine K-129, which had sunk near Hawaii four years earlier. Hughes's involvement provided the CIA with a plausible cover story, conducting expensive civilian marine research at extreme depths and the mining of undersea manganese nodules. The recovery plan used the special-purpose salvage vessel Glomar Explorer. In the summer of 1974, Glomar Explorer attempted to raise the Soviet vessel. However, during the recovery, a mechanical failure in the ship's grapple caused half of the submarine to break off and fall to the ocean floor. This section is believed to have held many of the most sought-after items, including its code book and nuclear missiles. Two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines were recovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners who were subsequently given formal burial at sea in a filmed ceremony. The operation, known as Project Azorian (but incorrectly referred to by the press as Project Jennifer), became public in February 1975 after secret documents, obtained by burglars of Hughes's headquarters in June 1974, were released. Although he lent his name and his company's resources to the operation, Hughes and his companies had no operational involvement in the project. The Glomar Explorer was eventually acquired by Transocean, and was sent to the scrap yard in 2015 during a large decline in oil prices.

Personal life

Early romances

Hughes dated many famous women, including Joan Crawford, Terry Moore, Debra Paget, Billie Dove, Faith Domergue, Bette Davis, Yvonne De Carlo, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, Pat Sheehan, Gloria Vanderbilt, Mamie Van Doren and Gene Tierney.

He also proposed to Joan Fontaine several times, according to her autobiography No Bed of Roses. Jean Harlow accompanied him to the premiere of Hell's Angels, but Noah Dietrich wrote many years later that the relationship was strictly professional, as Hughes disliked Harlow personally. In his 1971 book, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, Dietrich said that Hughes genuinely liked and respected Jane Russell, but never sought romantic involvement with her. According to Russell's autobiography, however, Hughes once tried to bed her after a party. Russell (who was married at the time) refused him, and Hughes promised it would never happen again. The two maintained a professional and private friendship for many years. Hughes remained good friends with Tierney who, after his failed attempts to seduce her, was quoted as saying "I don't think Howard could love anything that did not have a motor in it". Later, when Tierney's daughter Daria was born deaf and blind and with a severe learning disability because of Tierney's exposure to rubella during her pregnancy, Hughes saw to it that Daria received the best medical care and paid all expenses.

Luxury yacht

In 1933, Hughes made a purchase of a luxury steam yacht named the Rover, which was previously owned by Scottish shipping magnate James Mackay, 1st Earl of Inchcape. Hughes stated that "I have never seen the Rover but bought it on the blueprints, photographs and the reports of Lloyd's surveyors. My experience is that the English are the most honest race in the world." Hughes renamed the yacht Southern Cross and later sold her to Swedish entrepreneur Axel Wenner-Gren.

1936 automobile accident

On July 11, 1936, Hughes struck and killed a pedestrian named Gabriel S. Meyer with his car at the corner of 3rd Street and Lorraine in Los Angeles. After the crash, Hughes was taken to the hospital and certified as sober, but an attending doctor made a note that Hughes had been drinking. A witness to the crash told police that Hughes was driving erratically and too fast and that Meyer had been standing in the safety zone of a streetcar stop. Hughes was booked on suspicion of negligent homicide and held overnight in jail until his attorney, Neil S. McCarthy, obtained a writ of habeas corpus for his release pending a coroner's inquest. By the time of the coroner's inquiry, however, the witness had changed his story and claimed that Meyer had moved directly in front of Hughes's car. Nancy Bayly (Watts), who was in the car with Hughes at the time of the crash, corroborated this version of the story. On July 16, 1936, Hughes was held blameless by a coroner's jury at the inquest into Meyer's death. Hughes told reporters outside the inquiry, "I was driving slowly and a man stepped out of the darkness in front of me".

Marriage to Jean Peters

On January 12, 1957, Hughes married actress Jean Peters at a small hotel in Tonopah, Nevada. The couple met in the 1940s, before Peters became a film actress. They had a highly publicized romance in 1947 and there was talk of marriage, but she said she could not combine it with her career. Some later claimed that Peters was "the only woman [Hughes] ever loved", and he reportedly had his security officers follow her everywhere even when they were not in a relationship. Such reports were confirmed by actor Max Showalter, who became a close friend of Peters while shooting Niagara (1953). Showalter told an interviewer that because he frequently met with Peters, Hughes's men threatened to ruin his career if he did not leave her alone.

Connections to Richard Nixon and Watergate

Shortly before the 1960 Presidential election, Richard Nixon was alarmed when it was revealed that his brother, Donald, had received a $205,000 loan from Hughes. It has long been speculated that Nixon's drive to learn what the Democrats were planning in 1972 was based in part on his belief that the Democrats knew about a bribe that his friend Bebe Rebozo had received from Hughes after Nixon took office.

In late 1971, Donald Nixon was collecting intelligence for his brother in preparation for the upcoming presidential election. One of his sources was John H. Meier, a former business adviser of Hughes who had also worked with Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O'Brien.

Meier, in collaboration with former Vice President Hubert Humphrey and others, wanted to feed misinformation to the Nixon campaign. Meier told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election because Larry O'Brien had a great deal of information on Richard Nixon's illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released; O'Brien did not actually have any such information, but Meier wanted Nixon to think that he did. Donald told his brother that O'Brien was in possession of damaging information that could destroy his campaign. Terry Lenzner, who was the chief investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee, speculates that it was Nixon's desire to know what O'Brien knew about Nixon's dealings with Hughes that may have partially motivated the Watergate break-in.

Last years

Physical and mental decline

Hughes was widely considered eccentric and suffered from severe obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).

Dietrich wrote that Hughes ate the same dinner daily: a New York strip steak cooked medium rare, dinner salad, and peas; but only the smaller peas, pushing the larger ones aside. For breakfast, his eggs had to be cooked the way Lily, his family cook, made them. Hughes had a "phobia about germs", and "his passion for secrecy became a mania."

While directing The Outlaw, Hughes became fixated on a small flaw in one of Jane Russell's blouses, claiming that the fabric bunched up along a seam and gave the appearance of two nipples on each breast. He wrote a detailed memorandum to the crew on how to fix the problem. Richard Fleischer, who directed His Kind of Woman with Hughes as executive producer, wrote at length in his autobiography about the difficulty of dealing with the tycoon. In his book Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer explained that Hughes was fixated on trivial details and was alternately indecisive and obstinate. He also revealed that Hughes's unpredictable mood swings made him wonder whether the film would ever be completed.

In 1957, Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. He stayed in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He ate only chocolate bars and chicken and drank only milk and was surrounded by dozens of boxes of Kleenex that he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides giving them explicit instructions neither to look at him nor speak to him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continuously watching movies. When he finally emerged in the spring of 1958, his hygiene was terrible. He had neither bathed nor cut his hair or nails for weeks.

After the screening room incident, Hughes moved into a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel where he also rented rooms for his aides, his wife, and numerous girlfriends. He would sit naked in his bedroom with a pink hotel napkin placed over his genitals, watching movies. This may have been because Hughes found the touch of clothing painful due to allodynia. He may have watched movies to distract himself from his pain – a common practice among patients with intractable pain, especially those who do not receive adequate treatment. In one year, he spent an estimated $11 million at the hotel.

Later years in Las Vegas

The wealthy and aging Hughes, accompanied by his entourage of personal aides, began moving from one hotel to another, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse. In the last ten years of his life, 1966 to 1976, Hughes lived in hotels in many cities – including Beverly Hills, Boston, Las Vegas, Nassau, Freeport and Vancouver.

On November 24, 1966 (Thanksgiving Day), Hughes arrived in Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into the Desert Inn. Because he refused to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners, Hughes bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the center of Hughes's empire, and the ninth-floor penthouse became his personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, he bought several other hotel-casinos, including the Castaways, New Frontier, the Landmark Hotel and Casino, and the Sands. Hughes was rumored to have bought the Silver Slipper casino to move its trademark neon silver slipper which was visible from his bedroom, but this is not credible. After Hughes left the Desert Inn, hotel employees discovered that his drapes had not been opened during the time he lived there and had rotted through.

Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas to something more glamorous. He wrote in a memo to an aide, "I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car." Hughes bought several local television stations (including KLAS-TV).

Eventually, the brain trauma from Hughes's previous accidents, the effects of neurosyphilis diagnosed in 1932 and undiagnosed obsessive–compulsive disorder considerably affected his decision-making. A small panel, unofficially dubbed the "Mormon Mafia" for the many Latter-day Saints on the committee, was led by Frank William Gay and originally served as Hughes's "secret police" headquartered at 7000 Romaine, Hollywood. Over the next two decades, this group oversaw and controlled considerable business holdings, with the CIA anointing Gay while awarding a contract to the Hughes corporation to acquire sensitive information on a sunken Russian submarine. In addition to supervising day-to-day business operations and Hughes's health, they also went to great pains to satisfy Hughes's every whim. For example, Hughes once became fond of Baskin-Robbins's banana nut ice cream, so his aides sought to secure a bulk shipment for him, only to discover that Baskin-Robbins had discontinued the flavor. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, 350 gallons (1,300 L), and had it shipped from Los Angeles. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he was tired of banana nut and wanted only French vanilla ice cream. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free banana nut ice cream to casino customers for a year. In a 1996 interview, former Howard Hughes Chief of Nevada Operations Robert Maheu said, "There is a rumor that there is still some banana nut ice cream left in the freezer. It is most likely true."

Death

Hughes is reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27 p.m. on board an aircraft, Learjet 24B N855W, owned by Robert Graf and piloted by Roger Sutton and Jeff Abrams. He was en route from his penthouse at the Acapulco Princess Hotel (now the Princess Mundo Imperial) in Mexico to the Methodist Hospital in Houston.

His reclusiveness and possibly his drug use made him practically unrecognizable. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long—his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body. Howard Hughes's alias, John T. Conover, was used when his body arrived at a morgue in Houston on the day of his death.

An autopsy recorded kidney failure as the cause of death. In an eighteen-month study investigating Hughes's drug abuse for the estate, it was found that "someone administered a deadly injection of the painkiller to this comatose man ... obviously needlessly and almost certainly fatal". He suffered from malnutrition and was covered in bedsores. While his kidneys were damaged, his other internal organs, including his brain, which had no visible damage or illnesses, were deemed perfectly healthy. X-rays revealed five broken-off hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms. To inject codeine into his muscles, Hughes had used glass syringes with metal needles that easily became detached.

Hughes is buried next to his parents at Glenwood Cemetery in Houston.

Estate

Approximately three weeks after Hughes's death, a handwritten will was found on the desk of an official of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. The so-called "Mormon Will" gave $1.56 billion to various charitable organizations (including $625 million to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute), nearly $470 million to the upper management in Hughes's companies and to his aides, $156 million to first cousin William Lummis, and $156 million split equally between his two ex-wives Ella Rice and Jean Peters.

A further $156 million was endowed to a gas station owner, Melvin Dummar, who told reporters that in 1967, he found a disheveled and dirty man lying along US Route 95, just 150 miles (240 km) north of Las Vegas. The man asked for a ride to Vegas. Dropping him off at the Sands Hotel, Dummar said the man told him that he was Hughes. Dummar later claimed that days after Hughes's death a "mysterious man" appeared at his gas station, leaving an envelope containing the will on his desk. Unsure whether the will was genuine and unsure of what to do, Dummar left the will at the LDS Church office. In 1978, a Nevada court ruled the Mormon Will a forgery and officially declared that Hughes had died intestate (without a valid will). Dummar's story was later adapted into Jonathan Demme's film Melvin and Howard in 1980.

Hughes's $2.5 billion estate was eventually split in 1983 among 22 cousins, including William Lummis, who serves as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Hughes Aircraft was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5.2 billion. The court rejected suits by the states of California and Texas that claimed they were owed inheritance tax.

In 1984, Hughes's estate paid an undisclosed amount to Terry Moore, who claimed she and Hughes had secretly married on a yacht in international waters off Mexico in 1949 and never divorced. Moore never produced proof of a marriage, but her book, The Beauty and the Billionaire, became a bestseller.

Awards

Harmon Trophy (1936 and 1938)

Collier Trophy (1938)

Congressional Gold Medal (1939)

Octave Chanute Award (1940)

National Aviation Hall of Fame (1973)

International Air & Space Hall of Fame (1987)

Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (2018)

Archive

The moving image collection of Howard Hughes is held at the Academy Film Archive. The collection consists of over 200 items including 35mm and 16mm elements of feature films, documentaries, and television programs made or accumulated by Hughes.

In popular culture

Film

In The Carpetbaggers (1964), the main character Jonas Cord (played by George Peppard) is loosely based on Howard Hughes.

In the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the character Willard Whyte (played by Jimmy Dean) is loosely based on Hughes.

The Amazing Howard Hughes is a 1977 American made-for-television biographical film which aired as a mini-series on the CBS network, made a year after Hughes's death and based on Noah Dietrich's book Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes. Tommy Lee Jones plays Hughes.

Melvin and Howard (1980), directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jason Robards as Howard Hughes and Paul Le Mat as Melvin Dummar. The film focuses on Melvin Dummar's claims of meeting Hughes in the Nevada desert and subsequent estate battles over his inclusion in Hughes's will.

In Tucker: The Man and His Dream, (1988), Hughes (played by Dean Stockwell) figures in the plot by telling Preston Tucker to source steel and engines for Tucker's automobiles from a helicopter manufacturer in New York. Scene occurs in a hangar with the Hercules.

In The Rocketeer, a 1991 American period superhero film from Walt Disney Pictures, the title character attracts the attention of Howard Hughes (played by Terry O'Quinn) and the FBI, who are hunting for a missing jet pack, as well as Nazi operatives.

In Conspiracy Theory (1997), the character Jerry Fletcher (played by Mel Gibson) mentions one of his theories to a street vendor by saying, "Did you know that the whole Vietnam War was fought over a bet that Howard Hughes lost to Aristotle Onassis?" referring to his (Fletcher's) thoughts on the politics of that conflict.

In The Aviator (2004), directed by Martin Scorsese, Hughes is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. The film focuses on Hughes's personal life from the making of Hell's Angels through his successful flight of the Hercules or Spruce Goose.

Games

The character of Andrew Ryan in the 2007 video game BioShock is loosely based on Hughes. Ryan is a billionaire industrialist in post-World War II America who, seeking to avoid governments, religions, and other "parasitic" influences, ordered the secret construction of an underwater city, Rapture. Years later, when Ryan's vision for Rapture falls into dystopia, he hides himself away and uses armies of mutated humans, "Splicers", to defend himself and fight against those trying to take over his city, including the player-character.

In L.A. Noire, Hughes makes an appearance presenting his Hercules H-4 aircraft in the game opening scene. The H-4 is later a central plot piece of DLC Arson Case, "Nicholson Electroplating".

In Fallout: New Vegas and the Fallout TV series, the character of Robert Edwin House, a wealthy business magnate and entrepreneur who owns the New Vegas strip, is based on Howard Hughes and closely resembles him in appearance, personality and background. A portrait of Mr. House can also be found in the game which strongly resembles a portrait of Howard Hughes standing in front of a Boeing Army Pursuit Plane.

Literature

Stan Lee repeatedly stated he created the Marvel Comics character Iron Man's civilian persona, Tony Stark, drawing inspiration from Howard Hughes's colorful lifestyle and personality. Additionally, the first name of Stark's father is Howard.

Hughes is a supporting character in all three parts of James Ellroy's Underworld USA Trilogy, employing several of the protagonists as private investigators, bagmen, and consultants in his attempt to assume control of Las Vegas. Referred to behind his back as "Count Dracula" (due to his reclusiveness and rumored obsession with blood transfusions from Mormon donors), Hughes is portrayed as a spoiled, racist, opioid-addicted megalomaniac whose grandiose plans for Las Vegas are undermined by the manipulations of the Chicago Outfit.

In the 1981 novel Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, the weapon "which might have defeated the Japs if it hadn't come so late" is revealed to be the Spruce Goose, which had been magically hijacked on its test flight by evil Foré sorcerers in New Guinea. Hughes's skeleton is found at the controls, identified by Hughes's trademark fedora and cloth-and-leather jacket.

Music

John Hartford's song "Howard Hughes Blues" from his 1972 album Morning Bugle is a philosophical reflection on fame and fortune in the public eye: "But success is just a mess of overdues / For old Howard Hughes and all of his blues."

The 1974 song "Broadway Melody of 1974" from album "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" by Genesis referenced Howard Hughes: "There's Howard Hughes in blue suede shoes / Smiling at the majorettes, smoking Winston cigarettes".

The 1974 song "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues" by Jim Croce compares the main protagonist of the song to Howard Hughes in one of the lyrics.

The 1974 song "The Wall Street Shuffle" by English rock band 10cc directly references Hughes and his ways of life in the last verse.

The name of the musical group The Hues Corporation who had the 1974 hit song "Rock the Boat" was selected since it was a heterophonic spelling of Hughes as in Howard Hughes.

Joni Mitchell's 1977 song "Talk to Me" makes reference to Hughes.

The song "Me and Howard Hughes" by Irish band The Boomtown Rats on their 1978 album A Tonic for the Troops is about the title subject.

The song "Closet Chronicles" by American rock band Kansas on their 1977 album Point of Know Return is a Howard Hughes allegory.

In the song "Ain't No Fun (Waiting 'Round to Be a Millionaire)" by AC/DC on their 1976 album Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, singer Bon Scott referenced Howard Hughes toward the end of the song: "Hey, hello Howard, how you doin', my next door neighbour? Oh, yea... Get your f*ckin' jumbo jet off my airport"

The 1983 song "Casanova Brown" by Teena Marie includes the lyric "He's had more girls than Howard Hughes had money".

Television

"Howard Hughes Documentary", broadcast in 1992 as an episode of the Time Machine documentary series, was introduced by Peter Graves, later released by A&E Home Video.

In Episode 14 of Lupin III Part 2, the owner of a cursed ruby is named Howard Heath. Heath is based on Hughes, who had only recently died when the episode aired.

In the 1973 episode of The Partridge Family "Diary of a Mad Millionaire", John Astin plays a reclusive millionaire who was readily recognized as a reference to Howard Hughes, famous for being a recluse at that time.

In The Greatest American Hero Season 2 episode 3, "Don't Mess Around with Jim", Ralph and Bill are kidnapped by a reclusive tycoon, owner of Beck Air airplane company, who fakes his own death, and seems to know more about the suit than they do. He then blackmails them into retrieving his will to prevent it from being misused by the president of his company.

In Benson Season 6, Episode 2, "The Inheritance," Benson learns he has inherited the assets of Hugh Howard, a pastiche of Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner, including his Playboy-like magazine, which becomes embarrassing for him, the Governor, and the Governor's staff.

In The Simpsons Season 5 episode "$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)", Mr. Burns resembles Hughes in his recluse state. Various nods to his life appear in the episode, ranging from casino ownership and penthouse office to the "Spruce Goose" being renamed "Spruce Moose" as well as a lack of hygiene and being a germaphobe.

In The Beverly Hillbillies episode, "The Clampett-Hewes Empire", Jed Clampett, while in Hooterville, decides to merge his interests with a man Mr. Drysdale believes is Howard Hughes, the famous reclusive billionaire. Eventually it turns out, to Mr. Drysdale's chagrin, "Howard Hughes" is no billionaire; he is, in fact, nothing but a plain old farmer and severely henpecked husband with the homophonic name "Howard Hewes" (H-E-W-E-S).

In the Invader Zim episode, "Germs", the alien Zim becomes paranoid after discovering that Earth is covered in germs. Referencing Howard Hughes, he isolates himself in his home and dons tissue boxes on his feet.