Howard Hughes
Throughout the 20th century, it has
been the media’s job to pinpoint what
events and people would prove to be an
effective story. This was certainly the
case for Howard R. Hughes. Son to the
wealthy Howard Hughes Sr., Howard became
the interest of the American people
and newspapers for most of his life. Being
deemed one of the most famous men
of the mid-20th century was greatly attributed
to Hughes’s skills as an
industrialist, aviator, and motion-picture producer
combined with his
enormous wealth, intellect, and achievement. The media thrived
on Howard’s
unusual and sometimes scandalous life, especially in his later
years when
newspapers would frequently front large amounts of money to get
stories on
Hughes. Howard was also associated with what has been called one of
the
greatest publishing hoaxes in history. Howard Hughes Sr., commonly known
as
Big Howard, was a graduate of the Harvard School of Law, yet never
once appeared
before a court of law. Big Howard spent the first 36 years of
his life chasing
money across the Texas plains, as a wildcatter and a
speculator in oil leases,
working hard enough and earning just enough to move
on to another, hopefully
more fortunate gamble. In the year of his marriage,
Big Howard sold leases on
land that proved to have $50,000 in oil beneath it.
He promptly took his new
wife to Europe for a honeymoon, and returned exactly
$50,000 poorer. In 1908,
Big Howard turned his ingenuity and his hobby to
tinker into good fortune.
Current drilling technology was unable to
penetrate the thick rock of southwest
Texas and oilmen could only extract
the surface layers of oil, unable to tap the
vast resources that lay far
below. Big Howard came up with the idea for a
rolling bit, with 166 cutting
edges and invented a method to keep the bit
lubricated as it tore away at the
rock. Later that year, Big Howard produced a
model and went into business
with his leasing partner, Walter B. Sharp, forming
the Sharp-Hughes Tool
Company. Rather than sell the bits to oil drillers, Hughes
and Sharp decided
to lease the bits out on a job basis, for the tidy sum of
$30,000 per well.
With no competitor able to duplicate this new technology,
Sharp- Hughes
Tool possessed a profitable monopoly over oil extraction. So
quickly was the
invention successful that in late 1908, the partners built a
factory on a
seventy-acre site east of Houston. On 1915, Sharp passed away and
Big
Howard purchased his shares in the corporation, thus becoming the sole
owner.
Cash flowed freely into and back out of Sharp-Hughes Tool. Big Howard
became
a first class socialite, and began to spend increasing amounts of time
and
money on parties, automobile racing and travel. One of his amusements was
to
charter a railroad car, fill it with friends, and conduct a rolling
party
between Texas and California. In the spring of 1921, Mrs. Hughes past
away and
Big Howard died as abruptly as his wife, willing his three-
fourths of his
estate to his only son, Howard Robard Hughes. Big Howard left
an estate
appraised for tax purposed at $871,518. As a less attractive part
of his legacy,
he left behind $258,000 in unpaid bills, including $2,758 to
Brook Brothers
Clothiers, $5,502 to Cartier’s in New York, and $3,500 for
a grand piano.
Howard Hughes Jr. was born on Christmas Eve, 1906 in
Houston, Texas. He was
commonly known as Sonny, or Little Howard, despite the
fact that he was 6’3"
by the age of 16. Hughes was the student of 7 different
schools, of which he
graduated from none, excelling only in mathematics. As a
young man, Hughes had a
penchant for all things mechanical and was known to
spend hours tinkering on
various different devices. Little Howard had only
one friend, the son his
father’s business partner, Dudley Sharp. At the age
of 6, Howard Hughes Sr.
presented his son with the gift of a workshop, where
his son could always be
found playing with various bits of wires and pieces
of metal. At the age of 11,
Little Howard built his own ham radio, and at
the age of 13, when he refused the
gift of a motorcycle, Hughes built one for
himself, taking parts from his
father’s steam car. As a graduate of Harvard,
Big Howard sought his son to
have the same education, and sent his son to
boarding school in Massachusetts in
fall of 1919. After one year had passed
it became apparent that Sonny was not
going to succeed in grooming school.
Big Howard traveled across the country to
collect his son, and they attended
a boat race on the way home. After losing a
bet to his son on the outcome of
the race, Big Howard was forced to grant him
one wish. That summer, Sonny
took flying lessons with various crop dusters
against the wishes of both of
his parents. It was here that Hughes would develop
his love of aviation. In
1921, oil drilling and prospecting took off in
California, and Hughes Sr.
relocated to Hollywood, and took his son with him.
After a generous
donation to the California Institute of Technology, Sonny was
able to attend
mathematics and engineering courses. In the fall of 1923, Mrs.
Hughes
passed away, and a little over a year later in January of 1924,
Big
Howard passed as well. At the age of 17, it would seem that Hughes
was not
prepared to enter the world of adulthood, but he would quickly prove
otherwise.
Sonny was the inheritor of 75% of Hughes Tool, of which he
would be granted
control at the age of 21. Eager to take responsibility of
his own affairs,
Hughes appeared before a Texas judge to appeal the legal
guidelines set forth in
his father’s will. Against the advice of Little
Howard’s remaining family,
the judge granted Hughes his wish and a great deal
of wealth and power was put
into a young man’s hands. Howard took the helm of
Hughes Tool at the age of
eighteen. Fully aware that he was unable of
managing a multi-million dollar
firm, he set out to find solid management.
Hughes found it two months later in
Noah Dietrich, an out of work
accountant. Before hiring Dietrich, Hughes
insisted that they go on a
seven-day train ride. Hughes never mentioned one
detail about the business
over the seven-day period, and announced to Dietrich
upon their return that
he was hired. Dietrich managed Hughes' business affairs
and Hughes Tool for
the next thirty years. In 1925, an old friend of Big Howard
approached Hughes
Jr. to help him finance a film project that he was working on.
Hughes
agreed on the condition that he be allowed on the set of the film, and
be
given access to everyone working on the film, so that he might learn about
the
process himself. An agreement was made and Howard Hughes moved back
to
Hollywood. Hughes spent all of his time on the set of Swell Hogan,
constantly
questioning the cameramen, insisting that he must look through the
lens before
each shot was taken. Due mostly to his lack of film knowledge,
every scene was
shot twice, and production costs quickly doubled to $80,000.
On one occasion,
Hughes was discovered by the night watchman surrounded
by neat groups of bits
and pieces of a film projector. When asked what he was
doing, Hughes replied
that if he were going to be in the movie business, he
would need to know how
everything worked, down to the projectors themselves.
By dawn the next day the
projector was back in order, and Hughes was back on
the set of Swell Hogan.
Dollars were not of concern to Hughes as the cash
flowed freely out of Hughes
Tool. In early 1926, Hughes bought
controlling shares in a chain of 125
theaters, and 70 percent interest in
Multi-Color, a corporation developing color
motion picture film. Swell Hogan
was finished by mid-1926, and failed miserably
in its first screening. Hughes
hired the best producers and editors in
Hollywood, but the film could not
be salvaged. Hughes placed the film on a shelf
and bought his friend a new
car. All of Hughes’ ventures were financed by
Hughes Tool, of which
Hughes’ remaining family was 25% owners. Distraught with
his losses on Swell
Hogan, Hughes’ family phoned and warned him of the dangers
of show business.
Enraged at himself and his failures, Hughes bought the
remaining shares of
Hughes Tool at twice their value and turned to successful
director Lewis
Milestone to work on future movie projects. Hughes and Milestone
churned out
three movies in two years, including Everybody’s Acting, The
Racket, and
Two Arabian Knights, the last of which won an Academy Award for best
comedy
in 1927. Invigorated with his film success, Hughes set out to make a film
on
his own based on a subject that was near to his heart: aviation. The
script
for Hell’s Angels came from collaboration between Hughes and
two
screenwriters, and was based on two young British pilots competing for
the
affection of an English society girl. Written, directed and produced by
Hughes,
Hell’s Angels was to be the greatest motion picture ever made.
Hughes set out
to do just that, spending $553,000 to buy and re-condition 87
WWI fighters and
bombers, and another $400,000 to rent or build airfields in
the Los Angeles
area. Hughes needed a Zeppelin to burn and bought one.
Needing an army to fight
a ground battle, he hired 1,700 extras at $200 a
week each. His attention to
detail was immaculate. If the scene called for a
rainy night, Hughes would
require the actors to be on call until it rained at
night, and force them to
stay awake all night in the rain. The director,
Hughes, would demand re-take
after re-take of scenes, often because of his
own flaws. Hughes’ attention to
detail on the ground was nothing compared to
that of the air. The film called
for airplane battles in cloudy skies, and
for once, Hughes quickly learned that
one can’t buy clouds. He began to rise
early, or stay up all night to watch
for an opportune dawn. If the sun rose
over Southern California, 40 or more
airplanes would take off and seek out
cloudy skies. When the weather predicted
clouds miles away, Hughes, the
pilots, and the fleet of planes would travel in
hopes of the proper backdrop.
Some days, everyone would get paid just to stand
around. Many months in
production, Hell’s Angels seemed to be drawing to a
close, when Al Jolson’s
The Jazz Singer brought an audible revolution to
Hollywood. Sound became
the standard by which pictures were judged and Hughes’
film lacked just one
thing: sound. The film, at length, edited, cut and fitted
with titles, was
given an unannounced preview in a small L.A. theater. The
response from the
audience was clear; the 2 million-dollar silent picture was
not good enough.
Refusing to quit, Hughes set to work on Hell’s Angels anew.
The flight
scenes were easy enough to fix, the sound could be dubbed in, but the
scenes
in which the actors were to speak would have to be shot all over
again.
The first task was to write a new screenplay. Hughes insisted that
in a silent
picture actors could get away with mouthing their words, but in a
talking
picture they would have to make sense. He also demanded that the cast
be
completely overhauled out of fear that one individual might not sound
good
reading his lines. Production continued through the great depression,
and in May
of 1930 the film was completed. Hughes had shot 3,000,000 feet of
film, of which
only 1% was used in the final production, and spent almost 4
million dollars.
The film opened to pandemonium in Los Angeles. Despite
terrible reviews, the
public went wild for Hell’s Angels. The film set box
office records in every
theater that itplayed, and went on to appear on
screens for over 20 years
throughout the world. In the end, it brought in
just over eight million dollars,
roughly twice Hughes’s investment. Bored
with the movies and having proven
himself, it was time for Hughes to move on
to something more exciting. In the
summer of 1932, Howard Hughes took a job
with American Airlines under the name
Charles Howard. His salary was $250
a week, an excellent wage during the great
depression (unless you’re already
a millionaire.) Hughes masqueraded in this
position for two months, carrying
baggage, talking to passengers and working as
a co-pilot for the commercial
airline. In the late summer of 1932, Hughes left
American Airlines and
bought himself a seaplane. He hired Glen Odekirk to
customize the plane to
Hughes’ acute specifications. One day the two argued
for three hours about
the proper placement of three screws in a strip of metal.
Hughes wanted
to fly cross-country in his seaplane, and eventually hired Odekirk
as his
co-pilot. For the next 18 months the two would fly around the
country,
stopping at Hughes’ whims and Howard would often disappear
unannounced for
days, weeks or months, only to return to Odekirk and his
seaplane. On one such
disappearance, Hughes ventured to Europe, returning
with a 320 foot yacht and a
Boeing P-12 Army Air Corps pursuit plane.
Hughes decided to race his plane in
Miami, and set Odekirk to work,
tinkering with the plane in a vain attempt to
make the plane faster. Hughes
was so demanding that he would force Odekirk to
make adjustments the mechanic
knew would not work. In exasperation, Odekirk
suggested that Hughes build his
own plane from scratch, and after Hughes won the
race, the billionaire spent
the next two years building a plane that could win
any race. Hughes and
Odekirk returned to Los Angeles, where Howard hired Dick
Palmer, a young
Cal. Tech. Engineer known for his radical ideas. They set up
shop just
outside L. A. in a secret hangar where the three would work days and
nights
on end. The project was called H-1 (Hughes-1) and was the most
progressive
airplane in the world. The plane introduced the retractable landing
gear, and
pioneered other aeronautic advances such as countersunk screws and
flat
rivets to reduce wind resistance. The H-1 made its first appearance
in
September 1935 as Hughes announced that he would break the world
record for
airspeed in his new plane. Hughes insisted that he be the first to
fly the
plane, no matter how dangerous, and that the first flight be the one
for which
the record would be tested, even though no one knew how the plane
would perform
or if it would fly at all. The record to be broken was 314.32
miles per hour,
held by Raymond Delmotte of France. The test called for an
average of successive
trials, not less than four. After five passes, Hughes
averaged a speed of 352.39
mile per hour, easily passing Delmottes’ record.
The next morning Howard
Hughes moved from the entertainment pages of the
nation’s newspapers to the
front pages. He had flown faster than any other
man, in an airplane of his own
design, and won the record for the United
States. America did not know what to
do with Howard Hughes, the millionaire
playboy who was known to aeronautical
engineers as colleague, amongst pilots,
a gritty legend and to Hollywood, a film
genius. In addition to his many
achievements, Hughes was known to his friends
and his acquaintances as a
person of bizarre habits and personal tics. There
were numerous causes for
Hughes’s increasingly strange behavior. From an early
age he was quite deaf
and could not hear conversations around him, yet he told
few people of his
disability. He conducted much of his business on the telephone
because he
could hear better using it. As a young man, Hughes evidently
contracted
syphilis, and in his later years he was plagued with neurosyphilis,
which is
marked by a degeneration of brain cells that can lead to paranoia and
other
symptoms. He surrounded himself with aides that he trusted, a group of
seven
Mormons which never left Hughes’ side (Howard believed Mormons were
more
trustworthy) and insisted that nay item handed to Hughes be covered by
a
Kleenex. In addition, as a test pilot Hughes was involved in numerous
plane
crashes that some researchers presume resulted in brain injury. The
most serious
accident occurred in 1946 when an XF-11 reconnaissance plane he
was testing for
the Air Force crashed, leaving him with massive injuries that
caused him pain
for the rest of his life. Hughes, who eschewed alcohol and
tobacco, was forced
to take medications to alleviate his pain. An addiction
to codeine, a prescribed
painkiller made from opium, began at this time and
continued for the remainder
of his life. Finally, but perhaps most important
in understanding Hughes’s
inability to live a normal life, he became
increasingly trapped by what medical
professionals today understand was
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Many of
Hughes’s biographers believe that
his mother suffered from the same disease.
This mental disorder can cause
ritualistic behavior and unusual habits. For
example, Hughes became obsessed
with germs and cleanliness. In fact, the press
reported that Hughes was so
fearful of germs that he walked around in Kleenex
boxes instead of shoes and
insisted that any item be handed to him covered by a
Kleenex. The disease
went undiagnosed in his lifetime. In the early 1960’s
Hughes hired an
ex-FBI agent, Robert Maheu, as his right hand man. Hughes knew
that Maheu had
been involved in many cloak and dagger activities with the FBI
and CIA,
including an assassination attempt on Cuba’s Fidel Castro. At the
time there
were several dozen subpoenas for Hughes, including Federal, state and
local
tax evasion charges. In fact, later Hughes boasted that he never paid
a
dollar of income tax in his lifetime. Hughes brought Maheu on board to hide
him
from the public eye and to protect against those who wished to bring
Hughes into
court. In 1966, Maheu moved Hughes to the Desert Inn, located in
Las Vegas, by
train in the first hours of the morning. No one was allowed in
the hotel lobby
upon Hughes’ arrival. He moved into the penthouse on the
fifteenth floor. Six
months had passed and hotel management wanted Hughes
out. He was occupying the
floor of the hotel that had the most luxurious
suites, and casino profits
don’t come form room rent, but from high rollers
and high rollers demand the
best accommodations. Hughes instructed Maheu to
inquire about the price of the
hotel, and ownership humorously suggested $14
million, almost twice what the
casino was worth. Hughes paid the next day and
went into the gambling business.
Howard later acquired the Sands, the
Frontier, the Castaway, and the tiny Silver
Slipper. Hughes told Maheu to
buy the silver Slipper because its well-lit
rotating marquee was an annoyance
to Hughes when it shined through his window.
After spending several years
in Las Vegas, the pressure form legal actions
became too great. Hughes
re-located to the Bahamas on Maheu’s suggestion.
Eighteen months later,
the press reported that Hughes had died on an airplane
en-route to Texas from
heart failure. Hughes had not been publicly seen or
photographed for twenty
years. In the last part of Hughes’s life the media
went crazy over his
whereabouts and wellbeing. Rumors were circulating that in
seclusion, Hughes
had wasted away to 90 pounds and he had grown eight-inch
fingernails and
toenails. When a California court levied a judgement of $137
million for his
refusal to appear to defend against a stockholders’ lawsuit,
Hughes
abandoned his industrial empire, fled from the USA, and went into hiding
on
Paradise Island in the Bahamas. At this time, the McGraw-Hill Book
Co.
claimed Hughes had struck a deal with writer Clifford Irving, an
expatriate
novelist living on the Mediterranean Island of Ibiza. The hitherto
reclusive
billionaire had met clandestinely with Irving in Mexico and the
Bahamas, in
order to tell the 40-year-old author the true story of his life.
It was a
no-hold-barred autobiography, "warts and all," from a living legend
who was
dying and wanted to set the record straight. First reports hinted
that it told
of Hughes’ manipulation of the stock market, his bribery of
American
presidents, his secret wartime combat mission under the aegis of
President
Roosevelt, his friendships with Cary Grant and Ernest
Hemingway, his
behind-locked-doors life in Las Vegas- and it revealed details
of affairs with
movie stars from Katharine Hepburn to Ava Gardner.
McGraw-Hill’s announcement
of the impending publication ignited a firestorm
of controversy. Executives of
Hughes’ corporations insisted the book was
unauthorized. Finally on national
radio hookup, an invisible Howard Hughes
spoke from his darkened hotel suite on
Paradise Island. "This must go
down in history," he said. "I only wish I
were still in the movie business,
because I don’t remember any script as wild
or as stretching the imagination
as this yarn has turned out to be. I don’t
know what’s in the autobiography.
I don’t know Clifford Irving."
McGraw-Hill, Irving, and Life, which had
bought serialization rights, were not
fazed by the denials. For months the
debate was front-page news, often eclipsing
the Vietnam War. The manuscript
was read by many reporters that had covered
Hughes and came to the
conclusion that there was "no doubt in [their] mind
[s]" that it could only
have come from Hughes himself. As a final test to
determine authenticity,
leading handwriting experts in the United States
scrutinized the
documentation and matched it against samples provided by
Hughes’ lawyers.
Their conclusion: the signatures were those of Howard Hughes
and "the chances
are one in ten million that this many handwritten pages from
Hughes to
Irving and McGraw-Hill are not genuine. It would be beyond human
capability
to forge this mass of material." By the end of January 1972,
Clifford
Irving did an about-face, stunning his army of supporters with a
confession
that the autobiography was a hoax. "I never met Howard Hughes,"
Irving
now said. "It was a cheap caper, nothing more." The book had resulted
from a
combination of careful research and daring imagination. Amid
massive
worldwide publicity, Irving was sentenced to 2 ½ years in federal
prison only
two months after he appeared on the cover of Time. It was money
that etched
Howard Hughes into the public mind. The sound of his name was
associated with
untold wealth, wealth supposedly accumulated through his gift
for turning all he
touched to gold. left the world with a spectacular legacy
that will be
remembered for years to come. His contributions to the film
business, such as
attention to detail and high budget spending, are still
being used to this day.
Howard’s cutting edge technology used to build
his many planes has let to
development of many aircrafts presently in use. In
truth, we are left with two
Howard Hugheses- the public and the private:
the rational disguise and the world
of shadows, of instinct to preserve and
protect at any cost the image he had
created. That it has taken so many years
for the veil to part is tribute both to
his genius and to his
tragedy.
Bibliography
Bartlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B.
EMPIRE. New York, W. W. Norton &
Company. 1979. Drosnin, Michael.
Citizen Hughes: In His Own Words. New York,
Holt, Tinch and Winston.
1985.