Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer, film director, philanthropist, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gained fame in the late 1920s as a maverick film producer, making big budget and often controversial films like Hell's Angels , Scarface , and The Outlaw . Hughes was one of the most influential aviators in history. He also set multiple world air-speed records (for which he won many awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal), built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 "Hercules" aircraft, and acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines. Hughes is remembered today, however, for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, caused in part by a worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder. Hughes's legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Early years
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr.'s birthplace is disputed in sources as either Humble or Houston, Texas; the date is also disputed. Hughes claimed his birthday was Christmas Eve. A 1941 affidavit birth certificate of Hughes, signed by his aunt Annette Gano Lummis and Estelle Boughton Sharp, states he was born on December 24, 1905, in Harris County, Texas. However, his baptismal record of October 7, 1906, in the parish register of St. John's Episcopal Church, in Keokuk, Iowa, has his birth listed as September 24, 1905, without reference to the place of birth.
His parents were Allene Stone Gano (a descendant of Owen Tudor, second husband of Catherine of Valois, Dowager Queen of England) and Howard R. Hughes, Sr., who patented the two-cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for petroleum in previously inaccessible places. Howard R. Hughes, Sr. made the shrewd and lucrative decision to commercialize the invention, founding the Hughes Tool Company in 1909.
Showing great aptitude in engineering at an early age, Hughes built Houston's first radio transmitter when he was 11 years old. At 12, Hughes was photographed in the local newspaper as being the first boy in Houston to have a "motorized" bicycle, which he had built himself from parts taken from his father's steam engine. He was an indifferent student with a liking for mathematics, flying, and things mechanical, taking flying lessons at 14 and later auditing math and aeronautical engineering courses at Caltech.
Allene Hughes died in March 1922 from complications of an ectopic pregnancy. In January 1924, Howard Hughes Sr. died of a heart attack. Their deaths apparently inspired Hughes to include the creation of a medical research laboratory in his will that he signed in 1925, at age 19. Because Howard Sr.'s will had not been updated since Allene's death, Hughes inherited 75% of the family fortune. On his 19th birthday, Hughes was declared an emancipated minor, enabling him to take full control of his legacy.
Hughes dropped out of Rice University shortly after his father's death. On June 1, 1925, he married Ella Botts Rice (1904-1992), daughter of David Rice and Martha Lawson Botts of Houston, Texas. They moved to Los Angeles, where he hoped to make a name for himself making movies.
Hollywood years
His first two films, 1927's Everybody's Acting and 1928's Two Arabian Knights , were financial successes, the latter winning the first ever Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. 1928's The Racket and 1931's The Front Page were also nominated for Academy Awards. Hughes spent US$3.8 million to make Hell's Angels , a flying film, released in 1930. He produced another hit, Scarface , in 1932. Later he made The Outlaw , which featured Jane Russell, for whom Hughes designed a special bra (although Russell decided against wearing the bra because of a mediocre fit). Scarface and The Outlaw both received considerable attention from industry censors; Scarface for its violence, The Outlaw due to Russell's revealing costumes.
Hughes's wife returned to Houston in 1929 and filed for divorce. Hughes dated many famous women, including Billie Dove, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn, and Gene Tierney. He also proposed to Joan Fontaine several times, according to her autobiography No Bed of Roses . Bessie Love was a mistress during his first marriage. Jean Harlow accompanied him to the premiere of Hell's Angels, but Noah Dietrich wrote many years later that the relationship was strictly professional—Hughes personally disliked Harlow. 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 – when Tierney's daughter Daria was born deaf and blind with severe mental retardation due to Tierney being exposed to rubella during her pregnancy; he saw to it that Daria received the best medical care and paid all expenses.
On July 11, 1936, Hughes, in his car, struck and killed a pedestrian named Gabriel Meyer, at the corner of 3rd Street and Lorraine in Los Angeles. Although Hughes was certified as sober at the hospital to which he was taken after the accident, an attending doctor made a note that Hughes had been drinking. He was taken to jail and booked on "suspicion of negligent homicide." A witness to the accident told police that Hughes was driving erratically and too fast, and that Meyer had been standing in the safety zone of a streetcar stop. 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. Hughes made the same claim to reporters outside the inquiry, saying, "I was driving slowly and a man stepped out of the darkness in front of me." The District Attorney recommended that Hughes be cleared of responsibility for Meyer's death.
On January 12, 1957, Hughes married actress Jean Peters, whom he had known in Hollywood for several years.
Aviator and engineer
Hughes was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, pilot and aircraft engineer. At Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, he learned to fly from pioneer aviators, including Moye Stephens. He set many world records and designed and built several aircraft himself while heading Hughes Aircraft at the airport in Glendale. Operating from there, the most technologically important aircraft he designed (here they say that the design work was done by Richard Palmer) was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On September 13, 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set what was believed to be an airspeed record of 352 mph (566 km/h) over his test course near Santa Ana, California, although it is now recognized that Giuseppe Motta had reached 362 mph in 1929 and George Stainforth reached 407.5 mph in 1931. A year and a half later, on January 19, 1937, flying a redesigned H-1 Racer featuring extended wings, 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 (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average 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 Zero, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and the F8F Bearcat; although that has never been reliably confirmed. The H-1 Racer was donated to the Smithsonian in 1975 and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum.
On July 10, 1938, Hughes set another record by completing a flight around the world in just 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours), beating the previous record by more than four days. Taking off from New York City, he continued to Paris, Moscow, Omsk, Yakutsk, Anchorage, Minneapolis, and continued to New York City. For this flight he did not fly an aircraft of his own design but a Lockheed Super Electra (a twin-engine transport with a four-man crew) fitted with all of the latest radio and navigational equipment. Hughes wanted the flight to be a triumph of technology, illustrating that safe, long-distance air travel was possible. In 1938, the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, known at the time as Houston Municipal Airport, was re-named "Howard Hughes Airport," but the name was changed back after people objected to naming the airport after a living person.
He also had a hand in the design and financing of both the Boeing 307 Stratoliner and Lockheed L-049 Constellation.
Hughes received many awards as an aviator, 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 "in recognition of the achievements of Howard Hughes in advancing the science of aviation and thus bringing great credit to his country throughout the world." According to his obituary in the New York Times , Hughes never bothered to come to Washington to pick up the Congressional Gold Medal. It was eventually mailed to him by President Harry S. Truman.
Near-fatal crash of the XF-11
Main article: Hughes XF-11...
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