Howard Hughes

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Howard Hughes (1940s) Howard Hughes signature.svg

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (born  December 24, 1905 in Humble or Houston , both Texas, † April 5, 1976 on a plane over Texas) was an American entrepreneur , film producer , director and aviation pioneer.

Hughes was the main heir to the Hughes Tool Company and invested his fortune in other aviation and film ventures. In the 1930s and 1940s, his Hughes Aircraft set a number of speed records, some of which he was behind the wheel himself, and he temporarily owned the global airline Trans World Airlines . As a film producer, he shot Hell's Angels in 1930, the most expensive film in the world at the time, and produced controversial material such as Scarface(1932) to the cinema. His eccentric lifestyle - which was initially very glamorous in Hollywood, but from the late 1940s onwards was characterized by great seclusion and several illnesses - led to much speculation and myths about him.

Life

birth

There are two dates of birth of Howard Hughes; the first date (September 24) is based on St. John's Church, Keokuk , Iowa , baptismal register , October 1906, the place of residence of Hughes' grandparents; a birth certificate was not created.

The second date of birth (December 24th) is based on a subsequent birth certificate in the form of an affidavit from the family environment from 1941.

Youth and Hollywood

Hughes was the only child of the wealthy businessman and oil explorer Howard Robard "Bo" Hughes (1869-1924) and his wife Allene Stone Gano (1883-1922), a wealthy heiress from Dallas. Howard was born with a congenital hearing disorder ( otosclerosis ). He attended the exclusive Thacher School in California, but without a degree. His mother died at the age of 38 as a result of an ectopic pregnancy and his father died of a heart attack at 54. Due to the death of his father the young Hughes left the Rice University , which he had previously visited, and took over the Hughes Tool Company , thanks to its monopoly on oil - drill bit generated millions in profits annually. “My first goal is to become the best golfer in the world. Second, to become the best aviator, and third, the most famous film producer. And then I want you to make me the richest man in the world, ” said Howard Hughes to his chief representative Noah Dietrich , whom he hired in 1925 and who was to remain so until 1957.

With the financial security of the Hughes Tool Company behind him, Hughes went to Hollywood to work as a film producer and director . He married Ella Rice of Houston, Texas on June 1, 1925, from whom he divorced on December 9, 1929. He was in a relationship with the film actress Katharine Hepburn for a number of years. Hughes married the actress Jean Peters on January 12, 1957 . The couple soon separated, however, and Peters filed for divorce in 1971. Howard Hughes has been responsible for films such as Die Schlachtenbummler (1927), The Racket (1928), Scarface (1932), The Outlaw (1940) and numerous lesser-known ones, some of which flopped. More successful productions such as Hell's Angels (1930, the most expensive film in the world until then) and The Front Page (1931) were nominated for an Oscar . As a director, he discovered Jean Harlow and Jane Russell , whom he made movie stars. In 1948 he bought the ailing Hollywood studio RKO . He exerted a lot of influence on the ongoing productions, sometimes even stopped them for weeks and sold the company to the General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955 . The associated cinema chain was split off for cartel reasons .

Aviation

Parallel to his activities in the film business, Hughes became interested in aviation and moved into a barrack in Burbank (Los Angeles County) to develop aircraft , which he tested himself as a pilot . With these self-developed aircraft, he set several records, including the absolute speed record of 567 km / h in 1935 and the record time of 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds for the route Los Angeles - New York . His record of the fastest circumnavigation of the world with 91 hours in 1938 earned him recognition: On July 14, 1938, after a flight in a Lockheed 14 via Paris-Moscow-Omsk-Yakutsk-Anchorage-Minneapolis, he met again at the departure airport in New York City a. The William P. Hobby Airport in Houston only bore his name for a short time , as this honor was withdrawn after protests against the naming of a person who was still alive.

Hughes Aircraft eventually emerged from Hughes' barracks in Burbank , and in 1938/39 Hughes became the majority shareholder in Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) , which was later renamed Trans World Airlines . The TWA boss William John Frye financed the purchase of the Boeing 307 Stratoliner with Hughes money . Hughes also came up with the basic idea for the Lockheed Constellation (as a further development of the Super Constellation ), one of the first passenger aircraft with a pressurized cabin , from which TWA exclusively acquired the first copies.

The Spruce Goose (Hughes H-4 Hercules)

Since numerous Allied transport ships were sunk by German submarines in 1942, Hughes developed the plan to build giant seaplanes that would transport soldiers and other war materials to Europe . He managed to get a government contract to do this. But before a flying boat was operational, the war was over. Only in 1947 was a copy of the Hughes H-4 Hercules completed. It was flown over a mile distance only once by Hughes himself in the area of ground effect . It held the record for the aircraft with the largest wingspan for 72 years. Today this plane, called the Spruce Goose , is a tourist attraction at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon .

Hughes had a serious accident on July 7, 1946 with the prototype of another aircraft design of his own, the Hughes XF-11 , when he crashed with this machine on a test flight over Beverly Hills in the immediate vicinity of the country club golf course and damaged three houses . The plane went up in flames. Hughes sustained severe head and back injuries from which he never fully recovered.

Since the Hughes Aircraft company was without a business purpose after the war, Hughes decided to get into the newly developing aviation and defense electronics and hired experts from all well-known universities. At times, Hughes Aircraft employed 3,300 physicists. The effort paid off and the company became a monopoly on defense electronics, to which the US Department of Defense had no alternative for a long time. Today it is one of the most important arms companies. It merged with the Raytheon company and manufactures cruise missiles , rockets , satellites , helicopters and all kinds of electronic systems.

To save taxes, Howard Hughes founded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Foundation in 1953 , to which he transferred ownership to Hughes Aircraft .

At this time began his long-standing dispute over the airline TWA , which was now the largest in the world and which he owned 75%. Since Hughes could not come to an agreement with the management about the financing of the new jet aircraft and, moreover, could hardly be reached, the management of his own company sued him for payment of 135 million US dollars . Because Hughes, who had withdrawn completely from the public eye since 1958, never appeared on court hearings, he lost control of TWA and sold it for $ 546 million in 1966. In the 1970s he got back into the airline business and bought Air West.

Las Vegas

On November 24, 1966, Hughes arrived in Las Vegas in his specially prepared Union Pacific Railroad train and rented two entire floors of the Desert Inn . The Desert Inn had been owned by Moe Dalitz, a member of Kosher Nostra , since 1949 . At that time, the hotel casinos in Las Vegas were largely under the control of the US Mafia or people allied with them such as Dalitz. However, Dalitz came to the opinion that the activities of the Mafia in the Las Vegas casino industry were no longer tenable. In March 1967 he sold the Desert Inn to Howard Hughes for $ 13 million . This purchase became the starting point for further acquisitions.

In total, Hughes acquired seven Las Vegas casinos including the Castaways , New Frontier , Landmark and Sands . The only reason Hughes took over the Silver Slipper was because its neon sign shone in his bedroom.

Hughes had arrived in Las Vegas on Thanksgiving in 1966 , and as far as is known, he never left his hotel rooms there. He left Las Vegas on Thanksgiving 1970 and never returned.

Watergate

Hughes' relationship with US President Richard Nixon was , according to the minutes of the US Senate Watergate Committee, a major catalyst for the Watergate affair (1972). Nixon feared that Democratic Committee head Larry O'Brien had six-figure records of Hughes payments to Nixon for campaign purposes and in support of Nixon's bankrupt brother, Donald Nixon . However, this was deliberate misinformation. These documents, as well as evidence of O'Brien's own connection with Hughes, were to be obtained through the break-in at the Watergate Hotel .

Participation in the CIA's Azorian project

In 1968 the Soviet submarine K-129 sank . The United States Navy located the wreck around 1,500 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii at a depth of around 5,000 meters.

The CIA was planning to salvage the ship ( Azorian project ), and Hughes was contacted in 1972 for camouflage, allegedly to investigate the deep sea and mine ores , in particular manganese nodules , there.

To carry out the operation, a special ship was built with the Hughes Glomar Explorer ; In addition, a submersible barge ( Hughes Mining Barge ) was developed for the actual recovery . The costs are said to have been around $ 350 million.

In the summer of 1974, the recovery of the Soviet submarine began, but due to mechanical failure, it broke in two parts, and one of them sank again to the seabed. The entire Azorian project became known in 1975 after thousands of documents were stolen from Hughes headquarters in a July 1974 break-in.

death

Howard Hughes died of kidney failure on an airplane over Texas on April 5, 1976 . Since he had been admitted lifeless to the hospital under the name John T. Conover , fingerprints had to be taken after his death was determined to identify him as Howard Hughes.

Howard Hughes was buried next to his parents in Glenwood Cemetery, Houston.

estate

Because of the extensive activities and investments involved, Hughes left behind a number of companies. The core company of his aviation activities was the Hughes Aircraft Company , which he founded in 1936 . It was one of the largest defense and aerospace companies in the United States. In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, parts of the company were repeatedly sold, so that today none of the divisions ( Hughes Electronics , Hughes Helicopters, etc.) operates under the Hughes name. DreamWorks SKG film studios have now settled on the old company premises . In 1997, Hughes Electronics and Raytheon merged ; Hughes Space and Communications was acquired by Boeing in 2000 .

The Hughes Aircraft was originally a spin-off of the Hughes Tool Company , which Hughes inherited from his father in 1932. This company was sold on in 1972, before his death.

Like many wealthy Americans, Hughes has set up a foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute .

The question of how Hughes was able to turn an inheritance that was officially valued at $ 613,518 in 1925 into a billion-dollar empire has often been puzzled. Biographer John Keats judged: "80 percent genius of his general manager Noah Dietrich and 20 percent player blood of Howard Hughes". Hughes undoubtedly had an intuitive sense of which industries were the most promising growth in his day, and he didn't shy away from venturing into them.

Speculation about the physical and mental condition

Much speculation has been and is being made about Howard Hughes' general physical and mental health. Charles Higham wrote about Hughes in his biography:

“Behind it all was Hughes' desire to protect himself and his legend, on which he had worked himself [Hughes had inter alia. started destroying important papers about his life before his death]. Hughes, the hero and inventor of the Spruce Goose , who in old age was just a mindless zombie and from whom the threads slipped until he was only controlled like a puppet by Mormons, incapable of independent thought and action. Nothing could be less true. He was drug addict and experienced phases of hopeless apathy. But his numerous memoranda, found in Texas under mountains of files, prove that until his death in 1976 he had been doing business uninterruptedly, lively, scheming and hungry for power as ever. His favorite doctors like Howard House and friend Wilbur Thain, aviation mogul Jack Real and advisors Gordon Margulis and Mell Stewart confirm that Hughes was extremely agile in later years. "

- Charles Higham

It is undisputed that Hughes did not fully recover from his serious aviation accident in 1946. Certainly Hughes was also given pain management . Whether this led to an early drug dependency - especially codeine and valium  - up to drug addiction cannot be definitively proven to this day, despite Charles Higham's biography. This, too, essentially refers in the biography to the last painful years and especially weeks of Hughes, in which a high consumption of painkillers is documented. There are affidavits of the doctors Norman Crane, Lawrence Chaffin and Wilbur Thain as well as the nurses Chuck Waldron and John Holmes.

The observation of unusual, eccentric behavior in Hughes is also undisputed. In the mid-1950s, he withdrew more and more from the public. Hughes only tolerated a small staff of people (exclusively Mormons ) around him, from whom he required the observance of bizarre rituals. For example, seven Mormons had to cover every object he tried to touch with paper towels.

From this it is speculated to this day that Hughes could have developed an excessive fear of bacteria , which in turn is attributed to the assumed addiction problem since his accident, which is said to have led to these changes in character. But even these assumptions could never be substantiated.

A common premise that his momentous flight accident was the starting point for some bizarre character developments is not entirely conclusive, because eccentric and pedantic behavior in particular was observed long before this accident. Hughes had become an orphan at the age of 18 and was declared of age prematurely at his own initiative. Friends from the 1930s already reported Hughes' preference for certain pea vegetables , which he sorted according to the size of the individual pieces with special cutlery before consuming them. His pedantry made him the horror of his filmmakers. As a producer, for example, he used to send pages of memos to Richard Fleischer . He later wondered how the films could even be finished despite Hughes' intervention.

However, Hughes' extraordinary behavior after his accident is better known to the public than that of his youth and can be viewed as a subject of American pop culture (see movie quotes and biography adaptations). A film buff since his youth, Hughes locked himself in a movie theater for four months in 1947, watching non-stop movies. He was surrounded by boxes of tissues that he had arranged around him. He often only gave instructions in writing and no one was allowed to speak to him. He had stopped washing, and his hair and nails had not been trimmed for weeks.

When Hughes bought his way in Las Vegas in 1966, there were also tangible tax reasons. Hughes, unwilling to pay taxes for his TWA business, preferred to invest his profits in tax-free Las Vegas.

"Hughes was by no means - as Bill Gay claimed - deranged or incapacitated."

- Charles Higham

From 1966 to 1970, Hughes never left his rooms at the Las Vegas Desert Inn Hotel. Hughes remained a fanatical film lover. In 1968 he is said to have seen the film Eisstation Zebra in a loop between 100 and 150 times.

The film biographies also contributed to the health assumptions and interpretations: Scorsese's film Aviator from 2004 contains a scene at the Art Deco bar of the RMS Queen Mary , where Hughes - played by Leonardo DiCaprio - apparently suffers from increasing hearing loss since his accident , but Hughes is now too vain to wear a hearing aid . In one scene of the film there is a dialogue between Hughes and Katharine Hepburn - played by Cate Blanchett in the film -: “I'm sweating and you're deaf. Aren't we a fine pair of adorable weirdos? " The film referred to the fact that Hughes' entire family had a tendency to be hard of hearing and was diagnosed with otosclerosis at the age of four.

When Hughes died of kidney failure on a plane over Texas , he was thin and neglected at 1.93 meters tall to 46 kg, and his fingers were wrapped in cellophane. The list of his ailments in the last weeks of his life is long: especially chronic arthritis (for five years), nerve pain in the neck, shoulders and back, bruised intervertebral disc, toothache and inflamed gums, tumors on the head. Since he went blind a few days before death, biographer Charles Higham speculated about a possible infection with the cytomegalovirus , which causes a special retinitis that can lead to spontaneous blindness and, in modern times, in connection with HIV infection and cancer (chemotherapy, poisoning) was observed.

Adaptations and Trivia

Anecdotes

During the rehearsals for his first engagement at the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas in 1944, the American piano artist Liberace thought Howard Hughes mistakenly for the hotel's lighting technician. In a haunting tone of voice, he instructed his supposed employee to switch on a blue light immediately if he was to play the title Clair de Lune . Hughes said nothing and nodded in agreement.

Fake biography

Authors Clifford M. Irving and Richard Suskind published a fake biography of Hughes. It is true that they traveled to Hughes' known whereabouts; her supposed interviews with him, however, were all fictitious. Irving also forged a number of Hughes letters with disfigured handwriting. These documents in particular convinced the McGraw-Hill publishing house, which was interested in the memoir.

When the biography appeared, Hughes called and denied it. The last time he called in 1970 after being pronounced dead in public. Irving had speculated with the forgery that Hughes would never contact him, since he had disappeared from the public for 15 years and thus never demand a revocation of the forgery and it would never be discovered.

The Irving forgery is one of the biggest book scandals in publishing history. Although Irving was convicted in 1972, he was planning a new book about his fraud even before the verdict was pronounced.

Because of another biography, Hughes picked up the phone again in 1972 and contradicted the publication of a second biography allegedly also authorized by himself, which was to be published by Robert P. Faton in the Ladies Home Journal .

Film adaptations

Hughes' life has been filmed four times:

Movie quotes (selection)

  • 1970: In Der made Mann , the fourth part of Ich - Axel Caesar Springer , Howard Hughes is portrayed by Hans-Peter Minetti .
  • 1979: In the 1979 film Melvin and Howard, Hughes, played by Jason Robards , bequeaths one sixteenth of his fortune to the soldier of fortune Melvin, played by Paul Le Mat .
  • 1988: In the 1988 film Tucker , directed by Francis Ford Coppola , original version Tucker: The Man and His Dream , Howard Hughes is played by Dean Stockwell . In one scene, while he is talking to Preston Thomas Tucker ( Jeff Bridges ), the Hughes H-4 (Spruce Goose) is shown in the background .
  • 1991: In the fantasy comic book Rocketeer (set in Los Angeles in 1938), the character of Hughes is played by Terry O'Quinn .
  • 1993: In The Devil Obsessed episode of the animated series The Simpsons , Howard Hughes is parodied when Mr. Burns refuses to leave his room after opening his casino. He becomes obsessed with bacteria and cleanliness, but does not cut his hair or fingernails. He also designed an airplane model with the name "Fichtenelch" (in the English original Spruce Moose , based on the Spruce Goose ).
  • 1995: Hughes is parodied again in the animated series The Simpsons . In the episode The 138th Episode, a special screening , Sam Simon , one of the series producers, is briefly shown as a neglected maniac; similar to the "Burns Parody" two years earlier.
  • 2008: The character of wealthy inventor and entrepreneur Howard Stark was introduced in the 1970 comic book series Iron Man . His portrayal, like that of his son Tony Stark, is clearly inspired by Howard Hughes. Howard Stark was first mentioned in cinemas in the 2008 film Iron Man and has since been a supporting character in other films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe .

music

  • The British band 10cc asked the aviation pioneer in their hit Wall Street Shuffle in the early 1970s : "Oh, Howard Hughes, did your money make you better?"
  • The British band Genesis mentioned Howard Hughes in their 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in the song Broadway Melody .
  • The Australian band AC / DC refers to Howard Hughes at the end of their song “Ain't no Fun” on the 1976 album “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”: “Hey Hello Howard, how ya doin 'friend? Next door neighbor? Oh yeah ... Get your fuckin 'jumbo jet off my airport "
  • The Irish band Boomtown Rats released the song Me and Howard Hughes on their 1978 album A Tonic for the Troops .
  • The American band Kansas dedicated the song Closet Chronicles to Howard Hughes in their 1977 album Point of Know Return .
  • The British punk band The Tights released a single Howard Hughes in 1978 with their song of the same name.
  • The American band Rasputina released a song called Howard Hughes on their 1996 album Thanks For The Ether . The title deals with the whimsical rituals Hughes allegedly required, as well as his irrational fears and alleged addiction to painkillers.
  • The American band Bayside released a song called Howard on their 2008 album Shudder , in which the singer draws parallels between his own life and the life of Howard Hughes.
  • The British singer Jarvis Cocker and the pianist Chilly Gonzales released a song called "Howard Hughes Under The Microscope" on their album Room 29 in 2017 .

literature

Film documentaries

  • Howard Hughes: His Women and His Movies . TV documentary by Christian Sebaldt . USA 2000, Robert Dalrymple Productions / Turner Classic Movies (TCM) / WinStar Cinema, 55 minutes

Web links

Commons : Howard Hughes  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Howard Hughes Corporation: The Howard Hughes Story. (PDF) Archived from the original on February 5, 2004 ; accessed on February 14, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Charles Higham: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes. 2005, p. 17.
  3. ↑ Richard Hack: Hughes. The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters. The definitive biography of the first American Billionaire. Phoenix Books, Beverly Hills CA 2007, ISBN 978-1-59777-510-6 , p. 20.
  4. ↑ Philip Kaplan: Big Wings. Pen & Sword Aviation, Barnsley 2005, ISBN 1-84415-178-6 , p. 183.
  5. ^ John N. Ingham: Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders. Volume 2: H-M. Greenwood Press, Westport CT 1983, ISBN 0-313-23908-8 , p. 635.
  6. ↑ James Phelan: Howard Hughes. The hidden years. Random House, New York NY 1976, p. VI.
  7. ↑ Tony Thomas: Howard Hughes in Hollywood. 1985, p. 12.
  8. ↑ UNLV Libraries: Photograph of the landing of Howard Hughes' Lockheed 14 aircraft, New York, July 14, 1938 ( Memento of July 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ In Las Vegas digital.library.unlv.edu, English, accessed on July 22, 2013.
  10. ↑ a b Bob Thomas: Liberace. The True Story. St. Martin's Press, New York NY 1987, ISBN 0-312-01469-4 , p. 41.
  11. ↑ Howard Hughes at onlinenevada.org (English).
  12. ↑ Norman Polmar: Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the US Fleet. 18th edition. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 2005, ISBN 1-59114-685-2 , p. 251.
  13. ↑ biographies. On the run. In: Der Spiegel . No. 30, 1979, pp. 144–148 (Book review of: Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele: Empire. The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes. WW Norton & Company, New York NY 1979, ISBN 0 -393-07513-3 ; Retrieved February 6, 2014).
  14. ↑ Uwe Schmitt: Heaven and Hell. In: Die Welt from December 27, 2004, accessed on February 6, 2014.
  15. ^ Charles Higham: The secret life of Howard Hughes , Wilhelm Goldman Verlag, 1st edition 2005, (translation by Jörg Ingewersen of the English-language original edition from 1993), ISBN 3-442-45873-0
  16. ^ Charles Higham. P. 431 ff .; P. 468
  17. ^ Charles Higham. P. 301
  18. ^ A b Anne Seith: "Aviator" Hughes: Genie und Sklaventreiber , spiegel.de of December 24, 2005, accessed on February 6, 2014.
  19. ↑ Richard Fleischer : Just Tell Me When to Cry. A memoir . Carroll & Graf, New York NY 1993, ISBN 0-88184-944-8 .
  20. ^ Charles Higham: The secret life of Howard Hughes , Wilhelm Goldman Verlag, 1st edition 2005, (translation by Jörg Ingewersen of the English-language original edition from 1993), ISBN 3-442-45873-0 , p. 295
  21. ^ Tycoons: The Secret Life of Howard Hughes. In: Time . December 13, 1976, accessed February 6, 2014.
  22. ↑ Dave Kehr : "Ice Station Zebra". New DVDs. . In: The New York Times, January 11, 2005, accessed February 6, 2014.
  23. ↑ eyewitness report by Roger Tolces , bugsweeps.com, accessed on February 6, 2014.
  24. ^ Charles Higham; P. 14 and 25
  25. ↑ a b The Man. In: Der Spiegel. No. 4, 1972, p. 91, accessed on February 6, 2014.
  26. ↑ Rules Don't Apply. Retrieved July 10, 2019 .
  27. ↑ When Did Howard Stark Debut in the Comics? October 23, 2018. Retrieved February 24, 2019 (American English).
  28. ↑ The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway , on-design.de
  29. ↑ AC / DC - Ain't No Fun (Waiting Round To Be A Millionaire) Lyrics | AZLyrics.com. Retrieved July 10, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Hughes, Howard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hughes, Howard Robard
SHORT DESCRIPTION American entrepreneur and aviation pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Humble or Houston , Texas , USA
DATE OF DEATH April 5th 1976
PLACE OF DEATH Texas , USA