Page 60 - All About History - Issue 54-17

Hero or Villain?
HOWARD HUGHES
JOHN DEE

Defining
moment
Move to Los Angeles
“I’m not a Howard’s move to Los Angeles, California,
paranoid deranged set him on the road to international fame.
Howard became so obsessed with millionaire. As a film producer and director, he was
germs that the air conditioning in catapulted into the public eye. His billionaire
his car was industrial scale and playboy lifestyle and very public disputes with
all the windows were sealed
others in the movie industry and those who
controlled it — especially the Hays Code
Committee, which clashed with Howard
regularly over violent and sexual
content in his films – became
very public.
1925

Howard testified at a number
of committees regarding anti
The H-4 Hercules ‘Spruce Goose’ American behaviour

Scarface was delayed by the censors due to the “Once again, his determination, skill and
levels of violence depicted and perhaps the most
famous and enduring controversy was over the money delivered success”
1943 movie The Outlaw. Again, the Hays Code
Committee sought to censor what it judged to would watch movies alone there late at night, but the fuel tank exploded. Howard managed to pull
be the unacceptable sexuality within the film — upon hearing that the cast of the musical Porgy himself out of the flaming wreckage, but sustained
mainly the actions and provocative costumes of the And Bess (1959) had been using the room during near-fatal injuries, including a crushed collarbone,
leading lady, Jane Russell. The film was eventually the day, he was outraged. Appalled that he had multiple cracked ribs, a displaced heart and third-
released, and the controversy had given Howard shared a room with black people and that some degree burns. Although he did recover, his injuries
the publicity he needed to make it a success, which may have even sat in the same chair as him, he left him in chronic pain for the rest of his life and
was perhaps his intention all along. closed the screening room and never returned. he grew his trademark moustache to hide a scar on
For all the flamboyant public posturing over Though he found fame and (even greater) fortune his upper lip caused by the crash.
his films, Howard’s involvement in the movie in Hollywood, Howard never stopped flying. As he Howard had worked closely with the US military
industry also revealed a much darker side to his did in every other area of his life, Howard pushed during and after World War Two on a number of
character, something more than just the arrogant himself to the limit to improve as an aviator. As projects, but perhaps the one that gives the greatest
bluster of a man for whom money was no object. both a pilot and an aircraft designer, he broke a insight into his enigmatic character was that of
After his purchase of RKO Pictures in 1948, he number of world speed records before setting his the Hughes H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the ‘Spruce
dismissed three-quarters of the staff and conducted sights on a new world record for a round-the-world Goose’. Designed to carry large numbers of troops
background checks on the political beliefs of those flight in 1938. Once again, his determination, skill and equipment, it remains the largest aircraft ever
left. During his movie years, anyone who didn’t and money delivered success. built, but it was dogged with controversial delays as
have the same political views as him was either However, Howard’s aeronautic boundary pushing a result of his obsession with detail and controlling
sacked or never hired. He also maintained a close did eventually have an Icarus-like fall. In 1943, nature. By the time it was completed, the war was
eye on whether his films contained sufficient anti- while testing a prototype spy plane he was over and Hughes was in a position of potential
communist content and it was rumoured that he building for the US Air Force, an oil leak caused ridicule, with his critics saying the plane was so
held strong anti-Semitic views. the aircraft to yaw sharply and he crashed into a big and so under-powered that it would never fly.
Perhaps most telling was what happened after Beverley Hills neighbourhood. After destroying As a final act of defiance, Howard himself took the
he acquired a private screening room in 1958. He three houses, the plane finally came to a halt, but controls of the aircraft and flew 1.5 kilometres at a
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