In the movie “The Aviator” they show Howard Hughes as clever, quick on his feet, and always getting the best of Senator Brewster during his war-profiteering hearings.
At wiki, they say “Hughes was called to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee to explain why the plane had not been delivered to the United States Army Air Forces during the war, but the committee disbanded without releasing a final report.”
But nothing else.
Anyone have the straight dope on that? Was it basically a contentious, nit picky hearing that nothing came out of?
Also, in the movie they show him going deaf, and they never mention syphilis. At wiki, they never mention him being deaf but they do mention that he had syphilis.
Not to turn this into a compare/contrast of “Aviator” and “wiki” but they’re really my only two sources of info on the guy.
Unlike in the Aviator, Howard Hughes went wacko much later in life. A lot of things in the Aviator were blended, mushed together, and re-arranged, which is sort of typical about Holllywood. The scenes with him being naked, unshaven, and having long fingernails are exactly how he was described much later in life, although there are some folks who worked for Hughes who say that those descriptions were fabricated.
Hughes was a lot more arrogant and controlling than how he was portrayed in the movie. However, a lot of the back and forth bickering in those scenes matches very well with the newsreels that I’ve seen of the senate hearings. Hughes had an earpiece very similar to the one in the movie that he relied on to be able to hear what was going on.
I wasn’t aware that Hughes had conclusively been diagnosed with syphilis. However, the disease does track pretty well with the symptoms he displayed later in life.
By most accounts Hughes also wasn’t that great of a pilot. He wasn’t an exceptionally poor pilot, but he wasn’t exceptionally skilled either.
The full transcript of the hearings between Hughes Aviation and Brewster is over 600 pages. Hughes part alone would go almost 100. This is majorly condensed for the movie, with most of it being technical legal and aviation matters. Brewster wasn’t quite as much Trippe’s lap dog as he was in the movie, though he most definitely accepted major campaign financing and political pull from him, and there were many other firms (aviation and otherwise) called in to account for oddities in military expenditures.
Also gone from the movie, incidentally: Hughes’s first wife, whom he divorced before the action of the movie. Some believe she was more instrumental than his mother in his germophobia.
I don’t know about the talent Hughes did or did not display as a pilot, but he was certainly a very reckless pilot. Mostl of of the (many) major and minor accidents he incurred while flying were the result of poor discipline and a lack of situational awareness, and he routinely deviated from flight plans, which is not a smart thing to do with an experimental aircraft. Hughes claim to being a test pilot was hubris, not innate talent or manifest experience.
The movie, as engineer_comp_geek says, was an amalgam of actual fact, abridged history, suggestion, and outright bunk. The notion that Hughes actively concealed the relationship between former lover Hepburn and Spencer Tracy was bolsh–the media knew that the married (but long seperated) Tracy had been stepping out with Hepburn and there was even a bit of a minor scandal about it, particularly when they moved next door to each other; neither was particularly recalcitrant about it.
The penultimate Spruce Goose scene was one of the most egregious misrepresentations of historical fact recently chronicled on film. I think the plane in the film flew about three times longer than it did in real life, and considerably higher. In reality, the Goose was on a taxiing run when it “spontaneously” took off. Many has suggested that this was due to ground effect from the massive wings and that the plain could not have attained or held altitude; since Hughes didn’t allow anyone else to fly the plane, we’ll never know. It was certainly an enormous waste of taxpayer monies. Not Scorsese’s best effort by a long shot, and I’m not really clear on his obsession with DiCaprio, who strikes me as a mediocre actor at best, and who bares only the faintest resemblence to Hughes.
Hell’s Angles, though, has some of the most impressive flying sequences ever filmed. The most interesting story about Hughes, methinks, is the battle over his will, or rather, wills (alleged) after he died. But that extends beyond the scope of the film.
I knew a man many years ago who worked for American Airlines during the time that Hughes owned it. He said Hughes would show up unannounced on occasion with his Hollywood pals (men and women) and arbitrarily order planes with passengers onboard deboarded so he could take the plane and fly his friends to Vegas, etc.
And he once ordered a ticket agent fired when the agent didn’t recognize him and refused to give Hughes cash out of his till. When the agent’s boss balked, Hughes told him to fire the guy or he’d be fired, too.
I’ve always had a lot of admiration for Hughes intelligence and accomplishments, but by most accounts he cared little for anyone but himself and could be a real prick. I always thought he was a jerk, too, for not leaving a will or any sort of instructions as to what should happen with all his companies upon his death. He didn’t care a whit what happened to them (or by extension, his employees) once he was dead.