Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket, Hell’s Angels, and Scarface. Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records. Hughes was included in Flying Magazine’s list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranked at No. 25.

About Howard Hughes in brief

Summary Howard HughesHoward Robard Hughes Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist. As a film tycoon, Hughes gained fame in Hollywood beginning in the late 1920s, when he produced big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket, Hell’s Angels, and Scarface. Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s and much of the 1940s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules. Hughes was included in Flying Magazine’s list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranked at No. 25. Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness. Hughes’ uncle was the famed novelist, screenwriter, and film-director Rupert Hughes. His father patented the two-cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for petroleum in previously inaccessible places. His mother Allene Stone Gano died in March 1922 from complications of an ectopic pregnancy. Howard Hughes Sr. died of a heart attack in 1924. Their deaths apparently inspired Hughes to include the establishment of a medical research laboratory in the will that he signed in 1925 at age 19. Hughes inherited 75% of the family fortune on his 19th birthday, enabling him to take full control of his life.

From a young age, Hughes became a proficient and enthusiastic golfer. He rarely played competitively and gradually gave up his passion for the sport. Hughes played every afternoon at LA Golf Club, Wilshire Country Club, or the Bel-Air Country Club. After his death, Hughes included George Von Ozzie or Carlton Ozzen in his golfing partners, including Gene Sarazen, George Von Etten, and George O’Leary. He was a member of the PGA Tour and the Champions League of golf. He died in a car crash in Los Angeles, California, on December 31, 1974. He is buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in California, next to his wife, Barbara. His son, Howard R. Hughes Sr., was a successful inventor and businessman from Missouri. He had English, Welsh and some French Huguenot ancestry, and was a descendant of John Gano, the minister who allegedly baptized George Washington. Hughes had great engineering aptitude and built Houston’s first \”wireless\” radio transmitter at age 11. He went on to be one of the first licensed ham-radio operators in Houston, having the assigned callsign W5CY. At 12, Hughes was photographed in the local newspaper, identified as the first boy in Houston to have a motorized bicycle, which he had built from parts from his father’s steam engine. He took his first flying lesson at 14, and attended Fessenden School in Massachusetts in 1921. Hughes attended math and aeronautical engineering courses at Caltech.