THE AVIATOR Notes: Howard Hughes’ Hollywood
Tommy Lee Jones plays Howard Hughes (above, lower photo) in the TV movie The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977); Jason Robards plays the old and haggard Hughes in Melvin and Howard (1980), for which he received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actor; George Peppard plays a fictionalized Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964); and Robert Ryan plays another Hughes clone in Caught (1949).
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Initially, Michael Mann was going to direct The Aviator, but ended up co-producing it instead. Two of Mann’s recent biopics, The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001) were major box-office disappointments.
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Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow were reportedly scheduled to play Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner, respectively. (Some reports have Paltrow as Hepburn, and Kidman as Gardner.)
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Howard Hughes claimed that his troubled 1930 World War I aviation epic Hell’s Angels was, at a cost of US$4 million, the most expensive motion picture ever made. Its actual price tag, however, was US$1.3 million. At a cost of $3,967,000, MGM’s problem-plagued 1925 version of Ben-Hur, (mostly) directed by Fred Niblo and starring Ramon Novarro, remained the most expensive motion picture until Gone with the Wind in 1939.
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Katharine Hepburn, then a RKO contract player, was not considered box-office poison when she met Howard Hughes in the mid-1930s. She was, however, included in an infamous box-office poison list in 1938. Harry Brandt, president of the Independent Theater Owners of America, published an article in The Independent Film Journal complaining of the "nil" box-office appeal of performers such as Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Fred Astaire, Edward Arnold, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and Mae West.
Not mentioned in The Aviator is the fact that Howard Hughes loaned money to Katharine Hepburn so she could buy the film rights to her 1939 Broadway production of The Philadelphia Story. The play’s phenomenal success led to Hepburn’s triumphant return to films (via MGM) in 1940.
Also, by the time Katharine Hepburn met Spencer Tracy (her soon-to-be Woman of the Year co-star) in the early 1940s, Hepburn’s affair with Howard Hughes had already ended.
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The Aviator shows Howard Hughes linked to four actresses: Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Faith Domergue. (Hughes’ 1920s marriage to socialite Ella Rice goes unmentioned in the film.)
Here’s a (partial) list of other film stars who were at one point or another linked to Hughes: Billie Dove (rumors have it that Hughes paid Dove’s husband, director Irvin Willat, $325,000 to divorce the actress), Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, sisters Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine, Yvonne De Carlo, Gene Tierney, Lana Turner, Terry Moore, and Jean Peters (right).
More recently (and much less reliably), Hughes’ name has also been linked to those of several men, including Cary Grant.
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Terry Moore (nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for the 1952 drama Come Back Little Sheba) asserts that she was secretly married to Howard Hughes in the late 1940s. (Moore wrote a book about her relationship with Hughes, The Beauty and the Billionaire.) Hughes also married Jean Peters (the star of the classic 1953 noirish spy thriller Pickup on South Street) in 1957, though the couple spent most of their married life away from each other until their divorce in 1971. In a 1972 Newsweek article, Peters remarked, "My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.” Jean Peters died of leukemia on October 13, 2000.
The Howard Hughes estate considered Moore to be Hughes’ legitimate wife (they apparently were never officially divorced), and the former actress received an undisclosed amount from the estate in 1984.
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In 1948, Howard Hughes bought control of RKO, Katharine Hepburn’s studio in the 1930s, and proceeded to wreck it. In the mid-1950s, he sold it to General Teleradio, a subsidiary of General Tire and Rubber, which owned several TV stations in the United States. RKO finally ceased producing movies in 1957. That same year, Desilu, owned by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, bought the studio lot. (Ironically, Ball had started her career as an extra at RKO in the early 1930s.)
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Tags: Classic Movies, Howard Hughes, Irvin Willat, Jean Harlow, Jean Peters, Katharine Hepburn, Leonardo DiCaprio, Terry Moore, The Aviator, The Carpetbaggers
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Hi André,
I’m looking for this article by Harry Brandt; any idea where I could find it?
Cheers,
João
Hi João,
I’m not sure. I’ll have to look into that.
I’ll let you know if I find anything.