Howard Robard Hughes Jr. was an American aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer, investor, philanthropist, and pilot. He was best known during his lifetime as one of the richest and most influential people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry. 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 (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.
The Hughes H-4 Hercules is a prototype strategic airlift flying boat designed and built by the Hughes Aircraft Company. Intended as a transatlantic flight transport for use during World War II, it was not completed in time to be used in the war. The aircraft made only one brief flight, on November 2, 1947, and the project never advanced beyond the single example produced.
Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor. He has received various accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded on February 14, 1934 by Howard Hughes in Glendale, California, as a division of Hughes Tool Company. The company was known for producing, among other products, the Hughes H-4 Hercules aircraft, the atmospheric entry probe carried by the Galileo spacecraft, and the AIM-4 Falcon guided missile.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world. It is one of the largest private funding organizations for biological and medical research in the United States. HHMI spends about $1 million per HHMI Investigator per year, which amounts to annual investment in biomedical research of about $825 million.
Hughes Tool Company was an American manufacturer of drill bits. Founded in 1908, it was merged into Baker Hughes Incorporated in 1987.
The Aviator is a 2004 American epic biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by John Logan. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes, Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn, and Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner. The supporting cast features Ian Holm, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Kelli Garner, Matt Ross, Willem Dafoe, Alan Alda, and Edward Herrmann.
Lillian Bohny, known professionally as Billie Dove, was an American actress.
Lumiere Pictures and Television, formerly known as EMI Films, Thorn EMI Screen Entertainment, and Weintraub Entertainment Group, and later UGC DA, and Canal+ Image International, was a British-French film, television, animation studio and distributor. A former subsidiary of the EMI conglomerate, the corporate name was not used throughout the entire period of EMI's involvement in the film industry, from 1969 to 1986, but the company's brief connection with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Anglo-EMI, the division under Nat Cohen, and the later company as part of the Thorn EMI conglomerate are outlined here.
The Hughes Airport was a private airport owned by Howard Hughes for the Hughes Aircraft Company. It was located just north of the Westchester bluffs and district of Los Angeles, California, from 1940 until its closure in 1985. It was directly south of and along Jefferson Boulevard and Ballona Creek, the location of the present-day neighborhood of Playa Vista.
Terri Sue "Tovah" Feldshuh is an American actress, singer, and playwright. She has been a Broadway star for fifty years, earning four Tony Award nominations. She has also received two Emmy Award nominations for Holocaust and Law & Order, and appeared in such films as A Walk on the Moon, She's Funny That Way, and Kissing Jessica Stein. In 2015–2016, she played the role of Deanna Monroe on AMC's television adaptation of The Walking Dead.
Noah Dietrich was an American businessman, who was the chief executive officer of the Howard Hughes business empire from 1925 to 1957. Although these dates have been recorded as the official period of employment, Noah Dietrich continued to oversee and make executive decisions for the Hughes industries as late as 1970. According to his own memoirs, he left the Hughes operation over a dispute involving putting more of his income on a capital gains basis. The manuscript of his eventual memoir, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, may have been a key, if inadvertent, source of novelist Clifford Irving's infamous fake autobiography of Hughes.
The Idolmaker is a 1980 American musical drama directed by Taylor Hackford in his feature directorial debut, written by Edward di Lorenzo, and starring Ray Sharkey, Peter Gallagher, Paul Land, Tovah Feldshuh and Joe Pantoliano. Loosely based on the life of rock promoter/producer Bob Marcucci, whose discoveries included Frankie Avalon and Fabian and who served as a technical advisor for the production, the film marked the screen debuts of both Gallagher and Land.
The Hoax is a 2006 American comedy-drama film starring Richard Gere, directed by Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström. The screenplay by William Wheeler is based on the book of the same title by Clifford Irving. It recounts Irving's elaborate hoax of publishing an autobiography of Howard Hughes that he purportedly helped write, without ever having talked with Hughes.
Scream, Pretty Peggy is a 1973 American made-for-television horror film directed by Gordon Hessler and starring Bette Davis, Ted Bessell, and Sian Barbara Allen. Its plot follows a young college student who is given a job by a sculptor housekeeping at a mysterious mansion where his sister and their elderly mother reside. It was broadcast as the ABC Suspense Movie on November 24, 1973.
Tony Converse is a television and film producer who began his professional career in New York in 1957 upon graduation from Yale University.
The Hughes XF-11 was a prototype military reconnaissance aircraft designed and flown by Howard Hughes and built by Hughes Aircraft Company for the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Although 100 F-11s were ordered in 1943, the program was delayed beyond the end of World War II, rendering the aircraft surplus to USAAF requirements; the production contract was canceled and only two prototypes and a static test mockup were completed. During the first XF-11 flight in 1946, piloted by Hughes, the aircraft crashed in Beverly Hills, California, and was destroyed. The second prototype was flown in 1947 but was used only briefly for testing before being stricken from inventory in 1949. The program was controversial from the beginning, leading the United States Senate to investigate the XF-11 and the Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat in 1946–1947.
Ralph Owen Brewster was an American politician from Maine. Brewster, a Republican, served as the 54th Governor of Maine from 1925 to 1929, in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1935 to 1941 and in the U.S. Senate from 1941 to 1952. Brewster was a close confidant of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin and an antagonist of Howard Hughes. He was defeated by Frederick G. Payne, whose campaign was heavily funded by Hughes, in the 1952 Republican primary.
Roger Gimbel was an American television producer who specialized in television movies. Many of Gimbel's television films dealt with real-life events, including Chernobyl: The Final Warning, S.O.S. Titanic, The Amazing Howard Hughes, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Often, Gimbel's films also focused on serious societal problems, including mental illness, war, and domestic abuse. Gimbel produced more than 50 television films and specials, which earned eighteen Emmy Awards.
The Girl Called Hatter Fox is a 1977 American TV movie starring Ronny Cox and directed by George Schaefer.
