Howard Hughes on film PAGE D1
Eccentricities take starring role in most movies about the brilliant, yet reclusive, billionaire
Howard Hughes was a real person.
He was 6-foot-4, Texasborn, an only child and an extremely rich orphan at 19. Until his death in 1976, he lived among us — if hiding out in hotel penthouses, emerging only to be sneaked onto and off private planes, counts.
Of course, anyone with even a mild interest in Houston history knows this. But for much of the world, what they know, and remember, about one of America’s most renowned eccentrics has come from seeing him portrayed in film.
We’ve watched him on the big screen as an aviation-industry pioneer, demanding movie producer, man about town, germaphobe and, ultimately, billionaire recluse. These movie portrayals go back as far as Max Ophuls’ 1949 melodrama “Caught.” Don’t be confused by the lead character’s name in that film: Smith Ohlrig, the sadistic Long Island tycoon, was thoroughly Hughes, with whom Ophuls had just had an unpleasant working experience at RKO.
The latest incarnation of Hughes can be seen in Warren Beatty’s romantic drama “Rules Don’t Apply,” which opened last week. The film shows
Hughes in late middle age, ruling over the palm trees-and-convertibles world of midcentury Hollywood, lurking in the shadows a lot and eventually devolving from eccentricity to lunacy.
Every picture tells a slightly different story, but there are patterns.
‘Rules Don’t Apply’ (2016)
The Hughes standin: Warren Beatty, at 79
The look: Distinguished, mustachioed and aging but dapper, 1950s style.
Jobs and hobbies: Signing beautiful young women to movie contracts. Running planes and airlines into the ground.
Love interest: An aspiring teenage actress (Lily Collins) from prim-and-proper Virginia.
Peculiar habits: Marrying women just to avoid being institutionalized. Eating TV dinners in Beverly Hills Hotel bungalows with the lights off. Helplessly repeating phrases in public places (“I’ll leave this country and never come back”).
Driving impulse: Control. His employees, especially virile chauffeurs and nubile starlets, are forbidden to fraternize.
‘The Aviator’ (2004)
The stand-in: Leonardo DiCaprio, at 30
The look: Early on, clean-cut 20-something who looks fabulous in a white tie. Later, bearded madman who likes spending his days naked.
Jobs and hobbies: Designing airplanes. Making movies. Making movies about airplanes.
Love interest: Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) at the height of her stardom. With appearances by Ava Gardner and Jean Harlow.
Peculiar habits: Urinating into empty milk bottles. Living in a screening room. Helplessly repeating phrases in public places (“The way of the future”).
Driving impulse: Fear. “Does that look clean to you?”
‘Tucker: The Man and His Dream’ (1988)
The stand-in: Dean Stockwell, at 52
The look: Tweedy and mustachioed, with fedora.
Jobs and hobbies: Helping fellow entrepreneurs with secret manufacturing tips — in this case, a visionary car designer ( Jeff Bridges).
Love interest: Only the Spruce Goose, his overweight flying boat.
Peculiar habits: Holding meetings in dark airplane hangars. Refusing to shake hands. Not knowing what to do when a cut on his finger bleeds.
Driving impulse: Alienation. “Did I change? Or did the cosmic sense of humor? I used to laugh when they did.”
‘Melvin and Howard’ (1980)
The stand-in: Jason Robards, at 58
The look: A bum with scraggly salt-and-pepper hair and matching beard.
Jobs and hobbies: Random philanthropy. He leaves $156 million to a dim young loser (Paul Le Mat) who gives him a lift in his pickup truck.
Love interest: His memories.
Peculiar habits: Hitchhiking in the desert while resembling a homeless person.
Driving impulse: Control. “No doctors!” But on this one night, when he sings a mournful “Bye Bye Blackbird” and revels in “the smell of the desert after the rain,” he’s capable of being touched emotionally.
‘Caught’ (1949)
The stand-in: Robert Ryan, at 40
The look: Tall, dark, lanky and handsome, in elegant suits with pocket squares.
Jobs and hobbies: “Sort of an international something,” as his soonto-be wife (Barbara Bel Geddes) describes him when she meets him.
Love interest: A young, gold-digging department store model who quickly realizes that her new husband is crazy and dangerous.
Peculiar habits: Marrying women just to upset his psychiatrist. Hosting 3 a.m. parties in his mansion’s screening room. Flipping out and having undiagnosable physical attacks whenever he can’t get his way.
Driving impulse: Control. “If you want me to invest one penny, you’ll do it my way or not at all.”