Posted: 03/27/2005

Howard Hughes: The Man and the Madness

(2005)

by Ben Beard

The poorest man in the world. From MPI Home Video.

“He loved machines more than people,” one of Hughes’s former friends says early on in this television-quality documentary about the reclusive millionaire. Seeing the results of his grand, miserable life, it appears that this statement as much as any gets Hughes just right.

Providing interviews with agents, gossip columnists, and former aides, this documentary reconstructs Hughes surreal life with old footage and dramatic recreations. The best interviews offer a glimpse into Hughes’s private life by those who knew him—the sordid little details, the bizarre anecdotes. But much of the interview footage, mostly of his biographers, is stodgy and dry. The biographers lack gumption or resolve. They appear either mealy mouthed or unconvinced or worst of all, bored.

Not that there is a need to dramatize. Re-popularized recently by the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo Di Caprio film, The Aviator, Hughes has long haunted the edges of America’s pop consciousness, with cameos in crime novels and B-pictures, the subject of countless exposes. It’s easy to see why America would enjoy Hughes’s specter so much. As a youth, he caroused the Hollywood strip as a good-looking tall drink of water with a penchant for starlets and a steely vindictive gaze. The inheritor of his father’s tool company and thus a sizeable fortune, Hughes as a teenager took over the reins of the company and began to expand the drill bit business into other ventures, starting with movies.

His meticulous attention to detail resulted in a technical achievement unparalleled at the time: his first film, Hell’s Angels, shot on location in the skies, still offers up spectacular footage that puts to shame the computer-generated fantasia that permeates the film industry these days. Like a popcorn Orson Welles, Hughes challenged moviemaking with his unconventional approach and his intense dedication to making the movie his way. He spent days on each frame, revealing an obsessive compulsiveness that would later paralyze him.

Hughes later stepped into the aviation industry, first during wartime working on spy planes and a huge carrier, and later as the owner of Trans World Airlines. Hughes’s contribution to aviation is vast. He tinkered on his own and flew many prototype planes, crashing twice.

The narrative that emerges re-enforces The Aviator, which comes off as surprisingly accurate. The question of who Hughes was, however, remains. Money-grubbing thief or high minded visionary? Entitled brat or hardworking self-made man?

His oversexed private life offers no real explanation. At one time, Hughes had dozens of starlets stashed away in bungalows and apartments all over L.A. He hired henchmen to spy on ex-girlfriends, keep tabs on his current staple, and be on the prowl for new “talent.” To women, Hughes lied, dangled fame and fortune in front of their faces like a giant carrot and then once he was through with them he cast them aside.

Hughes emerges not as a romantic hero, but rather as a manipulative, cruel intellect suffering from megalomania. Hughes, it seems, recognized no one but himself. He worked ghastly hours, sometimes forty or more at a time, only to collapse and spend days recovering. These manic tendencies explain much of his success.

Hughes grew bored by business as quickly as he did with women. He jumped from industry to industry with ease, eventually owning six casinos in Las Vegas and a medical research company.

But his inner demons began to fester. Hughes retreated to a “germ free” zone where his aides were given explicit instructions on how to operate, replete with a guidebook Hughes dictated. Naked and strung out on Codeine, he screened movies amidst the wreckage of dirty tissue paper and mounds of discarded filth. He refused to cut his nails. He rarely bathed. Filth accumulated around him. He even insisted that his urine be kept in glass jars.

Near the end of his life, Hughes traveled from one dimly lit hotel suite to another, traipsing around the globe like a rich phantom of the opera or Hunchback of Notre Dame, hounded by lawsuits and controversy. Rumors continued to circulate. Does Hughes exist? Did he ever? As in fighting between his aides and other employees erupted, he floated in a Valium daze with little input. His vast financial empire, ultimately, rested in the hands of inferior subordinates. His last days were spent strapped to a bed, a drug-addicted shell of a man plagued by bedsores and unable to take visitors.

Pilot. Genius. Inventor. Moneymaker. Filmmaker. Hughes wore a dozen hats and excelled at everything, except living. Here is a man who could sleep with Marilyn Monroe or design a jet but could not shake hands or eat a meal without risking a total breakdown. This is the dichotomy of Howard Hughes. Like many of the large personalities of the past—Picasso or Hemingway or Theodore Roosevelt to name a few—Hughes seems beyond moral judgments. Look at the effects of his life and you’ll find greatness. Begin to scrutinize the individual pieces and you’ll see nothing but a terrible person who ran slipshod over everyone around him.

A rich, sex-obsessed millionaire driven to insanity by neurotic compulsions, Hughes is indeed a poster boy for the darker aspects of the American dream: a wealthy individualist run amok. With subject matter as intriguing as this, the documentary about him should be excellent, which here is not the case. Still, it’s entertaining and educational enough, and like the A & E biographies it emulates, it covers the material well enough. Perhaps Hughes deserves a documentary as flashy and mythic as he was. Or perhaps he doesn’t.

Regardless, Howard Hughes: The Man and His Madness offers a by-the-numbers portrait of an infinitely fascinating man.

Ben Beard is a film and music critique living in Chicago.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com