12 Interesting Facts, About Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes is one of the most fascinating public figures of the 20th century, a notorious risk taker and a man driven to succeed in his early life. Unfortunately, his debilitating obsessive nature was ultimately his undoing later in life. While he enjoyed a lavish public life, and a famous romance with Katherine Hepburn, the last years of his life were spent in seclusion from the world.
Let’s take a look into the strange world of Howard Hughes the director, the aviator, and the recluse.
1. Hughes’ father was the inventor of the “Hughes Rock Eater,” a self-sharpening drill bit used for drilling oil wells that is still in use today. Hughes inherited several million dollars but earned the vast majority of his wealth from his own business ventures. Hughes Aircraft and Hughes Helicopters alone were worth $5.5 billion when they were finally sold in the early 1980s.
2. He attended Rice University in Houston before dropping out in the 20s to move to Hollywood and begin making movies.
3. Hughes was well known in his early filmmaking days for romancing famous actresses. Aside from his extended relationship with Katherine Hepburn, Hughes was linked to Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Ginger Rogers, and Ava Gardner and Faith Domergue.
4. In the 1950s, Robert Mitchum was selected by Hughes to appear in a series of films he was producing. Hughes considered Mitchum a “friend,” but (as a paranoid recluse) hardly met the actor. Mitchum was half-way put-off and half-way amused by this “crazy, old man” and clearly saw that he was a surrogate for Hughes as the strapping actor “romanced” young starlets on screen.
5. Among his many obsessions, Hughes was enraptured with the Communist threat of the 1950s, sending out paranoid-laden articles from his seclusion.
6. It has variously been hypothesized that his crazed behavior in his later, reclusive years was caused by brain damage resulting from a series of accidents, OCD, bipolar disorder, or even paranoid-schizophrenia.
7. During one reclusive stretch, Hughes lived for five months in a screening studio in Hollywood. During that time, he ate and drank exclusively Hershey Bars, pecans, and milk.
8. In his final reclusive state, Hughes kept his urine stored in jars in his room and wore Kleenex boxes as slippers due to his crippling fear of germs. He also had an unnatural fear of radiation and pollution.
9. Stan Lee based his Tony Stark/Iron Man character on Hughes’ lavish wealth and early lifestyle.
10. One of Hughes’ more odd obsessions was with peas. He would often arrange them on his plate according to size.
11. His reported appearance when he was found dead was extremely bizarre. He was covered in uncut, matted hair, had extremely long toenails, and the once strapping, 6′ 4″ man weighed an incredibly low 90 pounds.
12. After Hughes died, actress Terry Moore claimed they had secretly married on a yacht in international waters in 1949 and never divorced; these “marriages” were ruses Hughes was known to employ in order to take advantage of young women. Despite the fact that Moore married two other men after she “married” Hughes, his estate settled with her for an undisclosed amount in 1984.
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