Eccentric entrepreneur who turned to film production in the early 1920s. In 1930 Hughes launched the career of Jean Harlow--the first of many ingenues he would find and promote--with "Hell's Angels", which he both produced and directed. Following a brief interruption in his film career (during which he embarked on a new trajectory as an airplane designer and pilot), Hughes sparked a furor with the appearance of "The Outlaw (1943), initially withdrawn from theaters thanks to the conspicuous cleavage of Jane Russell.
In 1944 Hughes formed a production company with Preston Sturges, and four years later he obtained a controlling interest in RKO, which he mismanaged from a distance for nearly ten years. Despite the studio's loss of $20 million by 1953 and bankruptcy by 1957, he managed to sell it to a subsidiary of the General Tire Company for a $10 million dollar profit. Hughes was a recluse for the last ten years of his life, managing his business interests from a Las Vegas hotel.
Part of American lore, a Hughes-like character was the central protagonist of the Harold Robbins adaptation, "The Carpetbaggers" (1964), and the actual Hughes was portrayed by Jason Robards in Jonathan Demme's engaging 1980 feature, "Melvin & Howard", and by Dean Stockwell in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tucker" (1988). Perhaps the most famous and successful interpretation of Hughes on film was Leonardo DiCaprio's multi-dimension portrayal in director Martin Scorsese's lavish opus "The Aviator" (2004).