Howard Hughes: Aviator, Film Producer and Founder of Hughes Aircraft

Howard Hughes: Aviator, Film Producer and Founder of Hughes Aircraft

Business Owner · Aerospace & Defence

Los Angeles

Howard Hughes produced Hell's Angels and Scarface, bought RKO Pictures, founded Hughes Aircraft and built the H-4 Hercules 'Spruce Goose'.

About Howard Hughes: Aviator, Film Producer and Founder of Hughes Aircraft

Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (December 24, 1905 to April 5, 1976) was an American aviator, aerospace engineer, business magnate, film producer and investor, one of the richest and most influential people in the world in his lifetime. He first became prominent as a film producer and then as an important figure in the aviation industry, and later became known for eccentric behavior and a reclusive lifestyle, oddities caused in part by worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash and increasing deafness. As a film tycoon he gained fame in Hollywood from the late 1920s, producing big-budget and often controversial films such as The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930) and Scarface (1932), and in 1948 he acquired the RKO Pictures studio, then one of the Big Five, though it struggled under his control and ceased operations in 1957. In 1932 he founded Hughes Aircraft Company and spent the next two decades setting multiple world air speed records and building landmark planes, including the Hughes H-1 Racer (1935) and the H-4 Hercules, the "Spruce Goose" (1947), the largest flying boat in history and the aircraft with the longest wingspan until 2019. Sources: English Wikipedia (Howard Hughes, accessed September 2026).

Basic Information

Founder, Hughes Aircraft Company; film producer and business magnate (1905-1976)

Company Details

Hughes Aircraft Company / RKO Pictures

Aerospace, Film, Aviation