Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was at times a pilot, a movie producer, a playboy, an eccentric and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for building the Hercules airplane, commonly known as the Spruce Goose, and for his debilitatingly eccentric behavior later in life.

Fictional media inspirations

The following fictional characters appear to have been, at least in part, patterned after Hughes:

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• "Charles Foster Kane" of the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane. This character was based on a composite of Howard Hughes and William Randolph Hearst.
• "Willard Whyte" of the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever
• "Montgomery Burns" of The Simpsons, especially in the episode "$pringfield" in which he exhibits all of Hughes's OCD attributes, including wearing tissue boxes on his feet, moving into a hotel penthouse, and creating an aircraft called the "Spruce Moose."
• In The Disney Afternoon's TaleSpin a reclusive hippo portraying Hughes' characteristic was building a plane called the Spruce Caboose.
• "S.R. Hadden" of the Carl Sagan novel Contact, and the 1997 Robert Zemeckis film of the same name
• "Jonas Cord" in Harold Robbins' novel The Carpetbaggers
• "Howard Lockwood" in the Lupin III film Mystery of Mamo
• Howard Hughes makes an appearance in the motion picture The Rocketeer, substituting for the "mystery inventor" (Doc Savage) in the original comic book version.
• Howard Hughes also appears in an episode of the TV Series Dark Skies
• Saturday Night Live presented a comedy sketch portraying Hughes and his eccentric activities
• Hughes appears in James Ellroy's political crime novel American Tabloid, as well as in many of Ellroy's other novels
• Steven Carter's novel I was Howard Hughes is a "picture of a Hughes who might have been."
• Dean Stockwell plays Howard Hughes in the Francis Ford Coppola's biopic of automaker Preston Tucker, '. The film introduces Hughes as a potential investor of Tucker's automobile line, although such claims are unsubstantiated.
• Melvin and Howard, 1980, directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Jason Robards as Howard Hughes and Paul Le Mat as Melvin Dummar. This film was spoofed on the sketch comedy series SCTV.
• Sam Shepard wrote a play entitled Seduced, about a fictional character named Harry Hackamore, who is modeled after Hughes. Incidentally, a 1982 production of this play in London landed actor Ian McDiarmid the role of Palpatine in the Star Wars films, as it showed that the then 37-year old actor could convincingly play much older characters.

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Do not list "The Aviator" here: it is not fiction. It has already been included in factual portrayals above. Thanks.

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