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Monday, January 10, 2004 Volume VII Number 2
by Ken Kemp
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rom the first word I had that there was a secret airplane kept under guard somewhere in the Long Beach Harbor, Howard Hughes became a mystery man to me. I was a youngster then, and the engineer who revealed just that little bit of information was a reliable friend. My imagination stirred. I wondered what sort of flying machine might be hidden back there behind the barbed wire under twenty-four hour watch. |
Later, when we lived on the west side of town, up there around the Marina (Del Rey) and the bluff overlooking Culver City, the mystery man emerged again. There was a helicopter factory on a runway that paralleled the bluff, Loyola University perched up there above overlooking the massive industrial buildings. Corporate jets flew in and out of the facility. The Hughes Aircraft Company owned some of the most expensive real estate in the neighborhood, and employees would boast of their job security. There were government contracts, aero-space projects, and the man who started it all, well, they said he’d become an eccentric, a reclusive eccentric. I wondered about him – and his flying machine.
The new movie company, Dream Works, wanted to purchase the property and make it the birthplace of cinematic dreams. Conservationists blocked the sale.
By this time, I knew about the “Spruce Goose.” To this very day, the infamous flying boat holds the record as the largest airplane ever built. Hughes hated the name. He would correct you, with spite in his voice. It’s the H-4, he would snap. “The Hercules,” he’d add, staring you down to be sure you got the point. Detractors called it “The Flying Lumber Yard.” It was made of wood. The Hughes team, under the watchful eye of Mr. Hughes himself, developed the concept for a troop carrier that would revolutionize the transportation of troops and equipment. Picture it – with a wingspan of three hundred and twenty feet – longer than a regulation football field. Its eight Pratt and Whitney engines generated three thousand horsepower a piece. The hull was capable of carrying seven hundred and fifty troops more than three thousand miles at over two hundred miles per hour. At the tip of her tail, she stood more than thirty feet (three stories) above the water. Hughes won the government contract in 1942. German U-Boats (submarines) were firing torpedoes at will, sinking American troop ships as they crossed the Atlantic. It was a bold, daring move – to imagine an airplane that would fly troops above the fray of the menacing enemy, delivering hundreds of troops or the equivalent of two box cars filled with equipment. Even today, engineers who have studied the wooden design will tell you that the way the Hughes team worked with the grain of the spruce made it lighter and stronger than aluminum.
But the development of the airborne troopship took time. Hitler fell. The atomic bomb ended the war on the Pacific front. The Hughes team had not completed their work. A prototype stood tall in the hangar. The eighteen million dollar contract nearly exhausted, Hughes kicked in some of his own personal money to bring the project to completion.
I didn’t tour the airplane until well after Mr. Hughes’ highly publicized death. His passing made the cover of TIME back in 1976, along with an unforgettable expose on his final wretched years. His was the tragic story of phobia and isolation and obsessions that robbed the high profile pioneer of aviation of any sense of normalcy. He sat alone, a solitary figure, in a darkened room. A multi-million (billion) dollar hermit, watching 16mm movies – some he produce himself in the early years. Some a record of his aviation exploits. Terrified of contamination, he lived in self-imposed quarantine. TIME provided eerie sketches of his descent into withering seclusion. I’ve never been able to erase those pathetic images from my memory – nor to detach them from my recollection of Howard Hughes.
Martin Scorsese has built a movie career exploring psychological torment. His film, Raging Bull looked closely at the disintegration of Jake La Matta. Mean Streets and Goodfellas and Gangs of New York all focused on the anguish and stresses of street life, and the effects of brutality and the delusions that come from it. When Scorsese considered the story of Jesus, he took the view of a cinematic psychoanalyst, imposing his own fantasies on the Gospel account. (It was an abomination – The Last Temptation of Christ.) But here, the legendary director took on a more tame subject... but no less fascinating. Howard Hughes. The Aviator.
As I walked through the actual airplane, touring the Long Beach museum erected next to the Queen Mary, I imagined that magical day, November 2, 1947, when Howard Hughes, dressed in his conventional gray suit, white shirt and narrow tie, took command in the cockpit of the colossal airplane. He fired up all eight engines and taxied across the Long Beach Harbor as media cameras (16mm) rolled. He hit the throttle. The massive bird lifted off the water and buzzed the crowd. Oh, to hear it roar and to see it fly!
The museum is gone. (The Long Beach Museum is closed. The Spruce Goose is now on display in a new hangar in Oregon.) But the nearly three-hour film filled in the gaps. Hughes inherited a fortune from his deceased father at the tender age of eighteen. He set out to pursue his dreams: To produce movies. To build experimental aircraft. To set records. To conquer women. To win wars. To hammer the establishment. To own an airline. To outclass and outmaneuver Washington (DC). To live on the ragged edge of high risk.
Roger Ebert, the movie reviewer, pointed out that Hughes was never really as rich as he appeared. He simply knew how to go bankrupt at successively higher levels.
In the end, he was an American story.
Leonardo DiCaprio proved himself a serious actor in playing the landmark role. He captured the nuances and the complexities of the character in a convincing performance. It filled in the gaps from the 1976 TIME exposé on the final years. Hughes was more than a living skeleton, unshaven, naked, unkempt and living in self-made squalor in the sealed off penthouse of a Las Vegas hotel. The Aviator sets the record straight. Howard Hughes was an adventurer. A pioneer. An innovator. A visionary. A reformer. A trendsetter.
But he lived most of his colorful life alone.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Like me, you are fascinated by the exploits of the high achiever. You wonder what makes him or her tick. You are curious – where did the energy and vision and determination come from? How did he build that bigger-than-life image? What were the psychodynamics that contributed to that meteoric rise to fame and fortune? Was there substance to support the image?
The Spruce Goose never transported troops to the front lines. It never fulfilled its intended purpose. Maybe that’s why it has such popular appeal. So much money. So much time and expertise and vision and innovation. But so little fulfillment.
Was that the reason for Howard Hughes’ descent into reclusivity?
I don’t think so.
Hughes never learned how to love. How to give. He was self-absorbed. Controlling. Unrepentant. Unforgiven. The only woman who really loved him (Kathryn Hepburn) left in utter despair.
Even Howard Hughes needed a Redeemer.
I know I do.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2005
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