At the beginning of the picture, only the Miramax Films and Warner Bros. logos appear, then the title. At the end of the film, the credits for director Martin Scorsese, writer John Logan, the production companies, producers, executive producers and actor Leonardo DiCaprio appear before the title is shown again. The main actors are then listed, beginning with Cate Blanchett and ending with Jude Law. Credits for several more actors are intercut with credits for the leading crew members, such as director of photography Robert Richardson and production designer Dante Ferretti. When the roster of cast and character names begins, the lead actors are listed first, followed by a list of other actors in order of their appearance. Throughout the film, title cards appear indicating times, places and character names.
       According to various news items, at one point more than seven projects on the life of Howard Hughes were in development, including a long time plan by actor-producer Warren Beatty. As various projects dissolved, two separate projects about Hughes appeared to be in simultaneous development. A 9 Jan 2005 NYT article, however, details that there was only one Hughes project, which producer Charles Evans, Jr. had been interested in for twelve years. The article indicates that Evans and his business partner, Michael Mann, began development on the film, hiring writers Dean Ollins, then John Fincher to work on a screenplay. Writer John Logan was brought on board in 1999. A Feb 2000 HR news item indicated that although Mann originally agreed to direct the film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, for New Line Cinema, he later decided not to direct the project but remain as producer with his Forward Pass production company.
       A 1 Mar 2001 DV article noted that producer Evans and Acappella Pictures sued New Line and Mann, claiming they had ousted him from the production. According to the article, in 1997 Evans approached actor Kevin Spacey about directing the project, which was then in co-development with Mann. Evans and Spacey interested New Regency in developing the project with Fincher set as the writer. Evans claimed to have approached DiCaprio in 1998 to star, but stated that the actor requested director approval. Evans' suit stated that he dropped Spacey and agreed to Mann as director, but that his former partner then absconded with the project, taking it to New Line. According to the Jan 2005 NYT article, Evans settled the suit and received a producer credit. His role as producer remained controversial, however, when the picture was nominated for various Best Picture awards (see below).
       A Jan 2002 DV article noted that Martin Scorsese, who had directed DiCaprio in the 2002 release Gangs of New York (see below) was brought on to direct The Aviator at DiCaprio’s request. An Apr 2004 DV article revealed that Warner Bros., which had originally purchased the North American distribution rights of The Aviator, then went into partnership with Miramax on financing the film. The companies agreed that Miramax would handle U.S. and European distribution, with Warner Bros. retaining foreign and ancillary rights.
       A Feb 2003 US Weekly news item mentioned that actresses Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman were being considered for the same role. The item mentioned the role as tobacco heiress Doris Duke, but Duke had no relationship with Hughes and her character is not in the released film. A Jun 2003 LAT item and a Dec 2004 NYT article mentioned that Kidman was under consideration for the role of Katharine Hepburn, but withdrew due to scheduling conflicts. A Jun 2003 DV item noted that Matt Ross took over the role of “Glenn Odekirk” when Barry Pepper withdrew due to an earlier commitment.
       Although most of the characters in the film are based on actual persons, “Professor Fitz,” played by Ian Holm, was entirely fictitious. Production notes and reviews on the film stated that the first half of the film, composed of events approximately up to 1936, recreated a two-strip red and blue-green Technicolor effect that was in use from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s. Portions of the film that take place later in Hughes’s life recreated the bright cyan-magenta-yellow three-strip Technicolor look of the 1940s and 1950s. Production information details the meticulous recreation of the famous Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The exterior of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre was also recreated for the elaborate premiere of Hell’s Angels, but the actual Chinese Theatre was used for interiors. The Hollywood Blvd. premiere sequence combined news footage that had been colorized with digital enhancements.
       News items stated that the bulk of the film was shot in Montreal, Quebec, Canada at the Technoparc in Mel’s Cité du Cinema. An item in DV from Nov 2003 indicated that wildfires in Southern California burned down a set for the film at Big Sky Ranch. The film then moved to Long Beach to complete shooting. Other California locations for the film mentioned by DV and press notes were Palos Verdes, Santa Clarita, Oxnard and the San Bernardino airport.
       The film correctly presents the basic facts of the life of Hughes: In 1909, Howard Robard Hughes, Sr. made his fortune by developing a diamond drill bit that could bore through any substance, and wisely chose to rent rather than sell the bits to oil companies and riggers, then guaranteed a world market by patenting the bit in numerous foreign countries. Hughes’s wife Allene died unexpectedly in 1922 at the age of thirty-nine after undergoing a routine surgical procedure. Upon the death of his father in Jan 1924, Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (1905--1976) became a millionaire by inheriting the controlling interest in the Houston-based Hughes Tool Company.
       Upon receiving his inheritance, Hughes, Jr. promptly bought out his relatives’ interest in the company, causing a lifelong rift with his father’s side of the family. Within six months young Hughes was Hughes Tool Company’s sole owner, and at the age of nineteen, won a legal petition to be declared an adult. Never interested in running the company, Hughes wrote down in 1925 the three things he wanted to do with his life, echoed in The Aviator’s closing shot of him recalling his childhood: to be the world’s best golfer, the world’s best pilot and the most famous movie producer. In the film, the wish to be the world’s best golfer is replaced by the child Howard declaring that he intends to be “the richest man in the world.”
       As shown in the opening sequence in The Aviator, Allene Hughes’s excessive fears of contagious diseases may have influenced Hughes’s later preoccupations and phobias. Biographies on Hughes indicate that from an early age he learned to feign illness in order to stop parental disagreements or simply to gain attention. The biographies comment on Allene’s excessive overprotective attitude toward her only child, yet also note that the few times Hughes was allowed away from home, he behaved normally. Some biographies conclude that in his late twenties Hughes contracted syphilis and the extremely contagious disease heightened his already established health phobias and fear of germs.
       Hughes’s interest in motion pictures was likely influenced by spending time with his father’s brother Rupert, a movie director and writer in burgeoning Hollywood. Rupert was also known for throwing lavish star-studded parties, to which Hughes, Sr. often brought young Howard. After Hughes, Sr.’s death, Rupert attempted to become his nephew’s guardian, but Hughes, Jr. refused, permanently breaking with his uncle. The Aviator does not mention Hughes’s marriage at nineteen to a twenty-one-year-old Houston socialite, Ella Rice. The marriage lasted four years and biographers speculate was likely undertaken by Hughes to keep his fortune from his relatives in the event of his early death. Unlike the film, in real life, Hughes did not hire his longtime executive assistant Noah Dietrich on the set of Hell’s Angels, but rather two years earlier and, according to modern sources, initially to manage his budding film production company, Caddo Co. (a subsidiary of Caddo Rock Drill Bit Company of Louisiana). Later, as related in the film, Dietrich would manage the Houston operation of Hughes Tool Company.
       Prior to Hell’s Angels, Hughes produced several films including the 1927 Two Arabian Knights (for which director Lewis Milestone won an Academy Award) and 1928's The Racket. As shown in The Aviator, Hughes took over direction of Hell’s Angels with no prior directing experience and, having purchased seventy-eight planes to be used in the film, was the owner of the largest private air fleet in the country. In Jan 1928, Hughes received his pilot’s license and insisted on joining stunt pilots during the filming only to suffer the first of four major crashes in his career. Two of those crashes are shown in the The Aviator. The Hell’s Angels production, as noted in the film, was the most expensive to that time, ultimately costing $4,000,000, and brought Jean Harlow to the attention of M-G-M, where she would go on to a successful career (for more information on the above titles, see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30).
       Hughes went on to produce several more films including the 1931 The Front Page and the censorship-plagued Scarface in 1932, both released by United Artists (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-40). In The Aviator when Hughes runs into difficulties with the film industry censor board, the MPAA, over The Outlaw, he refers to Scarface, and posters of the film are on prominent display in Hughes’s Hollywood offices. Hughes directed only two films, Hell’s Angels and The Outlaw, which he took over after the initial director, Howard Hawks, quit. As shown in the movie, Hughes’s obsession with displaying the ample breasts of star Jane Russell resulted in numerous run-ins with the MPAA. Despite these difficulties, the film opened in 1943 for a brief, successful run in San Francisco, but upon encountering more censorship problems, Hughes pulled the picture until 1946. (For more information on the complicated censorship issues facing the film, consult the entry in AFI Catalog of Feature Film, 1941-50.)
       As depicted in The Aviator, Hughes’s extreme interest in aviation and airplanes led him to co-design with Richard Palmer the H-1 Racer, built by Glenn Odekirk and now on display at the Smithsonian Institute National Air and Space Museum. The Aviator showed actual footage of newsreel reports tracing Hughes’s Jul 1938 record-setting flight around the world in three days in a Lockheed 4N Super Electra. The film’s footage of Hughes deplaning after his triumphant flight featured Hughes’s face digitally replaced with that of DiCaprio, but the ticker-tape parade sequence down Broadway in New York City featured footage of the real Hughes.
       As shown in the film, after Hughes’s purchase of commercial airline TWA, he attempted to secure a contract with the Army Air Force in order to continue developing aircraft. In 1942 Hughes agreed to join with aluminum magnate Henry J. Kaiser to design and construct an enormous cargo plane to carry crucial supplies overseas. Hughes and Kaiser received a military contract for the plane which, as shown in the film, Hughes called the Hercules or the HK-1. Not depicted in The Aviator was the initial decision by the army to cancel the contract for the Hercules, concluding that Hughes Aircraft could not complete both it and the reconnaissance plane, the XF-11. The XF-11 production contract would eventually be canceled by the air force in late May 1945, a fact placed elsewhere in the film. Hughes completed the XF-11 in 1946 and convinced the air force to allow him to test the plane.
       As shown in great detail in the film, during the end of Hughes’s XF-11 test flight over Culver City, CA, one of the dual propellers reversed pitch due to an oil leak, sending the plane spiraling out of control. Hughes attempted to land at the Los Angeles Country Club, but fell just short, crashing into two houses on North Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, one of which belonged to well-known film character actress Rosemary DeCamp. A third house on North Whittier was engulfed in flames when the XF-11 exploded. As shown in the film, the severely injured Hughes was pulled from the burning plane by a Marine visiting the neighborhood. Hughes successfully piloted the XF-11 in 1947 without incident.
       In 1939, as related in The Aviator, Hughes went on to purchase what was then called Transcontinental and Western Air, or TWA. TWA’s president, William John “Jack” Frye, did indeed encourage Hughes to acquire the company because the board was reluctant to purchase or build new planes. Hughes, who had established ties with airline manufacturer Lockheed from his round-the-world record-setting flight, was the actual instigator of the design of the successful Constellation. By 1946, the plane turned TWA into a flourishing commercial international air carrier that was eventually renamed Trans World Airlines, but retained the TWA moniker. Although events in The Aviator end in 1947, Hughes retained control of TWA for many more years. In 1957, however, Hughes’s attempt to upgrade TWA's fleet failed when he could not afford to meet the required costs. Due to his continued financial mismanagement, in 1960 Hughes was eventually forced out of his position as chairman by TWA executives. As Hughes remained the company’s major stockholder and could still intercede in financial decisions, the company’s executive committee filed a lawsuit in Aug 1961 accusing him of illegally using TWA to fund other private investments. During the suit, which ran for several years, when TWA teetered on bankruptcy, Pan Am’s president, Juan Trippe, offered to merge Pan Am with TWA as long as Hughes was cut out, but the deal eventually collapsed. In 1965, Hughes sold his TWA stock for 546 million dollars.
       In spite of his increasing mental breakdowns and withdrawal into seclusion, Hughes retained his avid interest in aviation, later acquiring the regional carrier Air West, which he renamed Hughes Air West. The carrier primarily serviced Las Vegas, where he resided for a lengthy period. In 1991, after a series of unsuccessful organizational restructures, Hughes’s and TWA’s great rival Pan Am ceased operations. Ten years later, the financially plagued TWA was absorbed by American Airlines.
       A critical portion of The Aviator was based on records from the actual Senate Committee Investigating National Defense and hearings led by Republican senator Ralph Owen Brewster. As shown in the film, Pan Am’s Trippe and Brewster came together to sponsor a bill, which would require all American airlines flying abroad to give up their routes to a consolidated international airline corporation in which the largest carrier, Pan Am, would have a controlling interest. Brewster’s committee began a vigorous investigation of Hughes as a wartime contractor, claiming that Hughes Aircraft received 40 million dollars of government funding but failed to complete the Hercules or the XF-11. When the Hercules was criticized during the hearings, called by its derogatory name of the “Spruce Goose,” Hughes defended the craft, insisting its development was a major advance for aviation. The ineffectual hearings were recessed for three months and resumed in Nov 1947 but closed three weeks later.
       Motivated by the attack on the Hercules in the senate hearings, Hughes turned to proving that the huge boat plane could fly. As shown in the film, in the fall of 1947 the Hercules had to be disassembled for its relocation from Culver City to Long Beach, CA. The plane is still the largest ever built, 218 feet long with a wingspan of 320 feet and a weight of 400,000 pounds. In Long Beach Harbor on 2 Nov 1947, Hughes ran numerous tests on the giant plane and as shown in the film, on the last test, made a successful takeoff and flew approximately one mile at about seventy feet in the air. It was the only flight the Hercules ever made. Hughes put the plane into a specially built hangar where it remained for thirty-three years. After Hughes’s death his holding company, the Summa Corporation, donated the plane to the Aero Club of California, which put it on display in Long Beach next to the Queen Mary. In 1990 the Hercules was transported to its new home at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, OR, where it is on permanent display.
       As shown in the film, throughout most of his life, Hughes was linked in the press to numerous Hollywood film stars. Hughes’s love affair with Katharine Hepburn (1907--2003) was true, although details and the chronology of their relationship were altered for the dramatization. As mentioned in The Aviator, Hepburn did move into Hughes’s Muirfield Road home in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. After the end of their romantic involvement, Hepburn and Hughes remained on friendly terms and Hughes maintained a particular interest in her film career. Unmentioned in the film was the fact that Hughes bought Hepburn the film rights to the Philip Barry play that would re-launch her Hollywood career, The Philadelphia Story (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-50).
       As depicted in the film, Hughes had a long on-and-off-again relationship with Ava Gardner (1922--1990), who indicated in her autobiography that she found the millionaire pleasant but eccentric, and consistently refused his numerous gifts of expensive jewelry. Gardner made no mention of assisting Hughes through any severe emotional breakdowns, as portrayed in the film. Hughes was also closely involved with starlet Faith Domergue (1924--1999), whose contract he purchased from Warner Bros. in 1940 and whom he promised to marry and make a great film star. Domergue appeared in Hughes’s troubled production of Vendetta and the film noir Where Danger Lives, both released in 1950 (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1941-50) by RKO, which Hughes then owned, then went on to make several films throughout the 1950s, predominantly Westerns and science fiction features. A biography on Hughes details a jealous outburst similar to one shown in The Aviator in which Domergue rams her car into one carrying Hughes and Gardner.
       Not shown in the film was Hughes’s relationship with Twentieth-Cenury Fox star Jean Peters, whom he married in Jan 1957. The couple rarely lived together and Peters divorced Hughes in 1971 and never commented on their relationship. After Hughes’s death in 1976, actress Terry Moore testified in court that they had been married briefly on board a yacht in 1949, but the courts declared the marriage illegal. Hughes’s wealth, eccentric behavior and personal relationships continued to make him a figure of great interest after his death, and numerous biographies, some sensationalistic, many citing the numerous claims made on his estate, were published over several years.
       Another true element depicted in The Aviator was the severe obsessive compulsive disorder and eccentric phobias from which Hughes suffered throughout his adult life. Unlike the movie, however, Hughes did not suffer a complete breakdown after the XF-11 crash and before the senate investigation hearings. In Aug 1944, however, Hughes did suffer what several biographies describe as a nervous breakdown, preceded by a compulsive repetition of phrases. Overwhelmed by work pressures, Hughes disappeared for eleven months. In 1975, a Hughes Aircraft mechanic published an article claiming that during the eleven months of Hughes’s 1944 disappearance, he and the millionaire flew back and forth from Las Vegas to Palm Springs to Reno, staying in hotels under assumed names.
       The seclusion and mental collapse depicted in the film did occur to Hughes, but not until early 1958, after a falling-out with Dietrich that prompted his resignation and increased financial difficulties at TWA. Although married to Peters by this time, Hughes secluded himself in the private West Hollywood screening room of producer Martin Nosseck for several months, eating candy bars, watching movies and going about naked. In the summer of 1958, Hughes moved to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where his mental collapse worsened and he became obsessed with repeating cleaning procedures for his staff while neglecting his personal hygiene and diet for several more months. Hughes was gradually able to resume making business decisions, yet his eccentric behavior and mental breakdowns continued, resulting eventually in his complete seclusion and isolation.
       There have been many films and television movies based on, or inspired by Hughes's life, and several unrealized projects, among them an unproduced Warren Beatty film in development for many years. Completed projects include a 1977 CBS television broadcast entitled The Amazing Howard Hughes, based, in part, on a book written by Dietrich, starring Tommy Lee Jones as Hughes, Ed Flanders as Dietrich and Tovah Feldshuh as Hepburn, directed by William A. Graham. In 1980 MCA/Universal Pictures released Melvin and Howard, based on one of the many claimants to Hughes’s fortune, gas station owner Melvin Dummar, purportedly left a portion of Hughes’s estate after he helped the aged millionaire in 1968 in the Nevada desert. Jason Robards played Hughes and Paul LeMat co-starred as Dummar. The film was directed by Jonathan Demme. Many critics and film historians note that Harold Robbins’ novel and the subsequent 1964 Paramount film The Carpetbaggers is loosely based on the life of Hughes.
       The Aviator was selected by AFI as one of its Top Ten films of 2004, and the National Board of Review also cited the picture as one of the ten best films of the year. The picture received three Golden Globe awards: for Best Picture—Drama, Best Performance by an Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Best Original Score (Howard Shore), and three other nominations: Best Director (Martin Scorsese), Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Cate Blanchett) and Best Screenplay (John Logan). Controversy about Charles Evans, Jr. continued at the Golden Globe ceremony when Evans appeared with Michael Mann and Graham King at the press conference following the awards, even though he had been requested not to participate.
       The Aviator received five Academy Awards, Supporting Actress (Blanchett), Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Film Editing. The film received additional nominations in the following catagories: Picture, Direction, Original Screenplay, Actor (DiCaprio), Supporting Actor (Alan Alda), and Sound Mixing. When the Academy Award nominations were announced on 25 Jan 2005, the names of those producers eligible to receive the nominations for The Aviator, Ray and Million Dollar Baby were withheld pending determination. On 5 Feb 2005, the Producers Branch Executive Committee of the Academy announced that Mann and King were the sole producers nominated for The Aviator.
       Blanchett also won the Screen Actors Guild award for Best Supporting Female Actor and the film received nominations for DiCaprio for Best Male Actor in a lead role and the ensemble cast. The British Academy of Film and Television selected Blanchett as Best Supporting Actress and named The Aviator as Best Film, with Evans included as one of the producer recipients of the award.
       Additionally, Mann and King, but not Evans, received the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Best Picture from the Producers Guild of America; Scorsese received a Best Director nomination from the Directors Guild; John Logan received a Best Original Screenplay nomination from the Writers Guild; and Robert Richardson received a Best Cinematography nomination from the American Society of Cinematographers.