As I recently noted, we had the opportunity to see The Aviator last month, and I came away a bit let down overall. Despite my disappointment in the film, I was very interested in its’ subject. Since childhood, stories of Howard Hughes’ days as depicted in the film have fascinated and amused me. In part, of course, I was curious how it was that an accomplished, ambitious person could be responsible for not only breaking aviation speed records and founding an important aerospace contracting company and also for such things as Jane Russell’s bra, the largest airplane ever built until the advent of the 747 or the A101 (depending on how you count these things.). How could such an energetic and imaginative figure become the ghostlike reincarnation of Fu Manchu that I recall from my childhood, wizened and bearded, clutching Kleenex in the place of silks from atop his aerie in Las Vegas?

I was never able to connect the two, although I did go through a period of fascination with the reclusive, insane Hughes. Most recently I read Michael Drosnin’s Citizen Hughes, which came to me courtesy of devoted reader Alice Dee. It depicts, from what is apparently primary source material, an isolated and conniving man bent on affecting American politics though force of capital, solely out of self-interest and with no apparent sense of responsibility, morality, or community. It also depicts those around him working hard to slow or stop his more outrageous fever dreams. It’s fascinating, as a case study, and terrifying, if one considers the inherent opportunities available to capital on Hughes’ scale today, in the holographically fragmented and deregulated American political arena.

As alluded to in The Aviator, Hughes sought to “buy” a politician, in the person of Richard M. Nixon, via $100,000 given to the slush fund that led directly to Watergate. As recounted in Citizen Hughes, Hughes explicitly understood the donations as a purchase. For his part, Nixon appears to have expertly avoided promising the recluse anyhing in exchange for the money, and Hughes seems not to have been aware of the effect his money would eventually have on American politics.

As ususal, the Wikipedia has a fine biographical entry on the man, covering both parts of Hughes’ life (and it should be noted that contrary to the film, Hughes remained creatively active in business for at least a decade beyond the flight of the Spruce Goose). Rotten.com, of all places, also has an informative, brief overview. PBS took a look at the man as well.

Regarding Hell’s Angels, the WWI air combat pic that opens The Aviator, I was surprised to find scant airplane-geek commentary on the film. I’ve read copious online commentary on other films from the interwar era, which often is devoted to a painstaking analysis of which planes seen onscreen are the genuine artice and which are creatively redressed ringers. After the war, large quantities of American-made airplanes were made available as surplus for cheap, while production halted altogether for the German planes. Thus in these films it’s much more common for German planes to be redressed US-made planes, a phenomenon which is glancingly referred to in the term “Wichita Fokker,” a nickname for a postwar Travelair. This Travelair shared a number of design features with the Fokker D-VII and was used extensively as an on-camera double, including, according to this list, on Hell’s Angels. This article covers some of the backgound on the stunt-flyer industry of the time.

TCM recently screened the film; unfortunately I missed it.

Looking at the other fascinating planes seen onscreen, it’s clearly the H-1 that has the best screen presence in The Aviator. In 1995, Smithsonian magazine took a look at the plane, which is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. There was at least one flying replica of the silver beauty, built by Jim Wright of Cottage Grove, Oregon. The plane set a world speed record in 2002. On August 4, 2003, the plane was destroyed and the builder killed when he attempted an emergency landing at Yellowstone National Park on his way back home from an airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Wright’s plane had been scouted for use in The Aviator, and my impression is that had it not been destroyed, it would have appeared in the film.

According to this radio-controlled flight forum, the planes seen onscreen are both a full-scale shooting prop and a flying radio-controlled model. The same forum states that the Spruce Goose seen in flight was a model that was flown in Long Beach harbor. I’m uncertain about this, as I felt that the Goose’s flight sequences were among the problematic uses of CGI in the film. Specifically, the behavior of the water under the taxi-ing hull is what keyed my attention. I freely admit that I could be wrong about this.

There certainly are large, flying radio-controlled models of the H-4; but for whatever reason, on this day my Google-fu fails to expose their linktraces.

Finally, Northwesterners, you should know that the airplane, which long languished at Long Beach harbor before Oregon, where it is the centerpiece of the Evergeen Aviation Museum, at the southern end of the wine-making Wilamette Valley in McMinnville. This summer, there are plans afoot to combine another Oscar-favorite’s subject, wine-tasting, with a visit to the big bird.