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How accurate is the movie The Aviator

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==Howard Hughes and the movies==
The Aviator shows Hughes spending a lot of time in Hollywood both as a producer and a party animal. In this regard the movie is accurate as Hughes was very important in Hollywood Tinsel Town and part of its inner circle. Hughes uncle had been a writer and one of the early scriptwriters in Tinsel Town. The Texan because of the profits from his father’s company was able to use his own personal money to make films and he was able to operate outside of the studio system <ref>Barlett, p. 45</ref>. In the movie the young Texan millionaire is show as investing heavily in the movie Hell’s Angels a World War I epic. This was true, and it did go wildly over budget as portrayed the movie and lost a great deal of money. The Aviator portrays Hughes as gambling everything that he had on this movie and that he was a novice in the industry. In fact, Hughes had made movies before and he was an established producer and one of his productions had even won an Academy Award. The Aviator does show very accurately that Hughes movie Hell’s Angels was indeed a pioneering work in its realism and its use of special effects and it was and remains an influential movie <ref> Porter, Darwin. Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel. ( Chicago, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd., 2005), p 78</ref>. Scorsese’s biopic then chronicles the long involvement of Hughes in filmmaking. It correctly shows him as willing to back risky and controversial subjects. At the time there was a growing conservative backlash against Hollywood and there was increasing censorship of the cinema. Hughes did push back against this and he was frequently in trouble with censors over movies such as Scarface and The Outlaw. Scorsese shows Hughes being influenced by Katherine Hepburn with regard to censorship and as a result he takes a rather principled approach to the issue as a result. In reality Hughes disliked censorship because he believed that it was bad for box-office. He was always a business man and for him cinema was a glamorous business and not an art form.  
==The many women in Howard Hughes Life==
The multi-millionaire is shown in the movie as having many affairs with a bevy of beauties, many of them Hollywood starlets. It also portrays him as having a long-term relationship with Katherine Hepburn (Blanchet) and Ava Gardner (Beckingsdale). This was to a large extent true and Hughes did indeed have a great many girlfriends and mistresses, but in real life the Texan multi-millionaire was even more promiscuous. The picture does not deal with claims that he used his power and wealth to force women into sexual relationships with him. At least one actress later claimed that Hughes implied that he would ruin her career if she did not become sexually involved with him. It is accurate that he had serious relationships with Ava Gardner and Katherine Hepburn and the Texan did have strong feelings for both women, especially for Hepburn. In the movie Hepburn is shown as possibly the love of his life and he wanted to marry her, which may have been correct. Scorsese’s movie totally glosses over the fact that Hughes was briefly married in the late 1920s. There are no references to his two wives and the impression is given that he was never married. The movie captures very well, the fact that despite his many lovers that Hughes was a very isolated figure and at heart a lonely man.

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