Howard Hughes - Wkp:
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (24 September 1905 – 5 April 1976), was an American aviator, engineer, industrialist, film producer and director, and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for setting multiple world air-speed records, building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules airplanes, producing the movies Hell's Angels and The Outlaw, as well as owning and expanding TWA.

Howard R. Hughes, Sr. patented the tri-cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for oil in previously inaccessible places.
Hughes grew up under the strong influence of his mother, who was obsessed with protecting her son from all germs and diseases. From his father, Hughes inherited an interest in all things mechanical. Showing great aptitude in engineering at an early age, Hughes erected Houston's first wireless broadcast system when he was 11 years old. At age 12, Hughes was supposedly photographed in the local newspaper as being the first boy in Houston to have a 'motorized' bicycle, which he had built himself from parts taken from his father's steam engine. He was an indifferent student with a liking for mathematics and flying, taking flying lessons at 14 and later auditing maths and engineering courses at Caltech.
Hughes' parents died within two years of each other, while he was still in his teens.
Their deaths apparently inspired Hughes to include the creation of a medical research laboratory in his 1925 will.
Because Howard Sr.'s will had not been updated since Allene's death so? otherwise wld not have left money to his son?, young Hughes inherited 75 percent of his father's multi-million dollar fortune, which included the increasing amounts of cash flow generated from oil drilling royalties.
Hughes dropped out of Rice University shortly after his father's death. In June 1925, Hughes married Ella Rice. Shortly thereafter they left Houston and moved to Hollywood, where Hughes hoped to make a name for himself making movies.

Hughes was a notorious ladies' man who spent time with many famous women, including Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland and Gene Tierney.

Hughes' ownership of and plans for TWA may have been the real reason he was investigated by the Senate following the war. Pan American World Airways chief Juan Trippe sought to monopolize international air travel and had influenced powerful Maine Senator Owen Brewster to propose legislation securing Pan Am as the sole American airline allowed to fly overseas at a time when Hughes planned TWA service to Europe with the Constellation. Dietrich wrote of the investigation that Hughes beat the Senate committee by turning the hearings into an attack on Brewster. Hughes successfully exposed Brewster's dealings with Pan Am and later helped defeat his re-election bid by pouring considerable funds into the campaign of his opponent, Frederick Payne.

Although Hughes lived in his own home in California for many years, he later came up with the idea of living in hotels as this enabled him to not have a legally declared residence in any state which would require him to pay personal income taxes. His extremely creative efforts to avoid taxes were successful; even after his death, the states of California and Texas were unable to collect inheritance taxes since it could not be proven that he was a legal resident of either state.
The wealthy and aging Howard Hughes, accompanied by his entourage of personal aides, moved from one hotel to another, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse. During the last ten years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, Hughes lived in hotels in Beverly Hills; Boston; Las Vegas; the Bahamas; Vancouver,London; Managua, Nicaragua; Acapulco, Mexico; and, others.
In 1966, Hughes arrived in Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into the Desert Inn. Refusing to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners of the hotel, Hughes bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center of his empire and the ninth-floor penthouse became Hughes' personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, Hughes bought several other hotels/casinos. Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas from its mobsters in gaudy silk suits and thousand-dollar-a-night call girls to something more glamorous. As Hughes wrote in a memo to an aide, "I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car." A chronic insomniac, Hughes bought several local television stations (including KLAS-TV) so that there would always be something for him to watch in the early hours of the morning.

just now in the movie, at the end, sees himself as a boy telling his mom, "When I grow up, I'm going to fly the fastest planes, make the biggest movies, and be the richest man."