Fame In Film: The Aviator - Kristofer Dorsey

The movie starts Leonardo DiCaprio as eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes as he starts his life as a director and movie producer to the most innovate person in the world of aviation. The story also follows his life in the lime light as he dated some of Hollywood’s leading ladies. Also, how he made headlines as he became one of the forefather’s in aviation. It also takes a look at how he became a recluse and later shied away from being a star in the public’s eye.
Fame for the Howard Hughes character is a roller coaster for him. While he is striving to make the move, Hell’s Angels, and prove all his critics wrong, he also starts to gain more interest in him from the media. The movie takes more than two years to make and this gets the media to start talking about the 22-year-old director that is directing the “most expensive movie of all time.” As the movie premiers, he make sure that the event is huge with airplanes flying over and that all the media is there. He also brings along the beautiful Jean Harlow to accompany him. The media eats this up. This is the night to see if his huge movie flops and also see what is going on with his love life.
Hell’s Angel becomes a hit. As the movie goes on, he shifts his attention from directing and producing to aviation. At the time he was doing this, aviation was just making way in to the world. This was the time of Charles Lindbergh and the competition of being the best at flying. Hughes gained more fame after breaking Charles Lindbergh record of flying the fastest plane and garnered more fame for himself. After also crashing a plane in a cornfield, it gained him more fame because he always pushed things to the age. The most famous of his crashes is when he crashed in to a Beverly Hills neighborhood causing damage to surrounding houses and almost killing himself. This allowed his legend to grow even larger. His fame would never eclipse the time he took on Juan Trippe, owner of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster, who worried over the possibility that Hughes, might beat them in the quest for commercial expansion. During this time, Trippe and Sen. Brewster slung his name in the mud after Hughes was not able to provide his monumental plane, the Hercules, in time of the war. They said that he was taking money away from the public and that he was a disgrace for his nation. During this time, due to his Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Hughes became a recluse. The media wondered if these statements were true since he didn’t go public and nobody knew where he was. Shying away from the public is the worst thing a person that was of his magnitude could do. The reason I say this is because it gains more interest in him from the media. The mudslinging did not stop until he went in front of Congress and spoke his mind. This got the public back on his side and he was no longer since as a nemesis to the United States. He later created a pseudo-event of his aircraft, the Hercules, and took reporters from the press on its first and only flight. His life through the crazy world of aviation does not compare to his love life. He was the equivalent of a male version of Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez. The women he was involved with were some of the biggest stars at the time and always gave him a headline in Hollywood.
In the movie, his first big love interest was Katharine Hepburn. Although both were stars in Hollywood, they basically shied away from the public as much as they could. They still was able to meet the headlines as it shown in the movie that Hepburn was mad and tired of seeing Hughes in the paper with a different Hollywood starlet. This led to the end of their relationship and to Hepburn leaving Hughes for Spencer Tracey. During this time, Spencer Tracey was married when he his affair with Hepburn. The paparazzi followed them on vacation and took incriminating photos of their romantic getaway. Once Howard heard about this, he paid so that these photos wouldn’t get release. If so, they would’ve ruined Hepburn and Tracey’s life. His second high profile love was the beautiful Ava Gardner. She at the time was Hollywood’s starlet and with Howard involved with her, the paparazzi would follow. An example of this was shown when heading to dinner, Gardner and Hughes was attacked in their car by Hughes former love, Faith Domergue, who rammed their car. The paparazzi flashed away as he made headline news of being a love triangle.
The film makes you reevaluate the idea of fame. It makes you wonder if this is really what you want. Do you want your name to be dragged in the mud? Do you want people think that this is the way you are because the media portrayed you that way? Is it worth it? For Howard Hughes, it look as if he could do his all the things he loved for aviation and not tamper with Hollywood, I think he would’ve been better off. It was the path he chose and his path is what makes people legends.