Howard Hughes

Hughes inherited oil-drill money and burned it in Hollywood, producing The Racket in 1928 and Hell's Angels in 1930, then Scarface two years later — big, bloody, expensive. In 1932 he founded Hughes Aircraft Company and spent the next fifteen years chasing speed records and building planes, including the H-1 Racer in 1935 and the H-4 Hercules in 1947, a flying boat with the longest wingspan on earth until 2019. He won the Harmon Trophy twice, the Collier, a Congressional Gold Medal. He bought RKO Pictures in 1948; it died under him in 1957. A near-fatal crash left him in chronic pain, worsenin…