The Aviator - Fiction as history

Rating: Null/10 (17 January 2005)

What amazes me most about the film is how historically inaccurate it is. The purported Hepburn/Hughes relationship is the worst. This is what really happened.
Howard Hughes and Kate Hepburn met originally in late summer 1935 while she was making Sylvia Scarlett. She didn't care for him and was also involved with her agent, Leland Hayward. KH didn't see Hughes again for over a year.So the scene of him picking her up on the Sylvia Scarlett location to go golfing is incorrect.
In November, 1936, Hepburn broke up with Hayward. Hughes, as he frequently did when pursuing a woman, renewed his effort to get to know Hepburn knowing that she was on the rebound from a failed relationship. This time he succeeded and they began an affair in January, 1937 while she was on tour in a play.
After the play ended in May, 1937 she moved into Howard's house in Los Angeles. Hepburn and Hughes lived in his house for one year, from May 1937 to June 1938. By then her career had taken a dive and she lost her contract with RKO. She decided to go back east to do a play. She moved out of Hughes' house.
In her autobiography, Me, Stories of My Life, she said that the romance really ended at the time of the September 1938 hurricane which destroyed her family's summer home at Fenwick, Connecticut. She wrote: "The next day God sent the hurricane of 1938. The house at Fenwick disappeared. Howard had a pilot fly in with water - - and I knew that Howard and I had become friends and not lovers. Love had turned to water. Pure water. But water." As can be seen, their affair lasted a little less than two years, from January 1937 to September 1938. The film has the relationship lasting from 1935 to 1941 which is completely incorrect.
Three years after she broke up with Hughes, Kate met Spencer Tracy. This was in August, 1941. Tracy and Hepburn commenced a relationship that lasted 26 years until his death in 1967. Kate beginning a relationship with Tracy had nothing to do with her break up with Hughes which had happened three years prior. Since the two events were totally unrelated, there would have been no scene where Hughes was upset about Hepburn telling him that she and Tracy were involved and no break up with Hughes because she had met Tracy.
Hughes never bribed a tabloid editor to keep 'compromising' pictures of Tracy and Hepburn out of the tabloids. To begin with there were no tabloids to speak of in the 1940s. That was a phenomenon of the 1950s. Second, there were never any compromising photos of T&H. Third, if there had been compromising photos of them, their studio, MGM, would have dealt with the issue. They never needed Hughes for that purpose. MGM had a hell of a lot more clout with the press than Hughes would ever have had. In fact, every mention of Tracy in the film is completely fiction. There's no reason to have him in the film at all since he had nothing to do with Howard Hughes or the Hepburn/Hughes relationship.
The film has a scene where KH goes to a film premiere with Hughes. The date isn't clear but I guess it's 1939? Ava Gardner shows up at the premiere as well even though she wasn't in Hollywood. As has been previously noted, KH and Hughes broke up in 1938. It's ludicrous to show a scene with KH at a premiere with Hughes in 1939. She wasn't seeing Hughes at all much less going to social events with him. The other point, of course, is that Hepburn never went to premieres, not even the premieres of her own films nor to nightclubs. She was also known for not wearing dresses. The idea that she was prancing off to nightclubs and movie premieres in dresses is just plain silly.
Howard Hughes did not lock himself in a screening room for several days (or weeks) during the time frame that The Aviator covers. That episode occurred in 1957. And, of course, in any event Hepburn would have not been trying to coax Hughes out of the screening room since she wasn't involved with him in either 1947 or 1957. This scene is completely fictional.
Hepburn's father was a distinguished urologist and surgeon who was the head of the urology department at Hartford Hospital. Hepburn's mother was a well known advocate of women's rights including the right to vote in the 1910s and 20s and later the right of women to use birth control. They were not independently wealthy. Dr. Hepburn worked for his money. They didn't live in a palatial mansion. They were not snobs and they certainly didn't look down on Hughes. KH said in her autobiography that "my family was not too sympathetic to Howard. In the first place, he was everlastingly on the telephone. And the telephone was in the dining room. Long telephone conversations did not suit the atmosphere. . . ." While, it's true they didn't get along with him it wasn't because they thought he was beneath them. So this whole scene is false as well as being incredibly insulting to the Hepburn family.
There are many other errors but the 1000 word limit keeps me from describing them all.
It's quite obvious that the film makers decided to portray Hepburn in the film because she's still well remembered. She, in fact, was only briefly involved with Hughes and he was involved with many, many women. If the film makers wanted to be accurate they would have included Billie Dove and Jean Peters but then, no one remembers them so they invented a grand passion between Hughes and Hepburn which simply never happened.