page_title: Rupert Hughes
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Rupert Hughes / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Ralph Barton sketch of Silent Movie stars. "When the Five O'Clock Whistle Blows in Hollywood" including Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, Bebe Daniels, Mary Pickford, Rupert Hughes, Harold Lloyd, Bill Hart, Wallace Reed and Gloria Swanson.
context_page_description: Rupert Hughes was an American novelist, film director, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, military officer, and music composer. He was the brother of Howard R. Hughes, Sr. and uncle of billionaire Howard R. Hughes, Jr. His three-volume scholarly biography of George Washington broke new ground in demythologizing Washington and was well received by historians. A staunch anti-Communist, in the 1940s he served as president of the American Writers Association, a group of anti-Communist writers.
context_section_description: His first marriage, to Agnes Wheeler Hedge in 1893, ended in divorce in 1903. The couple had one child, daughter Elspeth, born in 1897. (In 1981, heirs to Howard Hughes feuding over his estate claimed that Elspeth was not really Rupert Hughes's daughter, but the child of Agnes's illicit lover.) His second marriage, to actress Adelaide Manola Mould Bissell, took place in 1908. She starred in his stage production All for a Girl that same year. In December 1923, she died of an apparent suicide while on tour in Hai Phong, French Indochina. Rupert Hughes' final marriage, to Elizabeth Patterson Dial, took place the next year, 1924. The third Mrs. Hughes died from an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 1945. Hughes' daughter from his first marriage died a few months later.
  Hughes' health began to fail in the late 1940s, leading to a non-fatal stroke in 1953. He suffered a fatal heart attack while working at his desk on September 9, 1956. Rupert Hughes is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale in suburban Los Angeles, California.
  Hughes supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election.
caption: Rupert Hughes (top center) as he appeared with other Hollywood notables in a 1921 Vanity Fair caricature by Ralph Barton
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