49 Fun Facts About The Aviator

In The Aviator's opening scene, which word does Howard Hughes's mother teach him to spell as she bathes him?

Quarantine. As she spells it out she warns the boy about cholera and typhus and tells him he is not safe, the scene the film offers as the root of his later fears.

Cate Blanchett plays which screen legend in The Aviator?

Katharine Hepburn. At Scorsese's request, Blanchett watched prints of the star's first 15 films to absorb her poise and mannerisms.

Which film's star beat The Aviator's DiCaprio to the Oscar?

Ray. Jamie Foxx won Best Actor for playing Ray Charles, and DiCaprio had to wait another eleven years for an Oscar of his own, finally winning for The Revenant.

Which disorder drives Howard Hughes's decline in The Aviator?

OCD. DiCaprio has a mild form himself, a childhood dread of stepping on pavement cracks, and it resurfaced as he played Hughes.

What is the nickname of Howard Hughes's giant flying boat, the H-4 Hercules?

Spruce Goose. Despite the name it was built almost entirely of birch, and it flew only once, with Hughes himself at the controls.

Which of these Oscars did The Aviator win?

Best Supporting Actress went to Cate Blanchett, the only one of the film's three acting nominees to win. She later loaned the statuette to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Kate Beckinsale plays which actress in The Aviator?

Ava Gardner. In the film it is she who gets the reclusive Hughes bathed, shaved and dressed so that he can face the Senate hearing.

Which aviation film is Howard Hughes directing as The Aviator's main story begins in 1927?

Hell's Angels. Hughes shot it as a silent picture, then decided to redo it with sound, and the production dragged on for three years.

In The Aviator, which airline does Howard Hughes buy control of?

TWA. Hughes later orders a loan against all of the airline's planes and equipment so that he can keep building his giant flying boat.

In The Aviator, which airline is Howard Hughes's great rival for international routes?

Pan Am. Its boss has a friendly senator introduce a bill that would hand the airline a legal monopoly on American flights abroad.

In The Aviator, Katharine Hepburn leaves Howard Hughes for which actor?

Spencer Tracy. Hughes still steps in afterwards, buying off a scandal sheet to keep its photographs of her with the married star out of print.

Which phrase does Howard Hughes compulsively repeat in the final scene of The Aviator?

The way of the future. He says it of jet airliners minutes after his triumphant flight, then cannot stop, and is hidden in a washroom still repeating it.

Which film had Martin Scorsese already made with Leonardo DiCaprio before The Aviator?

Gangs of New York. It was DiCaprio who then carried the Hughes script to Scorsese, after the director first attached to it stepped aside.

On which holiday did The Aviator go on wide release in American cinemas?

Christmas Day. After a week in just 40 cinemas it opened across the country, and its takings rose rather than fell in the second weekend.

Alec Baldwin plays which airline chairman in The Aviator?

Juan Trippe. He pushes the reclusive Hughes into a public Senate hearing, sure he will never show his face, and the plan backfires when Hughes turns up and wins the room.

Gwen Stefani appears in The Aviator as which 1930s star?

Jean Harlow. Hughes cast her when his silent war epic was remade with sound and its Norwegian leading lady's accent would no longer do.

Jude Law plays which swashbuckling actor in The Aviator?

Errol Flynn. In a nightclub scene he breezily helps himself to a pea from Hughes's carefully ordered plate, and Hughes freezes, unable to touch the meal.

In The Aviator, Alan Alda plays which senator who investigates Howard Hughes?

Owen Brewster. At the hearing Hughes turns the tables, accusing the senator of doing a rival airline's bidding, and it is the investigator who comes off worse.

John C. Reilly plays which member of Howard Hughes's circle in The Aviator?

Noah Dietrich. He is Hughes's long-suffering money man, routinely ordered to mortgage everything to pay for the boss's latest inspiration.

Who wrote the screenplay for The Aviator?

John Logan. His script stops in 1947, leaving out the long years as a recluse that most people picture when they think of Howard Hughes.

In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes crash the XF-11 spy plane?

Beverly Hills. The real Hughes was trying to put the failing plane down on the open ground of a country club and fell just short, ploughing into houses instead.

The Aviator opens with the young Howard Hughes at home in which city?

Houston. The family fortune came from the oil-drilling bit his father's company made there, the money that later paid for the films and the planes.

In The Aviator, which film's release prompts Howard Hughes to remake his war epic with sound?

The Jazz Singer. Hughes declares his finished silent picture out of date and reshoots the whole thing, which nearly bankrupts the family tool company.

Which film beat The Aviator to Best Picture?

Million Dollar Baby. The Aviator still won more Oscars than any other film that night, five of them, but the boxing drama took Best Picture and Best Director.

The Aviator recreates 1930s Hollywood, but in which Canadian city was most of it shot?

Montreal. The Cocoanut Grove nightclub was rebuilt on a sound stage there, and so was the front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre for the big premiere scene.

In which California harbour did Howard Hughes fly the H-4 Hercules for the only time?

Long Beach. The day was billed as taxi tests only, but on the last run, with reporters aboard, Hughes lifted the giant off the water.

In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes crash-land the H-1 Racer after its speed record?

A beet field. The racer carried as little fuel as possible to save weight, and Hughes kept making passes over the course until the tank ran dry.

In The Aviator, what does Howard Hughes insist on waiting for before filming his dogfights?

Clouds. With nothing standing still behind them his planes looked slow, like models, so he hired a meteorologist and kept the whole air fleet waiting on the ground.

In The Aviator, where does Howard Hughes hide before the Senate hearing?

A screening room. The real Hughes did seal himself in one for months, living on chocolate bars and milk, but that was about ten years after the 1947 hearings.

Who beat Scorsese's Aviator to Best Director?

Clint Eastwood. Two years later the result was reversed: Scorsese finally won the award, and Eastwood was among the nominees he beat.

In The Aviator, which studio boss laughs off Howard Hughes's request to borrow two more cameras?

Louis B. Mayer. Hughes already has 24 cameras for his dogfight scene and wants 26, and the MGM chief advises him to put his money in the bank instead.

The real H-4 Hercules left California in the 1990s for a museum in which US state?

Oregon. The flying boat was taken apart and barged up the Pacific coast and the Columbia River, then waited months near Portland for the water to drop before the last leg.

Which editor won an Oscar for cutting The Aviator?

Thelma Schoonmaker. She met Scorsese on a six-week course at New York University, when a teacher asked her to help a student whose film negative had been ruined.

Besides his phobias, which physical handicap does The Aviator show Howard Hughes struggling to hide?

Partial deafness. The film muffles its own soundtrack to put us inside his head, and the real Hughes's failing hearing helped drive his retreat from the world.

The first act of The Aviator imitates early two-colour film, built from which pair of colours?

Red and cyan. Early colour film recorded only two colours, so greens such as grass come out blue-green on screen, a flaw the film copies on purpose.

Which director was attached to The Aviator in 1999, before Martin Scorsese took over?

Michael Mann. Worn out after making Ali, he handed the directing to Scorsese but stayed on as a producer, and shared the film's Best Picture nomination.

Which Lockheed airliner does Howard Hughes order for his airline in The Aviator?

Constellation. In 1944 the real Hughes flew one coast to coast in under seven hours to show it off, beating the record he had set in his own racer.

Which institution holds Howard Hughes's original H-1 Racer?

Smithsonian. The racer stayed inside Hughes's own factory for decades and was handed to the national collection only in 1975, the year before he died.

What stood in for the H-1 Racer in The Aviator's flying scenes after a full-size replica crashed?

A radio-controlled model. With the flying replica lost, a specialist firm built a racer with an 18-foot wingspan and had it in the air in about three months.

Warren Beatty's long-gestating Howard Hughes film was finally released in 2016 under what title?

Rules Don't Apply. Beatty had carried the idea for some four decades and at last played Hughes himself, but the film earned back only a fraction of its budget.

Which actress says she turned down a part in The Aviator because Harvey Weinstein was involved?

Angelina Jolie. She told The Guardian in 2021 that after working with the producer when she was young she warned others about him and never worked with him again.

Partway through, The Aviator's look shifts to imitate which vivid colour film process of the 1940s?

Technicolor. Scorsese wanted the picture's colour to advance with the film technology of Hughes's day, and to mirror the characters' changing emotions as it did.

In The Aviator, what does Howard Hughes burn on a backyard bonfire the night his lover leaves him?

His clothes. He throws his whole wardrobe on the fire, then telephones his manager in the small hours to order two cheap suits off the rack.

In The Aviator, Hughes tells the Senate he will leave the country for good if what happens?

His flying boat fails to fly. The vow was the real Hughes's own, and during a break in the hearings he went back to California and lifted the giant off the water.

Who plays Professor Fitz, the scientist on Howard Hughes's payroll in The Aviator?

Ian Holm. Hughes later hauls his bewildered professor before the film censors under a false identity, armed with calipers to measure actresses' necklines.

Which comedy star was lined up to play Howard Hughes in a rival biopic by Christopher Nolan?

Jim Carrey. Nolan shelved his script once Scorsese's film was under way, and later said much of its thinking went into Inception instead.

In The Aviator, Howard Hughes lands his plane beside a film shoot to invite its star to play which sport?

Golf. The real Hughes was a near-scratch player who once hoped to turn professional, and he listed being the world's best golfer among his ambitions.

Which BAFTA did The Aviator win?

Best Film. Four producers shared the British award, but the Academy accepted only two of them as nominees after a dispute over who had really made the picture.

Which feature, shouted to an aide in The Aviator, helped make Hughes's H-1 racer so fast?

Flush rivets. Sunk level with the metal skin, they left almost nothing to disturb the airflow, one reason the racer reached a record 352 miles an hour.