Howard Hughes’ favourite movie of all time
Before becoming just as famed for his well-publicised eccentricities as he was for his successes in any number of arenas, including aviation, real estate, gambling, and media, Howard Hughes quickly established himself as a powerhouse movie producer in the 1920s and 1930s, one who oversaw countless classics, Academy Award nominees, and forward-thinking titles including Two Arabian Knights, The Racket, Hell’s Angels, and Scarface.
Hughes may have eventually abandoned the film industry altogether to focus his attentions elsewhere – becoming one of the richest and most influential figures on the planet as a result – but during his later years, there was one feature in particular that Hughes ended up becoming so attached to that he would go out of his way to ensure he was able to watch it as often as possible.
1968 thriller Ice Station Zebra was a box office bomb that failed to recoup its estimated $10million budget from cinemas in the United States and found itself cold-shouldered by critics, but released at the height of Hughes’ reclusiveness swiftly saw it regarded by those around him as his favourite movie, a sentiment that’s hard to disagree with given just how dedicated he was to revisit its underwhelming charms.
Starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan, and Jim Brown in the four lead roles, the narrative follows an American submarine tasked to head to the North Pole in order to recover a Soviet satellite that contains imagery that would prove to be a major detriment to national security. Tensions inevitably arise, though, considering the crew is manned by a Russian expat, a British spy, and an American soldier, with sabotage afoot along the way.
In the posthumous biography, Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years, author James Phelan noted that those tasked to take care of Hughes during his final days would have been more than happy to never see the film again: “Ice Station Zebra will probably remain indelibly imprinted on the minds of his entourage for the rest of their lives.”
Cooped up in Las Vegas, Hughes found himself less than thrilled with the titles being played on local network KLAS-TV, so much so that he ended up purchasing the station and overseeing its programming. As a result, Paul Anka revealed in his autobiography My Way that everybody “knew when Hughes was in town”. He said: “You’d get back to your room, turn on the TV at 2am, and the movie Ice Station Zebra would be playing. At 5am, it would start all over again. It was on almost every night. Hughes loved that movie.”
Ice Station Zebra was reportedly screened on KLAS-TV more than 100 times for the sole purpose of satiating Hughes’ desire to revisit it as often as possible, although The Sting, The High Commissioner, and Sean Connery’s first five outings as James Bond were also staple parts of the schedule during his time at the helm of the network.
John Carpenter even acknowledged Ice Station Zebra as “Howard Hughes’ favourite movie” to Film Comment, even if the filmmaker viewed it as one of his guilty pleasures as opposed to a genuine example of cinematic excellence: “What is everyone after? Why is the audience laughing? Why do I love this movie so much?”
In keeping with Hughes’ reputation, he may not have been the only person to enjoy the Cold War caper, but he was almost certainly the only one to have turned it into an obsession.
