Howard Hughes: The Flying Billionaire By Bernie Alexander

For most people, the name Howard Hughes is synonymous with eccentricity. To know him is to know a movie mogul, aviation pioneer, political hound dog, and ladies' man. Even now, a quarter of a century after his death, Howard Hughes must still rate as one of the most celebrated recluses of modern times. While this might appear to be a contradiction in that recluses are not normally widely known, it does sum him up.  In youth he was idolized by a nation, and this level of attention lingered for a long time. If anyone were looking for proof that Hughes remains such an intriguing figure they only need consider the fact that no less a star that Leonardo DiCaprio is scheduled to play Hughes in a movie biography of one of the most intriguing businessmen in American history.

There was certainly more to Hughes than what he became in later life, an old and decrepit morphine addict who was paranoid about germs and insisted that any item handed to him be shrouded in Kleenex tissues. It’s true that in those twilight years he used to bottle his urine and store it all up in cupboards. Certainly he surrounded himself with sinister lackeys who pandered to his every whim, including banning all his associates from eating onions, garlic, and other so-called “breath destroyers”; and it is more than likely that he did indeed let his toenails grow so long they curled right up. But anyone who thinks that’s the whole Howard Hughes story is wrong, because you don’t get to be the richest man in the world just by being crazy.

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was born on December 24th, 1905, in Houston, Texas. His father, who had invented a self-sharpening drill bit used for drilling oil wells, was the founder of Hughes Tool Company. From birth, Howard Jr. was wealthy.

He attended a series of schools, from Boston to California, but he wasn't a very studious person. In fact, he always preferred golf to schoolwork and often spent time with his uncle Rupert, a Hollywood screenwriter. Despite the fact that Howard Jr. never graduated high school, his father made generous donations so that he could attend Cal Tech and later Rice University.

His father died suddenly on January 14th, 1924 and Hughes was left alone, his mother having passed away two years prior. Uncle Rupert was supposed to look after Hughes Tool Company until the teenager turned 21; instead, Hughes dropped out of Rice and arranged for a judge friend of his father's to forgo this plan and buy out company shares held by relatives. Howard legally became an adult on December 26th, 1924.

movie man

In the summer of 1924, Hughes and his soon-to-be wife Ella, a Houston socialite, moved to Los Angeles to get into the movie business. After an initial failure, he hired Noah Dietrich and Lewis Milestone, and together they made Two Arabian Knights (1928), which won an Oscar.

Then came The Mating Call (1928) and Hell's Angels (1930), which Hughes also directed. At the time, it was the most expensive movie ever made, with a budget of $3.8 million. The film lost money but it allowed Hughes to indulge his love of flying, as it was about World War I aviators.

Two of his following films were very controversial because of their violent and sexually risque nature: Scarface (1932), which would later be remade with Al Pacino in the lead role, and The Outlaw (1943). The latter starred the buxom Jane Russell in an astounding décolletage and it inspired Hughes to invent the half-cup bra a few years later.

Over the years, he produced other films such as Vendetta (1950), Flying Leathernecks (1951), Macao (1952), Louisiana Territory (1953), Son of Sinbad (1955), and Jet Pilot (1957). A ladies' man (he divorced in 1929), he dated several movie stars such as Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn. He owned the RKO movie studio from 1948 to 1955.

flying boy

Hughes earned his pilot's license while shooting Hell's Angels in 1930 and founded the Hughes Aircraft Company shortly thereafter in 1932, so that he could convert a military plane into a racing plane. In 1933, he signed on as a co-pilot for American Airways under a false name, but he was forced to resign after it was discovered that he had tried to alter his pilot's license number.

In 1934, he raced in the All-America Air Meet in Miami and won. Then his company built the world's most advanced plane, the H-1, and he personally test-piloted it, establishing a new speed record of 352 mph on September 13th, 1935.

Hughes was supposed to build three of them in three months for $18 million, but he was unable to respect the deadline. In the end, only one was produced and it wasn't until the hostilities had ceased. Ridiculed for this giant wooden plane, which the press had nicknamed the "Spruce Goose," Hughes flew it once over a distance of one mile on November 2nd, 1947.

Following various test flight accidents and a Senate investigation, the Hughes Aircraft Company stopped designing planes in the '50s to focus on spy satellites instead.

political animal

At the end of the '50s, Fidel Castro and the whole Cuban situation was a thorn in the side of the U.S. government. Vice President Richard Nixon called on Hughes' chief of staff, Robert Maheu, to be a liaison between the mob and the CIA in an attempt to assassinate Castro. Also, Hughes had leased islands from future U.S. president George Bush's oil company to be used for raids against Cuba by the CIA.

In 1960, a scandal over a never repaid $205,000 "loan" from Hughes to Nixon's brother cost the man the presidential election. With the Kennedys in the White House, Hughes stayed quiet for a few years, especially since Attorney General Robert Kennedy was secretly investigating him.

Hughes had founded the Hughes Medical Institute in Delaware in 1953 -- the only time that he ever gave money away. Then he turned over all the shares of Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, which made the defense contractor a tax-exempt charity.

In 1969, the government was considering putting an end to this practice, so Hughes hired Kennedy advisor Larry O'Brien to lobby for him. The tactic worked, as a loophole was created for medical research organizations such as Hughes'.

A few years later, O'Brien was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, headquartered in the Watergate Hotel. In 1972, Nixon ordered secret operatives to burglarize the place. These secret agents happened to have been in the CIA's employ at the time of the Cuban raids. Interestingly, Hughes was the common link between all these people.

taking a gamble

In 1966, political intrigue and corporate infighting forced Hughes to sell off his shares in Trans World Airways, which he'd had since 1932, for $546 million. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Las Vegas, to the Desert Inn Hotel-Casino resort. When they threatened to evict him, he bought the place.

This was a time when organized crime was under enormous pressure and moving out of Sin City. Over time, Hughes came to own the Desert Inn, Castaways, Frontier, Landmark, Sands, and Silver Slipper.

In Vegas, he became a recluse and a hypochondriac, being terribly afraid of germs. He even once had an air purifier installed into a car; the device ended up costing more than the car itself and took up most of the trunk.

But his idiosyncrasies didn't stop there. He once bought Las Vegas television station KLAS so that he could watch movies late into the night. When he fell asleep during a movie, he simply called the station and asked that the scenes he had missed be replayed.

At the same time, he insisted that his personal assistants be Mormons. The logic was that since members of this religion aren't permitted to drink alcohol, they would never be drunk on the job. Never mind that he had been personally addicted to morphine since 1946, following a near fatal plane crash.

Amid controversy, he took over Air West in 1970. Still, he had less and less control over his various businesses and no one could reach him directly, not even President Nixon. Feeling pressure from the press, he decreased his political ardor.

Howard sold Hughes Tool Company in 1972 and his company was renamed Summa Corporation. His health began to deteriorate and he traveled to places including Panama and Canada to recuperate.

On June 5th, 1974, a break-in occurred at Hughes' Los Angeles headquarters. Some souvenirs, more than $60,000, as well as over 10,000 secret documents were stolen. What's more, it looked like the authorities, including the CIA, were hoping the case would never be solved.

Reporter Michael Drosnin was given access to these papers two years later. The documents substantiated all the deals Hughes had made with Nixon, O'Brien and the CIA. Furthermore, these papers demonstrated that the man's last cause was to try and stop underground nuclear testing in Nevada, as he was so terrified of radiation.

Howard Hughes died of kidney failure on an airplane, on his way to a Houston hospital on April 5th, 1976. His appearance had so changed that fingerprints had to be used to identify his body. The estate he left behind was estimated at $2 billion and 400 people fought over it. Eventually, it went to 22 of his cousins.

People love to read about the rich and famous, and Howard Hughes was certainly one of them. The fact that he was so eccentric in his later years only adds to his mystique.

Since Martin Scorsese is making an epic about the billionaire's rise and fall, entitled The Aviator and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, people aren't done searching about the man who was once nicknamed The World's Greatest Womanizer.

Howard Hughes has always fascinated people. In 1971, James Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli used Hughes' hermit life as a model for the Willard Whyte character in Diamonds Are Forever. In addition, Hughes was a character in the films Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell (1977), The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) with Tommy Lee Jones in the role, Melvin and Howard (1980), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and The Rocketeer (1991).

The man was also a prominent character, not always painted in a favorable light, in James Ellroy's best-selling books American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand. The mystery surrounding both his life and his death will persist for years to come.