Can the Real Howard Hughes...

Toward the latter part of 1924, a lanky 18-year-old walked into a Houston courtroom to make an unusual request. Under an obscure Texas law, a minor who could prove that he was competent to handle his own affairs was entitled to inherit a business and run it.

Howard Robard Hughes was in court to invoke that law. The cards were partially stacked in his favor. An old family friend, Judge Walter Monteith, was presiding. Big Howard, young Howard's father, had died that year of a heart attack. Howard's mother, dark-haired, beautiful, aristocratic, Allene Hughes, had been dead for two years. The Hughes Tool Company, which made drill bits and leased them to wildcatters and the oil-well industry throughout the world, had been started by Howard's father and a partner, Walter B. Sharp. Under the provisions of his father's will, Howard, an only child, was the majority stockholder.

The boy was six feet, three inches tall, underweight, deferential, selfpossessed. He had done his homework for that occasion, which was unusual, for Howard Hughes had never been much of a student, racking up A's in the mathematical science and politely ignoring the rest of his education. Nevertheless, he astonished Judge Monteith with his knowledge of the Hughes Tool Company, its financial prospects, what it did and how.

The judge asked Howard if he would go back to school, to Houston's Rice Institute, and complete his education. Howard promised to consider it and the judge made his decision. When Howard Hughes walked out of the courtroom, he was in control of the Hughes Tool Company.

What he had collected was the Hughes drill bit, with its 166 cutting edges, incomparably superior to all other instruments of its kind. It had been designed, patented and put into production by big Howard, who had invented it on his dining-room table. Now, at the time of his son's take-over, Hughes Tool Company stock was estimated to be worth almost $10,000,000. Shortly thereafter, young Howard bought out the remaining stock in Hughes Tool from members of the family.

Forty-seven years later, at the age of 65, Howard Robard Hughes is perhaps the wealthiest individual in the world. His fortune totals--give or take $100,000,000--over two billion dollars. His empire employs more than 65,000 people.

During those 47 years, Howard Hughes did a number of things: He produced highly innovative films. He became a pilot and collected a number of speed and long-distance records. (He flew around the world faster than man ever had before and consumed ten pounds of lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches during the flight.) He designed airplanes and (continued on page 244)Can Howard Hughes...(continued from page 145) created a factory to build them. He developed an intercontinental airline. His monumental stubbornness and intelligence sparked the creation of a great scientific hatchery, where major elements of our missile systems, lasers, communication satellites and space-age hardware were developed and made practical. He endowed a medical-research center. He bought over a quarter of a billion dollars' worth of hotels, gambling halls, mining claims, ranchland and other real estate--as well as a television station--in and around Las Vegas. He brought new life to Vegas, a place he somehow loved. He did all this without a conventional office, keeping no hours nor counsel but his own--increasingly his own as the years went by. He worked without stopping, often 72 hours at a stretch, drinking and eating very little. Like other great American inventors--Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison--he was, and is, profoundly eccentric. Over the past 25 years, he has retreated from business associates, reporters, the world in general, deeper and deeper into isolation. And no one really knows why. No one knows what makes this alternately magnanimous and despotic, timorous and forceful, mightily successful man tick. Of those few who know him, some feel that Howard Hughes himself has no answer for what drives him. For he is driven: obsessed with work, obsessed with ideation, perhaps obsessed with fear and guilt.

• • •

Young Howard's mother, an uppercrust Texas lady, was concerned--unlike her husband--with the proprieties. She taught her son to be polite. He was a good little boy, quiet and withdrawn, who sought refuge in things that were safe and easy to understand. At three, he took pictures with a box camera and during his childhood spent every spare minute in a tool shop behind their Houston home tinkering with machinery. His mother once said of him: "He thought a puppy dog was a machine of some sort."

Big Howard may have regarded a boy as a machine of some sort. As his son told writer Dwight Whitney, "He never suggested that I do something; he just told me. He shoved things down my throat and I had to like it. But he had a hail-fellow-well-met quality that I never had. He was a terrifically loved man. I am not. I don't have the ability to win people the way he did. I suppose I'm not like other men. Most of them like to study people. I'm not nearly as interested in people as I should be, I guess. What I am tremendously interested in is science, nature in its various manifestations, the earth and the minerals that come out of it."

Big Howard was almost the stereotype Texas tycoon. His excesses ran beyond those of ordinary mortals. He would eventually leave more than $250,000 in personal debts. He filled his private railroad car with friends, champagne and what were then called demimondaines. Beautiful women glittered on his arm. While he loved his dark-haired wife and dressed her as beautifully as himself, soon after her death he was cheerfully buying and squiring young women all over Texas and Los Angeles.

The ease with which big Howard buried his wife, the speed with which he forgot her, must have wounded and offended his son, who understood the etiquette of grief.

In time, young Howard began to use his sense of courteous, proper conduct as a psychological technique. As long as he was gracious, he came to believe, he could do most anything to anyone and get away with it. Today, those who know Hughes still speak of his politeness over the phone. If he disturbs someone at four a.m.--a favorite time for work and talk--he begins with, "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you at this hour. I wouldn't have done it, but something important has come up." An hour later, the recipient of the call hangs up and stumbles back to bed. Half an hour later, the phone rings again. The Man is on the wire, once more apologetic, but something important has again come up ... and so it goes.

Howard had always been interested in planes. At one point, his father, a Harvard alumnus, intoxicated by a victory over Yale in the boat races of 1918, told him he could have anything he wanted. It was a dangerous thing for any father to say, but this one meant it--and could afford it. Young Howard pointed to a moored seaplane and said he wanted a ride. In 1918, a plane ride involved considerable risk, but he got his wish. It was the first pale taste of what was to become his great pleasure.

What big Howard never knew was that upon their return to Houston, his son took secret flying lessons, becoming one of the first amateur pilots in America.

For Howard Hughes, flying became an addiction. In 1932, at the age of 26, he took a $250-a-month job as a copilot with American Airways, calling himself Charles Howard. He was amiable and cooperative, an earnest listener and observer. His questions were direct and searching. He watched and learned for two months, then walked out on his job, having absorbed what he needed to know. No one can say whether or not he cashed his pay check. Those who know him feel certain he did.

This marked the beginning of Howard Hughes's involvement with airplanes. He designed them, built them, flew them and helped create the aerospace industry.

In 1935, he broke the world speed record for landplanes--in a machine of his own design--by more than 35 miles per hour, flying faster than anyone had flown before: 352 mph. In his haste to put the machine in the air, Hughes perhaps overlooked some final mechanical details, for he had to crash-land the plane. He was able to walk away from the wreckage. In 1936, he broke the transcontinental speed record, taking off from Burbank Airport near Los Angeles and landing at Newark, New Jersey, nine hours and 27 minutes later. The following year, he did it again. This time, he flew the 2490 miles between Los Angeles and Newark in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. He averaged 332 mph.

In 1938, flying a customized Lockheed aircraft--so thoroughly modified that little remained of the original design but the shell--Hughes flew around the world in the record-breaking time of 91 hours, eight minutes and ten seconds. He named his plane the New York World's Fair 1939. After his touchdown at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field, there was a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan many witnesses said surpassed the reception accorded Lindbergh 11 years earlier. It was one of the few times people saw Hughes smile. He even shook some hands.

The next morning's news photos gave Hughes's divorced wife, Ella, a rare opportunity to recall what her ex-husband looked like. They had been married in a rose garden on a warm Houston summer day in 1925. She was the former Ella Rice, a dark-haired, cheerful girl from the wealthy family that had given Rice Institute (now Rice University) its name. She was slightly older than he and physically very much like his mother, which gave rise to speculation about Hughes's need for a mother figure. If this were at all true, he nevertheless ignored the replacement and increasingly found airplanes pleasanter company than his wife. So Ella Hughes gave up on her husband and returned to Houston and in 1929 won a divorce settlement of $1,250,000.

Hughes's second marriage, to actress (continued on page 248)Can Howard Hughes...(continued from page 245) Jean Peters in 1957, lasted 14 years. When she finally divorced Hughes this year, it was said by some that he had not seen her--to touch, at least--for six years. Others claim she was an unwavering weekend visitor and traveled from California to Vegas--after he moved there--every Friday.

One thing is certain: Jean Peters Hughes remained in stasis for longer than any of Hughes's girlfriends. He treated her the way he treated the others--but on a much grander scale. Still, in essence, Jean sat in her rented quarters (a large house in Bel Air) and waited. She whiled away her time with college courses (she had once prepared herself to be a high school teacher) and with shopping sprees. Then she got tired of waiting. When Jean later announced her engagement to 20th Century-Fox vice-president Stanley Hough (they were married this past September), Hughes sent her a telegram of congratulations.

• • •

For many years, Hughes used his fame as a Hollywood producer and maker of stars to recruit lovely young girls from all over the world. (By 1932 he had profitably produced Hell's Angels--thus making Jean Harlow reasonably immortal--Scarface and The Front Page.) The photographs of these would-be starlets were collected and forwarded to him wherever he might be. Occasionally, he would look over the glossies, pick out the one he wanted, and some ambitious young lady would find herself signed to Howard Hughes Productions at a salary of $75 to $150 a week. She would be given free voice and dramatic lessons, live in a small, comfortable, rent-paid apartment and eat in good restaurants, constantly guarded like a queen. And she would wait--and wait--to meet Howard Hughes. Most of these girls (there is no way of knowing how many there were; it was part of their contract that they keep their mouths shut forever) waited in vain. After some months--or years--their contracts would not be renewed.

The most famed of his ladies in waiting was Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell. She was a ten-dollar-a-week receptionist in a doctor's office when some photos of her reached Hughes. When Hughes saw Jane's glossies, he blinked and almost immediately signed her for the starring role of Rio in the first sexy Western, The Outlaw.

Hughes was obsessed with Jane Russell's breasts. Impersonally. He decided, he told his publicity man, Russell Birdwell, that he "wanted to get some mileage out of her tits." Throughout the movie, Miss Russell, dressed in picturesque rags, was continually bending over someone or something, her cleavage aided by one of Hughes's minor inventions, the cantilevered bra, which he personally designed. The results infuriated the Hays Office, which was in charge of cinema censorship in those days. Howard Hughes refused to cut an inch of film. The battle between The Man and the Hays Office lasted for months. It was resolved some time after Hughes invited Joseph Breen--Production Code administrative director--and other censors to a meeting. On the walls of the room where this conference was held, Hughes had pasted blowups of famous screen actresses. With calipers and a ruler it was proved that, comparatively speaking, he had shown less of Miss Russell than, for instance, had been unwrapped in the case of Jean Harlow, a less nobly endowed woman.

The Outlaw premiered in San Francisco in 1943. It was possibly one of the worst Westerns ever made. Publicist Birdwell, faced with a monumental money loser, set in motion a whispering campaign to the effect that reel three of the movie was the damnedest thing ever screened. The Catholic Church quickly denounced it. The United States Army kept the picture off Service bases. Throughout the country, reel three was furtively discussed. There was, of course, nothing special about the third reel; it was just as bad as the rest of the picture.

Then, in the midst of all the furor and whispering, The Man inexplicably recalled the film. He had a special leadlined room built to house the fragile negative in complete sterility at an ideal temperature. For three years The Outlaw rested there. When it was re-released, in 1946, it was once again in the eye of a legal storm. Finally, Hughes gave a little, Breen gave a little and Jane Russell's most sensuous 18 minutes were cut from the original. The picture grossed over $5,000,000.

Miss Russell remained under contract to Howard Hughes Productions for more than a decade. During that time she, too, sat, drew her $1000-a-week salary and waited. She never made a second film under his personal direction.

There was another celebrated victim of Hughes's loving inattention: the Hercules, a vast wooden seaplane he designed for the U. S. Government during World War Two. It was dubbed the Spruce Goose, a nickname Hughes loathes to this day. And in the course of its conception, Hughes, for once, was in the position of being manipulated by someone else. In 1942, California industrialist Henry Kaiser became convinced that one of the ways to win the war in Europe was to develop huge cargo planes capable of flying entire platoons of combat troops to wherever they were most urgently needed. He talked to Hughes about his idea. Hughes was impressed. However, since any decision involved the terrible ordeal of making up his mind, Hughes did little but listen to the shipbuilding magnate and doodle mentally with the idea of a super flying boat. Finally, exasperated by Hughes's delay, Kaiser announced that the two of them would jointly design and build the largest hydroplane in the world. Thus, publicly committed to a project that he had envisioned in only the sketchiest fashion, Hughes went hurriedly to the drawing board.

The partnership, flimsy at best, was dissolved almost before it began. Hughes has never worked successfully with anyone. Kaiser was, in his way, just as stubborn. Hughes finally agreed to build the prototype of the giant cargo-carrying hydroplane. From then on, Kaiser would take over to build the production models. Kaiser had said publicly that the plane could be designed and built in ten months. Hughes thought it would take two years. It took five.

Hughes, involved as he always was in five or six overlapping careers, took the passage of time with equanimity; he was used to waiting, Kaiser, his patience worn away by the attrition of years, finally returned to building ships.

With metals all but impossible to procure, it was decided to build the huge plane out of wood and a laminate called Duramold. By that time, the Government was almost certain Hughes would never complete the prototype. The Man had been given $18,000,000 to construct three planes within two years. He managed to finish the Hercules by 1947, with all the money spent on one hydroplane. Hughes described it:

"The wing span is 320 feet. That is more than a football field, more than a city block. The length is over 200 feet. The circle on which the hull is built is 24 feet in diameter. It has eight engines with a present rating of 3000 horsepower each. It was really designed for a great deal more power. The wing area is 11,460 square feet, which, I believe, is almost three times that of any plane that has ever been built at this time.... I believe the wing span is almost three times that of the Consolidated [Coronado] airplane, which is the biggest one that I know of in the world today."

Perhaps the most important single benefit to emerge from the costly and ill-fated venture was Hughes's answer to an almost insuperable obstacle: how to control such an enormous machine. It could not be done manually. So Hughes designed workable power controls of a sensitivity undreamed of in the middle Forties. This alone made the entire Hercules project worth while. Without this technological breakthrough, mammoth jet planes might not have been developed until the Sixties.

The Hercules flew only once, on November 2, 1947, with Hughes, appropriately, at the controls. At 100 mph, Hughes pulled on the joy stick and the huge plane trembled and rose to an altitude of some 70 feet above the choppy water. The Hercules remained airborne for nearly a mile.

Howard Hughes had achieved his desire to build and fly the largest plane in his time. The Hercules was returned to its hangar, where it sits, at a rumored cost of $500,000 a year in hangar space and labor. Like all his possessions, the Hercules waits in luxury.

• • •

On July 11, 1936, in Los Angeles, Hughes and a ladyfriend, Nancy Bell Bayly, were driving slowly on Third Street around 11 p.m. in Hughes's $16,500 Duesenberg. Here is his statement of what happened:

"I was driving west ... when a car passed me on the right and pushed me over to the left.... Just as we reached the intersection, a man ran out in front of the other car.... The man ran ahead, right in front of my car. I tried to turn to the right to miss him and put on the brakes, and it was impossible."

His car struck Gabe S. Meyer, a 59-year-old salesman, killing him instantly. Hughes was exonerated by a coroner's jury. However, it is one thing to be judged innocent by a court of law, quite another to pronounce yourself blameless. Some time later, while driving to a restaurant where one of his starlets was waiting for him, Hughes ran over a dog. He stopped the car, picked up the animal, drove to a veterinarian and showed up two hours late for dinner. He sat down beside the girl, his coat stained with dog's blood, and proceeded to ignore her throughout the meal, making frequent dashes to the phone to call the animal hospital to check on the dog's recovery.

He was to have another accident that brought severe physical injury and--some amateur Hughes analysts believe--permanent damage to his psyche. On a Sunday afternoon in July 1946, he climbed into the cockpit to test-fly the XF-11, a photo-reconnaissance plane of his own design. In mid-flight, the rear half of the right propeller complex reversed itself. The four front blades were trying to pull the airplane ahead, while the four rear blades were trying as hard to push it backward. Hughes was helpless at the controls. The XF-11 crashed in the middle of Beverly Hills, plowing through the roof of a house, a nearby garage and smashing into the home of an Army colonel.

A Marine sergeant, William Lloyd Durkin, discovered Hughes's broken, bleeding body and helped pry him away from the wreckage. His chest was crushed. Nine of his ribs were broken. His left lung was collapsed. His left shoulder was broken. He suffered a lacerated skull and a broken nose. He was seared by second- and third-degree burns. He was not expected to live.

Three days later, Hughes, in great pain, summoned an aide. He had been working on an idea. He asked for a bed to be built made up of three-inch foam-rubber squares covered by cloth. Each square was to be mounted on a platform and under each platform was to be a screw jack attached to a motor: 80 squares, 80 motors. Each square could then tilt independently in any direction. The bed was built and even included a hole in the middle so a bedpan could be slid in and out without disturbing the patient.

When Hughes had finally recovered enough to leave the hospital, he was a changed man. The trauma induced by his accident and the suffering that followed have lasted to this day. A man who survives such terrible wounds is particularly susceptible to respiratory infection; conceivably, he might not survive pneumonia. This may account for the sterile, air-conditioned, controlled environment in which Hughes lives today. One guesses that the wreckage of his body damaged his spirit. His distaste for public exhibition grew rapidly. So powerful did it become that 17 years later, Hughes was willing to risk a $145,000,000 default judgment rather than appear in person at the TWA court hearing.

For Sergeant Durkin, the man who helped save his life, Hughes arranged a lifetime annuity. Durkin (probably under orders) never mentioned it. Years later, the story came out and Hughes was furious. His passion for secrecy is consistent: He wants no publicity--bad or good.

There is something capricious about Hughes's charitable impulses. He gets them while reading the paper (practically every magazine and newspaper published in the United States finds its way to Hughes's sanitized cell) and acts on them arbitrarily and instantly. He may learn about a child stricken with a rare disease; four eminent specialists are rushed to the bedside. It may be the wife of a Hughes employee who has died; she receives a naïvely anonymous check for $20,000.

These are about the only times Hughes makes up his mind quickly. In his business dealings, he procrastinates intolerably. Decisions intrude on his passionate absorption in detail. Yet personally, he lives as austerely as a monk.

"I am not a man of mystery," he said in 1952. "I run several businesses, and the people associated with me read those stories and do not understand them. There is nothing mysterious about me. I have no taste for expensive clothes. Clothes are something to wear and automobiles are transportation. If they merely cover me up and get me there, that's sufficient. In a Chevrolet, I can go where I want without being noticed. I can drive up to the curb without getting the Hail the Conquering Hero. I want to avoid any ceremony and pomp. I eat in my office or wherever I happen to be because I want to be unobtrusive."

• • •

If Howard Hughes were to spend all his worth, both invested and liquid, he could possibly run the entire Federal Government for a 48-hour period. For that length of time, he could assume interest on the national debt, pay the cost of keeping our unemployed, underwrite the country's wars and the operation of its agencies.

How did he amass such an incomprehensible sum? The great fortunes of the world have their roots in the past. The Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Mellons, the Rothschilds all began building their wealth generations ago (in the case of the Rothschilds, hundreds of years ago). With time, their interests have proliferated into a tangled skein of subsidiary companies. Some of these subsidiaries grew of themselves; the growth of others was part of a successful and continuous attempt to avoid the bugaboo of the very rich: taxes.

In comparison, Hughes's empire is young and baldly simple. Its basis is the Hughes Tool Company. Ever since big Howard invented his drill bit, Hughes Tool has been a faithful and munificent provider. Hughes owns it wholly. The company strength is twofold. The first is the product itself, initially protected by patents and diligently improved by research. The company manufactures the tool joints used to couple sections of drill pipe. It also makes over 400 types and sizes of rock bits--roughly 75 percent of all bits used in drilling oil wells in the non-Communist world. Hughes's metallurgical-research organization is second to none in the United States. It has continuously developed new equipment while refining the technology of metal hardening. Wisely, the company has always leased its drill bits. No one can buy one. Therefore, no one can retip the dulled cones and resell them at lower prices.

Its other strength is a highly efficient and pervasive sales-and-service organization. This facility makes the oil industry extraordinarily dependent upon Hughes Tool. All bits in use are under constant surveillance by a company representative. So are the oil-rich Texas plains; Hughes Tool salesmen have been known to keep rig owners posted on when and where new fields are ripe for exploration.

Another factor contributes to the company's success. Hughes Tool is the only one of his enterprises the boss has left alone. He has been seen in its offices once since 1926, two years after he walked from the Houston courtroom with Judge Monteith's permission to become a billionaire. His management team is left to run the business its own way. The result: an estimated gross yearly income of more than $75,000,000.

The second of Hughes's major companies is Hughes Aircraft--which has not manufactured airplanes since it produced the Hercules prototype. After returning the seaplane to its hangar, Hughes lapsed into weeks of deep and eager brooding over his next business venture. He presciently concluded that a great breakthrough would soon occur in the electronics industry and, furthermore, that Hughes Aircraft could become the finest electronics corporation in the world. This decision was quite in line with the general order he had given Noah Dietrich--his longtime top assistant who stayed with him for over 30 years--when he hired him. Dietrich asked his new employer what he wanted him to do. "First," Hughes answered, "help make me the richest man in the world." [Hughes's life in the present is trenchantly discussed in the accompanying article by James Phelan; it looks at Noah Dietrich today, at 83, and at other principals in the current confusion surrounding the Hughes empire.--Ed.]

Now The Man had to find someone to run his electronics corporation, which consisted so far only of what was in his head, plus a few scribbled notes. Hughes always has had trouble hiring top executives. As he has grown older and stranger, so has his notoriety spread among top management. As early as 1947, most of the eligible executives in the country felt one had to be insane to take a job with him. Lieutenant General Harold L. George--who had run the Military Air Transport Command during World War Two and had retired from the Army to run a Peruvian airline--was no exception. When Hughes wrote to George, whom he had met during the war years, and asked him to head Hughes Aircraft during its changeover to an electronics concern, George turned down the job with alacrity. So Hughes phoned him. Against his will, General George found himself agreeing to go to Los Angeles with his family at Hughes's expense. Hughes reasoned that at least George could use a vacation.

The general checked into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and called 7000 Romaine Street, saying that he had arrived. Days later, a crisp young voice phoned to tell George the appointment had been arranged. He was to be at a certain street, at a typical Howard Hughes business-conference time: two a.m. At the designated hour, a battered Chevrolet pulled up beside him. Hughes was at the wheel. George got in and they proceeded to drive solemnly and aimlessly around Los Angeles, while Hughes told him about his ideas, punctuating his conversation with increasingly tempting job offers. All the while, Hughes was patient, kind, courteous--and would not take no for an answer. George accepted the job at a salary of $50,000 a year.

He hedged his acceptance with a choice array of disclaimers. Hughes was not to interfere in George's operations. Hughes was to make himself available for discussion and consultation; and, mirabile dictu, such discussions were to be held during the ordinary business day. Hughes agreed to everything and the two men shook hands. The electronics company, under the protective hat of Hughes Aircraft--which, in turn, carried on its business under the umbrella of Hughes Tool Company--was launched. At first, things went smoothly enough. George recruited top scientists and gave them free intellectual rein. By 1949, Hughes Aircraft delivered to its customers almost $9,000,000 worth of equipment. In 1953, it delivered gross orders amounting to $200,000,000.

Over 1000 electronics engineers, mathematicians and other assorted technicians were working for Hughes Aircraft. At that point, the enterprise was actually making more money than its parent company. But by then, the inevitable pattern had begun to work its way past George's adamant conditions of agreement. He couldn't reach The Man for important decisions--sometimes not for months. In order to make good on its numerous and enormously profitable commitments (mainly to the Air Force), Hughes Aircraft needed additional capital. Specifically, General George transmitted to Hughes, via Romaine Street, a request for additional laboratory space costing close to $4,000,000. George, and the huge complex for which he was responsible, waited impatiently for The Man's reaction.

Hughes's eventual reply suggested that any additional facilities be built in Las Vegas. He wanted to use some land he had recently acquired there. The solution was wholly impractical. Quite naturally, George didn't want his increased laboratory space in a separate state. After weeks of delay, General George was allowed to expand his plant in Culver City.

But an irritated Hughes decreed that all blueprints had to be submitted to him for approval. Routinely, plans were sent to Hughes, held sometimes for weeks and returned with detailed instructions on such things as a change in the placement of windows or the color of paint.

The petty demands multiplied like locusts and Hughes Aircraft still waited interminably for major decisions. General George lost his usually calm disposition and a number of pounds.

At that point, Noah Dietrich, sulking jealously in his Tool Company office as George's impressive sales figures passed over his desk, decided he wished to run Hughes Aircraft directly. He tried to accomplish this in various direct and indirect ways, calling on existing corporate imbalances to help him. For, while Toolco was running Hughes Aircraft, there was no representation on Toolco's board of directors from Hughes Aircraft. Dietrich had no understanding of electronics and his insensitive meddling so enraged George that, after a few months, his secretary was careful to keep Dietrich's name out of any conversation with her boss.

The affair ended in 1953, when George, preceded by two of his top scientist-executives--Dean Wooldridge and Simon Ramo--sent his resignation to 7000 Romaine Street. Wooldridge and Ramo built an immediately successful electronics firm of their own. (The Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation later merged with Thompson Products, Inc., and is now TRW Inc.) General George simply faded from the Hughes universe. There were many more top-level resignations. The Man wondered if it was all the work of Communists.

After this wholesale desertion, The Man turned his attentions to other matters. In a short time, Hughes Aircraft began to fulfill its potential. In fact, so successful did it become that it was quickly imperative for Hughes to find a use for its mounting profits. As a result, in 1954. Hughes became philanthropic and established the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit organization for medical research. His first gift to that foundation was Hughes Aircraft stock--in toto. A portion of its profits were siphoned off to feed this new institution.

Next, Hughes had to find someone to run the company, as both the Air Force, his biggest customer, and his own management had repeatedly requested. He found Lawrence Hyland, a Bendix Corporation executive, who, from the beginning, enjoyed an advantage that General George saw evaporate after his first blissful months: He was allowed to run the company free from Hughes's intervention.

Hughes Aircraft is still an extremely successful electronics firm. It is still run by Hyland and its profits are enormous. The company's net worth is calculated at slightly less than $500,000,000. It originated the Early Bird and now manufactures satellites for a g'obal communications system subscribed to by 81 countries. It is a stunning success, and also predictably benevolent to another Hughes venture, since most of its profits go to the nonprofit Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which, of course, is wholly controlled by Howard Hughes.

• • •

There are failures in the life of any businessman, even Hughes. But his mistakes have invariably paid off--one of them overwhelmingly.

In May 1948, Hughes acquired, from Floyd Odlum, controlling interest in RKO studios. He paid $9.50 a share, for a total of $8,825,500, and became at one stroke principal stockholder in one of Hollywood's major motion-picture studios. Almost incidentally, he gained control of 124 theaters, thus giving him, for the first time in his spasmodic cinematic career, a ready-made distribution complex.

The resulting course of events followed the familiar pattern. The first executive to go was Dore Schary, a literate, immensely competent film maker, who couldn't disguise his dislike for Hughes. Peter Rathvon, president of RKO, followed almost immediately. Rathvon and Schary were followed by nearly 700 fellow employees. By the end of the summer, RKO was almost stripped of its staff.

About that time, Hughes put the ubiquitous Noah Dietrich at the head of RKO Corporation. True to his inverse logic, Hughes was never seen on the RKO lot but opened an office at the Goldwyn Studios, about a mile away, so he could transmit orders by messenger, telephone or carrier pigeon.

One of the first things Hughes did was sell RKO those properties that he actually owned, including The Outlaw, Mad Wednesday and Vendetta, believing that by distributing those films, the studio's financial picture would be given a quick boost. By the end of the year, the studio suspended production. It had managed to lose over $5,500,000 during the first year of Hughes's administration.

It became clear to those unfortunate executives whom RKO had hired to fill the spaces left by the vigorous Hughes broom that everything had to be cleared with The Man.

The motion-picture business is an impulse-buying industry. When you move for a script, for a star, you act quickly--or the other fellow gets there first. Clearly, such an impetuous business climate will prove uncomfortable for someone so daunted by the idea of decision making that he buries himself in trivial detail. At one point, The Man became interested in an elaborate set that had been constructed at great expense on the RKO lot. He ordered the set dismantled and re-created for him a mile away, on the Goldwyn lot, where he could see it from his window. After his suggested changes were made, the set was again dismantled and reconstructed on the RKO lot.

Having become part of The Man's private universe, RKO moved as far from reality as Hughes himself.

During his reign at RKO, there was a marvelously complicated system of espionage in effect. Battered Chevrolets driven by crewcut young men shadowed top executives. Information was passed on to Hughes's message center by anyone who wanted a quick $100 in cash. He trusted no employee. Morale, never high, hit rock bottom.

Sometimes he tried to become the impulsive wheeler-dealer, buying picture scripts at ridiculously high prices on a whim; they were put into production and never finished. RKO's board of directors' disgust became increasingly vocal as RKO lost more money. The company became entangled in a cloud of legal disputation, a cloud that follows Hughes wherever he goes.

Hughes's reply to the board's persistent criticism was typically obstinate. As managing director of production, he declared that no script could be shot without his problematical consent. The quagmire thickened. An Ann Sheridan vehicle, scheduled for 1949, never got off the ground. Miss Sheridan ended up suing RKO. Jet Pilot, a modern Hell's Angels, took so long to complete that the Air Force uniforms worn in the film became obsolete during the movie's production.

Hughes continued to operate RKO in his own inscrutable fashion and the studio lost more money. He kept hiring people--good people, who had worked with the best, who were the best themselves. They endured for as long as they could and then they, too, left. Among the many distinguished dropouts from Hughes's RKO tenure is the producer-director team of Jerry Wald and Norman Krasna. They had been signed--after wild shenanigans involving the usual battered car and two-a.m. conversations had defeated once-firm resistances--to one of the largest five-year contracts in cinematic history.

Another RKO executive recalls his business days under Hughes with a mixture of amusement and horror. He dealt with Hughes by phone from time to time.

I'd just gotten divorced. I was asleep when the phone rang. It was after two a.m. It was Hughes. "Are you alone?" he asked suspiciously. I told him I was. "I asked you that because you've just gotten your divorce. You're sure you're alone?"

He asked me, "How long will it take you to read a script?" I told him about two hours for a standard-length screenplay. "I'll call you back in two hours," he said. "There's a script on its way to you."

Within one minute after hanging up, the doorbell rang. One of his crewcut young men stood there with a script in one hand and a receipt in the other. I signed for the script, got back into bed and read it. Godawful script. The phone rang two hours later.

"Well? What do you think?"

I remember I thought: Here goes. I said, "If you're considering this vehicle for someone of Miss Peters' abilities--I'd say it's far below her talents, Howard."

He thanked me, apologized for disturbing me and, one minute later, there was the same guy ringing my doorbell. I gave him back the script, he gave me back my receipt and I went back to bed for two hours' sleep.

When I got to my office, I didn't know if I still had a job. Then the other guys started to trickle in, all of them with bags under their eyes. We finally got to talking among ourselves. Everyone there had read the same script the night before. Hughes had staggered his calls at half-hour intervals. One poor bastard didn't get back to bed at all. He was low man on the totem pole.

Another favorite anecdote dating from Hughes's RKO days has come to be known as the "Rapunzel's Hair" story. The girl involved, Gail Ganley, was 18, pretty, a student at UCLA and looking for a career in the movies.

One morning she received a phone call. A pleasant voice told her that a very influential person was interested in helping her career. Would she mind having some photographs taken? If she agreed, the voice implied, she might become a movie star. That was sufficient urging for Miss Ganley. She reported to the specified Hollywood photo studio, where she was shot without make-up, flat-lit, so that she would look (she remembers thinking) as ghastly as possible. Afterward, she repeatedly questioned her agent for information. He acted as though she had been struck by beneficent lightning, but he said nothing.

A chauffeur driving a battered Chevrolet arrived some days later and the girl found herself at the studios of a famous dramatic coach. He let her know, finally, that he usually took in hand Howard Hughes's discoveries. She had been picked by The Man.

Every afternoon, the chauffeur picked her up and drove her to her lessons. Miss Ganley would work conscientiously for two hours on so and then be taken to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she and her mother--who went along as a chaperone--would eat dinner. Everything was charged to Hughes. After dinner, Gail would return to her lessons and work until 10:30 or 11 at night.

The schedule was inflexible. After a while, Mrs. Ganley decided her presence as chaperone was unnecessary. The girl continued her rigid routine. After a month, however, she understandably grew bored and called her agent. He called his contact at 7000 Romaine Street, who informed him that there was a contract ready and waiting for Miss Ganley, but Hughes had not yet found time to sign it.

The arrangement, the coaching, the free meals seemed to go on indefinitely. Finally, Gail quit in disgust. A gifted musician, she joined an orchestra. Two years later, she received a phone call from Romaine Street. They wanted new glossies. This time they offered her a contract and expense money. They gave her an honest-to-God script--A Pale Moon--to read. She didn't like it. Hughes's representative reminded her it had cost a great deal of money and added that high-priced writing talent was busy reshaping the story.

The routine began again. This time she was allowed to drive her own car. She had free meals waiting at a number of top Hollywood restaurants but received no promised expense money. Finally, when her own funds began to run low, she gave Romaine Street an ultimatum. With earnest assurances, they arranged a way to give the 20-year-old starlet some cash. Hughes's people agreed to station one of their men in a car in front of 7000 Romaine at a specified time. When Gail appeared, driving her car, he would sound his horn in a predetermined pattern. A window would open on the second floor of the building and a white envelope would be lowered on a long string. The man in the car would get out, sign a receipt clipped to the envelope, take the envelope off its hook and ceremoniously hand it over to Miss Ganley. Inside, in cash, would be the agreed amount of money. Meanwhile, the receipt rose slowly back toward the open window, where an anonymous hand reached out and took it.

After a while, Gail was authorized to drive down to 7000 Romaine herself and do her own signaling. The envelope would be lowered. She would sign the receipt and pocket the cash. This went on for two years. By then, the girl knew every line of A Pale Moon by heart. She also knew as much about acting technique as money could buy. After this 24-month period had elapsed, she received another phone call: Hughes had decided against doing the picture.

In 1962, Gail Ganley, stuffed with expensive food and expensive lessons, but thin in the pocketbook--the envelope had stopped descending from the window at 7000 Romaine--brought suit against Hughes for more than $500,000. The suit was settled out of court. She declined to talk about most of her experiences with the Hughes ménage, but once, much later, she told a friend, "I keep seeing that goddamn script. I know it by heart, every lousy word, every line, including the camera directions."

Between Hughes's selection of starlets whom he sincerely believed he would promote to stardom and of scripts that were never shot and the films that weren't completed, RKO's fortunes continued to fall. By early 1954, RKO publicly held stock had lost nearly 70 percent of its value under The Man's stewardship and the corporation could point to over-all losses of more than $38,000,000.

Finally, Hughes acted, in his own inimitable style. First he disposed of 929,000 shares of the theater-owning-company stock that he had obtained as a result of an antitrust ruling that divorced the theater chain from the studio. Hughes sold his shares to an investment group at $4.75 each. The stock had been selling on the exchange at $3.875 per share. Now The Man had recouped approximately 50 percent--nearly $4,500,000--of the sum he had originally disbursed to Floyd Odlum.

On February 8, 1954, Hughes offered to pay $23,489,478 in cash for all RKO assets. This would pay off all stockholders at the hefty price of six dollars per share--shares that were selling on the big board for under three dollars at the time. Together with this kingly offer, The Man issued a rare public pronouncement:

"There have been expressions of dissatisfaction among shareholders. I have been sued by certain of the stockholders and accused of responsibility for losses of the corporation. I would like to feel that I have given all the shareholders of RKO Pictures Corporation an opportunity to receive for their stock an amount well in excess of its market value."

On February 14, 1954, the RKO board decided to accept Hughes's offer; the stockholders ratified their acceptance a month later and Hughes became one of the few men ever to own a major studio outright. A bemused film industry watched and wondered. What would The Man do with his prize, undoubtedly the largest commercial white elephant ever acquired by one individual?

He sold it. He immediately entered into negotiations with Thomas Francis O'Neil, president of General Teleradio, which owned four TV stations, among other things, and was increasingly interested in the purchase of feature films.

It was Tom O'Neil's first exposure to the Hughes marathon of no sleep, constant talk, little or no food. After some days of this, the exhausted middle-aged executive, his eyes blurred and stinging, peered hazily at a document that The Man produced at the right psychological moment and agreed to sign it. But Hughes wasn't through. For some private, undiscernible reason, he refused to have the agreement ratified in California. Tired to death and confused, O'Neil found himself in a Hughes-piloted aircraft headed for Las Vegas. The contract was signed there, giving Hughes a profit approaching $10,000,000, minus a capital-gains tax of 25 percent.

O'Neil went to bed for 12 hours of exhausted sleep.

If RKO was a fiasco that eventually produced a relatively small--for Hughes--profit, Trans World Airlines was an unmitigated disaster, out of which The Man was to clear a mammoth sum.

His association with TWA began when he was 34 years old. It took over a quarter century for him to finally sell out, and he did so against his will. The story is more than instructive. Like Hughes's spasmodic life style itself, it is a mixture of outrageous events and undeniable serendipity.

In 1934, a young airplane pilot, Jack Frye, became president of an airline then named Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc. The airline operated between Los Angeles and New York and other scattered points in a sort of hit-or-miss fashion. (Indeed, such irregular performances were symptomatic of most airlines in those technologically prehistoric times.) Frye and Hughes had known and respected each other as pilots. Frye was looking for capital. He envisioned luxurious galleons of the sky moving hundreds of passengers from one end of the country to the other at enormous speeds. However, his shareholders had informed him they were in the airline industry and had little taste for such science fiction. So Frye gave Hughes a call and explained that he needed money. The Man listened to Frye and asked one question.

"How much money?"

"Fifteen million dollars," Frye said. He gulped and then added, "In cash."

Hughes exploded. "Good God! Don't you realize that's a small fortune?"

Frye, who must have gulped again at hearing $15,000,000 dismissed as a "small fortune," agreed that it was a "considerable amount of money," and Hughes retired to ponder the idea.

He decided he'd like to own an airline. He purchased controlling interest in Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc., for more than $7,000,000.

The more Hughes worked, the more excited about the passenger-airline industry's future he became. Hughes and Frye spent nights dreaming of great ships traveling at supersonic speed while the passengers ate elegant meals and watched the latest movies in regal comfort. Most of their associates thought they were, to put it kindly, visionary.

But the planes were on the drawing board. Hughes spent most of his time on technical matters. TWA had a boss who was a combination of superconscientious test pilot and mechanic. Out of Hughes's absorption in technical detail there was born the Lockheed Constellation, which became--with the Douglas DC series--the standard of the commercial airlines.

Meanwhile, he neglected the business end of the company and TWA lost money with alarming consistency. That didn't seem to bother Hughes, perhaps because the airline was owned--here, again, the same structure existed--almost wholly by Hughes Tool Company. In fact, TWA was a valuable tax loss to Hughes. For the tool company was immensely profitable, and its profits, had they been paid out to The Man, would have been returned to the IRS almost entirely. But Hughes Tool Company did not pay out its earnings to Howard Hughes; instead, it explained to the IRS that most of its profits went into feeding its subsidiary, TWA, which was draining it. Result: Hughes Tool Company never did have to pay a truly ruinous undistributed-profits tax.

In the late Fifties, commercial airlines entered the jet age. In February 1956, after five years of study, Hughes placed his first order for jet airplanes. He ordered 33 Boeing 707s, 30 Convair 880s from General Dynamics and millions more in piston-driven aircraft. With some other commitments, Hughes had, in one grand gesture, placed TWA (and Hughes Tool Company) in the position of owing $497,000,000. Apart from this enormous commitment, Hughes's belated timing also put TWA years behind competitors in terms of actual delivery of aircraft.

While he waited for delivery of planes he didn't have the money to pay for, Hughes stalled for time while looking for capital. But by the end of 1960, the banks, Wall Street and the Federal Government were fed up with Hughes. They resented his arrogance, unpredictability and the fact that he could never be seen face to face.

For the first time, Hughes was out of his depth, afloat in a muddy sea of commitments he could not possibly fulfill. Though he had told his friend Odlum in 1958 that he would "rather starve in a garret than give up TWA," he was forced by his creditors to put his stock in a voting trust on December 30, 1960. In April 1961, effective responsibility was handed to new president Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr., and his management sued, charging that Hughes had taken advantage of TWA to serve his own interests. Hughes still owned the airline, but he could no longer run it. He had been told, and not subtly, to go away and let others thought more qualified take over.

Things improved almost immediately. TWA (which had showed a loss in 1961--the year after Hughes lost control) lost money in 1962, then showed a profit of some $20,000,000 in 1963, $37,000,000 in 1964 and over $50,000,000 in 1965.

TWA stock rose correspondingly. At the time Hughes was removed from active management, it was selling at less than $14 a share. When Hughes finally sold his stock--after giving everyone, including brokers and underwriters, a frantic last-minute run-around--he sold at $86 a share, very near the top of the market. And in selling, he made himself perhaps the richest man in the world.

On May 3, 1966, Hughes Tool Company accepted, on behalf of Howard R. Hughes, a check for the proceeds of his sale of 6,584,937 TWA shares. There was a strange expression on the faces of Hughes's representatives as they held the check gingerly, by its edges, toward the camera, as though it might explode at any moment. The check was made out for a total of $546,549,771. The amount was written twice--but in numerals only. There was no space on the front of the check to write out the sum in script. This check represented the largest amount of money ever paid an individual outright in the history of American finance.

• • •

On November 27, 1966, a large truck backed up to a huge service elevator at the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. When the truck doors opened, a man got up from a mattress and walked into a service elevator. The doors closed. Only a handful of people were ever to see Howard Hughes again. There on the ninth floor, in the Penthouse Suite, without a watch or a clock to remind him of the passage of time, he intended to spend the rest of his life. In his pocket--so to speak--was the TWA check that he planned to convert into income-producing properties and was thereby responsible for one of the great buying sprees in history.

The groundwork had already been laid. Among the shadowy figures who had arranged Hughes's entry into Las Vegas was a balding, vigorous man in his late 40s. The management of the Desert Inn Hotel knew him as a free-spending guest, Robert Murphy. This was a cover name for Robert A. Maheu, onetime FBI operative and, since 1953, owner of Robert A. Maheu Associates, a management-consultant firm formed in Washington, D. C.

Beginning in 1957, Maheu Associates found themselves deeply involved with Hughes. They had successfully undertaken a number of minor chores for him. From 1957 to 1961, the small firm increased its involvement with The Man's affairs. Hughes liked the way Maheu handled his business. In 1961, Maheu moved from Washington to Los Angeles at Hughes's request. By 1965, Robert A. Maheu Associates had one client: Hughes, at a $500,000 annual retainer, plus lavish fringe benefits.

In September 1966, Hughes phoned Maheu from Boston and asked him to arrange accommodations for him in Las Vegas. He wanted to spend the rest of his life there.

Reserving space for Hughes was no easy matter, since he requested not rooms nor suites but floors. It must have taken some doing (since luxury penthouse floors were reserved for the big-time gamblers, who had come to expect them as their due), but Maheu managed it.

Maheu supervised Hughes's secret entrance into his eyrie. The special bugless phone wires and private switchboard had to be installed. The closed-circuit television, which allows The Man to talk from another room to those favored few who do speak with him, the elaborate amplifying system, which has become necessary with Hughes's increasing deafness, and the air purifiers and special air-conditioning systems also had to be emplaced.

Provisions had to be made for the praetorian guard: Hughes's army of silent, incorruptible, nonsmoking, teetotaling Mormons. The huge security system had to be briefed and organized. The bulletproof steel doors, painted to look like wood, had to be made and installed. Custom-built sanitary facilities had to be incorporated. Special hospital equipment, working on unusual voltages, had to be hooked up and made operative. And all this had to be done in absolute secrecy.

Hughes was now so terrified of the germs people carried that he refused to shake hands. He shaved himself, no longer tolerating barbers. His obsession with isolation had blossomed into paranoia.

Within two years, Maheu bought, for Hughes, the Desert Inn, the Sands Hotel, the Castaways Hotel, the Frontier Hotel, the Silver Slipper Casino and the Landmark Hotel. In Reno, he later acquired Harold's Club, the largest gaming room under one roof in the world. By 1971, much of Hughes's loose change--over $300,000,000--had been spent. Over 15 percent of Nevada's gambling revenue now flowed into the coffers of a man who did not gamble, smoke nor drink.

As chief of Hughes-Nevada Operations, Maheu controlled, under Hughes's direction, a gaming empire that employed more than 8000 people, with a total payroll of some $50,000,000 a year and a gross handle of some $500,000,000. Throw in a local airline, another $100,000,000 worth of desert land and a TV station and it can be understood that Nevada is as much the property of Howard Hughes as Tammany Hall once was of Boss Tweed.

• • •

On November 25, 1970, Howard Hughes left Las Vegas. He left it secretly, by night, as he had entered it. It was some time before anyone knew he had gone from the ninth floor of the Desert Inn. When the news broke in screaming headlines in the Las Vegas Sun, the city wailed; Daddy had left with the pay check.

Several days later, there was a quiet invasion. Hughes Tool, represented by Frank William Gay, senior vice-president, and Chester C. Davis, the company attorney, announced it had taken over the Hughes-Nevada Operations on Hughes's express command. Robert Maheu was fired and, with him, Jack Hooper, security chief for the network of private police that constantly patrols the Hughes hotels.

Maheu, unable to accept his dismissal, refused to quit. He hired an attorney, Morton Galane, and slapped a complex $50,000,000 suit on Hughes, Davis and Gay.

Rumors were thick: Hughes was dead. He was dying. He had been kidnaped by his top associates. Hank Greenspun, editor and publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, went on national television to express his fear that Hughes was merely a vegetable.

Thoroughly disturbed, Governor Paul Laxalt, together with an old Hughes acquaintance, Vegas district attorney George E. Franklin, Jr., pleaded for a phone call from The Man. Eventually, Hughes picked up the phone. He assured Laxalt he was fine--just recovering his health in the Bahamas. Twelve days later, a Vegas court ruled that Hughes, through the Hughes Tool Company's board of directors, had the legal right to fire Robert Maheu.

Why was Maheu fired? These are some of the reasons:

Hughes-Nevada produced in 1969--1970 something over one percent in profits. Most of Hughes's competing hotels produced nearer a ten percent profit during that same period.

Maheu is a high liver. His home, his yacht, his expense account, his clothes, his jewelry, are in contrast to the sober living standard of other Hughes executives--and Hughes Tool Company had greatly subsidized Maheu's life style.

Maheu had launched enterprises--that he's since sold--of his own. He bought, for instance, a fish-and-chips franchise. He bought controlling interest in Elpac, Inc., a bankrupt electronics firm. He became a partner of Marina City Corporation in Los Angeles. He invested in Radiarc, Inc., a distributor of Japanese-made lights. In short, he became a reasonably active entrepreneur in his own right.

Hughes has a fatherly interest in his employees. He is often benign and protective. (One of the reasons he has hesitated to take Hughes Tool Company, complete with employees, to Vegas is his concern over whether the men on his payroll would lose their pay checks, not to mention their morals, in the casino pits. Also, executives of Hughes-Nevada Operations have been forbidden to use the Paradise Golf Course; its greens and fairways are supposedly watered by effluent. Lake Mead is verboten; it's polluted.) But he is also a harsh parent and never forgives anyone who competes with him on his own ground. (Noah Dietrich learned of Hughes's unbending sternness in 1957, when he mentioned once too often that he wanted to become more than just a salaried employee--he wanted some Hughes Tool Company stock. That request ended, peremptorily, their long association.)

Maheu had lived in a tremendous house on Country Club Lane--a private residential area of Las Vegas. It was complete with electronic alarm and built-in sprinkler systems. It had been built with Hughes's money. A week after Maheu's dismissal, his protective system, which included a direct wire to the Hughes security guards, was disconnected. His phone lines were cut shortly after that. He had seen this coming and had put in two phone lines in his own name.

Galane, Maheu's attorney, has argued, in the case, whether a man of Hughes's power could legitimately continue to hide. "If such a man is no longer in control," he stated in court, "that can be very serious for Las Vegas and for the entire state. Sometime, somewhere, Howard Hughes must make himself available to people. Some contact with him must be made." Galane believes that there comes a time when the right of a man's privacy is superseded by a moral obligation to a state and its people.

Since his retirement to Las Vegas in 1966, Hughes has seen no one except his secretary-nurses. He still has a few close acquaintances who remember times spent with him before he closed his bulletproof door permanently on the world. One of these acquaintances is Kirk Kerkorian, who had this to say about him:

"Hughes was a good businessman, but he was also lucky. He was forced out of TWA, but he was able to sell the stock at the right time. It could just as easily have gone another way."

Kirk Kerkorian knows about luck. He has managed to run a $12,000 stake, made during World War Two poker games, into an estimated $250,000,000 empire, which once included Las Vegas' Flamingo and International hotels. (They are now owned by the Hilton chain.)

Another of the very few who have actually known The Man on a more-or-less personal basis is Del Webb, himself a multimillionaire. Webb owns casinos and real estate in Las Vegas and various other profitable operations in different parts of the world. He has known Hughes for over a quarter century. He's probably the last outsider to have seen The Man, some four or five years ago. Webb remembers Hughes's eyes: "He's got black eyes. They look right through you when he talks. When I last saw him, he'd grown older, but he hadn't changed much. He still had his mustache and his hair was graying. He was still tall, stooped and underweight." Webb has always been fascinated by Hughes's modus operandi: "I wish I could work the way Howard does. He concentrates on one thing at a time. He doesn't let anything interfere. There may be a hundred other things needing his attention. But he'll finish what he's working on, right down to the smallest detail. Perhaps he won't work in the right order; but, eventually, he gets it all done. It's not an easy pattern for his executives to work with, but you can't shake him."

Webb and The Man used to go out together on the town.

"Once, we took our wives to a small night club on the Strip to hear Ben Blue. We had dinner. The girls had some wine. We watched the show and then called for the check. Howard reached for it and remembered he had no money on him. I'd forgotten my wallet myself. So the girls paid for the dinner. Howard hates to sign his name to anything. He doesn't charge. He likes to pay and get it over with.

"He's the kind of fella who'll surprise you by how much insight he has one minute; and the next, you feel he has none at all. When he was younger, he was quite attractive to ladies. At one time," Webb adds delicately, "Howard was occasionally interested in ladies of the evening. He isn't particularly interested in making friends. All his friends, if you can call them that, are made through his business. The older he gets, the more he gets that way. And then, a fellow in his position--my God, everyone's after you. Charities! Many are worth while, but there's a limit. You almost have to remove yourself to be able to live. Howard's developed a complex as he's grown older. He thinks everyone's trying to take advantage of him. He gets an odd view of the world through letters, newspapers and television.

"He's moved around from one hotel to another all his life. He once told me, 'I live around damn hotels just like a rat! I've got to get myself a home!' So we started looking for a home for him. He wanted to live near Vegas. Found a place he liked, but he got caught in a dust storm while looking over the site. He played around with the idea of building a shell around the house to catch the dust, but that proved impractical. So he dropped the idea. Then we looked around for a place in Florida. But he couldn't take the mosquitoes."

Webb laughs, dismissing stories of The Man's untidiness.

"Howard doesn't have many clothes, but what he wears is neat and clean. When he's working, he's in slacks with an open shirt. He's no fashion plate. He rarely takes time to buy clothes. He's just not interested in them."

Webb says that Hughes's one overriding ambition is "to leave two billion dollars to a new medical-research center. But he's come to an impasse with his advisors. He had in mind to build a clinic and a research center in some isolated spot. But he had no plans for a hospital. The doctors said he had to build at least a 2800-bed hospital to go with it. And it ought to be connected to a university. And he would need to be fairly close to an airport, even if he had to build one."

• • •

Hughes probably continues to function. Employees no doubt still dance like puppets at the end of a string of telephone calls, handwritten and teletyped messages. He's surely surrounded by security guards, air purifiers, amplifiers, his closed-circuit television system and his doctors (not to mention his hospital equipment). He is not well; he reportedly suffers from anemia, among other ailments. Hank Greenspun says with melancholy relish, "The richest man in the world and he's dying of starvation."

And plans for the clinic--research center, where he could be conveniently treated while his isolation was being honored, await a series of Hughes decisions. "The reason he wants it away from everything," explains Del Webb, "is that he'd like his name identified with it--like the Mayo Clinic. It's really what he's dedicated his life to. But he hasn't yet made up his mind."

The big Vegas money would probably say that he never will. For this time, the partnership is different. In the past, Howard Hughes has used time and they've worked well together. The longer he let it run, the more he won. The RKO sale and the TWA settlement attest to that. But money isn't the measure anymore--his health is; and Howard Hughes, plushly quarantined on a Nassau hotel's ninth floor, is losing.