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The Hughes birthplace is disputed in various sources as both Humble, Texas and Houston, Texas are given. He also claimed his birthday was Christmas Eve, although some biographers debate his exact birth date, (according to NNDB.com, it was most likely "the more mundane date of September 24"; NNDB in turn refers to his baptismal records, but do not provide them for verification). His parents were Allene Stone Gano Hughes (a descendant of Catherine of Valois, Dowager Queen of England, by second husband Owen Tudor)and Howard R. Hughes, Sr., who patented the two-cone roller bit, which allowed rotary drilling for oil in previously inaccessible places. Howard R. Hughes, Sr., founded Hughes Tool Company in 1909 to commercialize this invention.
Hughes grew up under the strong influence of his mother, who was obsessed with protecting her son from all germs and diseases. From his father, Hughes inherited an interest in all things mechanical. Showing great aptitude in engineering at an early age, Hughes erected Houston's first wireless broadcast system when he was 11 years old. At age 12, Hughes was supposedly photographed in the local newspaper as being the first boy in Houston to have a 'motorized' bicycle, which he had built himself from parts taken from his father's steam engine. He was an indifferent student with a liking for mathematics and flying, taking flying lessons at 14 and later auditing math and engineering courses at Caltech.
Allene Hughes died in March 1922 from complications of an ectopic pregnancy. In January 1924, Howard Hughes, Sr., died of a heart attack. Their deaths apparently inspired Hughes to include the creation of a medical research laboratory in his 1925 will. Because Howard Sr.'s will had not been updated since Allene's death, Hughes inherited 75% of the family fortune. On his 19th birthday, Hughes was declared an emancipated minor, enabling him to take full control of his legacy.
Hughes dropped out of Rice University shortly after his father's death. In June 1925, he married Ella Rice, and moved to Hollywood, where Hughes hoped to make a name for himself making movies.
Controversy at Hollywood
Hughes was at first dismissed by Hollywood insiders as a rich man's son. However, his first two films, 1927's Everybody's Acting and 1928's Two Arabian Knights, were financial successes, the latter winning an Academy Award for Best Director of a Comedy Picture. 1928's The Racket and 1931's The Front Page were nominated for Academy Awards. Hughes spent a then-unheard-of $3.8 million of his own money to make Hell's Angels, an epic flying film that ultimately became a smash hit after overcoming many obstacles, released in 1930. He produced another hit, Scarface, in 1932. One of his best-known films may be The Outlaw which made a star of Jane Russell, for whom Hughes designed a special bra (although Russell decided against wearing the bra because of a mediocre fit). Scarface and The Outlaw both received considerable attention from industry censors; Scarface for its violence, The Outlaw due to Russell's revealing costumes.
He signed an unknown actor, David Bacon, in 1942 to play Billy the Kid, and then later replaced him with Jack Buetel. According to Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Lucien Ballard, both of whom worked on The Outlaw, Hughes and Buetel had a sexual relationship, which also influenced Bacon's replacement in the movie. Bacon's murder the following year sparked an investigation which brought to light allegations of the affair between them and which may have indirectly led to Bacon's death. Bacon's widow, Greta Keller, claimed later that he wanted to get out of his contract with Hughes and had been prepared to reveal details about their alleged homosexual relationship in order to secure a release from the studio. However, according to the book written by Brown and Boeske, hundreds of depositions from Hughes' associates have never revealed any evidence that he was gay.
Hughes kept his wife isolated at home for weeks at a time and, in 1929, she returned to Houston and filed for divorce. Hughes was a notorious ladies' man who spent time with many famous women, including Billie Dove, Bette Davis, Ava Gardner, Olivia de Havilland, Katharine Hepburn and Gene Tierney. He also proposed to Joan Fontaine several times, according to her autobiography No Bed of Roses. Bessie Love was a mistress during his first marriage. Jean Harlow accompanied him to the premiere of Hell's Angels, but Hughes' longtime, right-hand man, Noah Dietrich, wrote many years later that the relationship was strictly professional—Hughes personally disliked Harlow. In his 1971 book, Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes, Dietrich also noted that Hughes genuinely liked and respected Jane Russell but never sought romantic involvement with her. According to Russell's autobiography, however, Hughes once tried to bed her after a party. Russell (who was married at the time) refused him and Hughes promised it would never happen again. The two maintained a professional and private friendship for many years. Hughes remained good friends with Tierney – when Tierney's daughter Daria was born deaf and blind with severe mental retardation due to Tierney being exposed to the German Measles during her pregnancy, he saw to it that she received the best medical care and paid all expenses. Tierney never forgot his acts of kindness.
On 11 July 1936, a car driven by Hughes struck and killed a pedestrian named Gabriel Meyer at the corner of Third Street and Lorraine in Los Angeles. Although Hughes was certified as sober at the hospital to which he was taken after the accident, a doctor there made a note that Hughes had been drinking. He was taken to jail and booked on "suspicion of negligent homicide." A witness to the accident told police that Hughes was driving erratically and too fast, and that Meyer had been standing in the safety zone of a streetcar stop. By the time of the coroner's inquiry, however, the witness had changed his story and claimed that Meyer had moved directly in front of Hughes' car. Hughes made the same claim to reporters outside the inquiry, saying, "I was driving slowly and a man stepped out of the darkness in front of me." The District Attorney recommended that Hughes be cleared of responsibility for Meyer's death.
In 1956, he released The Conqueror, considered a tremendous flop and particularly infamous for what was considered a miscasting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan.
On 12 January 1957, Hughes married actress Jean Peters, whom he had known in Hollywood for several years. His second marriage was troubled, however, with much of the contact between husband and wife conducted by phone.
Aviator and engineer
Hughes' and the H-1 Racer
Hughes was a lifelong aircraft enthusiast, pilot, and self-taught aircraft engineer. At Rogers Airport in Los Angeles, he learned to fly from pioneer aviators, including Moye Stephens. He set many world records and designed and built several aircraft himself while heading Hughes Aircraft. The most technologically important aircraft he designed was the Hughes H-1 Racer. On 13 September 1935, Hughes, flying the H-1, set the airspeed record of 352 mph (566 km/h) over his test course near Santa Ana, California. The previous record was 314 mph (505 km/h). A year and a half later, (19 January 1937), flying a somewhat re-designed H-1 Racer, Hughes set a new transcontinental airspeed record by flying non-stop from Los Angeles to New York City in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds (beating his own previous record of 9 hours, 27 minutes). His average speed over the flight was 322 mph (518 km/h).
The H-1 Racer featured a number of design innovations: it had retractable landing gear and all rivets and joints set flush into the body of the aircraft to reduce drag. The H-1 Racer is thought to have influenced the design of a number of World War II fighters such as the Mitsubishi Zero, the Focke-Wulf FW190 and the F6F Hellcat although that has never been proven. The H-1 Racer was donated to the Smithsonian in 1975 and is on display at the National Air and Space Museum.
On 10 July 1938 Hughes set another record by completing a flight around the world in just 91 hours (3 days, 19 hours), beating the previous record by more than four days. For this flight he did not fly an aircraft of his own design but a Lockheed Super Electra (a twin-engine transport with a four-man crew) fitted with all of the latest radio and navigational equipment. Hughes wanted the flight to be a triumph of technology, illustrating that safe, long-distance air travel was possible. In 1938, the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas, known at the time as Houston Municipal Airport, was re-named "Howard Hughes Airport," but the name was changed back after people objected to naming the airport after a living person.
Hughes received many awards as an aviator, including the Harmon Trophy in 1936 and 1938, the Collier Trophy in 1938, the Octave Chanute Award in 1940, and a special Congressional Gold Medal in 1939 "...in recognition of the achievements of Howard Hughes in advancing the science of aviation and thus bringing great credit to his country throughout the world." According to his obituary in the New York Times, Hughes never bothered to come to Washington to pick up the Congressional Gold Medal. It was eventually mailed to him by President Harry S. Truman.
Near-fatal crash of the XF-11
The second XF-11 prototype (with conventional propellers).
Hughes was involved in a near-fatal aircraft accident on 7 July 1946, while piloting the experimental U.S. Army reconnaissance XF-11 over Los Angeles. An oil leak caused one of the counter-rotating propellers to reverse pitch, causing the aircraft to yaw sharply. Hughes tried to save the craft by landing it on the Los Angeles Country Club golf course (incorrectly stated as Wilshire Country Club in the 2004 movie), but seconds before he could reach his attempted destination, the XF-11 started to drop dramatically and crashed in the Beverly Hills neighborhood surrounding the country club.
When the XF-11 finally skidded to a halt after mowing down three houses, the fuel tanks exploded, setting fire to the aircraft and a nearby home. Hughes lay seriously injured beside the burning XF-11 until he was rescued by Marine Master Sergeant William L. Durkin, who happened to be in the area visiting friends. Hughes sustained significant injuries in the crash; including a crushed collar bone, 24 broken ribs and numerous third-degree burns.
However, Hughes was proud of the fact that his mind was still working. Also, as he lay in his hospital bed, he noted that he did not like the design of his bed. He called in plant engineers to design a "tailor-made" bed, equipped with hot and cold running water, built in six sections, and operated by 30 electric motors, with push-button adjustments.
Many attribute his long-term addiction to opiates to his use of morphine as a painkiller during his convalescence. The trademark moustache he wore afterwards was meant to cover a scar on his upper lip resulting from the accident.
Hughes H-4 Hercules
The H-4 Hercules with Hughes at the controls
Possibly his most famous aircraft project was the H-4 Hercules, nicknamed the "Spruce Goose" (to Hughes' consternation, since its frame was built of birch, not spruce). The aircraft was originally contracted by the U.S. government for use in World War II, as a viable way to transport troops and equipment across the Atlantic instead of sea going troop transports that were liable to the threat of German U-Boats. In 1947, it was the largest aircraft ever built, weighing 190 tons and not completed until just after the end of World War II. The Hercules flew only once for a mile (1.6 km) (with Hughes at the controls) on 2 November 1947.
The Hercules has the longest wingspan of any aircraft ever built, at 319 ft 11 in (97.54 m) (the next largest wingspan is about 30 ft (9 m) shorter), but it is not the longest nor the heaviest. It is the largest flying boat ever built and also the largest aircraft ever made from wood.
Hughes was summoned to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee to explain why the aircraft had not been delivered to the United States Army Air Forces during the war, but the committee disbanded without releasing a final report. Because the contract required the aircraft to be built of "non-strategic materials," Hughes built the aircraft largely from birch (rather than aluminum) in his Westchester, California facility to fulfill his contract. The aircraft was on display alongside the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California for many years before being moved to McMinnville, Oregon, where it is now part of the Evergreen Aviation Museum.
Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company, a division of Hughes Tool Company, was originally founded by Hughes in 1932, in a rented corner of a Lockheed Aircraft Corporation hangar in Burbank, California, to carry out the expensive conversion of a military aircraft into the H-1 racer. During and after World War II, Hughes fashioned his company into a major defense contractor. The Hughes Helicopters division started in 1947 when helicopter manufacturer Kellett sold their latest design to Hughes for production.
In 1948, Hughes created a new division of the company, the Hughes Aerospace Group. The Hughes Space and Communications Group and the Hughes Space Systems Division were later spun off in 1948 to form their own divisions and ultimately became the Hughes Space and Communications Company in 1961. In 1953, Howard Hughes gave all his stock in the Hughes Aircraft Company to the newly formed Howard Hughes Medical Institute, thereby turning the aerospace and defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute sold Hughes Aircraft in 1985 to General Motors for $5.2 billion. In 1997 General Motors sold Hughes Aircraft to Raytheon and in 2000 sold Hughes Space & Communications to Boeing. Boeing, GM, and Raytheon acquired the Hughes Research Laboratories.
Airlines
In 1939, at the urging of Jack Frye, president of TWA, Hughes quietly purchased a majority share of TWA stock for nearly $7 million and took control of the airline. Upon assuming ownership of TWA, Hughes was prohibited by federal law from building his own aircraft. Seeking an aircraft that would perform better than TWA's fleet of Boeing 307 Stratoliners, Hughes approached Boeing's competitor, Lockheed. Hughes already had a good relationship with Lockheed since they had built the aircraft he used in his record flight around the world in 1938. Lockheed agreed to Hughes' request that the new aircraft be built in absolute secrecy. The result was the revolutionary Constellation and TWA purchased the first 40 of the new airliners off the production line.
Lockheed Constellation
Hughes' ownership of and plans for TWA may have been the real reason he was investigated by the Senate following the war. Pan American World Airways chief Juan Trippe sought to monopolize international air travel and had influenced powerful Maine Senator Owen Brewster to propose legislation securing Pan Am as the sole American airline allowed to fly overseas at a time when Hughes planned TWA service to Europe with the Constellation. Dietrich wrote of the investigation that Hughes beat the Senate committee by turning the hearings into an attack on Brewster. Hughes successfully exposed Brewster's dealings with Pan Am and later helped defeat his re-election bid by pouring considerable funds into the campaign of his opponent, Frederick Payne.
In 1956, Hughes placed an order for 63 Convair 880s for TWA at a cost of $400 million. Although Hughes was extremely wealthy at this time, outside creditors demanded that Hughes relinquish control of TWA in return for providing the money. In 1960, Hughes was ultimately forced out of TWA, although he still owned 78 percent of the company and battled to regain control.
Before Hughes' ouster, the TWA jet financing issue precipitated the end of Hughes' relationship with Noah Dietrich. Dietrich remembered Hughes developing a plan by which Hughes Tool Company profits were to be inflated in order to sell the company for a windfall that would pay the bills for the 880s. Dietrich agreed to go to Texas to implement the plan on the condition that Hughes agreed to a capital gains arrangement he had long promised Dietrich. When Hughes balked, Dietrich resigned immediately. "Noah," Dietrich quoted Hughes as replying, "I cannot exist without you!" Dietrich stood firm and eventually had to sue to retrieve personal possessions from his office after Hughes ordered it locked.
In 1966, he was forced by a U.S. federal court to sell his shares in TWA due to concerns over conflict of interest between his ownership of both TWA and Hughes Aircraft. The sale of his TWA shares netted him a profit of $547 million. During the 1970s, Hughes went back into the airline business, buying the airline Air West and renaming it Hughes Airwest.
RKO
The classic logo of RKO Radio Pictures.
In 1948, Hughes gained control of RKO, a struggling major Hollywood studio, by acquiring 25% of the outstanding stock. During his tenure, RKO suffered as a result of his management style. Within weeks of taking control, he dismissed three-quarters of the work force and production was shut down for six months in 1949 while he undertook the investigation of the politics of all remaining studio employees. Completed pictures would be sent back for reshooting if he felt his star (especially female) was not properly presented, or if a film's anti-communist politics were not sufficiently clear. An aborted sale in 1952 to a Chicago-based group with no experience in the industry disrupted studio operations even further.
Hughes let go of the RKO theaters in 1953 as settlement of the United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. antitrust case. With the sale of the profitable theaters, the shaky status of the film studio became increasingly apparent. A steady stream of lawsuits from RKO's minority shareholders, charging him with financial misconduct and corporate mismanagement, became an increasing nuisance, especially because Hughes wanted to focus on his aircraft-manufacturing and TWA holdings during the Korean War years. Eager to be rid of the distraction, Hughes offered to buy out all other stockholders.
By the end of 1954, at a cost of nearly $24 million, he had gained near total control of RKO, becoming the closest thing to a sole owner of a studio that Hollywood had seen in more than three decades. Six months later, Hughes sold the studio to the General Tire and Rubber Company for $25 million. Hughes retained the rights to pictures he had personally produced, including those made at RKO. He also retained Jane Russell's contract. For Howard Hughes, this was the virtual end of his 25-year involvement in motion pictures; though he had all but destroyed a major Hollywood studio, his reputation as a financial wizard emerged unscathed. He reportedly walked away from RKO having made $6.5 million in personal profit.
General Tire was interested mainly in exploiting the value of the RKO library for television programming, though it made some attempts to continue producing films. After a year and a half of mixed success, General Tire shut down film production at RKO for good at the end of January 1957. The studio lots in Hollywood and Culver City were sold to Desilu Productions later that year for $6.15 million.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland, formed with the express goal of basic biomedical research including trying to understand, in Hughes' words, the "genesis of life itself." Hughes' first will, that he signed in 1925 at the age of 19, stipulated that a portion of his estate should be used to create a medical institute bearing his name (Brown and Boeske 34). Hughes gave all his stock of the Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, thereby turning the aerospace and defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's new Board of Trustees sold Hughes Aircraft in 1985 to General Motors for $5.2 billion, allowing the institute to grow dramatically.
The deal was the topic of a protracted legal battle between Hughes and the Internal Revenue Service, which Hughes ultimately won. After his death in 1976, many thought that the balance of Hughes' estate would go to the institute, although it ultimately was divided among his cousins and other heirs, given the lack of a will to the contrary. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is America's second largest private foundation[citation needed] and the largest devoted to biological and medical research with an endowment of $16.3 billion as of June 2007.
Watergate Scandal
Shortly before the 1960 Presidential election, Richard Nixon was harmed by revelations of a $205,000 loan from Hughes to Nixon's brother Donald. It has long been speculated that Nixon's drive to learn what the Democrats were planning in 1972 was based in part on his belief that the Democrats knew about a bribe that his friend Bebe Rebozo had received from Hughes. Nixon's desire to cover up this event may have led to the Watergate break-in. With the upcoming Presidential election, former U.S. Senate Candidate and Howard Hughes personal adviser John H. Meier, working with former Vice President of the United States Hubert Humphrey and others, wanted to feed misinformation to Richard Nixon. In late 1971, Donald was collecting intelligence for his brother at the time and was asking Meier about the Democratic National Chairman, Larry O'Brien, who had worked with Meier and the Hughes Organization.
Meier told Donald that he was sure the Democrats would win the election since they had a lot of information on Richard Nixon’s illicit dealings with Howard Hughes that had never been released, and that Larry O’Brien had the information,(O’Brien didn’t actually have any documents but Meier wanted Richard Nixon to think he did). Donald then called his brother and told him that Meier gave the Democrats all the Hughes information that could destroy him (Richard Nixon) and that O’Brien has it.
Although almost all of the top people who worked for Hughes, never actually met him, Meier not only met with him regularly, but at one point was only one of five people allowed to see him, and shook hands with him everyday. Referred to as “the man to see about any of Howard Hughes operations," John Meier is listed as part of the information in the Nevada State Museum of Las Vegas in the Material Collected about Howard Hughes Section.
Glomar Explorer
In 1972, Hughes was approached by the CIA to help secretly recover Soviet submarine K-129 which had sunk near Hawaii four years earlier. He agreed. Thus the Glomar Explorer, a special-purpose salvage vessel, was born. Hughes' involvement provided the CIA with a plausible cover story, having to do with civilian marine research at extreme depths and the mining of undersea manganese nodules. In the summer of 1974, Glomar Explorer attempted to raise the Soviet vessel.
However, during the recovery a mechanical failure in the ship's grapple caused half of the submarine to break off and fall to the ocean floor. This section is believed to have held many of the most sought after items, including its code book and nuclear missiles. Two nuclear-tipped torpedoes and some cryptographic machines were recovered, along with the bodies of six Soviet submariners who were subsequently given formal burial at sea in a filmed ceremony. The operation, known as Project Jennifer, became public in February 1975 because burglars had obtained secret documents from Hughes' headquarters in June 1974.
Mental and physical illness
By the late 1950s Hughes had developed debilitating symptoms of social avoidance behavior and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifested itself in various ways. His mother may have suffered from OCD, and coddled and spoiled her only child. It was Hughes' mother who first provided her young son with a means of escaping social situations and pressures by using the excuse of illness. As a young boy, when Howard wanted to attend summer camp (during a time when the public feared the spread of polio), his parents wanted assurances that their son was protected. When this assurance was not forthcoming, his mother decided it was better to keep him home. Subsequently after attending camp one summer, Hughes avoided another year at camp by complaining about headaches and bad dreams when he returned home. Later, on the verge of adolescence, young Howard became ill and was kept out of school for most of the year. He developed a form of paralysis that was never diagnosed and which disappeared after several months.
In the 1930s, close friends reported he was obsessed with the size of peas, one of his favorite foods, and used a special fork to sort them by size before he ate. While producing The Outlaw, Hughes became obsessed by a minor flaw in one of Jane Russell's blouses, claiming that the fabric bunched up along a seam and gave the appearance of two nipples on each of Russell's breasts. He was reportedly so concerned by the matter as to write a detailed memorandum to the film crew on how to fix the problem.
Richard Fleischer, who directed His Kind of Woman with Hughes as executive producer, wrote at length in his autobiography about the difficulty of dealing with the famed tycoon. In this book, Just Tell Me When to Cry, published in 1993, Fleischer explained that Hughes was fixated on trivial details and was alternately indecisive and obstinate. He went on to say that Hughes' unpredictable mood swings made him wonder at times if the film would ever be completed.
As an adult—at one time one of the most visible men in America—Hughes ultimately vanished from public view altogether, although the tabloids continued to follow rumors regarding his behavior and whereabouts. At various times, the media reported him to be terminally ill, mentally unstable, or possibly dead. Hughes eventually became a complete recluse, locking himself in darkened rooms in a medication-induced daze. Though he always kept a barber on call, Hughes only had his hair cut and nails trimmed about once a year. Several doctors were kept in the house on a substantial salary, but Hughes rarely saw them and usually refused to follow their advice. Toward the end of his life, his inner circle was largely composed of Mormons because he considered them trustworthy even though Hughes himself was not a member of their church.
Hughes equipped this 1954 Chrysler New Yorker with an aircraft-grade air filtration system which took up the entire trunk
Hughes by this time had become severely addicted to codeine, valium, and a number of other prescription drugs and was becoming increasingly frail. He insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. It has also been said that he watched the 1968 film Ice Station Zebra some 150 times.
In a bout of obsession with his home state of Texas, Hughes began purchasing all restaurant chains and four star hotels that had been founded within Texan borders. This included, if for only a short period, many unknown franchises currently out of business. Ownership of the restaurants was placed in the hands of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and all licenses were re-sold shortly after.
Hughes may have contracted syphilis as a young man, and some biographers believe that much of the strange behavior at the end of his life, for example his well-documented aversion to handshaking, may be attributed to the tertiary stage of that disease. The condition is thought to have first manifested itself in the form of tiny blisters that erupted on his hands. After receiving medical treatment for his symptoms, Hughes is said to have been warned by his doctor not to shake hands for some time and avoided doing so for the rest of his life. Syphilis has also been blamed by some biographers for a bizarre episode in which Hughes burned all his clothes.
Managing the financial empire
As his empire grew, Hughes used every trick conceivable to avoid paying taxes to the government. In the early years of Hughes Aircraft, Hughes attempted to move his company from Southern California to Nevada in an effort to take advantage of Nevada's low tax rates. Ultimately, Hughes donated all his stock in Hughes Aircraft to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, thereby turning the military contractor into a tax-exempt charity. In addition to avoiding income taxes, this had the effect of silencing the upper management in Hughes Aircraft, who for many years had clamored for stock in the company as part of their compensation.
Hughes was able to keep and maintain highly qualified managers in his companies by promising them large sums of money at the end of their careers. In order to be able to give them the most money without taxation, Hughes would make an arrangement whereby he would publicly criticize a certain manager that had recently left his company. Then, the manager would sue Hughes in court for public defamation. A settlement was given to this manager in court which was not subject to taxes. This happened with Noah Dietrich, Robert Maheu, and others. For example, Robert Maheu was awarded $2.2 million in a defamation lawsuit shortly after leaving Hughes' employ.
Although Hughes lived in his own home in California for many years, he later came up with the idea of living in hotels as this enabled him not to have a legally declared residence in any state which would require him to pay personal income taxes. Shortly after Hughes began living in hotels with no state as his official residence, legislation was passed that any person living in a state 180 days or longer was subject to personal income tax during that time period in that state. Then, Hughes would live in a given hotel for just under 180 days, before moving to another hotel for just under 180 days, and so on. His extremely creative efforts to avoid taxes were successful; even after his death, the states of California and Texas were unable to collect inheritance taxes since it could not be proven that he was a legal resident of either state (Prior to 1983, Texas did have an inheritance tax; today, Texas, like Florida, is one of the few states that only collects estate taxes up to the federal credit for the deduction from federal estate taxes on estate taxes paid to the state, unlike California, which imposes its own estate tax on top of the federal one).
Las Vegas baron and recluse
The wealthy and aging Howard Hughes, accompanied by his entourage of personal aides, moved from one hotel to another, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse. During the last ten years of his life, from 1966 to 1976, Hughes lived in hotels in Beverly Hills; Boston; Las Vegas; Nassau, Bahamas; Vancouver, Canada; London, England; Managua, Nicaragua; Acapulco, Mexico; and others. One of the reasons he moved so many times was because of his obsession with minimizing taxation. Anyone who inhabits a state for six months out of the year must pay state income tax. To avoid this, Howard would move every five and a half months thus claiming no legal state residence.
On 27 November 1966, Hughes arrived in Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into the Desert Inn. Refusing to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners of the hotel, Hughes bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel's eighth floor became the nerve center of his empire and the ninth-floor penthouse became Hughes' personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, Hughes bought several other hotels/casinos (Castaways, New Frontier, The Landmark Hotel and Casino, Sands, and Silver Slipper) from the Mafia. An unusual incident marked an earlier Hughes connection to Las Vegas. During his 1944 engagement at the Last Frontier hotel in Las Vegas, flamboyant entertainer Liberace mistakenly took Howard Hughes for his light director, instructing him to instantly bring up a blue light should he start to play "Claire De Lune." The alleged staff member nodded in accordance as the hotel's entertainment director approached the scene, properly introducing Howard Hughes to Liberace.
Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas from its mobsters in gaudy silk suits and thousand-dollar-a-night call girls to something more glamorous. As Hughes wrote in a memo to an aide, "I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car." A chronic insomniac, Hughes bought several local television stations (including KLAS-TV) so that there would always be something for him to watch in the early hours of the morning.
Hughes' considerable business holdings were overseen by a small panel unofficially dubbed "The Mormon Mafia" because of the many Latter-day Saints on the committee.In addition to supervising day-to-day business operations and Hughes' health, they also went to great pains to satisfy Hughes' every whim. Hughes once became fond of Baskin-Robbins' Banana Nut ice cream so his aides sought to secure a bulk shipment for him—only to discover that Baskin-Robbins had discontinued the flavor. They put in a request for the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, 350 gallons, and had it shipped from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he was tired of Banana Nut and wanted only French Vanilla ice cream. The Desert Inn ended up distributing free Banana Nut ice cream to casino customers for a year, until the 350 gallons were gone.
As an owner of several major businesses in Las Vegas, Hughes wielded enormous political and economic power in Nevada and was often able to influence the outcome of elections there and elsewhere. A marked obsession that affected Hughes throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s was the underground nuclear testing that was then occurring in Nevada. Hughes was afraid of the risk posed by the residual nuclear radiation from the tests. Hughes stayed up for days and nights on end, managing his assets to try to halt the nuclear tests. When they finally went through despite Hughes' efforts, the detonations were powerful enough that the entire hotel in which he was staying trembled with the shock wave. In two separate, last-ditch maneuvers, Hughes instructed his representatives to offer million-dollar bribes to both presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. His aides never offered the bribes, reporting to Hughes that Johnson declined the offer and they were unable to contact Nixon. Hughes' personal correspondence makes it clear that the Nevada nuclear testing issue was the last straw leading to his self-imposed exile from the United States, which was to end only with his death.
In 1971, Jean Peters filed for divorce; the two had not lived together for many years. Peters requested a lifetime alimony payment of $70,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, and waived all claims to Hughes' estate. Hughes offered her a settlement of over a million dollars, but she declined it. Hughes did not insist upon a confidentiality agreement from Peters as a condition of the divorce; aides reported that Hughes never spoke ill of her. She refused to discuss her life with Hughes and declined several lucrative offers from big-name publishers and biographers. Peters would state only that she had not seen Hughes for several years before their divorce, because his psychological problems forced him to stay in a separate room, talking with her only by phone.
Hughes was living in the Intercontinental Hotel near Lake Managua in Nicaragua where he sought privacy and security.However, a powerful 6.5 earthquake damaged Managua in December 1972. On the pretext of possible assassination and intrusive press photographers, his aides insisted the windows be blacked out. He took precautions and stayed in the Nicaraguan National Palace with former dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle before leaving for Florida on a private jet the following day.
In 1972, author Clifford Irving created a media sensation when he claimed to have co-written an authorized autobiography of Hughes. Hughes was such a reclusive figure that he did not immediately publicly refute Irving's statement, leading many people to believe Irving's book was a genuine autobiography. Before the book's publication, however, Hughes finally denounced Irving in a teleconference and the entire project was eventually exposed as a hoax. Irving was later convicted of fraud and spent 17 months in prison. The 2007 film The Hoax, starring Richard Gere, is based on these events.
Death and burial
Howard Hughes' gravestone
Hughes died on 5 April 1976, at 1:27 PM while on an aircraft owned by Robert Graf, en route from his penthouse in Acapulco, Mexico to The Methodist Hospital in Houston. It has also been argued that he died before leaving Mexico inside his penthouse at the "Acapulco Princess Hotel"[citation needed]. His reclusive activities and drug use had made him practically unrecognizable; his hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails had grown grossly long, his once-strapping 6'4" (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 lb (41 kg), and the FBI had to resort to fingerprints to identify the body.
A subsequent autopsy noted kidney failure as the cause of death. Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his death; X-rays revealed broken-off hypodermic needles still embedded in his arms and severe malnutrition. While his kidneys were damaged, his other internal organs were deemed perfectly healthy.
Hughes is buried in the Glenwood Cemetery in Houston.
Estate
Approximately three weeks after Hughes' death, a holographic, or handwritten, will was found on the desk of an official of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. The so-called "Mormon Will" gave $1.56 billion to various charities (including $625 million to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute); nearly $470 million to the upper-management in Hughes' companies and to his aides; $156 million to first cousin William Lummis; $156 million split equally between his two ex-wives Ella Rice and Jean Peters; and $156 million to a gas-station owner named Melvin Dummar. Dummar initially denied any knowledge about the will but changed his story when his fingerprints were found on the envelope containing the will.
Dummar claimed to reporters that late one evening in December 1967, he found a disheveled and dirty man lying along U.S. Highway 95, 150 miles (250 km) north of Las Vegas. The man asked for a ride to Las Vegas. Dropping him off at the Sands Hotel, Dummar said the man told him he was Hughes. Dummar then claimed that days after Hughes' death, a "mysterious man" appeared at his gas station, leaving an envelope containing the will on his desk. Unsure if the will was genuine, and unsure of what to do, Dummar left the will at the LDS Church office. In a trial lasting seven months, the Mormon will was eventually rejected by the Nevada court in June 1978 as a forgery. The court declared that Hughes had died intestate.
Hughes' $2.5 billion estate was eventually split in 1983 among 22 cousins, including William Lummis who serves as a trustee of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dummar was largely discounted by the public as a phony and an opportunist. Jonathan Demme's film Melvin and Howard (starring Jason Robards and Paul Le Mat), was based on Dummar's tale.
Howard Hughes appointed his illegitimate son, Andrew J. Cipollo (born January 19, 1941) as the Irrevocable Trustee of the Atlas Monetary International Trust on June 4th, 1961, as reported in Atlas Monetary International Trust Indenture Addendum 204, filed by former Nevada Deputy Attorney General Frank Shattuck in Clark County, Nevada, under Document Number 20071108-0000651. Former Attorney General Shattuck is the Attorney for Atlas Monetary International Trust, whose assets of gold, silver and silver certificates are in excess of $9 Billion US Dollars. Andrew J. Cipollo never made a claim against the estate. Howard Hughes' grandchildren include Andrew J. Cipollo's daughter Precious, and her son Scott and daughter Precious II, who live in Riverside County, California. Andrew J. Cipollo is a resident of Puerto Rico, where he is in the process of developing the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, acquired from the United States Navy, for the construction of exothermal gallium arsenide solar panels on the 2,900 acre site in Ceiba, Puerto Rico, which was closed down in 2005 by the U. S. Navy. Atlas Monetary International Trust is the parent company of Atlas International Bank and Atlas Holdings Corporation (Puerto Rico). Atlas Monetary International Trust is also the owner of the Freighter Ships known as the Quadra and the Vancouver, where many works of art looted by the Nazis were once stored, which Howard Hughes had acquired after World War II. The two ships are located off the harbor of San Francisco.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hughes Aircraft was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5.2 billion. Suits brought by the states of California and Texas claiming they were owed inheritance tax were both rejected by the court. In 1984, Hughes' estate paid an undisclosed amount to Terry Moore, who claimed to have been secretly married to Hughes on a yacht in international waters off Mexico in 1949 and never divorced. Although Moore never produced proof of a marriage, her book, The Beauty and the Billionaire, became a best-seller.