Dies a Very Private Billionaire
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SEChronicle APR. 6 1976 c A 4 ..etti :Yrancisfo gronicle _*. Tues., Apr. 6, 1976 In 1947, Hughes smiled as he finished testifying before the Senate on his aircraft business Dies A Very Private Billionaire Howard Hughes inherited mil- lions and built them into billions until he became one of the richest men in the world. Then he retreat- ed into such seclusion that for the last years of his life people argued that he had died years ago. Hughes' obsession with privacy and secrecy in his personal life was such that only his closest aides saw , him in his last years. He lived in heavily guarded hotel suites in Las Vegas, London, Vancouver, Nicara- gua and the Bahamas. The drive of the phantom billionaire persisted, however, and he bought airlines, hotels and casi- nos, silver mines and airports the way ordinary people purchase a family car. In 1965, a respected business magazine estimated Hughes' wealth at between $1 billion and $1.4 billion. Next to oilman J. Paul Getty, Howard Hughes was proba- bly the richest of all Americans. The reputation of Howard Hughes Jr., first as a Hollywood playboy, then a controversial mov- . iemaker, a daredevil pilot and finally ,an eccentric recluse, over- shadowed his remarkable achieve- ments in aviation and the postwar In 1941, Hughes (standing) directed 'The Outlaw', which starred Jane Hollywood film industry. Russell and Walter Huston (left) During his varied career, Hughes once owned or held con- trolling interest in Trans World Airlines, the biggest brewery in Texas, the RKO film studio and the Hughes Aircraft Co., which built the surveyor mooncraft and had annual sales of $500 million. The instrument through which he manipulated his vast empire, whether it was buying Nevada silver claims or airlines, was the Hughes Tool Co., later known as Playboy, Daredevil, Summa Corp. Hughes discovered and made movie stars of Jean Harlow and Jane Russell. His RKO films includ- Industrialist,: Recluse ed "Hell's Angels," one of the screen's great air epics, and "The Outlaw,", a film which featured bosomy Miss Russell and which touched off a long battle with Hollywood censors. • me blind," remarks which ignited In 1966, Hughes sold his 78 per Maheu to file a $17.3 million libel cent interest in TWA for $546 suit. million, traveled briefly to Boston The billionaire's closest aides — reputedly for an operation to kept mum about their employer's .;` bolster his failing hearing — then personal life and the reading public took a private train across the digested fact and myth with equal - country to Las Vegas and secreted gusto — no one being absolutely • himself behind a barricade of sure that Hughes didn't shuffle guards and special passwords in the around his hotel room in Kleenex Penthouse of the Desert Inn, a hotel bores to prevent infection, or' that he later purchased. he didn't disinfect his hands after From his heavily guarded Des- he shook hands with an associate. ert Inn headquarters, Hughes He won two of aviation's most _ bought six other hotels and casinos coveted awards — the Harmon and plus more than 40,000 acres of land the Collyer trophies — and a New and scores of ore claims in and York ticker tape parade for his t. around Las Vegas. It only took two record setting flights. Hughes, who years before Hughes turned a tidy insisted on personally testing every profit on Airwest, a losing Western plane he designed, survived four ; States commuter airline when the plane crashes. billionaire bought it in 1970. In the H-1 racing plane that he Hughes threw his organization helped design, he set a world'speed into pandemonium when he swiftly record of 352 miles an hour in 1935. and secretly departed from Las Vegas on the eve of Thanksgiving, He conceived two of the na- 1970 ... just four years to the day tion's most famous planes, the after he arrived. World War II fighter, P-38 Light- ning, and the Constellation airliner which brought luxury to commer- cial air travel. But those achievements were obscured by his great plywood flying boat fiasco. During World War II he embarked on the project to build the gigantic HKL flying boat, designed to carry 750 soldiers began a ten-year courtship with a to overseas battlefields and to pretty young film actress, Jean thwart enemy submarines. Peters, marrying her in 1957. They divorced in 1971 without children. Because of the war ban on For some years they had lived metal, Hughes was forced to use together in Hughes' ninth floor plywood to construct his 200-ton, hideout in Las Vegas, and the 219-foot long craft, powered by second Mrs. Hughes was occasional-. eight 3000 horsepower engines. ly sighted around town. But it was It was promptly dubbed the impossible to track down anyone "Spruce Goose" and the "Flying who had actually seen the "invisi- Lumberyard" by critics who said it ble" billionaire outside his lair. would never get off the ground. There were weird stories that More than $58 million was poured he was transported to and from the into the flying boat and it became a hotel in a refrigerator freezer and subject of a Congressional investi- it was known he did spend some gation. time on a ranch outside the gam- bling resort. On Nov. 3, 1947, Hughes suc- ceeded in personally flying the The tall, handsome young craft at an altitude of 70 feet for bachelor who in the 40s squired about a mile. It was never airborne such Hollywood lovelies, as Lana again but was kept in a specially HUGHES, THE PILOT Turner, Ginger Rogers, Ida Lupino, The Harmon trophy M 1937 built, heavily guarded hangar at Ava Gardner, Paulette Goddard San Pedro, Calif. and Katharine Hepburn, had not Upon landing in the Bahamas, granted a face-to-face interview Many of the legends about he took over the top floor of a since 1957. Hughes sprang from his unortho- resort hotel then let his top aides dox business methods. He liked to bicker in public about replacing his Yet in 1972, Hughes emerged from 15-years of silence to hold a conduct business at all hours of the top Nevada operations man, Robert day or night in public telephone Maheu. telephonic news conference to dis- claim the authenticity of an alleged booths, parked cars, hotel closets Just as , suddenly as Hughes autobiography by Clifford Irving. and airplane cockpits. He would appeared, he vanished from the work until he was exhausted and , Bahamas and isolated himself and Hughes spent nearly three then catch a few hours sleep. his retinue in a Vancouver, B.C., hours lamenting his self-imposed hermitage, reciting some little Hughes was born in Houston hotel suite and then in the Inter- on Dec. 24, 1905, the only child of continental Hotel in Managua, chat- known details of his life, informing the reporters of his good health - Howard Robard Hughes Sr. and ting occasionally with the Nicara- Allene Gano Hughes. His mother's guan president in utter secrecy reports of his death to the contrary until the disastrous earthquake that — and denouncing the Irving "auto- family belonged to the Texas social leveled that city on Dec. 23, 1972, biography" as a fraud. aristocracy. His father, invented a forced him out. Last year, Hughes' name sur- revolutionary oil drill bit and faced in disclosures that the CIA founded Hughes Tool Co. to manu- Hughes divorced a Houston had used his mystery ship, the facture the bit, which was leased, debutante after four years of mar- Glomar Explorer, in an attempt to not sold, and was used in most rock riage in 1929, then much later salvage a Russian submarine from oil drills. the floor of the Pacific Ocean off Early in life, Hughes displayed Hawaii. his mechanical aptitude. When his Hughes turned on his former father refused him a motorcycle, top aide, Maheu, during the ram- he made a motor out of an auto bling, lengthy interview, describing selfstarter and hooked it onto his him as a "son of a bitch" who "stole bicycle. It ran. In the 1940s, Hughes escorted many glamorous film stars, including Ava Gardner He was educated at preparato- ry schools in Massachusetts and California and attended Caltech and Rice Institute in Houston brief- ly. The elder Hughes died when his son was, 19, and the youth convinced a judge to allow him to take control of the tool company. Hughes spent a year at the compa- ny learning the business, then leaving his executives to run it, headed for Hollywood moviemak- ing. His first wife, Ella Rice, was a member of the family for which Rice Institute was named. So great was his fascination with flying that he worked as an American Airlines copilot in 1932, crashed into a mansion in the Bel when he was already one of the Air section of Los 'Angeles. He was country's richest men. listed in critical conditon from multiple head and internal injuries, In addition to the 352 mile an broken bones and burns, but the hour record in 1935, Hughes flew next day he was attempting to run from Los Angeles to New york in 7 his business from his hospital bed. IA hours in 1937. In 1938, with a crew of four, he flew around the During his hospital stay, he world in the then remarkable time designed and had built for him a of 91 hours. special push button controlled bed with some 80 separate moveable In the test of another of his sections.