5 things you didn’t know about Howard Hughes
Perhaps best known locally for his casino acquisitions and buying the land for the Summerlin master-planned neighborhood, Howard Hughes was a renowned director, casino mogul, engineer and entrepreneur, among other things.
Hughes, already a billionaire when he moved to the Las Vegas Valley in 1966, first bought the Desert Inn, the Sands, the Frontier, Castaways, the Silver Slipper and KLAS-TV before buying and finishing the Landmark Hotel, all in a span of only three years.
But among the business tycoon’s well-documented stories, here are five things you might not know about Howard Hughes:
He bought the Desert Inn after overstaying his welcome there
The Desert Inn hotel rented Hughes its top two floors of high-roller suites when he first arrived in Las Vegas in 1966. The deal was supposed to be for 10 days only, according to a 1999 Review-Journal.
When check-out time came and passed, Hughes remained in the hotel, sparking anger from then-owners Moe Dalitz and Ruby Kolod.
Hughes’ surrogate, former FBI employee Robert Maheu, called in a favor from Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa, who phoned the D.I. owners and asked them to leave “my friends” alone. The struggle lasted into the new year of ’67, when Maheu told the boss he had played out his options.
“If you want a place to sleep, you’d damned well better buy the hotel,” Maheu told Hughes. After months of negotiations, the RJ reported, Hughes ended up buying the Desert Inn from Dalitz for a price of $13.25 million.
His Nevada buying spree totaled over $300 million
That figure allowed Hughes to purchase a total of “six resorts or stand-alone casinos in Las Vegas, a seventh in Reno, 2,500 mining claims, a TV station, an airport, an airline and huge tracts of open desert now covered with houses, office towers and industrial buildings.”
His fear of germs was probably his mother’s fault
According to a past RJ article, if Howard so much as sneezed, his mother rushed him to a doctor. It was said that, despite that, while he was holed up in his D.I. penthouse, he stored his bodily waste in jars in the closet, rarely bathed and rarely steralized needles.
“… He demanded that everything delivered to him be wrapped in Kleenex, and had a procedural manual which dictated among other things the specific numbers of Kleenex to be used for various actions,” a memo in “Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue” read. “Other procedures were prescribed for washing one’s hands, carrying and opening a can of fruit, etc. This fear of germ contamination was particularly anomalous when contrasted with his lack of personal hygiene and his use of an unsterilized syringe and needle to self-inject himself with large amounts of codeine.”
He nearly died in a plane crash
In 1946, Hughes crashed while test-piloting his XF-11 photo reconnaissance plane in Beverly Hills, Calif. He wasn’t expected to live through the crash. The crash broke nearly every bone in his body, and he was given strong doses of morphine for his pain.
The administration of morphine began an addiction to opiates for Hughes that lasted for the rest of his life.
Hughes was not affiliated with a particular political party
Hughes supported the candidates he felt would do him the most good, but always spread plenty of cash among incumbents and challengers alike. He paid “millions” for Richard Nixon, according to an RJ report.
During Hughes’ time in Las Vegas, his donations were disbursed by well-connected Las Vegas attorney Thomas Bell, who sized up the political candidates, assessed their chances, and distributed an appropriately sized bankroll.
“All the money came from the cage at the Silver Slipper,” former Hughes associate Robert Maheu told the RJ in 1999.
Contact Chris Kudialis at ckudialis@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4593. Find him on Twitter: @kudialisrj
