HUGHES, HOWARD ROBARD

Howard Robard Hughes (1905–1976) was born into great family wealth, and despite his flamboyant lifestyle as a playboy, tycoon, and eccentric, he nevertheless enjoyed a remarkable business career that made him a billionaire. He was successful in many endeavors. He was a test pilot, the majority owner for years of TWA airlines, a movie producer, and a real estate developer. Oddly, Hughes is perhaps best remembered not for his successful business enterprises but for his bizarre and reclusive behavior. In his later years, his paranoid concern for privacy became legendary.

Howard Hughes, Jr. was born in Houston, Texas, the only child of Howard and Alene Hughes. His parents had grown wealthy because of his father's invention of a drill bit used in most gas and oil drilling. This invention brought vast revenues to the family's Hughes Tool Company, which manufactured the drilling bit. Howard attended private schools in California and Massachusetts, and later, Rice Institute in Houston, and the California Institute of Technology.

His mother died when Hughes was sixteen. Two years later, his father also died. At age eighteen Hughes inherited an estate of $871,000 and a patent for the revolutionary drill bit, which continued to bring large revenues to the Hughes Tool Company. Hughes left school to take control of the company after his father's death, using its profits to finance a variety of projects.

At the age of twenty, in 1925, he married and moved to Los Angeles. Two years later, Hughes put up the money for the first of several films he produced, a movie called "Hell's Angels," about World War I (1914–1918) fighter pilots. It was the most expensive movie ever made at that time, and it did very well at the box office. He went on to produce other films, some of which are considered classics, including "Scarface" and "The Outlaw." He discovered the actors Jean Harlow and Paul Muni, and made Jane Russell a Hollywood star. Hughes became romantically linked with a number of Hollywood stars.

Hughes continued to produce movies while he pursued an interest in aviation. He seemed to be driven to prove his excellence in whatever field he entered. Becoming a pilot in 1928, Hughes went on in 1932 to found the Hughes Aircraft Company, and to design, build, and fly record-breaking planes. He set the world speed record in 1935, transcontinental speed records in 1936 and 1937, and a world flight record in 1938. He was named to the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1973. Hughes built the largest aircraft ever, made out of wood. It flew one time, piloted by Hughes, and was known as "The Spruce Goose."

Hughes became a well known public figure, popular for his aviation and movie heroics. He seemed to embody the traditional American qualities of individuality, daring, and ingenuity.

His aircraft company became a major defense contractor after World War II (1939–1945), and as the profits of his company increased, Hughes became obsessed with ways to avoid paying taxes on his huge profits. In 1953 he created a medical institute designed to be a tax-shelter, to which he transferred the assets of his aircraft company. For a time in the 1950s, his fame increased, as he openly confronted the federal government. In 1956 he loaned future President Richard Nixon's brother, Donald, $205,000 in an apparently successful ploy to influence the Internal Revenue Service's rulings on the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In the eyes of many, he was a lone hero fighting against the intrusion of federal bureaucracy and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In the eyes of the government, he was a tax-cheat.

Hughes continued investing with his tool company profits. He created Trans-World Airlines (TWA), one of the most famous mid-century world airlines. Because he failed to appear in court in a matter related to possibly illegal TWA operations, Hughes was forced to sell his TWA holdings in 1966. He invested all of the $566 million from the sale of TWA into Las Vegas hotels, gambling casinos, golf courses, a television station, an airport, and land in Las Vegas. He again increased the size of his fortune.

In 1970 Hughes left the United States. He traveled secretly throughout the world, arriving unannounced in luxury hotels. To the paparazzi, he took on the aura of a romantic figure, but in reality he was a profoundly ill man. His last act of business, before going into total seclusion and paranoid decline, was to sell off his Hughes Tool Division, the basis of his great fortune, and put the money into a building company he named Summa Corporation, located in Las Vegas.

At that point, the Hughes fortune became muddled. His money and business interests seem to have often been used for secret activities; some allegedly involved in Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations aimed against the former Soviet Union. One such operation involved the Hughes conglomerate designing and constructing a naval vessel to raise a sunken Soviet submarine. The Hughes organization was reportedly linked, along with the CIA, to the Watergate affair. Details of the end of the Hughes empire are shrouded in mystery and controversy. Howard Hughes' mental illness was progressive and characterized by his obsessive concern to control every aspect of his environment. He died April 5, 1976, on an airline flight to a hospital in Houston, Texas. Hughes left no direct heir or will to his great fortune. The U.S. government was the big winner in the contest for the Hughes estate. Sixty percent of his fortune was taken as estate tax by the IRS.

HUGHES, HOWARD ROBARD

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