No one makes history more interesting and fun than your QoD writers. I know I could google "Howard Hughes in Las Vegas" and read about that, at least the Wikipedia entry. But I'd rather read what you have to say about when Hughes lived in Las Vegas and what all he owned.
Why, thank you for the compliment. Appreciation is always appreciated (and it's a good way to impel us to seriously consider answering questions).
As for Howard Hughes, his attraction to Las Vegas dated back to the early 1950s, when he liked to fly in, piloting the planes himself, take over floors of hotel-casinos, shoot craps at all hours, and try to buy showgirls for himself and his friends.
In 1965, he sold his airline, Trans World, for nearly a half-billion dollars. Cash money. Rather than hand over a huge chunk to Uncle Sugar, he needed to invest most of the proceeds and he apparently decided to see how much it might cost to acquire the entire city of Las Vegas.
He arrived in November 1966 -- reportedly at midnight, incognito, from an ambulance and through a back door of the Desert Inn, trailing a truckload of Kleenex and a retinue of Mormon advisors. He set up shop on the top floor of the DI, the toniest resort-casino in town at that time. As the legend goes, by mid-December, the DI owners wanted their ninth-floor suites back, in order to accommodate high rollers heading in for Christmas. But Hughes and his entourage had grown so comfortable (armed guards stationed at the entrances, an air-purifying system working round the clock, blackout draperies on all the windows, and a special internal phone system) that he wasn’t in the mood to be evicted. So in March 1967, he bought the whole joint for $13.2 million.
Again according to legend, Hughes remained exactly where he was, barely seeing the light of day, for the next three years. But he moved his cash in a big way, embarking on the most robust buying spree Nevada had ever seen. When the dust settled, he owned the Desert Inn, Sands, Castaways, and Frontier and was ready to buy the Stardust when antitrust laws got in the way. That sale failed, but he did manage to purchase the Silver Slipper, the Landmark, big vacant parcels on the Strip and around the city, a TV station, a small local airline, North Las Vegas Airport, casinos in Reno, and mining property throughout Nevada.
In addition, during this time he unveiled, in a personal statement that broke 15 years of official silence, the master plan for "his" city: He intended to turn Las Vegas into a space-age airport that would accommodate the supersonic jets (SSTs) that Hughes foresaw in the future.
In all, he dropped $300 million between March 1967 and April 1970. One inflation calculator we checked estimated that in today's dollars, that would be roughly $2.5 billion.
Although Hughes ultimately contributed nothing to the Las Vegas skyline or industrial sector, the presence alone of the billionaire master financier and visionary added an enormous degree of long-needed legitimacy to Las Vegas and his investments stimulated an unprecedented boom. The Aladdin, Caesars Palace, Four Queens, Circus Circus, Landmark, and International (now Westgate), among other smaller casinos, all opened while Hughes was holed up on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn.
In addition, he demanded, and received, special dispensation from state casino regulators. Prior to his whirlwind of cash, all casino owners, no matter how small their percentage of ownership, were required to appear in person before the Gaming Control Board. Hughes, being Hughes, simply refused -- and got away with it. This paved the way for the Nevada Corporate Gaming Acts of 1967 and 1969, which allowed, for the first time in Nevada history, publicly traded corporations to acquire gambling licenses without the need for every stockholder to be individually licensed. MGM, Hilton, Holiday Inn, and others quickly entered the industry.
In the final analysis, the Hughes' era was a rousing success for everyone but Hughes himself. In 1970, he divorced his first and only wife, Jean Peters. He also lost a $150 million lawsuit to TWA. And he fled Las Vegas the way he came -- on a stretcher.
especially after the Clifford Irving hoax. I went through Las Vegas quite often in that era, and everybody was happy to share their opinions and theories with you. One common view was that he was dead, and had been for years. Several books came out covering his Las Vegas "residency" (to coin a phrase) including "Howard Hughes in Las Vegas" by Omar Garrison, and "Howard--the Amazing Mr. Hughes" by his long-time factotum and accountant, Noah Dietrich. Dick Odessky describes a 1950's Hughes Vegas visit in his book "Fly on the Wall" (Huntington Press, 1999). Even back then, he was already acting a little odd. Jimmy Dean played the reclusive, Hughes-like character "Willard Whyte" in "Diamonds are Forever" (1971); and a similar mysterious casino owner appears in an episode of the 1972 "Banacek" TV series. He looks just like you'd expect, and asks George Peppard for a light in the closing scene. Actress Terry Moore ("Mighty Joe Young," 1949) also claimed to have been married to him.