Howard Hughes: Encyclopedia II - Howard Hughes

The elderly Howard Hughes moved with his entourage from hotel to hotel and from Beverly Hills to Boston to Las Vegas, where he eventually bought the Desert Inn after the proprietors threatened to evict him. He also purchased several other hotels/casinos (Castaways, New Frontier, The Landmark Hotel and Casino, Sands and Silver Slipper) from the Mafia, transactions which ultimately ended mob control of the city 's hotels and casinos. 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" on account of the many Latter-day Saints on the committee. In addition to supervising day-to-day business operations, they also went to great pains to satisfy Hughes's every bizarre whim. Hughes once took a liking to Baskin Robbins' banana-nut ice cream, and 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 350 gallons, the smallest amount the company could provide for a special order, and had it shipped from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. A few days after the order arrived, Hughes announced he had grown tired of banana-nut and only wanted vanilla ice cream, with the consequence that his aides were distributing free banana-nut ice cream to their friends and family for years after the fact.

Having bought up many of Las Vegas's major businesses, Hughes wielded enormous political and economic power in Nevada and was often able to influence the outcome of elections and ballot votes. He even once ordered his aides to offer $1 million each to presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon if they would shut down the open-air nuclear weapons testing program in Nevada (Hughes was afraid of the risk posed by the residual nuclear radiation). His aides never offered the bribes, reporting to Hughes that Johnson had declined the offer, and that they had been unable to contact Nixon.

As he deteriorated, Hughes moved around to the Bahamas, Vancouver, London, and several other locations, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse of his hotel and insisting on having the windows blacked out. Many of the hotels in which he stayed were forced to undergo major renovations to repair the damage Hughes had caused to the premises.

In 1971, he divorced Jean Peters; they had been living apart for several years. She agreed to a lifetime alimony payment of $70,000 a year, adjusted for inflation, and waived all claims to Hughes' estate. The usually untrusting Hughes surprised his aides when he did not insist on a confidentiality agreement from Peters as a condition of the divorce; aides reported that Peters was one of the few people Hughes never spoke ill of. Peters refused to discuss her life with Hughes, and declined several lucrative offers from big-name publishers and biographers. She would state only that she had not seen Hughes for several years before their divorce.

According to some Watergate historians, the infamous 1972 burglary of Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C. was ordered by President Nixon's aides with the intention of recovering potentially damaging papers documenting payments from Hughes to Nixon and establishing an apparent connection between Hughes and the Democratic Party (Larry O'Brien, the Democratic National Committee chairman whose office was broken into, had been a paid lobbyist for Hughes since 1968).

In 1972, author Clifford Irving created a media sensation when he claimed to have co-written an authorized autobiography of Howard Hughes. Hughes was such a reclusive figure that he hesitated in coming out to publicly refute Irving's statement, leading many people to place faith in the truth of Irving's claim. Prior to the book's publication, however, Hughes (in a rare telephone conference) finally denounced Irving, and the entire project was eventually exposed as a hoax. Irving later spent fourteen months in jail.