ECCENTRICS / Rashomon, Starring Howard Hughes

(9 of 12)
transport 700 men. The conception was perhaps too grandiose for the times—the plane was only 11 ft. shorter than a 747. After the war, Maine's Senator Owen Brewster demanded to know why Hughes had spent $18 million in Government funds and produced no flyable planes. Thereupon Hughes flew his monstrosity for a mile at 70 ft. over Los Angeles Harbor, the only time it was ever in the air. Today, at an annual rental of $46,000, the plane is hangared under guard on the Long Beach waterfront, a monument to Hughes' lifelong reluctance to admit failure—and his tendency to remember slights, real or fancied.

Into Nevada. Hughes was seriously injured in three plane crashes, the last and worst in 1946, when he was test-piloting the twin-engine XF11. One of its huge, counterrotating propellers froze. He brought the plane to a crash landing next to a Los Angeles country club. His chest was crushed and doctors doubted that he would live. The aftereffects of those crashes have been blamed for his later reclusiveness. He first grew a mustache while recovering from the XF-11 crash because the burns he had suffered made shaving painful. For all his feats. Hughes is regarded as a second-rate flyer by some pilots who have shared a cockpit with him.

In 1948 Hughes gained control of RKO Pictures. Despite heavy losses—$15 million in one year —he managed to sell out at a profit. At times, his management of TWA was also less than inspired. After long hesitation, he plunged into ordering jets on all sides, and without fully realizing it ran up commitments of close to $500 million. Noah Dietrich recalls in his book that when he remonstrated with Hughes and pointed out that the board of Hughes Tool had to be consulted, Hughes replied: "That's no problem; just tell those stooges to give their approval." He lost control of TWA in 1961, and after a lawsuit was later ordered to pay the company $136 million—with $9 million subsequently added for interest —on the grounds of mismanagement and breach of antitrust laws. That is one of the suits still hanging over him.

Hughes sold his shares of TWA in 1966, receiving $546 million for them. It was then that he began his inroads into Nevada, buying up five Las Vegas hotels, a casino in Las Vegas and another in Reno. He also acquired a TV station, a Las Vegas air terminal, thousands of acres of real estate, and a regional airline, now Hughes Airwest. Meantime, thanks in part to the fact that he left them alone under competent management, Hughes Tool and Hughes Aircraft, an electronics and satellite company, were thriving.

While he was still in high school, Hughes remarked: "I suppose I am not like other men. Most of them like to study people. I am not so interested in people as I should be, I guess. What I am tremendously interested in is science, the earth and the minerals that come with it."

The truth is that even before he became a recluse, he was never very good with people, uneasy with other men and unable to make lasting friendships, awkward and uncomfortable with women despite the beauties he squired in public, sometimes generous but often thoughtless of those who worked for him. Dietrich was paid $500,000 a year, but taxes took a huge chunk of that. Dietrich persistently badgered Hughes for part ownership. Hughes stalled for years. Finally, in 1957, Dietrich decided to