The Eccentric Casino Mogul
1930’s America is becoming more and more a chapter of the history books then a cultural memory. The days of big bands fronted by Duke Ellington, or the Count Basie Orchestra, playing jazz and swing in the big Vegas casinos and riverboats to swarms of appreciative listeners soaking up those sweet melodies from the table games is a thing of the past. Outside of movies, few are aware of the flashy and elegant history the gaming scene of today holds a claim to. This scene was manhandled, for the most part, by shady organizations. Many people these days know of Howard Hughes by name only, not by reputation. If they know anything about him at all, it’s probably due in large part to the film The Aviator, which starred Leonardo Dicaprio as the aviation pioneer, movie maker, womanizing playboy and lord of political intrigue.
What the movie didn’t show was Hughes the casino mogul and Vegas real estate kingpin, whose acquisitions played a large part in curtailing the questionable syndicate’s hold over the desert city.
Howard Hughes became heir to a massive fortune when his parents passed away in his teens, leaving him the lucrative Hughes Tool Company. Without finishing high school, and without a college degree, Hughes became one of the most influential men in the US. He made a splash on the scene of popular culture with his movie Hell’s Angels which, at the time, was the most expensive movie ever to be produced. It cost 3.5 million to make, only made two million at the box office (making it a net loss), but it started the most prominent, impressive and unusual aviation career in the history of the field.
Hughes was a playboy, and notorious for frequenting expensive hotels, restaurants and theatres in Vegas and Hollywood, always with a new and different movie star by his side. Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fontaine were but a few of the more famous woman whose company he enjoyed during his youthful heyday.
After making a fortune with many and various aircraft innovations - in particular fuselage and hydraulic redesign, and the buying and selling of various airlines - the incredibly rich, incredibly clever Howard Hughes experienced a more than strange turn in the course of his life. Sadly, due to aggravated obsessive-compulsive disorder and phobias he became a hypochondriac and spent most of the rest of his life totally alone, all of his business and personal needs taken care of by a personal staff… who never saw him. He was terrified of germs and illness and kept himself in near complete isolation until his death in 1976 of kidney failure and collapsed veins.
Finding a personality of this era host to more rumors of fishy organizations, CIA and Presidential intrigues would be hard to find. His involvement in the failed assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and his association with American President Richard Nixon, in particular, are very often speculated upon by conspiracy theorists and historians alike. It was in this troubled time in the mid 60’s that Hughes came to Vegas under mysterious circumstances.
Arriving on a night train and hustled up to the top floor of the Desert Inn, he would stay there until he left Vegas four years later. His investment and buyout of large quantities of casinos played a large part in the flight of the syndicates from the Vegas scene. The Nevada State Gaming Commission could not have been more pleased to have such a famous and reputable personage investing in its city with, at the time, the most sordid of reputations due to its invasion by the felonious lords.
In a short time, Hughes had bought out the majority of the syndicate owned casinos and upon his retreat from Vegas to the Bahamas four years later, was the man who owned the most property and the most casinos in the entire state of Nevada!
