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He was the richest man in America, the world at his fingertips, and yet he was a prisoner to his own dark fears. His achievements were astounding – he created the fastest plane on the planet, was the driving force behind the largest aircraft ever built and was a pioneer in film making – and yet he is remembered for the eccentricities that drove him from hero to hermit. In his heyday, he was a romantic figure, with movie starlets flocking to be seen on his arm, and yet he spent the last 26 years of his life as a recluse, obsessed with cleanliness and controlling every aspect of his environment even as he sunk deeper and deeper into madness.
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Transcript provided by YouTube:
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When it comes to the life of Howard Robard Hughes, it can be a challenge to separate
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fact from fiction.
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Even the details of his birth were falsified.
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Official records give that date as December 24, 1905 in Houston, Texas.
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The reality is that he’d been born two months earlier in the oil town of Humble, a hundred
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miles from Texas.
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From there, the lies built upon each other.
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He was not one of triplets, nor was he his mother’s sister’s illegitimate son or
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a substitute baby brought in to replace the one who had died.
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All of these fanciful stories were later told by the man himself in order to build upon
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the aura that surrounded his name.
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Hughes senior, known as ‘Bo’ – a shortened form of his middle name Robards – had been
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a penniless scoundrel, bumming his way round Joplin, Missouri at the turn of the 19th Century.
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In 1899, he was run out of town by the furious father of a girl he tried to seduce.
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With no other options, the dreamy eyed larrikin decided to try his hand at the oil business.
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Making his way to Texas, Bo just happened to be on hand when a 1000-foot spume of black
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oil hurtled from the ground at Spindeltop on January 10th, 1901.
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He was among the first to grab claims, buying up land for a few dollars an acre, and selling
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it days later for hundreds.
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Within a few months, having amassed a small fortune, Bo moved to Houston, where he founded
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the Texas Oil Fuel Company, the forerunner to Texaco.
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Within six months he had also married the darkly pretty, but seriously hypochondriacal
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Allene Gano.
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Allene was terrified of small animals and had an insect phobia, fueled by an obsession
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with cleanliness.
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These traits were to find full expression in her only son…
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By the time that Howard, junior, known as ‘Sonny’, entered the world in 1905, his
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father was still chasing oil.
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Still he was frustrated, not so much at finding the oil locations, but at the inferior quality
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of the drilling tools that were available.
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Finally, out of exasperation, he set his sights on designing a better drill bit.
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On November 20th, 1908, he emerged from his study with designs for a bit that contained
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168 cutting edges.
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He had just invented the Hughes Tool Bit, from which would flow the millions of dollars
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that would both enrich, and ultimately destroy, his son and heir.
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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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By the age of four, it was obvious that Sonny Hughes had inherited the partial deafness
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that ran in the family.
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The condition, hereditary otosclerosis would become progressively worse over Howard’s
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lifetime.
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As a youngster, it caused him to become isolated and introspective.
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Now that money was no object, the eight-year old Hughes was sent to an exclusive private
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school.
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He didn’t make a very good impression, with a head teacher remembering him as an uppity,
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snobbish bore who refused to join in with the other boys, preferring to sit with the
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girls.
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Not surprisingly, he soon gained a reputation as a sissy…
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But the young Hughes also gained a reputation as a technical whizz-kid.
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He put together his first wireless radio transmitter when he was 11-years old.
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A year later his picture appeared in the local newspaper, proudly standing next to the first
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motorized bicycle in Houston, which he had put together from steam engine parts.
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In an effort to get his nervous and timid boy to ‘man up’, Bo decided to pack him
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off to the boot camp of the day, the Boy Scouts.
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So, during the 1916 summer recess, Sonny found himself in the middle of the Pohokop Mountains
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in Pike County, Pennsylvania under the tutelage of a grizzled old timer by the name of ‘General’
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Dan Beard.
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Surprisingly, the young Hughes took to the woodsman life like the proverbial duck to
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water.
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He was already quite fit and quickly learned to whittle, perfect Indian signs and simulate
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bird calls.
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He seemed to excel under the military discipline of the camp, too.
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Away from the over protective gaze of his mother, it seemed, he was able to shake off
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his effeminate nature and show his true colors.
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In the Fall of 1920, a fourteen-year-old Sonny went with his father to the Harvard-Yale rowing
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crew races in Connecticut.
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Hughes senior promised to buy his son whatever he wanted if his favorite, Harvard, won the
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race.
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When Harvard smashed Yale by 14 seconds, the boy held out his hand in expectation and asked
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for five dollars.
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He then pointed to a sign further up the river advertising rides on a Curtis Flying Boat
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for $5.
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Hughes, senior reluctantly joined his son for the ten-minute flight.
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It made the father sick, but the son had just discovered the one true love of his life.
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He found the experience of flying both exhilarating and liberating.
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From that moment on, he would be at his most peaceful when he was alone in an airplane
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– flying high above a world that he so often tried to escape.
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Movie Mogul
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By the age of 19, both of Hughes’ parents were dead.
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His mother had died suddenly when he was 16, after suffering complications from an ectopic
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pregnancy.
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Bo died less than two years later of a heart attack, leaving Hughes jr the heir to the
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Hughes Tool Company.
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He dropped out of college to take control of the company, quickly discovering that he
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knew nothing about the oil business.
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He soon hired a self taught accountant by the name of Noah Dietrich to take the controls.
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At the same time, Hughes legally declared himself an adult and seized full control of
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the entire family fortune.
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Hughes now had the money that he needed to pursue his greatest passions.
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Those passions had nothing to with oil – instead they revolved around building and flying airplanes
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and making movies in Hollywood.
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Another of his passions was golf.
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One day, while playing at the Beverly Hills Country Club, he watched as a biplane flew
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overhead and tipped its wing at him.
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Howard was able to track down the flyer and offered to pay him the outrageous sum of a
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hundred dollars per day if he would teach him to fly.
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The pilot readily agreed and, two years later, Hughes was issued his private pilot’s license.
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Despite his chronic shyness, Howard was fascinated with the glitz and glamor of Hollywood.
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In order to break into the business, he signed talented director Lewis Milestone to a 3-year
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contract.
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The pairing immediately struck gold with their debut picture, ‘Two Arabian Knights’,
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claiming an Academy Award in 1927.
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This gave Hughes the confidence to take on his next challenge – a fusion of his two
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great loves, flying and movies.
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Failing to find a director who shared his passion for the skies, Howard decided to go
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it alone – writing, producing and directing the world’s first true aviation picture,
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Hell’s Angels.
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This was going to be his magnus opus and he was prepared to pour in as much money, time
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and effort as was needed to create a masterpiece.
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An air-fleet was contracted that was bigger than that of some countries.
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During aerial filming sequences Howard’s obsessive compulsions led him to fixate on
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such things as cloud formations.
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He would scrap valuable minutes of perfectly good footage, forcing his pilots to reshoot
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until the clouds were just right.
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One day, Hughes, in an effort to control every minute aspect of an aerial shoot, went up
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in a small scout plane.
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But no sooner had he ascended than the plane went into a tail-spin and crashed to the ground.
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Howard managed to walk away uninjured, the first of a number of miraculous plane crash
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escapes.
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A bemused stunt man commented that ‘at least he hasn’t injured his check writing arm.’
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Howard’s obsession with perfection meant that the shooting schedule for Hell’s Angels
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got totally out of control.
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In the meantime, the public had become infatuated with the latest Hollywood innovation – talkies.
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Against everyone’s advice Hughes decided to rescript the movie and reshoot all of the
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dialogue scenes, this time adding sound.
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The reshoot proved to be the break of a lifetime for a former bit player named Harlean Carpenter.
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The leading lady of the movie, Greta Nissen, was cut because of her strong Norwegian accent
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and Carpenter stepped into the role.
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Hughes transformed her into Jean Harlow, the platinum blond bombshell who became a sensation
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during the 1930’s.
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Hell’s Angels was a box office smash, returning double its production cost of $4 million,
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which was an exorbitant amount at that time.
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Unfortunately for Hughes, three flops followed, Hughes cashed in on the public’s fascination
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with gangsters by producing Scarface, based on the life of Al Capone (we’ve actually
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got a video on him, you can find a link in the description below).
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Always one to push the bounds, Hughes filled the film with violence and obscenities.
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The sensors knocked it back, demanding major edits.
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To their surprise, Hughes sued them – and he won.
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The movie would be released just as he intended.
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After the release of Scarface, Hughes stepped back from Hollywood to indulge his other great
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passion – flying.
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Aviator
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In 1934 he easily won a flying race in Miami.
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This success fuelled his ambitions, inspiring him to set up the Hughes Aircraft Company.
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He now set out to design and build the world’s fastest racing plane.
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The result of his efforts was the H1, which Hughes flew to a new world speed record of
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352 miles per hour on August 18th, 1935.
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By 1938, Hughes was intent on achieving another world first – the fastest flight around the
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world.
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In a modified Lockheed 14, he took to the skies with a hand-picked crew and set off
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from New York.
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Sixteen hours and thirty-eight minutes later they landed in Paris, then onto Moscow and
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Siberia.
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Three days, nineteen hours and fourteen minutes after setting out they were back in New York.
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Hughes was hailed as a conquering hero.
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For three days the painfully shy adventurer endured ticker tape parades and receptions
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in New York, Chicago, Washington and Houston.
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In 1940, Hughes moved into commercial aviation by grabbing a controlling share of Trans World
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Airlines (TWA).
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A short time later, the US Government came calling.
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They wanted Hughes Aircraft to supply plane parts, artillery shells and cannon barrels
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to help supply the war effort in Europe.
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Two years later, with America well and truly immersed in the conflict, Hughes was contracted
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to design and build a massive flying boat in order to overcome the German U-boat menace
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that was causing serious problems for US transport vessels.
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While doing the testing and design for this project, Hughes was involved in his fourth
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plane crash.
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He was testing a Sikorsky S-43 amphibian aircraft on Lake Mead, Nevada.
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The plane went down into the frigid waters, killing a CAA inspector and an engineer who
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were also onboard.
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Hughes managed to walk away, but he did receive a large gash to the top of his head…
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Mental Illness
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It was around this time that Hughes began to exhibit patterns of behavior that seemed
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odd to onlookers.
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Compulsive hand washing to avoid germs, checking and re-checking his work, always seeking symmetry
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and constantly trying to make things perfect – all classic signs of OCD – were seen
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as symptoms of a deteriorating mind.
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This was hardly a good time for whispers of insanity…
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With his business empire rapidly expanding and his military contracts imposing weighty
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demands, Hughes was facing stresses and pressures from all directions.
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Two huge contracts, for the XF-11 Reconnaissance Plane and the HK-1 Spruce Goose, were both
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over budget and overdue.
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Most of the delays were due to Hughes’ incessant tinkering and his insistence on being the
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test pilot for both planes.
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And it was this insistence which brought about his closest call yet…
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On July 7th 1946, Hughes took the XF-11 for its first test flight – over the Los Angeles
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basin.
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For the first 45 minutes the plane functioned perfectly.
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Then, suddenly, a propeller malfunction causing the plane to plummet to the ground.
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Desperately wrestling with the controls, Hughes hoped to land on a fairway at the Los Angeles
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country club.
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Instead he plunged through the roof of a nearby house.
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This was one crash that Hughes wasn’t able to walk away from.
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He was extracted from the wreckage as it went up in flames and rushed to the hospital.
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He suffered severe head trauma and multiple burns, along with fractures to his neck.
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These injuries were going to cause him suffering for the rest of his life.
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To control his pain, Hughes started taking drugs…
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He relied on a 3 part cocktail of drugs – codeine, valium and empirit – drugs he took daily for
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the next 30 years.
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Still, the pain and head injuries affected his behavior, causing his OCD to spin out
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of control.
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Long before his reliance on pain killers, Howard Hughes had another, all embracing addiction
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– to women.
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When he had come to Hollywood in 1925, he had a wife – and an enormous sexual appetite.
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The wife, Ella, soon tired of his infidelities, filing for divorce in 1929.
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The sexual appetite remained though, and was satisfied with a list of Hollywood conquests
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that would include such stars as Jean Peters, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and
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Katherine Hepburn.
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Hughes was obsessed with the female form, and it was this infatuation that inspired
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his most controversial film, The Outlaw.
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Set during the old west, the movie was a showcase for the voluptuous Jane Russell, with Hughes
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personally ensuring that here dresses were cut low enough to accentuate her size 38D
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bust.
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Once again the censors were outraged, but Hughes was laughing all the way to the bank…
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By the mid 1940’s, Hughes’ health issues were impacting upon his increasingly complicated
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business empire.
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In addition to his ownership of TWA and Hughes Tool Company, he now also owned the RKO movie
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studio.
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At the same time, he was building a huge aerospace company to develop spy technology for the
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military.
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In 1947 the pressure on Hughes was ramped up by several notches when he was subpoenaed
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to appear before Congress regarding alleged improprieties in his government contracts.
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In a commanding performance, with the TV cameras rolling, he strongly denied profiteering from
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the war effort.
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It is ironic that this congressional appearance – his most confident, strong and dominant
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public outing – was also the last time that the public would see Howard Hughes.
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The brilliant and fearless visible millionaire was transforming into a mysterious, invisible
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recluse…
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Withdrawal from Society
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The fifty-year old Hughes was now intent on completely retreating from society.
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The symptoms of his undiagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder were by now all too apparent.
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He refused to shake hands or touch door handles, instructions to his aids were repeated in
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meticulous detail and he flew into violent rages when things were not exactly as he had
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commanded.
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Those who worked for Hughes began calling him ‘the old man’ and they became seriously
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concerned that he was going insane.
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The FBI, who were keeping tabs on him, noted in 1957 that he was acting like a ‘screwball
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paranoiac’ adding that he could even be capable of murder…
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Then, out of the blue, Hughe’s declared that he was going to marry one of the many
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starlets he had been seeing, Jean Peters.
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Many people believe that Hughes decided to get hitched so that his aides would no longer
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be able to have him committed to an asylum.
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Less than a year after marrying Peters in a Nevada motel room, Hughes descended into
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one of the most bizarre episodes of his life.
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He told his aides that he wanted to view some movies at a studio on Sunset Boulevard.
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He didn’t leave the darkened screening room for more than four months…
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His diet consisted of chocolate bars and milk, and he spent his days and nights sitting naked
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in a chair staring at the screen.
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During this time time, Hughes communicated with his aides by scribbling on a yellow legal
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pad.
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Instructions included not looking at him and not speaking to him unless spoken to first.
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Over those four months at the studio his personal hygiene rapidly deteriorated, even as his
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germ obsession intensified.
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When he finally emerged from the screening room in the spring of 1958, Hughes was an
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unkempt, ragged and pathetic mess…
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He immediately checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, another place your supposed to stay
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temporarily, but Hughes ended up staying in for years.
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Here he reverted to his screening room habits, sitting naked in the dark hour after hour.
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Business dealings were conducted by telephone and through his handwritten instructions.
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His drug use escalated as he fought continuous pain, now injecting himself with morphine
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to supplement his mega doses of codeine and valium.
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In 1966, conducting negotiations completely by telephone, Hughes sold his controlling
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share in TWA.
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This made him a billionaire and the richest man in America.
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But rather than sit on his fortune, Hughes, despite his pathetic physical condition, set
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his sights on conquering a new frontier – Las Vegas.
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His first move was to relocate to the penthouse suite of the Desert Inn, where he could continue
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his bizarre lifestyle without interruption.
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He then began buying up the city, starting with the hotel he was living in.
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His investments included a local TV station, bought so that he could call them at any time
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and demand that they play the movies he wanted to watch.
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By 1970, Hughes was a prisoner of his own design.
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And then, as if things weren’t crazy enough already, he suddenly left the Desert Inn without
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warning.
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Many in his entourage thought that he’d been abducted.
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But three weeks later he turned up in the Bahamas.
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From there he announced that he was turning the day to day operations of his empire over
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to a group of Mormon aids…
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In 1972, Hughes relocated to a hotel room in London.
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He left the room only once – to go flying.
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But this was like no flight he’d ever taken.
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Climbing into the cockpit he took off all his clothes, flying around London in the nude…
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Following what would be his final flight at the helm, Hughes’ condition rapidly deteriorated.
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He took a fall in his London hotel room, increasing his reliance on pain killers and taking away
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his ability to walk…
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Death
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Things went downhill from here.
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As if by design, Hughes last hours were spent in the air – he was traveling to Houston to
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receive medical treatment.
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His emaciated body finally breathed its last breath on April, 5th, 1976.
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The world was shocked when the autopsy revealed the terrible condition of his body – the
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result of undiagnosed OCD, multiple severe head injuries, and 30 years of largely self
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imposed neglect.
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It was a sad end for a brilliant man.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.