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Howard Hughes in Las Vegas · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
0:15
Speaker 2: should know. Root and Toot and wild West Mobbed Up
0:20
Speaker 2: Vegas Spectacular.
0:22
Speaker 1: That's right. Before we get going, though, we want to
0:25
Speaker 1: very quickly just say our friends Ben Harrison and Adam Pranica,
0:29
Speaker 1: who we talk about a lot, genuine friends of ours
0:33
Speaker 1: of the Greatest Generation podcast. They have done a very
0:37
Speaker 1: brave thing and got out on their own. Yeah, and
0:40
Speaker 1: left the Max Fun Network, which is always kind of
0:43
Speaker 1: a scary thing, and they are they're looking for people
0:46
Speaker 1: to support them there. They're loyal fans to support them
0:50
Speaker 1: with a mirror at entry level six dollars a month
0:53
Speaker 1: for an ad free version of not only The Greatest Generation,
0:56
Speaker 1: but my favorite two podcasts that they do, the Factory
0:59
Speaker 1: Seconds podcast where they one by one eat their way
1:03
Speaker 1: through the cheesecake Factory menu, and the Santa Monica Mountains
1:07
Speaker 1: podcast their rewatch of Baywatch.
1:11
Speaker 2: That's just those guys are just a delight as people,
1:15
Speaker 2: as podcasters all of that. So where would they go?
1:18
Speaker 2: Where would somebody go and be like, take my six
1:20
Speaker 2: dollars and then some.
1:22
Speaker 1: They are going. Adam is sending everyone to Greatest dot
1:26
Speaker 1: supercast dot com, and you know, support these guys, support
1:30
Speaker 1: independent artists. It's like I said, it's a very sort
1:33
Speaker 1: of brave thing to do to go out on your
1:34
Speaker 1: own these days and try and be an indie artist
1:37
Speaker 1: in any creative realm. So we love Ben, we love Adam.
1:42
Speaker 1: I love those podcasts, and so I signed up obviously
1:45
Speaker 1: because I still got to get my I'm eventually going
1:47
Speaker 1: to be a guest on Factory seconds to keep promising
1:49
Speaker 1: me nice. I'm a bit of a heel so far,
1:52
Speaker 1: because at one point I said that the Cheesecake Factory
1:56
Speaker 1: just I assume they did like bagged food like every
1:59
Speaker 1: other big cheer like that, And I was wrong, and
2:02
Speaker 1: they have not stopped making fun of me since then.
2:04
Speaker 3: About that?
2:05
Speaker 2: Is it from scratch there? Oh? Wayay?
2:07
Speaker 1: They cook all that stuff, even like their sauces.
2:09
Speaker 2: Dude, Wow, No, I had no idea. I'll have to
2:13
Speaker 2: send them that gift certificate we got for Jerry for
2:19
Speaker 2: She's Cake Factory that she was like, I don't want this.
2:22
Speaker 2: She wouldn't take it. So we're gonna have to give
2:26
Speaker 2: it to them. They'll put it to kids use, all right.
2:28
Speaker 1: So thanks for letting shout out these guys, and now
2:30
Speaker 1: onto Howard Hughes in Las Vegas.
2:33
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, also huge thanks to our sponsor of the episode,
2:36
Speaker 2: Cheese Cake Factory.
2:37
Speaker 1: No, man, that'd be great. I don't see why they
2:39
Speaker 1: don't sponsor Ben and Adam because almost everything they rate
2:42
Speaker 1: pretty highly.
2:43
Speaker 2: That's a great idea, get to it. Cheese Cake Factory, agreed.
2:47
Speaker 2: You know who I would have guessed could probably make
2:50
Speaker 2: that happen, but it turns out it was a toss
2:53
Speaker 2: up whether they'd be able to or not. Howard Hughes.
2:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've commissioned this one, and I'm really glad you did,
3:00
Speaker 1: because I don't know if you've seen the movie The
3:02
Speaker 1: Aviator from Martin Scorsees.
3:06
Speaker 3: About me.
3:07
Speaker 2: I have not known.
3:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's you know, it's a great movie. Obviously
3:10
Speaker 1: it's scarsezy. But they cover a bit of Howard Hughes's
3:16
Speaker 1: stint in Vegas, probably about ten or fifteen minutes of
3:20
Speaker 1: the movie there with with Leo obviously playing Howard Hughes
3:24
Speaker 1: hold up in his hotel room. And when I say
3:28
Speaker 1: hold up, I mean hold up.
3:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, naked is a j bird, naked is a jake.
3:32
Speaker 3: You get to see Leo's but you know.
3:34
Speaker 2: Well, he does a helicopter at one point, I hear,
3:37
Speaker 2: oh god, no. The scene inside of Howard Hughes's real
3:43
Speaker 2: life hotel room in Las Vegas was the opposite of
3:46
Speaker 2: the kind of place where you'd see a helicopter. It
3:49
Speaker 2: was not at all celebratory or funny or childish or juvenile.
3:54
Speaker 2: It was a dark, dark place and basically every sense
3:57
Speaker 2: of the word dark.
3:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, we should probably do a little bit
4:01
Speaker 1: of background on Hughes himself. He was born in Houston.
4:05
Speaker 1: He's a Houston guy in nineteen oh five, and he
4:10
Speaker 1: came from an oil family, but not like a Getty
4:13
Speaker 1: oil family. His dad had co patented a drill bit,
4:17
Speaker 1: and sometimes you can make a huge fortune just by
4:20
Speaker 1: doing something like that. But that revolutionized oil drilling, and
4:24
Speaker 1: he made a ton of money doing it. And by
4:26
Speaker 1: the time Hughes was eighteen his parents had passed. He
4:29
Speaker 1: inherited that vast fortune and business and dropped out of college,
4:33
Speaker 1: bought out his family members and said this is my
4:36
Speaker 1: company now.
4:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he was really interested in two things. He
4:41
Speaker 2: wanted to make movies and he wanted to build airplanes. Yeah, yeah,
4:46
Speaker 2: and he did both. He founded Hughes Aircraft Company, and
4:49
Speaker 2: then he also bought a bunch of shares in Transworld
4:52
Speaker 2: Airlines so that he controlled that company. And he bought
4:56
Speaker 2: controlling shares in RKO Studio, so he started producing movies,
5:00
Speaker 2: he started building airplanes, and he very quickly became one
5:04
Speaker 2: of the most famous people in the United States, if
5:07
Speaker 2: not the world, because he was dashing, He had a
5:11
Speaker 2: great mustache. I believe he was six foot four. He
5:14
Speaker 2: knew how to attract like Starlit's in Hollywood. He went
5:18
Speaker 2: to all the right events. He was like a proto
5:22
Speaker 2: Tom Ford.
5:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
5:25
Speaker 1: He very famously dated both Catherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner.
5:30
Speaker 1: He was his own test pilot and you know which
5:34
Speaker 1: meant at some point he crashed and he was very
5:37
Speaker 1: badly injured and lived a lot of his life in
5:39
Speaker 1: chronic pain due to a lot of things, but for
5:43
Speaker 1: sure the second third degree burns that were over most
5:45
Speaker 1: of his body. And like you said, America loved him.
5:48
Speaker 1: He was sort of a national hero.
5:51
Speaker 3: But he was in.
5:52
Speaker 1: Pretty bad shape, partially because of the plane crash, for sure,
5:58
Speaker 1: because that led to a a morphine and opioid addiction,
6:02
Speaker 1: which was really put him put him down for the count.
6:06
Speaker 2: Did you ever see Dope Sick?
6:09
Speaker 3: Did I see Dope Sick?
6:10
Speaker 2: No?
6:10
Speaker 1: I never saw that.
6:11
Speaker 2: That's the one with Michael Keaton.
6:12
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I never saw that.
6:14
Speaker 2: Hurd scre so good, Chuck, go back and watch it
6:16
Speaker 2: is so good. Yeah, But that seems to be like generally,
6:20
Speaker 2: how opioid addictions outside of adolescence develop, Like somebody injures himself.
6:27
Speaker 2: They're like, here, take these for the pain, and then
6:29
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you're like, I'm going to keep
6:31
Speaker 2: taking these. Yeah, And that's exactly what happened to him
6:34
Speaker 2: as well. By the middle of the nineteen fifties, he
6:37
Speaker 2: was completely addicted to opioid It's like totally dependent on them,
6:42
Speaker 2: and it had such an impact on his life that
6:46
Speaker 2: he stopped going out in public. By nineteen sixty one,
6:49
Speaker 2: that's the last time the public saw Howard Hughes. And
6:54
Speaker 2: he actually began to decline so much that he lost
6:58
Speaker 2: about four inches of his stature and started just dropping
7:03
Speaker 2: weight by the tens of pounds, and mentally he really
7:09
Speaker 2: started to decline as well. It wasn't just his opioid
7:13
Speaker 2: addiction to morphine. He was set up to have serious
7:17
Speaker 2: mental illnesses from the outset, as we'll see, and they
7:21
Speaker 2: were exacerbated by the fact that he was gobsmackingly rich,
7:25
Speaker 2: did not have to worry about anyone saying no to
7:28
Speaker 2: him for any reason, was beloved by the public. Like
7:31
Speaker 2: all of the risk factors that could make somebody just
7:35
Speaker 2: completely twisted, like he had all of those just coming together.
7:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know, the germophobia is something we're
7:47
Speaker 1: going to talk a lot about, but that was a
7:48
Speaker 1: big part of what kind of crippled him. It wasn't
7:53
Speaker 1: the kind of germophobia where he was worried about cleaning
7:56
Speaker 1: himself because as we will see, when he was in Vegas,
7:58
Speaker 1: he would bathe once a year, and you know, grew
8:02
Speaker 1: his fingernails very famously out. Not grew them out, but
8:06
Speaker 1: they grew out. It wasn't something he was working on,
8:09
Speaker 1: but he just quit taking care of himself and all
8:11
Speaker 1: hygiene went out the window. But he was afraid of
8:13
Speaker 1: everything else getting him sick. He was afraid of the
8:16
Speaker 1: water being dirty. He drank only bottled water. I mean,
8:21
Speaker 1: we'll get through sort of the nitpicky details as we go,
8:24
Speaker 1: But like you said, public eye drops out in sixty one,
8:28
Speaker 1: moves to Vegas, well, didn't move. Initially went to Vegas
8:31
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six, and not because he had any
8:35
Speaker 1: interest in casinos or anything. He went because, you know,
8:39
Speaker 1: he heard about it being a great tax shelter and
8:43
Speaker 1: he had sold a ton of stock I guess all
8:46
Speaker 1: of his stock in twa that year and had a
8:48
Speaker 1: big tax bill. So he'd been sort of eyeing Vegas
8:51
Speaker 1: for a while. It had been investing in the state
8:54
Speaker 1: throughout the forties and the fifties. I think he did
8:57
Speaker 1: a land swap with a Bureau of Land Management which
9:00
Speaker 1: got him about forty square miles which was the most
9:03
Speaker 1: land that anybody had at the time in Clark County,
9:07
Speaker 1: and didn't do anything with it for a while. It
9:08
Speaker 1: was supposed to be the future home of Hughes Aircraft,
9:11
Speaker 1: but nobody was you know, Vegas at the time. Was
9:15
Speaker 1: this you know, out in the middle of nowhere, mob
9:18
Speaker 1: run town that respectable business didn't want anything to do with.
9:21
Speaker 1: So he couldn't get anyone as far as the higher
9:24
Speaker 1: ups and the engineers to leave California from Hughes aircraft.
9:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, like you the person, like the tourists going out
9:31
Speaker 2: to Vegas at the time were probably not in danger
9:33
Speaker 2: and you probably be treated well out there. But it
9:36
Speaker 2: was a really exotic, risky place, like in the mind
9:40
Speaker 2: of the American public because it was so thoroughly mopped up,
9:45
Speaker 2: it just was not a place that people go. And
9:48
Speaker 2: those of us around today, it's hard to conceive of
9:52
Speaker 2: Vegas being like the opposite of a tourist place, like
9:57
Speaker 2: it's yeah, you're just a very specif a kind of
10:00
Speaker 2: person would go to Vegas, and most people would avoid
10:03
Speaker 2: it entirely.
10:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that was it was sin city back then,
10:06
Speaker 1: and now it's sin City with achine over it.
10:10
Speaker 2: For sure. A sheene of jell O so.
10:13
Speaker 1: Hughes arrives in Vegas, like I hinted at earlier, he
10:17
Speaker 1: did not go there to move. Initially, he went there
10:20
Speaker 1: for was supposed to be like a ten day stay,
10:22
Speaker 1: I think, to kind of check things out. And once
10:24
Speaker 1: he got there, he didn't leave. He arrived by private train,
10:28
Speaker 1: was very secretly shuttled to the ninth floor, which is
10:31
Speaker 1: the top floor of the uh oh, what was.
10:33
Speaker 2: The name of it again, the Desert Sands.
10:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Desert in yeah, the Desert Inn hotel and casino,
10:39
Speaker 1: and just decided to stay stay there forever.
10:43
Speaker 2: Basically he did like like I mean, he had the
10:47
Speaker 2: whole ninth floor to himself, right, Yeah, and again, he
10:51
Speaker 2: hadn't been seen in public in five years. He was
10:53
Speaker 2: he was declining terribly, And this is where it seems
10:58
Speaker 2: to have just become full blown because he took the
11:02
Speaker 2: spot and made it a just a warren or a
11:07
Speaker 2: little cubby hole for him and all of the mental
11:10
Speaker 2: illness that he was suffering. So if you know about
11:14
Speaker 2: Howard Hughes and you know about his mental illness, this
11:17
Speaker 2: is where all of the legends, some of which seemed
11:21
Speaker 2: to be totally true, all came from.
11:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, he you know, blacked out the windows with curtains,
11:27
Speaker 1: apparently never once opened them at all.
11:29
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, there's a legend that the housekeepers when they
11:33
Speaker 2: finally came in after he left, that they found the
11:37
Speaker 2: drapes were rotted because they'd just been in the same
11:39
Speaker 2: place the entire time.
11:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't allow housekeeping in I think one time
11:45
Speaker 1: while he was there for what ended up being what
11:47
Speaker 1: like four years, he was suffering from anemia and malnutrition.
11:53
Speaker 3: He was.
11:54
Speaker 1: He was eating candy bars and sweets and canned like
11:58
Speaker 1: really sweet canned fruit and drinking milk. He was fifty
12:02
Speaker 1: nine years old at this time, and I think there
12:06
Speaker 1: was that story about the ice cream that he ate
12:09
Speaker 1: just like gobs and gobs of this specific flavor of
12:12
Speaker 1: ice cream.
12:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really good example of how powerful and
12:16
Speaker 2: rich he was, but also just how much he liked
12:19
Speaker 2: ice cream. Right, it was banana. It was Baskin Robbins
12:22
Speaker 2: banana ripple ice cream, right, and he was totally nuts
12:26
Speaker 2: about it and loved it and would eat it. And
12:29
Speaker 2: then Baskin Robbins, I guess didn't know this, and they
12:32
Speaker 2: discontinued the banana ripple ice cream, and so Howard Hughes
12:36
Speaker 2: had to start ordering it special order, I think, in
12:41
Speaker 2: two hundred gallon increments, like Basket Robins like, sure, we'll
12:45
Speaker 2: make you a special order, but you have to order
12:47
Speaker 2: two hundred gallons of it at a time.
12:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so he said, fine, as we'll see when
12:52
Speaker 1: you're like you said, The sort of combination of wealth
12:54
Speaker 1: and this, you know, unfortunate mental illness meant that he
12:57
Speaker 1: could kind of get anything done that he wanted, and
13:00
Speaker 1: that was a recurring theme while he was in Vegas,
13:03
Speaker 1: and this was one of them. So he bought, you know,
13:05
Speaker 1: the two hundred gallons and very soon after apparently it
13:07
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I like French vanilla the most,
13:10
Speaker 1: And so apparently the hotel was then stuck with that
13:13
Speaker 1: two hundred gallons that they took about a year to
13:15
Speaker 1: get rid of, which, by the way, it's way too
13:17
Speaker 1: long to keep that ice cream in.
13:18
Speaker 2: The preezer for sure. So yeah, that is a really
13:21
Speaker 2: good example of that. So of course, like he like
13:23
Speaker 2: you said, he's becoming malnourished, anemic. And he also was
13:31
Speaker 2: like posthumously, basically everybody who knows the stories, like he
13:35
Speaker 2: clearly had some form of OCD. Even if it wasn't
13:39
Speaker 2: like that was the main you know, mental illness he had,
13:42
Speaker 2: it was certainly a comorbidity, and that is evidenced by
13:47
Speaker 2: the minute directions he instructed his staff to use to
13:52
Speaker 2: do everyday things, like very famously he wrote twelve steps
13:58
Speaker 2: to opening a can of and putting it in the
14:01
Speaker 2: bowl that it would be served in.
14:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, he you know, like you have to
14:06
Speaker 1: get the label off, you have to scrub the can
14:09
Speaker 1: on the outside until it was down to the bar metal.
14:11
Speaker 1: You had to then wash the can on the outside again,
14:14
Speaker 1: pour the contents into the bowl without touching the can
14:17
Speaker 1: to the bowl. Apparently the secretaries who typed things up
14:22
Speaker 1: had to use gloves just to type things that would
14:25
Speaker 1: go to him. Tissues were a very big thing, the
14:29
Speaker 1: amount of instruction on tissues and have this many tissues
14:33
Speaker 1: to open this door, and have this many tissues to
14:35
Speaker 1: handle this thing that you give to me. And in
14:38
Speaker 1: the movie and the aviator, in that part, you know,
14:40
Speaker 1: there's just tissue boxes everywhere. And of course we're going
14:44
Speaker 1: to mention the Simpsons because mister Burns in the episode
14:47
Speaker 1: where they lampooned this time where mister Burns was the
14:51
Speaker 1: stand in for Howard Hughes also wore tissue boxes on
14:56
Speaker 1: his feet. And there's a picture of the only picture
15:00
Speaker 1: I know of of Howard Hughes in that hotel room.
15:01
Speaker 1: There may be more than one, but the only one
15:03
Speaker 1: I could find is a picture of long, gray bearded,
15:06
Speaker 1: gray haired, and fingernailed Howard Hughes sitting there with tissue
15:11
Speaker 1: boxes on his feet for shoes.
15:12
Speaker 2: Really, I didn't know that that existed. Okay, well, that
15:15
Speaker 2: confirms that that. Wow, that's great man that you found that,
15:19
Speaker 2: because that's a that was a semi confirmed legend from
15:24
Speaker 2: what I could find, and the best explanation I could
15:28
Speaker 2: find why you would wear Kleenex boxes on your feet
15:32
Speaker 2: is that to him? Like you said, he used tons
15:34
Speaker 2: of tissue because they were sterile, So of course the
15:38
Speaker 2: boxes that the tissues came in would be sterile as well,
15:41
Speaker 2: So rather than walking around a bare feet or whatever,
15:44
Speaker 2: he was basically using tissue boxes as disposable sterile slippers.
15:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just want a caveat that by saying
15:51
Speaker 1: the picture looks real to me, so I hope it's
15:52
Speaker 1: not one of those things where like, dude, you fell
15:55
Speaker 1: for the Howard Hughes picture.
15:57
Speaker 2: That's a deep cut though. Man, if you're making deep
16:00
Speaker 2: fakes today, you're probably not super familiar with Howard Hughes.
16:05
Speaker 2: So to go back and make that is, I mean,
16:07
Speaker 2: hats off to that guy.
16:08
Speaker 1: Really, I mean, or maybe it's not Howard Hughes. Now
16:11
Speaker 1: I'm like doubting myself. It looked like Howard Hughes, but.
16:14
Speaker 2: It was Wayne Newton.
16:16
Speaker 3: All Right.
16:17
Speaker 1: I feel like we should take a break and we're
16:19
Speaker 1: gonna come back and talk a little bit about who
16:21
Speaker 1: was there helping Howard Hughes on the ninth floor of
16:24
Speaker 1: that hotel right after this, all right, we're back.
16:52
Speaker 3: I think we set the stage pretty well.
16:53
Speaker 1: Of what's going on there on the ninth floor of
16:55
Speaker 1: the hotel there in Las Vegas. But we need to
16:58
Speaker 1: tell you how. You know, you need a lot of
17:01
Speaker 1: help there to live this way, and he had all
17:03
Speaker 1: the money in the world to do that. So he
17:05
Speaker 1: had a right hand man named Robert Mayhew, who was
17:09
Speaker 1: kind of did everything. He was a chief of security.
17:12
Speaker 1: He represented him publicly for everything. Possibly may have stood
17:17
Speaker 1: in for him on the telephone as Howard Hughes, and
17:20
Speaker 1: he worked for him for about eight years, and this
17:23
Speaker 1: is fairly shocking, but apparently never met him in person.
17:28
Speaker 1: They spoke on the phone. I think they had memos exchanged.
17:32
Speaker 1: I think they talked through the door even at some point,
17:34
Speaker 1: but they never met face to face.
17:36
Speaker 2: That was confirmed. Yeah, that's not like a legend. That's crazy.
17:40
Speaker 2: I saw he worked for him for fifteen years, even potentially,
17:45
Speaker 2: and he was one of his closest confidants. But since
17:48
Speaker 2: Mayhew was running the show, he was actually following orders
17:53
Speaker 2: from Howard Hughes. But he wasn't always getting them directly,
17:56
Speaker 2: like by phone or like you said, through the door.
17:59
Speaker 2: He would get them in notes or memos, which I
18:01
Speaker 2: think you mentioned as well. But they were carried for
18:04
Speaker 2: him by a group of six men known as the
18:07
Speaker 2: Mormon Mafia, because five of the six were Mormon. Because
18:12
Speaker 2: Howard Hughes is like, well, they're not allowed to drink,
18:14
Speaker 2: not allowed to smoke, or gamble or anything like that.
18:16
Speaker 2: I'll just hire Mormon so I don't have to worry
18:17
Speaker 2: about my closest employees being you know, suspect or untrustworthy.
18:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I guess this before Elvis got there, because
18:25
Speaker 1: I was wondering if the Memphis Mafia and the Mormon
18:28
Speaker 1: Mafia ever rubbed elbows. But probably not, because it sounds
18:31
Speaker 1: like the Mormon Mafia obviously would not have been anywhere
18:34
Speaker 1: near the gaming tables or the bars.
18:37
Speaker 2: Probably not. Although you know, no, that's.
18:41
Speaker 1: Why they hired him, you know, he wan he liked
18:43
Speaker 1: his loyalties, right.
18:44
Speaker 2: Yes, and like these were the people who interacted with
18:48
Speaker 2: him physically personally with tissues on their like mods of
18:52
Speaker 2: tissues of course, but they would inject him with his
18:55
Speaker 2: morphine although he tended to do that more often himself.
18:58
Speaker 2: They brought him the tissue that he would use, and
19:01
Speaker 2: they helped him communicate with Mayhew, along with tons of
19:07
Speaker 2: other stuff. But like these were the men who interacted
19:11
Speaker 2: with them, and like you said, there was a he
19:16
Speaker 2: had like kind of a strange version of OCD where
19:19
Speaker 2: he was freaked out by other people's germs, was not
19:21
Speaker 2: afraid of his own germs. And so I have the
19:24
Speaker 2: impression that when these men would come in and say
19:27
Speaker 2: they had to do something like his hearing aid out
19:30
Speaker 2: of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, Howard Hughes would
19:34
Speaker 2: not go into that bathroom for a while and would
19:36
Speaker 2: end up just like peeing on the carpet and covering
19:38
Speaker 2: it with tissues because again, nothing wrong with his germs,
19:41
Speaker 2: but he couldn't bear to go into the bathroom for
19:43
Speaker 2: a while after somebody had been in there.
19:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, he also.
19:49
Speaker 1: Saved his own urine and pede in bottles. I think
19:52
Speaker 1: that one has been confirmed, at least confirmed enough for
19:55
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese to have Leo DiCaprio ping in bottles and
19:58
Speaker 1: saving his.
19:58
Speaker 2: Own urine, and confirm enough for Matt Greeny.
20:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mentioned that he could. He
20:06
Speaker 1: had a reputation for sort of like, I'm surprised he
20:08
Speaker 1: didn't buy Baskin Robbins when I wanted at ice cream,
20:12
Speaker 1: But I guess he didn't need to since they made
20:14
Speaker 1: it for him. But he had a habit of doing that.
20:16
Speaker 1: One of great example is when he would just sit around,
20:19
Speaker 1: like he said, naked and watch television and watch movies.
20:23
Speaker 1: And when he found out that there weren't like good
20:27
Speaker 1: movies showing in Las Vegas on the local TV at
20:30
Speaker 1: the time, he bought a local TV station and reportedly
20:35
Speaker 1: like programmed the lineup himself. And there's one source that
20:39
Speaker 1: even says, like, you know, if he missed the start
20:42
Speaker 1: of the movie at least one time, he would call
20:44
Speaker 1: down to the station and have them start it over
20:47
Speaker 1: again so he could see the whole thing.
20:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's what their purpose was. Essentially. It
20:51
Speaker 2: just so happened that other people could watch the movies too,
20:54
Speaker 2: you know, right. He was obsessed with movies, and he
20:56
Speaker 2: would watch certain films, like he loved aeriel combat films.
21:01
Speaker 2: One of the films he producers, Hell's Angels, which is
21:03
Speaker 2: about fire pilots. He also loved Ice Station Zebra. Have
21:08
Speaker 2: you ever seen that movie? I've heard of it, but
21:10
Speaker 2: I've never seen it.
21:11
Speaker 3: No, Howard you saw it a lot though, right, one.
21:13
Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty times they say, yeah, it's a lot. Yeah,
21:17
Speaker 2: it's about like the It's a Cold War movie where
21:19
Speaker 2: the US and the Soviet Union have a confrontation at
21:23
Speaker 2: the North Pole. So basically it's like, what's happening eventually
21:26
Speaker 2: in the next ten to fifteen years.
21:29
Speaker 1: What movie do you think you've seen the most?
21:34
Speaker 2: That is a great question, man, I am not sure.
21:40
Speaker 2: I have no idea what I've seen the most.
21:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't. I mean, I definitely don't have a count.
21:45
Speaker 1: But if I had to guess, it would be probably
21:48
Speaker 1: either like Raiders of the Lost Stark huh or Spinal Tapper,
21:53
Speaker 1: maybe Blazing Saddles.
21:55
Speaker 2: All good ones to watch over and over again. I
21:58
Speaker 2: genuinely don't know. I'll have to think about that. I'll
22:01
Speaker 2: blurt it out later. But you did bring up something
22:03
Speaker 2: I wanted to mention. Do you remember when I was like,
22:05
Speaker 2: you should never let a person write, direct, and star
22:09
Speaker 2: in a show?
22:10
Speaker 3: Did you find a good example?
22:11
Speaker 2: I did. I don't know if you saw this or not,
22:14
Speaker 2: but I sent I told you to watch it. It's Onyx,
22:17
Speaker 2: the Fortuitous and The Talisman of Souls. Did you ever
22:20
Speaker 2: watch that? No?
22:21
Speaker 1: I don't even remember that wreck.
22:23
Speaker 2: Okay, well go watch it. It's on Prime and this
22:26
Speaker 2: guy named Andrew Bowser wrote, directed and stars in it.
22:31
Speaker 2: And it is just a lovely little movie.
22:34
Speaker 3: Okay.
22:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely worth watching. And if like his character,
22:38
Speaker 2: like annoys, you just hang in there.
22:40
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, that's always a good caveat Yeah, all right,
22:45
Speaker 1: So back to Howard Hughes and hopefully you'll blurt out,
22:47
Speaker 1: you know, back to the future at some point or
22:49
Speaker 1: something like that.
22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good one, you do. Well, it doesn't
22:54
Speaker 2: have to be I'm gonna be like The Remains of
22:56
Speaker 2: the Day.
22:57
Speaker 3: Wait was that Scorsese? No, no, no, that was a
23:00
Speaker 3: me and I.
23:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
23:01
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the other one that set in
23:03
Speaker 1: high society in New York. Uh did with Daniel day
23:09
Speaker 1: Lewis and win Ona.
23:10
Speaker 2: Writer at the Age of Innocence.
23:13
Speaker 3: The Age of Innocence?
23:14
Speaker 1: That was it?
23:15
Speaker 3: Okay, which is just okay? All right? So uh where
23:19
Speaker 3: are we? All right?
23:20
Speaker 1: We're outside of Howard Hughes's hotel at this point, because
23:23
Speaker 1: I know.
23:24
Speaker 3: I know, Oh god, what is it?
23:26
Speaker 2: I know? Uh, it's probably tied. One is Gleaming the Cube,
23:32
Speaker 2: oh wow? Or Days and Confused different summers in my life.
23:37
Speaker 2: Every day I would get up and start my day
23:40
Speaker 2: watching Gleaming the Cube, and then several years later I
23:43
Speaker 2: would start my day watching Dazed and Confused. So those
23:46
Speaker 2: two are probably the ones I've seen the most.
23:49
Speaker 1: I have seen Dazed and Confused a lot as well,
23:52
Speaker 1: and so I will recommend to you, boy, this is
23:54
Speaker 1: going to go long the day.
23:55
Speaker 3: That's okay.
23:56
Speaker 2: Uh.
23:56
Speaker 1: The Oral History of Dazed and Confused is a really
24:00
Speaker 1: one of the better books that I read last year.
24:02
Speaker 2: Oh okay.
24:03
Speaker 1: It's called all right, all right, all right, the Oral
24:05
Speaker 1: History of Richard link Clatter's Days and Confused by Melissa
24:08
Speaker 1: Mayers from twenty twenty. And if you like Days and Confused,
24:12
Speaker 1: you will love this book.
24:14
Speaker 2: Do you have that book in front of you or
24:16
Speaker 2: you just have all that memorized?
24:17
Speaker 3: Well?
24:17
Speaker 1: I looked it up real quick because I always like
24:19
Speaker 1: to shout out the author. But next time I see you,
24:22
Speaker 1: I'll love it to you. It's great, thanks, you can
24:24
Speaker 1: just have it, all right? So where we were was
24:27
Speaker 1: outside Howard Hughes hotel room because we need to talk
24:30
Speaker 1: about a little bit about what's going on in Vegas
24:33
Speaker 1: at the time. What's happening in that hotel is the
24:36
Speaker 1: hotel management is getting pretty upset because, like I said,
24:40
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be the week and a half, he
24:41
Speaker 1: keeps staying. He keeps staying, he's paying for all this stuff.
24:44
Speaker 1: But they're still like, hey, listen, man, you've taken the
24:46
Speaker 1: entire floor of our hotel and we need this. At
24:50
Speaker 1: one point, I think Jimmy Hoffa himself made a plight
24:53
Speaker 1: quote unquote request that he'd be allowed to stay because
24:56
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's got a lot of influence Howard
24:58
Speaker 1: Hughes obviously. But management finally was like, listen, we're going
25:02
Speaker 1: to physically throw you out of here. We need this
25:05
Speaker 1: floor for New Year's Eve. And Mayhew, his right hand end,
25:08
Speaker 1: said hey, listen, man, if you want a place to sleep,
25:10
Speaker 1: you damn well better buy the hotel. So again he
25:14
Speaker 1: is just like, fine, I'll buy the hotel, and he
25:16
Speaker 1: bought it for thirteen point twenty five million, and was
25:19
Speaker 1: all of a sudden in the hotel and casino business.
25:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we talked very briefly about this in
25:24
Speaker 2: the History of Vegas episode. Yeah, but yeah, I'm glad
25:28
Speaker 2: we're talking about this too, because just that alone is
25:31
Speaker 2: worth an episode on Like that, you don't want to
25:35
Speaker 2: get kicked out of a hotel, so you buy the hotel.
25:38
Speaker 2: He actually did that kind of stuff. And yeah, bear
25:41
Speaker 2: in mind, he didn't pick up a phone, he didn't
25:44
Speaker 2: write a note. He said, go buy this hotel. That's
25:47
Speaker 2: a fine idea. I don't want to move. I don't
25:49
Speaker 2: want to get up by the hotel. That genuinely happened.
25:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then once he got into the hotel and
25:56
Speaker 1: casino business, he was like, wait a minute, casino earnings
26:01
Speaker 1: are taxed at a lower rate than these lousy stocks
26:04
Speaker 1: I've got, And he said, so you know what, I'm
26:07
Speaker 1: going to legitimately get involved in the casino and hotel
26:10
Speaker 1: business and literally try and make it a legitimate thing.
26:15
Speaker 1: Like he had a vision of Las Vegas to be
26:18
Speaker 1: I think, he said, as respectable as the New York
26:21
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange. He wanted to make it not a mob
26:24
Speaker 1: town that only kind of the CD people would go
26:27
Speaker 1: to gamble. So he's the first one to have that
26:29
Speaker 1: real vision and in nineteen sixty seven started buying up
26:34
Speaker 1: hotels and casinos.
26:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again like this was a time where the
26:38
Speaker 2: FBI essentially had like they were camped out in these
26:43
Speaker 2: hotels and casinos because they were conducting so many investigations
26:47
Speaker 2: all the time. Yeah, so this was a it was
26:50
Speaker 2: a gamble, if you'll forgive the pun, unintentional for him
26:54
Speaker 2: to buy this stuff, because he did start to buy
26:57
Speaker 2: it in the eye of like changing the entire city,
27:00
Speaker 2: and that was not a given. We know it worked
27:02
Speaker 2: out in retrospect, but he didn't know that at the time,
27:06
Speaker 2: so it was kind of risky him doing that. Plus
27:09
Speaker 2: also he had to deal with the Mob. He ended
27:11
Speaker 2: up buying six hotels from nineteen sixty six to nineteen
27:14
Speaker 2: sixty eight, hotel casinos, i should say, and almost all
27:17
Speaker 2: of them were from the Mob, if not all of them.
27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, he bought the one he was in the desert in,
27:22
Speaker 1: He bought the Sands, he bought Castaways, the Silver Slipper,
27:26
Speaker 1: the Landmark, and the Frontier. And not only did he
27:30
Speaker 1: have a vision for Vegas as sort of a legitimate
27:33
Speaker 1: town where people in corporations could do business and like
27:36
Speaker 1: possibly families might even come one day, but he wanted
27:39
Speaker 1: it to be what he called an environmental city of
27:40
Speaker 1: the future. He didn't want because again he was a germophobe.
27:43
Speaker 1: So he had this vision of a smogless city with
27:47
Speaker 1: an efficient government where it was like taxpayers didn't have
27:51
Speaker 1: to get fleeced, and he like sort of as a utopia.
27:54
Speaker 3: Almost.
27:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about that city of the future. Some
27:59
Speaker 2: of the stuff he wanted to do to Vegas and
28:02
Speaker 2: Nevada to kind of create that city of the future.
28:06
Speaker 2: Remember when I said that, I think that he could
28:09
Speaker 2: have had a pretty good chance of getting the Cheesecake
28:12
Speaker 2: Factory to sponsor Factory Seconds podcast with Adam and Ben.
28:18
Speaker 2: There's also a toss up because he might have been
28:21
Speaker 2: turned down. He had a lot of ideas that the
28:24
Speaker 2: local county and city and state legislatures were like, hey,
28:28
Speaker 2: that's a great idea. We'll get back to you on that.
28:31
Speaker 2: Some of the ideas were just terrible as well. But
28:35
Speaker 2: he was essentially trying to shape Vegas into his own image.
28:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, he had a sort of list of
28:42
Speaker 1: things that he proposed but never really got done, and
28:46
Speaker 1: like he had a ton of influence, Like he got
28:48
Speaker 1: this casino without having to appear before the Gaming Commission
28:52
Speaker 1: or anything like that to get licensed. Like that's how
28:55
Speaker 1: much pool he had. Yeah, like you're not supposed to
28:57
Speaker 1: be able to buy a casino that easily. And in fact,
29:01
Speaker 1: that that would open the door for the Nevada Corporate
29:04
Speaker 1: Gaming Act, which made it easier for public companies to
29:07
Speaker 1: get into the business because previously they had a requirement
29:10
Speaker 1: that every stockholder had to submit background checks to be
29:13
Speaker 1: involved in Las Vegas. So that went away and really
29:16
Speaker 1: opened the door. So all this to say he had
29:18
Speaker 1: a ton of pull and could really get things done,
29:20
Speaker 1: but he has a laundry list of things he wanted
29:22
Speaker 1: to get done that they all were just sort of like, yeah,
29:24
Speaker 1: we'll look into that.
29:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was this great list in the Las Vegas
29:28
Speaker 2: Review Journal that some of the stuff he was pushing for.
29:33
Speaker 2: He wanted to keep dog racing illegal. I could not
29:36
Speaker 2: find what his issue with dog racing was. He wanted
29:40
Speaker 2: to repeal repeal the sales tax, gas tax, cigarette tax.
29:45
Speaker 2: He wanted to keep Clark County School district segregated. So
29:50
Speaker 2: now you're starting to be like, oh, he wanted to
29:53
Speaker 2: prohibit the booking of talent from communist countries. It's kind
29:58
Speaker 2: of I could see that being an nineteen sixties sentiment,
30:01
Speaker 2: not just his. He wanted to outlaw rock festivals boo.
30:06
Speaker 2: He wanted to And I could not find out why
30:09
Speaker 2: for this one either, But he wanted to require Vegas
30:12
Speaker 2: or Clark County to consult with him before they realigned
30:16
Speaker 2: any streets. I don't I could not find out. Why
30:20
Speaker 2: do you have a guess? H No, I think he'd
30:24
Speaker 2: I don't know what was the last one.
30:27
Speaker 1: The last one was he wanted to be exempted himself
30:29
Speaker 1: from having ever to go to court or any board
30:33
Speaker 1: for any reason at all, Like he wanted to ensure
30:36
Speaker 1: that he could stay in that room. He also wanted
30:39
Speaker 1: to get rid of the nuclear testing site nearby. They
30:43
Speaker 1: did not do that. And he also wanted to, like
30:46
Speaker 1: I said, he had a big problem with the water.
30:48
Speaker 1: He thought the water was dirty. And once he found
30:50
Speaker 1: out that Lake Mead fed water into a system where
30:54
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like it's very common today where
30:57
Speaker 1: wastewater is treated and fed back into the system, he
30:59
Speaker 1: was like, no, no, no, you need to get rid
31:01
Speaker 1: of that. And they were like, yeah, we're not going
31:04
Speaker 1: to do that.
31:04
Speaker 2: No, because there will not be anymore in Las Vegas
31:07
Speaker 2: without that water supply.
31:08
Speaker 1: So yeah, And by the way, if everyone is horrified
31:11
Speaker 1: that I booed outline rock festivals and not keeping things segregated,
31:17
Speaker 1: that's because there's a larger point to be made later
31:20
Speaker 1: about Howard Hughes being very racist, which he had a
31:24
Speaker 1: long reputation of being very racist against black Americans specifically.
31:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was something that my eyes were opened about.
31:32
Speaker 2: Like I was never like I've got Howard Hughes T
31:35
Speaker 2: shirts and I love him, He's my hero or anything
31:38
Speaker 2: like that. But I had no idea that he was
31:41
Speaker 2: kind of a bad person in a lot of ways.
31:44
Speaker 2: Very sympathetic in the sense that he had one of
31:47
Speaker 2: the worst documented cases of mental illness of any kind
31:50
Speaker 2: of public figure of all time. So I sympathized with
31:54
Speaker 2: him for that, but he also just the views he
31:57
Speaker 2: held and some of the things he did were just terrible,
32:01
Speaker 2: like really kind of added up to making him a
32:03
Speaker 2: not great guy. Like, yeah, one other thing, his first
32:06
Speaker 2: wife divorced him because he locked her in the house
32:09
Speaker 2: for three weeks. Yeah, Like he was an abusive person
32:12
Speaker 2: even and yes, he had horrible problems. A lot of
32:16
Speaker 2: it was from his upbringing, but that still doesn't excuse
32:19
Speaker 2: a lot of the stuff he did or.
32:21
Speaker 1: Though for sure held in September of nineteen sixty eight,
32:25
Speaker 1: here's another example he had. It was going to be
32:27
Speaker 1: the first annual desert In Invitational tennis tournament, like a
32:31
Speaker 1: very big, high profile tournament, and he tried to cancel
32:33
Speaker 1: it because he found out that Arthur Ash, an African American,
32:38
Speaker 1: was going to be competing, and he was worried about
32:40
Speaker 1: his you know, black fans coming to his casino to watch.
32:43
Speaker 1: So Mayhew was like, listen, man, we can't cancel this thing.
32:46
Speaker 1: It'll be all right in a little bit of sweet victory.
32:50
Speaker 1: Arthur Ash ended up winning the singles title at that tournament. Yeah,
32:53
Speaker 1: that's just pretty awesome. And he but he was stopped
32:57
Speaker 1: sort of right there as far as his casino empire goes.
33:00
Speaker 1: I think at the sixth that he bought because he
33:02
Speaker 1: tried to buy another one and got the initial sort
33:06
Speaker 1: of AOK. But then the FED stepped in and said,
33:09
Speaker 1: you know what, you're on your way to getting monopoly
33:12
Speaker 1: on Las Vegas gambling. So they filed an anti trust
33:15
Speaker 1: lawsuit against him, and he was never able to get
33:19
Speaker 1: that seventh casino, So he's kind of locked in with
33:21
Speaker 1: the six right.
33:22
Speaker 2: They said, go to jail, do not pass go, do
33:26
Speaker 2: not collect two hundred dollars.
33:28
Speaker 3: Should we take another break?
33:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we'll be right back after.
33:31
Speaker 2: This, okay, Chuck. So Howard Hughes at the time when
34:00
Speaker 2: he still hasn't left his hotel room, and he's changing
34:03
Speaker 2: the face of Las Vegas. He's changing the city at
34:05
Speaker 2: its core just by buying these things up and not
34:08
Speaker 2: being a mobster. And so the local politicians are just like,
34:13
Speaker 2: this guy is saving the city. He's giving it an
34:15
Speaker 2: actual bright future just his involvement. The fact that America
34:21
Speaker 2: is now starting to associate Las Vegas with this beloved figure,
34:25
Speaker 2: Howard Hughes, who they remembered him before he started to decline,
34:30
Speaker 2: so that was everyone's image. They were just like, that
34:33
Speaker 2: guy is just reclusive. Now. They had no idea what
34:38
Speaker 2: was going on with Howard Hughes at the time. So
34:41
Speaker 2: this very respected person was now associated with Las Vegas,
34:45
Speaker 2: which was great. That actually attracted other respected businessmen who
34:51
Speaker 2: decided to kind of follow in Hughes's footsteps or rival
34:56
Speaker 2: him if you were looking at it from Howard Hughes perspective,
34:59
Speaker 2: and the first first one was Korian. He was a
35:04
Speaker 2: billionaire who built the International Hotel and I think nineteen
35:09
Speaker 2: sixty eight, and Howard Hughes was not happy about that
35:12
Speaker 2: at all.
35:13
Speaker 1: No, he tried to stop it because it was going
35:15
Speaker 1: to be the largest hotel not only in Vegas, but
35:17
Speaker 1: the largest hotel in the world and the first big
35:20
Speaker 1: sort of giant resort in Vegas. And Hughes was like,
35:24
Speaker 1: I got to stop this thing. So he got kind
35:27
Speaker 1: of consumed with halting its progress to no avail. So eventually,
35:33
Speaker 1: when the International Hotel was like, all right, we got
35:35
Speaker 1: a big grand opening night an event, Howard Hugh says, yeah,
35:39
Speaker 1: you know what, I've got one that's even better at
35:41
Speaker 1: my hotel, this huge event that had not even you know,
35:45
Speaker 1: he literally just kind of blurted that out, had no
35:48
Speaker 1: plan for this event. Apparently spent like weeks and weeks
35:54
Speaker 1: just like working on the guest list, Like he was
35:56
Speaker 1: entirely consumed by this, and Mayhew had to kind of
35:59
Speaker 1: kind of pull it up out of his rear end
36:01
Speaker 1: to make any kind of event happen.
36:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really was, mister Burns, And I get the
36:05
Speaker 2: impression of Mayhew is mister Smithers. Yeah, so, Yeah, what
36:09
Speaker 2: it was was the grand opening of the Landmark Hotel
36:12
Speaker 2: and Casino, which had been built just a couple of
36:15
Speaker 2: years before, but I think they had stopped just short
36:18
Speaker 2: of completing it, so he came in and bought it.
36:20
Speaker 2: The reason he bought the Landmark is because it was
36:23
Speaker 2: thirty one stories and Kirk Krekorian's International Hotel was going
36:28
Speaker 2: to be thirty stories right off the bat. That attracted Hughes.
36:31
Speaker 2: And then he had the grand opening the day before
36:35
Speaker 2: Kirk Kirkory's just as petty as you can be. Kirkoryan
36:41
Speaker 2: had the upper hand though, like this was a massive,
36:44
Speaker 2: very nice, huge casino hotel and the Landmark was not built.
36:52
Speaker 2: It was poorly built and designed as far as running
36:55
Speaker 2: a profitable hotel or casino goes. It was just too
36:58
Speaker 2: small for that to turn a profit.
37:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, that couldn't figure out how they allowed him to
37:04
Speaker 1: buy that when they had just stopped him from purchasing
37:06
Speaker 1: the Seventh. But the only guess I have is that
37:09
Speaker 1: this thing was in such bad shape they were like, well,
37:11
Speaker 1: at least a Hughes bides that it'll not be a blight.
37:14
Speaker 2: I think it's also possible he bought it right before
37:16
Speaker 2: he went to go buy the Star Dust Oh okay,
37:19
Speaker 2: because they were both in nineteen sixty eight, and the
37:22
Speaker 2: FEDS objected sometime in nineteen sixty eight, so like the
37:28
Speaker 2: second half of it. So it's possible that he bought
37:30
Speaker 2: it before then.
37:31
Speaker 1: I don't know, all right, So we should point out,
37:35
Speaker 1: you know, you said he wasn't mobbed up, but the
37:37
Speaker 1: mob was still there. It's not like he moved in
37:39
Speaker 1: and the mob moved out. They basically just had people
37:42
Speaker 1: working on the inside at Hughes's casinos, and we're fleecing him.
37:46
Speaker 1: You know, everyone's always on the take and skimming from
37:50
Speaker 1: the top that's or the bottom, and that's just how
37:52
Speaker 1: it worked in Vegas, and that's what they did to him. Apparently,
37:56
Speaker 1: in less than four years, the mob skimmed about fifty
37:59
Speaker 1: million bucks off of Howard Hughes, and even as rich
38:02
Speaker 1: as he was, that put him in pretty dangerous financial shape.
38:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, he don't worry about him. He was
38:10
Speaker 2: still mega rich, but eventually he got to the point
38:14
Speaker 2: where he was like, I'm sick of Vegas, and he
38:16
Speaker 2: decamped in the middle of the night. I think four
38:19
Speaker 2: years to the day. I think he showed up on
38:21
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving Eve of nineteen sixty six and left Thanksgiving Eve
38:25
Speaker 2: of nineteen seventy. I don't know why, but it's pretty
38:30
Speaker 2: circular and complete. He left Vegas on a stretcher because
38:35
Speaker 2: he was unable to walk around himself, certainly go down
38:39
Speaker 2: a fire escape set of fire escape stairs, which they
38:42
Speaker 2: allegedly took him out of under the cover of night.
38:45
Speaker 2: They put him on a plane. They flew him to
38:46
Speaker 2: the Bahamas, where he set up at the Xanadu Beach
38:50
Speaker 2: Resort and basically did the same thing. Camped out there,
38:54
Speaker 2: was outstaated as welcome, and bought that place next.
38:58
Speaker 3: Yeah.
38:59
Speaker 1: I think that's definitely where Scorsese went off book and
39:02
Speaker 1: made stuff up, because in the movie, at one point,
39:05
Speaker 1: after all this time there you see the door open
39:08
Speaker 1: up to his room and he kind of with a
39:10
Speaker 1: shirt on and pants on, kind of walks out and
39:13
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh my God, like.
39:15
Speaker 3: Howard Hester just slept his room or you know.
39:18
Speaker 1: I think the woman in the scene is like, mister Hughes,
39:20
Speaker 1: like no one had seen him, and he was like,
39:23
Speaker 1: I don't have shoes. I need shoes, and then he
39:26
Speaker 1: leaves and goes and sees Ava Gardner and she helps
39:28
Speaker 1: him with his like clearly OCD with like washing his
39:31
Speaker 1: hands and stuff. But I don't know if that stuff
39:33
Speaker 1: never happened, or if it was just artistic license or what.
39:36
Speaker 2: I don't know. I saw that he has known to
39:39
Speaker 2: have left his room three times in the four years
39:42
Speaker 2: he was there, and they were all for like business meetings,
39:44
Speaker 2: and those are basically the times that he shaved and
39:48
Speaker 2: washed and cut his hair and cut his fingernails and
39:50
Speaker 2: like that was it. I don't know. Maybe one was
39:53
Speaker 2: to go see Ava Gardner, but I mean we're talking
39:55
Speaker 2: Hollywood here, you know.
39:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always just weird though when there's a buyap
40:00
Speaker 1: that just strays so far. But it was toward the
40:02
Speaker 1: end of the movie, So maybe Scorsese was like having
40:05
Speaker 1: him go to the Bahamas and doing the same thing.
40:07
Speaker 1: It's not a good ending, that's right.
40:09
Speaker 2: We need to give him like a magical cricket and
40:12
Speaker 2: his wishes to become a real boy.
40:15
Speaker 3: Oh man, those are two pretty good scorsesees.
40:17
Speaker 2: Who knew I didn't know. Did I just do a
40:20
Speaker 2: good Scorsese? I was just doing Scorsese.
40:22
Speaker 1: Well, I think we I think we both did a
40:24
Speaker 1: pretty good one. And that means, you know, you know,
40:27
Speaker 1: one day when we stopped doing this show, maybe we
40:29
Speaker 1: have a second act as a.
40:31
Speaker 3: Co Scorsese on stage. Bit.
40:33
Speaker 2: Well, that's a good one.
40:34
Speaker 3: Scorsese v. Scorsese starring Josh and Chuck.
40:37
Speaker 2: That's right. We to talk about how good movies were.
40:40
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, everybody, all right, So where are we?
40:46
Speaker 1: I guess we should cover his his passing. He died
40:49
Speaker 1: on April fifth, nineteen seventy six, on a plane flight
40:52
Speaker 1: from Mexico to Houston, and he was seventy years old
40:56
Speaker 1: at the time. They listed the cause of death as
40:58
Speaker 1: kidney failure. After he died, Mayhew was let go and
41:05
Speaker 1: his holding company remember that forty square miles. I talked
41:08
Speaker 1: about where he was going to put Hughes Aviation That
41:12
Speaker 1: is now Summerlin, a planned community just outside Vegas. Yeah.
41:17
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, like I think a lot of people
41:21
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, Howard Hughes got rid of the mob
41:23
Speaker 2: in Vegas, and that's just not the case. Like he
41:26
Speaker 2: had a huge effect on Vegas. The mob getting out
41:28
Speaker 2: of Vegas was mostly the Justice Department, but his again,
41:33
Speaker 2: his name attached to Vegas made it okay for Americans
41:38
Speaker 2: to start coming and turn Vegas into an actual legitimate
41:41
Speaker 2: tourist destination. And he it wasn't him specifically buying this casino,
41:47
Speaker 2: as we say that because you know it, it essentially was,
41:50
Speaker 2: but his corporation, sum a holding corporation was the one
41:53
Speaker 2: actually buying them. So that opened the door to other
41:56
Speaker 2: corporations buying casinos ripped like tearing him down building brand
42:01
Speaker 2: new casinos that Ace Rothstein basically said. It was like
42:04
Speaker 2: Disneyland at the end of casino and then it's like
42:08
Speaker 2: checking into an airport. That all started thanks to Howard Hughes.
42:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. As far as like you know, the
42:18
Speaker 1: post mortem on what he had going on in his
42:21
Speaker 1: life and his autopsy, he weighed ninety three pounds at
42:25
Speaker 1: the time of death and apparently had enough codine in
42:28
Speaker 1: his system they said to stop five beating hearts. And
42:32
Speaker 1: even though it was kidney failure, technically neglect is kind
42:36
Speaker 1: of what the doctors talked about. He didn't have a will.
42:42
Speaker 1: The very famous movie I know we've talked about before
42:44
Speaker 1: in the show Melvin and Howard about supposedly Howard Hughes
42:48
Speaker 1: played by Jason Robards I think Howard Hughes's middle name
42:51
Speaker 1: was Robard. Yeah, it's a really good movie, a little
42:55
Speaker 1: indie from the nineteen eighties. I think maybe seventies, but
42:58
Speaker 1: I think eighties. But there were a lot of fake
43:00
Speaker 1: wills that turned up after his death. But his two
43:04
Speaker 1: point five billion dollar estate in nineteen seventy six dollars
43:08
Speaker 1: was then sort of, I guess, sort of up for grabs.
43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. A lot of people came forward like that belongs
43:15
Speaker 2: to me, No, that belongs to me. I think eleven
43:17
Speaker 2: or twelve people ended up splitting the whole estate. But
43:20
Speaker 2: a group of them hired hired an attorney who hired
43:24
Speaker 2: Raymond Fowler, who at the time was the head of
43:27
Speaker 2: the American Psychological Association. Oh yeah, to conduct a psychological
43:32
Speaker 2: autopsy they called it on Howard Hughes, to basically determine
43:36
Speaker 2: his mental competence toward the end of his life. And
43:39
Speaker 2: this gave the world again people were just like, wait,
43:43
Speaker 2: he waited, how much? How long was his hair when
43:45
Speaker 2: he died? What was going on when he died? Like
43:47
Speaker 2: all that news started to come out. This gave the
43:49
Speaker 2: world like an actual psychological profile, and you're not supposed
43:53
Speaker 2: to you're not supposed to diagnose anybody, any patient that
43:57
Speaker 2: you've not actually interviewed or taking care of yourself. But
44:02
Speaker 2: Fowler basically did as good a job as you possibly
44:06
Speaker 2: could in you know, creating a psychological sketch of somebody
44:11
Speaker 2: just from the research he did.
44:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, tons of research like obviously interviewing staff and reading
44:18
Speaker 1: newspaper documents, court depositions, personal letters that he wrote back
44:23
Speaker 1: and forth with his mother, phone call logs, pilot logs,
44:28
Speaker 1: and you know where we ended up was he most
44:32
Speaker 1: certainly had OCD. I think everyone kind of agrees on that.
44:36
Speaker 1: His germophobia they think may have stemmed from his childhood.
44:40
Speaker 1: Apparently his mother was a germophobe and constantly worried about
44:43
Speaker 1: little Howard getting sick from polio, and so she was
44:48
Speaker 1: checking him every day for signs of polio. And they think, yeah,
44:52
Speaker 1: probably stemmed from that childhood with his mom.
44:55
Speaker 2: For sure. There's also, like, I mean, just the intense
44:59
Speaker 2: losing he had of germs and the instructions that he
45:02
Speaker 2: gave his staff for interacting with inanimate objects in his room,
45:07
Speaker 2: like using tissues and stuff like that. Like that in
45:10
Speaker 2: and of itself is like, yeah, he clearly had OCD,
45:13
Speaker 2: but to be able to trace it back to you know,
45:17
Speaker 2: his mother's influence, who seemed to have been a hypochondriac herself. Yeah. Yeah,
45:22
Speaker 2: he was definitely set up from the outset to have
45:25
Speaker 2: some serious troubles throughout his life, and they really became
45:32
Speaker 2: full blown after he injured himself and adopted morphine and
45:35
Speaker 2: stopped taking care of himself.
45:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. I know the aviator covered it in you know,
45:41
Speaker 1: twelve minutes or so, but I think there's an entire
45:43
Speaker 1: film of the Vegas years to Bete.
45:45
Speaker 2: I was looking for a documentary on it, and I
45:48
Speaker 2: could find basically nothing. I was really surprised.
45:51
Speaker 3: I thought, yeah, the.
45:52
Speaker 2: American experience would have done it or something, but no, nothing.
45:56
Speaker 2: Huh so yeah, we just had to make all this stuff.
46:00
Speaker 1: Uh well, I wonder if one reason there's not a
46:02
Speaker 1: documentary is just because there's so little. There's zero footage,
46:06
Speaker 1: and I think that one photo, so.
46:08
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, true, true.
46:09
Speaker 1: A lot of talking and ken burnstyle photos of like mobsters.
46:13
Speaker 1: I guess you're right.
46:14
Speaker 2: Just pan across the photo and everybody, you'll be cool
46:17
Speaker 2: with it.
46:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could make a movie though, Yeah, they did.
46:21
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll do that Scorsese bit.
46:23
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go. You got anything else?
46:27
Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
46:28
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to know more about Howard Hughes
46:30
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas, build a time machine and go pound
46:32
Speaker 2: on his door until he lets you in. But bring
46:34
Speaker 2: a bunch of Kleenex and it's time for listener mail.
46:40
Speaker 1: That's right. This is a bit of a myth busted
46:42
Speaker 1: from our Ozzie friends. Although this Benjamin here is from Albuquerque,
46:46
Speaker 1: but we did get other emails from Azzi's so apologies
46:49
Speaker 1: for not reading one from the Native Land. But guys,
46:52
Speaker 1: in the Kangaroo episode, Josh mentioned and I was on
46:55
Speaker 1: board too, so you're not taking the ball for this,
46:57
Speaker 1: okayot thanks that the origin of the word kangaroo have
47:00
Speaker 1: come from a misunderstanding of an Aboriginal person, saying, I
47:03
Speaker 1: don't know. Think the origin for this myth might be
47:08
Speaker 1: the film Arrival from twenty sixteen, in which Amy Adams
47:11
Speaker 1: linguistics professor character tells the Kangaroo story to force Whitaker
47:15
Speaker 1: in relation to the misunderstandings that may happen when communicating
47:18
Speaker 1: with the aliens, and the next scene, Jeremy Rinner tells
47:21
Speaker 1: her that he's surprised to hear the story, to which
47:24
Speaker 1: she says it's not true, but it illustrates my point.
47:27
Speaker 1: I'm not a learned linguist myself, so I can't provide
47:29
Speaker 1: any more information about it, but it's certainly an interesting idea.
47:32
Speaker 1: It wouldn't be surprised to hear that has possibly multiple
47:36
Speaker 1: times happened, possibly multiple times throughout history. Also, I find
47:40
Speaker 1: it interesting that you mentioned the film Enemy at the
47:43
Speaker 1: end of the episode, because A Rival was also directed
47:45
Speaker 1: by Dinny Billineux. It's a phenomenal film that I highly
47:48
Speaker 1: recommend if you haven't seen it. Yeah, but you recommended
47:52
Speaker 1: it and we've both seen it, so take that.
47:54
Speaker 3: Benjamin.
47:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I think he was talking about Arrival.
47:57
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I saw a Rival too.
47:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, seen that a couple of times. It's great.
48:01
Speaker 1: Well, we didn't didn't get that from Arrival, but we
48:04
Speaker 1: definitely got people that wrote in and said that was
48:06
Speaker 1: a myth.
48:06
Speaker 2: Yeah.
48:06
Speaker 1: I hope the origin said the kangaroo name right.
48:08
Speaker 2: And hopefully Arrival got it from it's the fact that
48:11
Speaker 2: it's a myth and the myth didn't arise from Arrival, right,
48:15
Speaker 2: because that means that we got duped by Arrival, and
48:17
Speaker 2: we like to think that we're better researchers than that.
48:20
Speaker 1: I'd like to think so.
48:21
Speaker 2: All right, well, so who was that again, Benjamin? Thanks
48:24
Speaker 2: a lot, Benjamin, Sorry about that one, and thanks for
48:27
Speaker 2: setting us straight. And to all of our Ozzie listeners
48:31
Speaker 2: who set us straight, we appreciate it. And if you
48:33
Speaker 2: want to get in touch with us, like all of
48:35
Speaker 2: our Ozzie listeners did, you can send us an email
48:38
Speaker 2: to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should
48:45
Speaker 2: Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
48:47
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48:50
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