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Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American businessman, inventor, aviator, and left an immense influence at the casinos of Las Vegas and the gaming industry within the state. Hughes first visited Las Vegas within the 1940's and preferred to stick on the Last Frontier, although he did occasionally visit the casinos downtown.
Hughes spent much of his time engaged on feature films in Hollywood like Hell's Angels (1930) and Scarface (1932), setting aviation records, and watching his profits from hughes Tool company soar. He began stockpiling shares of TWA in 1939 and gained control of RKO Pictures in 1948. Although RKO was not an overly profitable venture, Hughes Tool Company manager Noah Dietrich keep money flowing to Hughes for his pet projects. However, it was his ownership of TWA (Trans World Airways) that left Hughes one of the vital riches men on the planet. In 1966, Hughes was forced by a U.S. federal court to sell his shares in TWA as a result of concerns over conflict of interest between his ownership of both TWA and Hughes Aircraft. The sale of his TWA shares netted him a profit of $547 million
Unlike Texas and California, where Hughes had the majority of his business, Nevada offered a tax haven he couldn't pass up: no corporate or personal taxes. So, on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1966, a train with a specially-equipped Pullman car stopped in downtown Las Vegas at Union Plaza and the 51-year-old millionaire was transported via stretcher to a waiting ambulance that whisked him away to the Desert Inn casino and hotel. Reservations for the highest two floors were made by Bob Maheu, a former CIA operative now fronting for Howard Hughes. He contacted mobster Johnny Roselli, who contacted majority owner and previous Cleveland Mob Boss Moe Dalitz, who arranged the reservation as a private favor. He could have considered it an honor to permit the reclusive millionaire the usage of his hotel, but his attitude soon changed when Hughes refused to leave.
Howard Hughes' First Casino PurchaseWeeks before the casino's huge New Year's Eve party, Dalitz asked Maheu to assist get Hughes out of the penthouse of his hotel to make room for his incoming high-roller casino guests, but Maheu already knew Hughes wouldn't go. Instead, he asked Dalitz to sell the valuables. Although Dalitz in the beginning refused, the theory of marketing the casino but still having a hand in running it (and a hand within the till) was appealing. A deal was eventually struck for $13.1 million.
While reputed mobsters like Sam Giancana, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello were long rumored to manage among the Las Vegas casinos, players didn't care an excessive amount of about ownership as long as the games were at the square. However, the State of Nevada was overjoyed to have a wealthy industrialist like Howard Hughes related to the gaming industry and approved his purchase and control of the valuables without such a lot as a single personal encounter.
Maheu brought plenty of new security features to the Desert Inn, however the Hughes ownership didn't stop Dalitz from continuing to exercise control over the casino, and while it turned a pleasant profit each year, cash that never made it to the rightful owner was skimmed from the count room and slot machines.
Hughes enjoyed great political power within the sparsely populated state, and after purchasing the Silver Slipper casino around the street from the Desert Inn, his associates made direct, cash disbursements to many politicians, that have been considered campaign contributions and thus perfectly legal. Hughes got many of the concessions he asked his political friends for over the years, but was never in a position to get the underground testing of nuclear devices stopped.
New Hughes casino purchases included the Castaways, New Frontier (which started life because the Last Frontier), and the Sands. Over time the Sands casino was one of the crucial popular and mentioned casinos within the world, especially with players like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra appearing within the show room and gambling within the casino. Sinatra, who owned 9 percent of the Sands, was forced to sell his ownership as a result of allegations of criminal ties several years previous to the Hughes purchase.
Corporate Casino OwnershipHoward Hughes brought corporate ownership to Las Vegas, upgrading the city's image and respectability. He modernized his properties, forcing the owners of sagging properties around town to spend more to maintain at a time when Las Vegas needed a face-lift. The added benefits included more tourism, more jobs, and overall prosperity. Unfortunately, backstage the image wasn't so rosy.
By the 1960's Hughes was in chronic pain from two near-fatal plane crashes and used codeine frequently. When he purchased the incomplete Landmark casino, Hughes was in the midst of another round of obsessive-compulsive behavior that just about doomed the project. He wrote notes concerning the construction and had them sent to Bob Mahue each morning, but often changed his plans later within the day. Room size, the entire height of the tower, color scheme, restaurant decor, or even the selection of casino games were all at the plate, but Hughes was too sick to even manage himself, much-less the development of a hotel casino on the time.
Shortly after the Landmark casino opened to a tiny reception, Hughes decided that the radiation from the ongoing underground bomb testing was too dangerous. He instructed Mahue to supply President Nixon a $1 million bribe to prevent the testing. The tests continued.
Hughes refused to go away his Desert Inn penthouse suite for over two years, and through that point had his hair and beard cut but once. His toe and fingernails were only clipped 3 times in step with his aids, who were his only personal contact while he sat in a darkened bedroom full of boxes of tissues he used as slippers and empty bottles of milk he periodically refilled in place of getting off the bed to make use of the restroom.
When Hughes wasn't busy together with his casinos, he was purchasing mining claims in old Nevada ghost towns, most of which turned out to be worthless, and purchasing businesses. His purchase of Air West, which become Hughes Air West (jingle: "West, Hughes Air West, a banana within the west), didn't fare a lot better than the mines, especially after having the planes painted a bright yellow. In addition, without his direct involvement or an appropriate gaming director, the Hughes casinos were skimmed to the tune of over $300 million in precisely many years in keeping with the FBI.
Unable to get the government to prevent the underground bomb testing, Hughes left Las Vegas for the Bahamas within the cloak of darkness, never to go back. Later, Hughes turned over his Hughes Aircraft Company to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Howard Hughes DeathHoward Hughes passed on to the great beyond in 1976 on the age of 70 on an airplane en-route to Houston. His emaciated 6-foot 1-inch frame was just 90 pounds and fingerprints needed to be taken to positively identify the body. He left no will, so a seven-year onslaught of lawsuits was finally settled in 1983 when 22 cousins split his $2.5 billion estate. Whether that might has been his last wishes or not, Hughes certainly got the last laugh over taxes, which he abhorred. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hughes Aircraft was legally owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (sold in 1985 to General Motors for $5.2 billion) so there have been no taxes that needed to be paid. In addition, suits brought by the states of Texas and California for inheritance tax were also rejected by the court.
Shortly after Hughes began his casino buying spree (seven casinos), new corporate owners took note of the potential for owning casinos, with hotels. Although Wall Street was cool to the idea, Bill Harrah talked Greyhound Corp. into loaning him enough money to complete his expansion in Reno within the early 1970's and Harrah's Corp. went directly to become the primary publicly-owned corporation. Today Harrah's is Caesar's Entertainment, the second one largest gaming company within the world.
The largest gaming corporation, MGM Properties, was started by Kirk Kerkorian, a former Las Vegas airline owner who opened the International Hotel in Las Vegas at the same day the Howard Hughes Landmark opened. During construction of the properties Hughes fought continually along with his contractor to check out and keep his tower higher than the approaching International. Kerkorian won. On July 4, 1969 when the casinos opened, the International was the biggest hotel within the world.
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