TYCOONS: THE HUGHES LEGACY SCRAMBLE FOR THE BILLIONS

Perched atop the service elevator in Acapulco’s pyramidal Princess Hotel, Repairman Lidio Sandoval was performing a routine maintenance check one morning last week, when suddenly the car began to rise. To his surprise, it ascended all the way to the forbidden 20th-floor penthouse, which elevators could reach only if summoned by a special key. Peering unseen through an open panel in the ceiling, he watched in fascination as a drama unfolded in the car below. Anxious aides and a doctor wheeled in a stretcher bearing an old, apparently unconscious man covered only by a yellow sheet. A tube dangling from one of his arms connected him, presumably, to a dialysis machine.

When the elevator reached ground level, the attendants brusquely shooed away curious hotel workers and loaded the man into an ambulance that sped to the airport. There the patient was placed in a waiting Gates Learjet ambulance plane from Miami. Before landing in Acapulco earlier that day, it had fetched from the Bahamas a vacationing Utah physician, Wilbur Thain, who was one of the patient’s three private doctors. Pilot Roger Sutton was alarmed by the ailing passenger’s condition. “He looked very emaciated, a pasty color,” he recalls. “When they put him on the plane, he moved his lips, but I could not hear anything.”

As the Learjet streaked toward Houston, Sutton inquired about the patient’s condition.

“He is very close to dying,” replied the doctor.

After the plane touched down at Houston Intercontinental Airport, Thain told the pilot, “There is no hurry. He’s gone.”

At 70, the legendary, invisible, mysterious, outrageous Howard Robard Hughes was dead. No American had ever intrigued and confounded his fellow citizens as did the once handsome and dashing Hughes. Squeezing several implausible careers into one lifetime, he was the fabled billionaire who squired and sometimes seduced the world’s most beautiful women, the provocative moviemaker, the daring pilot, the unchallenged and capricious captain of an industrial empire and a huge airline, the innovative weaponmaker on whom the nation’s defense rested in part. Yet despite his wealth and onetime glamour, he had turned into a recluse whose obsession for privacy only intensified the curiosity about him. For the past ten years his isolation had been so complete that only his death gave proof he had still been alive.

Even in death Hughes created more mysteries. Childless and twice divorced, he left no immediate family. He had often stated that he intended to bequeath his fortune to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Miami-headquartered organization that in the past decade has dispensed $8.8 million in research grants. In that way he would have avoided all federal estate taxes. But by week’s end no one had produced his will. There is growing suspicion that the eccentric Hughes may have died before executing a legally binding document. If so, his fortune, estimated at a total of $2.3 billion, will be reduced by the largest inheritance tax in history—$1 billion or more.

Even if a clear and authentic last testament by Hughes is found, a gigantic scramble for the remaining money seems certain to break out anyway. That fight, which could have incalculable consequences, would pit Hughes’ long-estranged, patrician Houston relatives against a triumvirate of insiders at Hughes’ Summa Corp., the umbrella company formed in 1972 to oversee his vast holdings (see box).

The uncertainty of the situation raises serious questions about the fate of Hughes’ empire. In Nevada, his aviation companies and seven hotels and casinos—including the Sands, the Desert Inn and the Castaways—are the second largest employer (more than 6,000 people) after the Federal Government. His aviation and defense companies even now affect the national interest; for example, Hughes Aircraft, which is the U.S.’s ninth biggest defense contractor, produces the Phoenix air-to-air missile, the Hellfire air-to-surface missile and radar.

While the fate of Hughes’ legacy was in doubt, the world could only once again try to probe the mysteries of his life—and death. There was even dispute over the cause of death. An autopsy in Houston, the home town that Hughes had not visited in 21 years, ascribed it to kidney poisoning. But a Summa Corp. spokesman insisted that Hughes had suffered a massive stroke two days earlier, forcing the emergency trip to Houston.

After the autopsy, the body was claimed by Hughes’ relatives, including his only surviving aunt, Mrs. Frederick Lummis Sr., 85, and eight cousins. At an eight-minute Episcopal ceremony attended only by them and their families—about 20 people in all—Hughes was laid in a grave beside his mother and father in Houston’s Glenwood Cemetery. “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out,” said the priest. “Remember thy servant Howard.”

Hughes had lived for so long in utter isolation that many people questioned whether the body was actually his. The Internal Revenue Service, which had been on the verge of declaring him legally dead in order to claim the huge estate tax, took fingerprints from the corpse to check against genuine Hughes prints on file with the FBI in Washington. It was Hughes, all right.

Self-imposed Imprisonment

No one could be blamed for doubting. He had not been seen in public since 1958, and the most recent photo dates from 1952. Dr. Jack Titus, the chief pathologist at Methodist Hospital, performed the autopsy. He found Hughes to be a skeleton of a man, weighing only 90-odd lbs., with wispy gray hair down to his shoulders and a sparse beard.*

His secret life was surrounded by speculation, much of it wildly spurious. The only eyewitness account came in 1971, when Howard Eckersley, one of Hughes’ principal nurse-aides, was compelled to testify in a Nevada suit. According to Eckersley, Hughes had locked himself into a self-made prison. Whether atop the Desert Inn in Las Vegas (where he lived from 1966 to 1970) or the Inn on the Park in London (1972-73) or the Princess in Acapulco (since February), Hughes’ pattern of existence was much the same. He was completely sheltered from outsiders by five nurse-aides, four of whom are Mormons. Hughes had picked them because their abstinential religion rendered them, in his eyes, less susceptible to the weaknesses of human nature that he knew so well. The penthouses were isolated from the rest of the hotel by locked elevator and surveillance devices, sometimes including TV monitors. Security guards patrolled the halls to ward off intruders.

Usually Hughes lived in one room, its windows sealed by black curtains and masking tape. Only when watching television was he aware of the time; long ago he had imperiously chosen to ignore the ordinary routine of days and nights. He spent most of his time sitting in a straight-backed hard chair, most often clad only in pajamas. He was constantly attended by two male aides who acted as secretaries and nurses. When he lived at the Desert Inn, he was separated from the aides by a glass partition to ward off germs. If he wanted to give instructions, he would summon an aide to a door to pick up notes, or he would hold up the notes to a glass. Sample: “Please watch me closely and do not let me go to sleep at all.”

Hughes would work and read for days on end. Then he would fall into an almost comatose state in which he would sleep for several days. His eating habits were equally bizarre. He existed largely on unvaried diets consisting mainly of such sweets as fudge and cakes. At one time he developed an obsession for cakes that were perfectly square. “We had a ruler in the kitchen to measure them with,” recalls the former chef at the Bayshore Inn in Vancouver, where Hughes stayed in 1972. At other times he would fast for days. Usually he drank bottled Poland water from Maine.

His abnormal life-style led to a deterioration of his health, which already had been weakened by earlier accidents and overwork. After the first 18 months of seclusion in the Desert Inn, Hughes had wasted to less than 100 Ibs. He developed chronic anemia in 1968; one of the Western world’s two or three richest men suffered from malnutrition.

What drove him into hiding? In one of his rare meetings with outsiders, at Managua, Nicaragua, in 1971, he offered an explanation to former U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Shelton Turner and Strongman Anastasio Somoza. “I was working on inventions, but calls and visitors kept interrupting me,” he said. “I told my aides to cut down on appointments and calls. It was very gradual, but finally I realized I was not seen seeing anyone.” Laughing, Hughes added, “I probably carried it too far.”

Some of Hughes’ phobias, however, had roots in real causes.

For example, his celebrated fear of germs: a 1946 air crash injured his lungs, rendering him susceptible to bronchial infection. As for his shyness, he was embarrassed both by his increasing deafness and the injuries that had marred his looks. Three air crashes had mangled his nose and cheeks. While flying over Siberia on a globe-circling flight in 1938, Hughes had had to breathe oxygen for many hours through an aluminum tube; that froze his jaw, causing a bone disease that slowly eroded his profile. Still, he remained a reasonably handsome man, but unfortunately he failed to think so.

Above all, Hughes’ withdrawal stemmed from a deep fear that others would gain power over him. It was an ironic inversion of his own ruthless desire to impose his will on others. In an exchange of messages with a Merrill Lynch executive in 1960, Hughes boasted that for most of his life he had never done anything that he did not want to. Though he attracted many talented people into his service, he demanded a total obedience

that ultimately repulsed nearly all of them. Similarly, he was driven to possess his women, was wildly jealous to retain them for himself alone although he had moved on to other interests (see box).

Even in isolation, Hughes devised methods that made him highly effective as a wheeler and dealer. His deteriorating health was, of course, a handicap, but at times when he felt strong, his mind was sharp and clear. Until as late as 1972, he retained the overall control of his empire by poring over his companies’ performance reports, peppering aides with memos and reading a wide selection of the nation’s press. He orchestrated the activities of his aides down to the last detail and closely supervised their business transactions.

When negotiating business deals himself, Hughes, who had the reputation of being the world’s greatest procrastinator and nitpicker, continued to be an exasperating haggler. Always trying to squeeze out a better deal, he refused to be moved by deadlines or ultimatums imposed by the other side. A favorite Hughes rebuttal: “I will not negotiate with a gun at my head!”

“Those who dealt with him were almost always driven to absolute fits of frustration,” wrote TIME Associate Editor David B. Tinnin in his book, Just About Everybody vs. Howard Hughes (1973). Continued Tinnin, who interviewed scores of people who had dealt with him: “One banker who did business for many years with him maintains that Hughes operates according to four principles. One: Never make a decision. Let someone else make it and then if it turns out to be the wrong one, you can disclaim it, and if it is the right one, you can abide by it. Two: Always postpone any deadline—for a week, a day, or even half an hour. Who knows, the situation may change in your favor if only you have the patience to wait. Three: Divide and conquer —both your foes and friends. Play off everyone against each other so that you have more avenues of action open to you. Four: Every man has his price. The only problem, therefore, is finding out what the price is.”

By remote control, Hughes became a politically powerful ghost. His representatives handed out as much as $250,000 a year to politicians. After moving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 1966, he contributed heavily to the campaign fund of Republican Governor Paul Laxalt, whom Hughes for a time considered pushing for the presidency. Then he became a backer of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, contributing $50,000 to his 1968 presidential campaign.

The CIA Partner

In Las Vegas, Hughes found the ideal money machine from which he drew funds for political contributions. It was the Silver Slipper casino, a gaudy gambling house located opposite Hughes’ Desert Inn hideaway, which he leased for $4.5 million. From the Silver Slipper till, Hughes in 1970 withdrew at least $1 million for his personal projects. The money was in small-denomination, old bills, which could not be traced by tax authorities. Thus he could contribute to his favored candidates more than the $3,000 tax-free limit that prevailed until 1972. As the Watergate investigations later disclosed, Hughes in 1970 sent President Nixon $100,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which were given to Charles (“Bebe”) Rebozo in two installments in manila envelopes. There has been speculation that the purpose of the Watergate break-in and bugging was to discover how much the Democratic National Committee knew of that secret gift, but federal investigators have been unable to establish the credence of that suspicion.

By no means all the success of Hughes’ enterprises stemmed from his special relationship to Washington. Hughes Aircraft, for example, has top-flight managers and an excellent reputation. Even so, a recent Government study shows that although the company produces superior weapons, it also charges very high prices and makes big markups on equipment that it buys from outside suppliers and resells to the Pentagon.

During the past ten years Hughes Aircraft, which relies almost exclusively on Government work, has won nearly $6 billion in Government contracts, most of them on bids for weapons and electronic devices that were not open to competitors. There was also about 6 billion dollars more in secret contracts with the CIA over this period. “The huge contracts made Hughes Aircraft a captive company of the CIA,” asserts one former Pentagon official. “Their interests are completely merged.”

Howard Hughes was eager to have a link to the CIA, since he believed it would help him fend off other U.S. agencies prying into his taxes and business manipulations. The now defunct Robert R. Mullen & Co., which represented Hughes in Washington, also served as a CIA front and provided cover for agents in Europe and Asia. Mullen’s president, Robert Bennett, is now a Summa executive.

When the CIA conceived the plan to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the Pacific seabed, the agency turned to Hughes for cover. Summa organized the construction of the Glomar Explorer, under the guise of an oceanic mining and exploration ship. Its real mission remains the subject of suspicion. Despite Government denials, there is speculation that the ship may have been performing different duties—like implanting a weapons systern on the ocean floor. Last week the Government sought to dispel those suspicions by allowing newsmen to visit the huge barge that accompanied the Glomar Explorer on the mission. The craft looked harmless, but it was not large enough to accommodate a retrieved Soviet submarine, as the CIA at first asserted.

In any event, some U.S. intelligence experts will miss Hughes.

On learning of his death, James J. Angleton, the former CIA chief of counterintelligence, became misty-eyed. Said he: “Howard Hughes! Where his country’s interests were concerned, no man knew his target better. We were fortunate to have him.”

Hughes was fortunate too. Under both the Johnson and Nixon Administrations, he received kid-glove treatment. Not until 1971 did the IRS subject the Hughes holdings to an overall audit; the results of that audit have been kept secret. The Hughes Medical Institute has continued to enjoy tax-exempt status though its small volume of contributions does not meet IRS regulations for tax exemption. When Hughes in 1970 was faced with an antitrust complaint for attempting to buy another hotel in Las Vegas, former Attorney General John Mitchell personally intervened on his behalf.

The opening chapters of Hughes’ life read like a rather special American Dream Texas version. He had just about everything —money, talent, ambition. As a boy, he showed a remarkable innate talent for tinkering; he built one of the first licensed “ham” stations in Texas, using an old doorbell and an auto-ignition system. His father, known as “Big Howard,” had developed the first oil-drill bit that could bore through rock, thus opening vast untapped fields to exploration. “Little Howard” was only 18 when his father died, but he persuaded a Texas court to declare him to be of age. He bought out his relatives and took over the Hughes Tool Co. as sole owner.

Becoming restless, Howard soon headed for Hollywood, where he used the earnings from Toolco, as the company became known, to teach himself the art of film making. He was such a fast learner that within two years he won an Oscar for a silent comedy and went on to produce Hell’s Angels, an epic of World War I aerial combat. For the leading lady, he discovered Jean Harlow, whose wondrously sculpted shape, platinum hair, plus a certain charming vulgarity, gave her a unique place in the American libido.

Meanwhile, Hughes, who learned to fly as a teenager, built his own highly advanced H-l racer in which he set a world speed record of 352 m.p.h. in 1935. Three years later, Hughes, who was already predicting the era of ocean-spanning aircraft, flew round the world in 91 hr. 14 min., breaking the old record by four days.

When German submarines sank Allied shipping at an appalling rate during World War II, Hughes advocated the building of a gigantic airplane that could fly troops and cargo to the battle zones far above the reach of U-boats. Since metal was in short supply, he constructed his plane from lumber; hence its nickname, the Spruce Goose. Working in a mammoth hangar, which still stands at a Hughes plant in Culver City, Calif., Hughes built the huge eight-engine flying boat, which was as big as today’s Boeing 747.

By the time the Spruce Goose was finished. World War II had long been won. But a Senate subcommittee began investigating whether Hughes through his p.r. man had won rich Government contracts for the Goose and long-range reconnaissance aircraft by lavishly entertaining military officers, including Colonel Elliott Roosevelt, the late President’s son. Facing down his congressional critics, Hughes vowed to leave the U.S. if the huge plane failed to fly. On Nov. 2,1947, he flew it—but only for slightly more than a mile off Long Beach, Calif., at an altitude of no higher than 70 ft. The plane was just too unwieldy and dangerous. Today it sits in a specially constructed hangar in Long Beach.

After the war, Hughes foresaw the importance of wedding electronics to weaponry, and bright young scientists flocked to the Hughes Aircraft Co. because he created a questing atmosphere and provided them with the wherewithal to experiment. The company rapidly ex panded, but m the ’50s Hughes offended his best scientists by second-guessing them. After many quit, the Air Force threatened to cancel its defense contracts unless Hughes ceased interfering. Partly to reassure the Air Force, as well as to save taxes, he gave the company’s stock to the Hughes Medical Institute in 1954, but he still prided himself on its achievements.

He had even sharper ups and downs at Trans World Airlines. With huge infusions of cash, he built it from a small southwestern carrier into a globe girdler. It was also his fief. He chose planes, tinkered with design improvements and harassed TWA’s presidents with interminable post-midnight calls. On transcontinental flights, four to six seats were always blocked off for him even though he almost never used them. After Hughes’ failure to raise the money for TWA’s jet fleet, he lost control of the airline, and the new management hit him with an antitrust suit. Hughes won it in the U.S. Supreme Court. By that time, however, he had sold his huge bloc of TWA at a moment when the market was very high. He got $546 million, but he regretted losing TWA. “It’s not mine any more,” Hughes would say. “I can’t run my hands over it any more.”

In much the same way he gained—and lost—Hollywood’s RKO. Buying it in 1948, he soon became the only individual to own a major U.S. film studio. He would summon associates to midnight meetings in obscure hotels and sometimes hole up for weeks in a studio screening room, subsisting on cookies and milk while watching nonstop reruns of old flicks. The studio had few postwar hits; its executives revolted; and in disgust Hughes sold RKO in 1954 for a small profit to the General Tire and Rubber Co.

The Looming Conflict

Because Hughes’ life was so shrouded by secrecy, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to assess his achievements. Beyond doubt, he possessed a visionary gift for applying the scientific breakthroughs of today to create the new products of tomorrow. With his encouragement, his companies developed the laser, communications satellites and a dizzying array of esoteric weaponry. As one senior Pentagon intelligence officer puts it, “He was something of a genius in understanding far-out concepts of electro-optical systems, infra-red sensors and other sophisticated gear from undersea to outer space.”

Judged solely on the balance sheet, Hughes performed brilliantly. Starting with a company worth only $750,000 in 1924, he increased the assets astronomically. Yet many businessmen who have observed Hughes closely contend that his companies succeeded only when he left them alone. There is much to be said for that argument. Since he had little interest in drilling technology, he left Toolco alone; because it had an excellent product, it produced a gusher of profits. By contrast, Hughes meddled so much in RKO and TWA that he ultimately failed there.

In Las Vegas the Hughes casinos and hotels are poorly managed compared with other Strip establishments. Furthermore,

Hughes failed to build in Nevada the new light industrial plants that he had promised, or to develop the strategically located plots of land that he bought up in Las Vegas.

At precisely 4 p.m. last Wednesday, gamblers in the Hughes-owned casinos in Las Vegas were startled to hear over the P.A. system: “We ask that you pause for one minute of silence in reverence and remembrance of our good friend and a great American, Howard Robard Hughes.”

For 60 seconds, pit bosses held the dice at the crap tables; dealers shoed the cards at the 21 games; croupiers stopped the roulette wheels; and the casinos fell silent as players restively eyed their watches and women stared vacantly into their paper cups full of quarters in front of the slots. Sentiment not being a major commodity in Vegas, one man in the Desert Inn muttered when it was over, “Okay, he had his minute. Let’s deal ’em.”

The lack of empathy was fairly widespread. In Hughes plants, the flag flew at half mast, but there were no sighs of mourning. In his latter years, Hughes had become the epitome of the 20th century tragedy, a man so preoccupied with gadgets and power that he severed the bond with his fellow men.

Quite a few of his fellow men, however, were more than ever interested in his riches, and the scramble was beginning for the money—or at least part of the action. Producer David Wolper trumpeted that he would make a film about Hughes titled—guess what?— The Billionaire. It will hardly be factual, since he intends to base it on the fake “autobiography” of Hughes that Writer Clifford Irving foisted on LIFE and McGraw-Hill before he was jailed for fraud. Hughes’ former chef, Garry Reich, said that he was ready to sell the recipe for the fudge that Howard savored. Meanwhile, the Mexican authorities seemed piqued that Hughes had got away without leaving anything valuable behind. Two days after his death, Mexican detectives raided his Jasmine suite in the Acapulco penthouse and seized three aides, who had stayed behind to pack furniture and shred files. At week’s end the Mexicans charged Hughes Aide Clarence Waldron, 41, with forging Hughes’ signature on a Mexican tourist card. The other two were released. Under intense questioning, the aides disclosed that Hughes had been bedridden for years and was too weak to write. He had been unconscious for three days before he was flown to Houston.

The battle over the billions almost certainly will be fought by two groups that could hardly be more opposed. On the one side are Hughes’ rather distant Houston relatives, all members of the city’s old, tight-knit aristocracy. They live mostly in the genteel River Oaks area, belong to the best clubs (the Assembly, the Tejas Club), are members of the Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal) and try—with unusual success—to keep out of the news.

The matriarch is the aged Mrs. Frederick Lummis, a Wellesley graduate (1911) who is the widow of a physician. Her son, William Rice Lummis, is a member of the prestigious Houston law firm of Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Jones, which has handled the Hughes family’s private matters for half a century. There are three other Lummis children, all with at least potential claims to Hughes’ estate: Frederick Rice Lummis Jr., a physician; Annette Neff, wife of a Houston banker; and Allene Russell, a Boston suburbanite. Another aunt has died, but three of her children could be claimants.

They are: Mrs. Sara Lindsey, a past president of the Houston Junior League; Mrs. Janet Davis, wife of the president of a die-casting company; and James Houstoun, an insurance man. Another cousin is Houston Accountant Howard Gano, who is the son of the brother of Hughes’ mother. Most of them had not seen Hughes since he returned in triumph from his world flight in 1938. Says Sara Lindsey: “All the kids in the family rode in the parade in 1938. We haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

On the other side are three self-made and middle-class people who represent the anti-Houston faction within the Hughes empire, which finally prevailed in the long battle for Howard’s ear. The last of the old-guard Texans were purged when he sold off the Hughes Tool Co. for $150 million in 1972. The three: Frank William Gay, 55, Summa’s highest-ranking officer, began as a clerk in the early 1950s in Hughes’ communications center, became the chief of the nurse-aides surrounding Hughes and was picked by him to be the holding company’s executive vice president. The general counsel is Chester Davis, 65, the irrepressible Wall Street lawyer who ultimately won the twelve-year TWA antitrust suit for Hughes; he and Gay had long been rivals, but in the past two years have patched up their quarrels. The third member of the triumvirate is Nadine Henley, 69, Hughes’ longtime and fiercely loyal administrative assistant.

The lines along which the legal battles will be fought will depend largely on whether one or more wills come to light. Much will hinge, too, on what evidence each side can produce about Hughes’ state of mind at the time he executed any will. Since Hughes hated to sign his name, the signature may be questioned. Still, legal developments seem likely to take one of four possible routes:

> If there is not a valid will bequeathing the money to the medical institute, the Hughes estate will be subject to massive federal death taxes that will more than halve it (and will narrow the federal budget deficit a bit; after all, every little billion helps).

> If Hughes left a final testament bequeathing his estate to the medical institute, as he often said he intended, the money could be spared the ravages of the death tax. Gay and Co. would support this will, since it most likely would put them in control of the medical institute, which, in turn, would then be the sole owner of Summa. In that case, Summa would continue to function along its present lines but would pay its profits to the institute. The Hughes family could—and probably would—fight. Their lawyers would argue that Hughes was not of sound mind when he executed the will and that he had been under the control of the persons who benefited from the will. And the Government might also fight in the courts to remove the institute’s tax-exempt status.

> If Hughes left more than one will, the situation would be even more complicated. There would be a long court examination over the different documents to try to determine which one was the most recent and whether it had been drawn and properly witnessed while Hughes was in his right mind.

> If Hughes left a single will dividing his estate between his relatives and the institute—and perhaps some others, including possibly the Mormon church—the various sides would be likely to fight anyhow. Each probably would go to court to assert its claim to the entire inheritance.

In life, Howard Hughes was able to conceal most of his foibles and fancies from public view. But if the case goes to court, the various claimant sides will be forced to reveal as much as they can about his state of mind and his way of life in order to prove the validity of their own claims to his fabulous wealth. It seems quite likely that the looming litigation will peel back the layers of mystery. They still cloak Hughes in much the same manner as the yellow sheet that shrouded his emaciated corpse on his last flight home.

* For TIME’S cover portrait, Artist Barron Storey worked from old photos of Hughes and eyewitness descriptions provided last week by the two pilots of the ambulance plane and the Houston customs inspector who admitted the body to the U.S.