March 22, 2021 • 51 mins
Howard Hughes was one of the most financially successful businessmen of all time, an engineer, a record setting pilot, film producer and philanthropist, his obsessive compulsive disorder drove his ability to stunningly innovate but ultimately it caused great suffering.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Hi. I'm
Dr Gail Saltz, and this is Personology. Today. We're going
to be speaking about Howard Robart Hughes, Jr. He was,
(00:25):
in his lifetime one of the most financially successful men
in the world. He was an American businessman, but he
was also a film director and producer. He was also
an engineer and a record setting pilot. He also gave
away a good amount of his money as a philanthropist,
(00:46):
but he also came to be known as reclusive and eccentric,
which probably had to do with his psychiatric illness obsessive
compulsive disorder. My guest joining me today is James B. Steele.
He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best selling author,
(01:06):
and he is the co author of the book Howard Hughes,
His Life and Madness. Howard Hughes was born in nine five,
perhaps on Christmas Eve, although that seems that I documents
say different things. But we'll say Christmas Eve in Humble, Texas,
(01:30):
which is kind of ironic for a man who was
anything but humble or Houston, Texas. It sounds like I
think it was Houston, because you know, one of the
mysteries of his life is that his birth certificate was
never found, and it was only when he in World
War Two came around that his aunts had to verify
(01:51):
as to when he was born and where the birth
took place. So it's just typical of a man who
lived his whole life with mystery that we don't even
have a real birth certificate for that is pretty fascinating
in it of itself, a man who would ultimately come
to be a mysterious figure in so many ways. An
only child, two parents who really didn't have much to
(02:16):
start with, but whose father And this is just interesting,
you know, when you think about what's nature and what's nurture,
that's a big question in the life of Howard Hughes,
and that his father had nothing. But his father, who
was originally from Missouri, discovered, or let you say, designed,
built a drill bit to drill oil, that's correct, and
(02:42):
it revolutionized the oil industry because prior to the invention
of this drill bit, conventional drills were basically destroyed when
they hit extremely hard rock formations. So this particular drill
devised a way to go through those formations, and in fact,
it developed a fascinating name. At the oil fields, people
(03:02):
called it the rock Eater because that's exactly what it did,
and revolutionized the oil industry and ultimately made Howard you Senior,
Howard's father fabulously wealthy, and that was actually the basis
of his son's fortune. What's also fascinating in terms of
what do you take away from your parents and learn
or what has to do with, you know, innate intelligence.
(03:23):
But he not only built this thing and revolutionized the industry,
but he chose to a patent and be rented, not
sell it, which really was instrumental in not only making
his fortune but keeping his fortune in the sense that
ultimately people were always dependent on renting these pieces. No
(03:47):
one else could make these pieces, and so this became
really for life in many ways, a source of Howard
Hughes Junior's money. Absolutely. And it's funny that the father
intuitively understood that the way you really make money in
business is to be a monopoly, and that's an effect
what he was, and everybody in the oil industry was
dependent on that, and he fought vigorously for years to
(04:11):
protect that patent, to make sure nobody else ripped it off,
and then Howard continued that same process, but you're absolutely right,
the leasing the renting of it assured not just the
father's fortune, but particularly his sons. So fascinatingly, Howard's father
was engineering, was very intelligent and innovative and business wise, intelligent, innovative,
(04:36):
and also somewhat ruthless in his pursuit. He was also
described as a loner. He didn't have very many friends himself.
The father, he was the businessman, and he was away
a lot. And that's just interesting because those words could
be used to describe young Howard as a boy exactly.
(04:58):
Howard was an only child and from early on a
loaner early on, very interested in mechanical things. As far
as I could tell in all the research we did
for our book, he really only had one friend from
his childhood and who basically was kind of his only
real friend. It was the son of the fellow who
had developed the tool company drill Bit with Howard Sr.
(05:21):
And in fact they weren't in close contact. They didn't
correspond much. But many years later, when Howard was famous,
flown around the world, created all kinds of achievements. He
was very unhappy with where he was in the world.
And he called Dudley, this boyhood friend, and he said, Dudley,
I've just messed up my whole life. I've messed it
up terribly. And Dudley couldn't figure out what he meant,
(05:44):
because at that point he was this famous aviator, this
famous designer of airplanes, fabulously rich, Hollywood starlet's hanging off
his arm. Whatever he meant by that, Dudley had no idea.
But the point of my story on this is that that,
as far as I could tell, and all the research
we did, was his only him. He had no siblings.
His father was away a lot with this business, so
(06:05):
often not home. His mother, on the other hand, was
a very different relationship. He was very, very close to
his mother, you could say really and what the term I,
as a psychiatrist would use a psychoanalysts and meshed. It
was hard to know where one began and the other
one ended. They were that kind of close. And it's
(06:25):
important and interesting to note that his mother is described
as being so nurturing as to being babying, being you know,
sort of couldn't stop nurturing him. Was fairly intrusive with
her nurturing. You will do it this way, you need
to wash this way, you need to be healthy this way,
and that she had a particular fear of germs herself.
(06:51):
She imparted that concerns about violent germs was the term
she used, which is an interesting personification of germs as
something though to be really feared and that were aggressive
in her mind, something that she seemed to pass on
to Howard. Again, it's always interesting when we think about
(07:12):
things like fears and phobias or obsessions. The impact of
your environment certainly is there, and we know that about
everything from simple phobias to O c D. But it's
also true that things like simple phobias and obsessive compulsive
disorder running families because there's a genetic basis for it,
(07:35):
and we think there's something biologic as well. But she
was afraid of violent germs, and fairness to her, there
was a time of the real polio outbreak where understandably
a lot of people were afraid about what you could catch,
and terrible things did happen. But she would tell him
to clean his body, try to kind of control what
he ate. He needed to eat very curative foods, and
(07:58):
talk to him a lot about being sick and be
generally overinvolved, but he describes really having this close and
nurturing relationship in a kind of positive way. Right. Absolutely.
I think he was very close to her, and I
think what you mentioned earlier, the fact his father was
away in the oil fields selling the drill bit, building
up the company that would become this great fortune. So
(08:19):
they were together much more than he was with the
entire family. It's true also that only children probably get
more attention than children who are part of a multi
child family. But he had been sick as a child,
and the mother was frankly obsessed by this. And some
of the most revealing letters we found were when she
(08:41):
finally got up the nerve to let him go to
camp when he was a young teenager. They sent him
from Houston up to northeast Pennsylvania. Houston those days there
was no air conditioning, unbelievably hot in the summertime. Human
also fear of malaria, other kinds of problems, which on
this day and age we don't think of a place
like that having that back in those days, it was
(09:01):
a real thing. So she sent him to this camp
up in Pennsylvania, and she worried the whole time. She
would send letters to the fellow who was running the
camp watch out for Howard. If there's anybody who's sick
near him, would you make sure that that boy gets
isolated and I put Howard somewhere else. I understand there's
a polio outbreak and that part of the world. Just
please take care of him. And you know Howard's delicate
(09:24):
makes you know this, that and the other thing. So
we have actual physical evidence in these letters that she
wrote repeatedly to the fellow who ran the camp, saying,
I'm really concerned about him. Will you be concerned about him?
Will you take special care to watch my boy because
he needs special care? Basically that's what she was saying.
In fact, she even had one time where she was
(09:44):
so anxious about this. She and her husband were in
New York. He was their own business. She said, I
have to I have to come see him, and she
apparently took the train to near the camp, and whether
or not they ever got together or not was never
revealed any of these records, but it was an indication
of just how on the impulse wasn't her to protect
him and to worry about his condition. So it's hard
(10:04):
from Howard standpoint not to absorb some of that concern
in some of that worry. I mean, you made such
a good point at the beginning about what's part of
nature and what do you pick up I'm paraphrasing you
in your environment. I think there's an awful lot that
probably both those channels flowed into Howard. It's worth noting
that the way his mother speaks and is described that
(10:27):
she herself may have had obsessive compulsive disorder, her intense
concern about cleanliness and germs. Of course those things weren't
diagnosed in those days, but that was a possibility, and
that similarly his father's mother, his grandmother, is also described
as having similar concerns and fears, which to have genetic
(10:52):
loading from both sides of your family with O c
D makes it not surprising at all that you would
struggle with it. You're absolutely the grandmother on his father's side,
I mean his father's mother. They lived in kiakak, Iowa,
and it was on the Mississippi River. His father was
kind of a famous regional lawyer for the railroads at
the time, and the grandmother had this terrible fear of
(11:15):
bugs and germans, like being in the closets and Howard
spent quite a bit of time as a boy with
those grandparents. Whether it was just for that visitor loan
or when he was passing through town not entirely clear,
but he saw first hand some evidence of that particular
thing as well, and so it seems totally natural to
him by the time he's like fourteen or fifteen years old,
(11:37):
that people should be worried about these things exactly. And
let's talk about him as a student. He was by
all accounts, extremely mathematically minded and had a propensity for
the kinds of sciences that lead to engineering. While he
seemed to have incredible aptitude, he wasn't a very good student, right,
(12:00):
which sometimes happens with people who were quite bright. As
we all know, he wasn't a particularly good student. He
didn't particularly like, as far as we could tell, the
organized activity that was involved in being in a school.
Even how Hard was the ultimate loner, and being in
that kind of environment means you're part of the community.
But he was very interested in engineering. He was very
(12:21):
interested in mathematics even and I believe elementary school was
they built some toy radio. This at a time where
there were not a lot of radios around actually he
built like the first transistor sort of CB type radio
exactly and was in the newspaper, was like eleven years old,
and it was a phenom in terms of electrical engineering
(12:42):
sorts of feats. That was his instinct, and those were
his instincts. He was very comfortable with numbers, He was
very comfortable with the kinds of engineering drawings, conceptual things
of that sort. So he was more at home with
them than it really was with people. And he had
already as a child, it sounds like an interest in flying.
That was something that appealed to him in those early days.
(13:04):
And aviation was the hot issue, I mean, the most
dramatic thing that was happening in the world when he
was a kid. I mean, the Wright brothers were only
I guess a couple of years before he was born
and was kiddie hawk. And so from then on there
was one aviation advance after another that formed part of
that whole story. So he sort of dove tailed perfectly
(13:28):
with his mathematics and the possibility of flying. So it
was a natural thing that he would later evolve into
that particular field. At that point, his father had made
enough money for him to do things that maybe most
boys in those days wouldn't have been able to afford
to do. He took flying lessons basically as a teen,
which is pretty exciting, expensive venture, certainly in those days,
(13:53):
but he already was sort of in pursuit of that
interest of his yes, And after his mother died, his
father spent quite a bit of time on the West
Coast in l A, where a lot of the early
aviation industry was starting to shape up because of year
round moderate temperatures where you could build certain kinds of things.
So before we get to his independence, let's let's talk
(14:15):
about for a minute about the death of his parents,
which happened at an early age and created a very
odd scenario for him as an only child. His mother
died he was seventeen. He was away at boarding school,
and she developed well what turned out to be an
(14:37):
ectopic pregnancy, which was in those days often deadly because
they didn't have a treatment for that, really, and they
often didn't discover it in time. And she said to him,
I'll be fine, I'll be fine. I'm going in for something,
but it's going to be fine, And of course she
did not emerge. She died, and that was really devastating
(14:57):
for both Howard and his father. Yes, and Howard at
the time was in school in Santa Barbara, and his
uncle Rupert Hughes, came up from Los Angeles and broke
the news to him, and then the two of them
took the train back to Houston. But it was a
devastating blow, not just a Howard but even to the father.
After that, I think he returned to school briefly, and
(15:20):
then of course he got the other dreadful news a
little over here after that, where his father, who had
appeared to be in perfect health, very robust kind of
figure as home in the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana,
as he was in chatting up people in the movie
community in l A, which he spent some time in,
(15:42):
suddenly just keels over at his desk in Houston one day,
that of a heart attack. So here's Howard at eighteen.
Up to this time, his evidence no particular sign of
independence or wanted to be his own person. He's been
a very loyal son to both the mother and the
father other But then something very dramatic happens. His relatives.
(16:04):
His father had a brother by name and Rupert, who
was a very famous author and screenwriter in California, and
then his grandparents. I think by this time we're also
living in California. The assumption was they would all oversee
the tool company, Howard's the fortune, the basis and family fortune.
But Howard, right away, right away, with no indication, with
(16:28):
no advanced warning, says I want to buy you out.
I mean, here's this eighteen year old kid. There's evidence,
no sign of any particular independence. Who the family is thinking, gosh,
she just lost both parents. He's eighteen years old, and
he wants to buy us out. And it, needless to say,
it created a tremendous rift in the family. They initially
resisted this, but eventually he was so determined and so
(16:52):
hardheaded and so stubborn about it, which was the hallmark
of his character throughout his life as a boy, and
I mean as young man and then as a mature
man that he had. They eventually said, okay, buy us out.
They were part owners somehow, or in the will they
became parted in the wild, they were part owners. They
were all in that together, but he was the majority
(17:14):
owner right exactly. And he remembered something his father had
told him once which in this case. He then starts
to use on the family. His father had had some
difficulty with one early partner, and his father said, whatever
you do, don't ever have a partner in this world.
So Howard took this to heart with his own family.
(17:34):
Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back in
a moment. His father basically told him business partners are dangerous,
you know, as sort of like his mother told him
germs or dangerous. And so his absorption of dangers and
fears was very total. That really caught his attention. And
(17:57):
I'm just thinking of of how he was is and
these influences over the course of his life, and his
being primed for danger signals and to do everything you
can to batten down the hatches and avoid danger. By
the way, after your two parents die, so you know,
of course you think the world is a pretty dangerous place.
(18:19):
That he would decide, you know, the most important thing
was to avoid this danger. And I think the point
you just made as an excellent one. He did see
these various dangerous and out of this group, I think
even stronger desire to be a loner. I mean, it
came naturally to being a loner. But basically I think
Howard felt, you can't trust anything in this world. You
(18:40):
can't trust the fact your parents are going to survive
a small operation and they're otherwise healthy. Father is going
to live to be an old man. Don't even trust
your relatives, don't trust your uncle or your grandparents, don't
trust anybody. You just have to rely on yourself in
this world. I think that's something that came out of that,
and it's sort of dovetailed perfectly with his sense of
(19:00):
being kind of a loaner anyway, and in so much
of his life it wasn't a problem. But eventually, and
I'm sure we'll get to that, it was a problem.
Fascinating and he, as you said, you know, self sufficiency
became the most important thing, the most important thing to him,
and he could financially be self sufficient vis a vis
this company, which then allowed him to use that money
(19:23):
to explore and develop and innovate other companies, which is
in the veins of his interests, which was interesting. He
did this by at the age of nineteen. Petitioning to
become legally emancipated was sort of a furthering of his
I'm not going to count on anybody in this world
it's me and I have to be the one, and
(19:46):
he basically starts Hughes Tool Company. He makes that the
center of things. But then he goes on to develop
these other institutions, not surprisingly a medical institution, given that
his parents both died of illness and he was so
afraid of illness and germs. I think that seems really
(20:06):
overdetermined that you would choose to make a medical institution.
Two things happened with the medical institution. People are always
asking him as he grew through life, what are you
going to do with your money? And that became also
a way to tell people that's where it's going to go,
and that appeared to be something that was a good
thing to do. Howard Is didn't need people for much
(20:30):
of his life, but he had this absolutely sixth cents
about what motivated the population and public opinion. He knew
exactly what would ring true. And to say that you're
going to leave your money to a medical institutional, that
that was a good thing. That must mean Howard's a
good person, and that must mean he's on the right
(20:50):
track and he's he has bigger issues and motivations at him.
Were there other indications besides this that Howard cared what
people thought of him, what his public legacy would be.
I'm glad you asked that, because Howard was obsessed by
his image, even though he himself was very shy in
many ways, and he all throughout his life he had
(21:12):
various public relations people churning out certain things about in
blatant life. He didn't he didn't have to worry about
that so much because by that time the image was built.
He wanted to create the image at all times that
he was possibly the richest man in the world or
one of the richest. He wanted to make sure the
image that he was a great corporate leader and designer
of machines and so forth. He wanted to conquer Hollywood,
(21:36):
which he could do because of his money, not to
make money. Most of his movies lost money. But he
was very conscious of the image. And when he did
the premier for his famous movie Hells Angels, which actually
has some of the most remarkable aerial sequences for the
planes of that time, the nine twenties that you'll ever see,
I mean, they truly are amazing. I mean, three people
(21:56):
have died in the filming of that movie because of
these things were so dare devilished. But anyway, you look
at those and you see wow. But what was typical Howard?
When that movie premiered, he shut down Hollywood, searchlights, planes
flying overhead, everything in the world focusing on that kind
of thing. So Hugh was, while shy personally, in many ways,
(22:17):
understood so well what it took to catch the public's attention,
and that continued throughout life in the other movies as well.
Did he talk to others about the importance of perhaps
surpassing his father in success. He did not talk about
that per se, but it was a conclusion we reached
in our book that that was one of the great
(22:38):
driving forces of his life. His father was a larger
than life figured to him, who had really died before
Howard himself reached his maturity. So maybe by at that stage,
Howard's not even noticing perhaps a few flaws in his father,
if he had any. I mean, the man is really
on a pedestal at that point. He's created this great company,
(22:58):
he's engineered this amazing is unfortune. It goes west with
him to Hollywood to see his uncle, and people are
dazzled by Howard Senior and a handsome man, very rich Man,
so on and and so forth. So I think his whole
life he wanted to do something that would equal that,
but we came to the conclusion in his own mind
he never did, even though he himself vastly exceeded the
(23:23):
fame of his father in multiple areas of interest, from
aviation to movies to other industries as well. That is
interesting because it's not unusual, as you point out, at
least through your teens to idolize a parent and see
them as a hero. And then usually as you move
along in your teens and early twenties, you start to
devalue them, and maybe then ultimately after your twenties or
(23:46):
late twenties, you start to come into a more just
a realistic view that includes everything. But yes, left with
this purely idealized view of a hero, it would be
difficult to, when you know what you know about yourself,
to feel that you could measure up. But I also
think another thing comes to bear, and that is because
(24:07):
of the many signs and symptoms of some form of
obsessive compulsive disorder. The flip side of that is that Howard,
there are many things about him and his work that
indicate he was extremely perfectionistic, that he was incredibly detailed oriented,
and that everything he did with the development of planes,
(24:29):
with the movies, that he would do something over and
over and over again because it had to be just right.
And you could say, well, you know, this is actually
a symptom of O c D, this level of perfectionism
that actually can make people suffer terribly in their lives
because nothing is ever exactly right. And sometimes people with
(24:51):
O c D of this form can't get anything done
because they have to keep redoing things, so nothing ever
gets completed, and they're striving for it to be just right.
But in the case of Howard Hughes, his perfectionism in
many ways was an incredible asset. Your description a second
ago is really a one paragraph description of what kind
(25:13):
of drove him. It was both the source of his
triumphs and later on it became the source of his
really his own destruction in a way. But you're absolutely
right the the O c D, the perfectionism you saw
it in particular with the airplanes and actually in the
making of the movies, and the reason he was able
to make these movies like Hell's Angels, which cost a
(25:33):
fortune and never made any money was because he had
all this money and he could do things the average
producer of a movie couldn't do, who had investors and
other people to answer to. He had no partners, He
had to man to spend. You can do whatever you
want if you own your own movie studio. There is
no one to tell you know, you can't do that. Exactly.
The one big institution he had to we owned most
(25:53):
of them, but not all of it turned out to
be a real problem for him, which was t w a.
The airplane. But that perfectionism you really saw not just
in health angels, but you also saw in the making
of the airplanes. You know, he designed and flew some
very innovative aircraft. The original ones were a cross country
(26:13):
Johnson and then he had his famous around the World
flight in and prior to that, a lot of people
thought of airplanes, it's just guys with leather caps and
they get in the cockpit and they buckety buck across
the Atlantic, and let's just an active, great personal heroism,
which of course it was. But in his case, the
(26:34):
round the World flight he took with several crew members
was not only in heroic jount but the plan they
designed and that he helped design and perfect was an
engineering and mechanical marvel for its time, the Lucky thirty eight.
So that was a case where the perfectionism was extremely important.
(26:54):
It got them out of a couple of close calls.
There was one close call in Shoe where they almost
crashed into a mountain. But I think if the instruments
hadn't been functioning properly, they might have been in some
real trouble. They would have been in some real trouble.
But anyway, later on in life, the perfectionism got out
of control. And there's one it's almost a funny incident
(27:16):
when he was having a battle that he was aircraft
company which didn't actually make an airplanes and made electronics.
He was having all kinds of trouble with the Pentagon
because he was a defense contractor people trying to get
decisions out of it. And as you pointed out, sometimes
the c D people have trouble making a decision because
they're afraid they're going to make the wrong decision the way,
that's that and the other thing, And pretty soon you're
(27:37):
just you're sitting there on this fence and it's so
what do you do when that happens? Well, in Howard's case,
it's almost comical. He's got this huge enterprise under government
contract and generals and their force people are breathing down
his neck. So what does he do. He orders the
study of the all the candies that are being sold
in the company's vending machines. He was kind of a
(28:00):
funny health note as well, but again it's just something
where he's able to make a decision on something that's
totally unimportant that kind of saves him from making this
big decision and diverse his attention. It's sort of something
he can focus on and move forward and then perhaps
have the issue that was kind of crippling him, the
obsessing issue, take a back burner, which actually might have
(28:21):
allowed him to then make that decision, which would be
interesting because what it would be is a personal work
around or like a self treatment you know of sorts
and something we might incognitive behavioral therapy use to you know,
teach a patient how to sort of unstick themselves, you know,
at any time. So that's kind of fascinating. He needed
(28:44):
something like that, I'll tell you it really did. Of course,
there were not those treatments at that time, and people
didn't talk about those things. The stigma was tremendous. But
as you point out, hues Aircraft was really a maker
of like satellites and technology, not airplanes. But he did
have this love of aviation and airplanes and he did,
as you just discussed, you know, build airplanes, set world records,
(29:08):
and he married his interests. Which is also really interesting
that he brought aviation to film in a way that
both improved the brand of aviation filming himself and putting
it in the films in a way that made aviation
sexier if you will, and have the public be more
interested in it and want to fly t w A.
(29:29):
And at the same time he used that to make
movies that he hoped obviously would be successful on groundbreaking
by using the appeal of aviation absolutely and in fact
you see in the case of t Way, he was
one of those who had a hand in designing t
Wway is famous plane which anybody young today is not
(29:50):
aware of. But it was this absolutely gorgeous plan called
the Constellation. Even gave it this wonderful name. It had
basically three tales, three fins at the rear, and it
became the great luxury airliner prop plane of its time,
and he was used it very much in his movie business,
very starlets back and forth the movie sets and things
(30:12):
of that sort. And there's just unbelievable numbers of films
where some famous Hollywood actress are standing on the gangway
of a constellation to come out, waving to the press,
waving to others, things of that sort. So it became
it was a marriage of these two luxurious issues, aviation
and movies. That's what was so much of Hughes's early
(30:33):
driving instincts. It's fascinating that while in certain areas of
his life he was obviously terrified of taking risks, you know,
when it came to issues that is O. C. D
touched on health and and well being and perhaps social issues,
taking risks. In terms of relationships, as you pointed out,
he really he had two definite but you know a
(30:57):
couple of year marriages. It seems that he was often
fairly certainly emotionally absent and often physically absent from those marriages,
did not have children. Was pursued by various starlets, but
it seemed more about superficial you look good with me,
I'm very wealthy, I look good with you. Sorts of liaisons,
(31:18):
but in planes, he really took risks and sadly ultimately
had a terrible plane crash. But he really did take risks.
That's at the heart of a lot of his image
and why people are in part of him. I mean,
in addition, he said a couple of ground speed records
in California with a racer he designed, one of which
(31:39):
christ but didn't hurt him. Then he set two transcontinental
flights from l A to the New York area six
and the other seven I believe, where you set the
record for flying across the country. This is one person
doing this in a little plane that took around eight
to nine ten hours. But here's one guy in a
(32:00):
cockpit flying through the night, and his compass went out
on one of the early into the flight. And here
he is flying at night, looking down at the lights
of various cities, or hopes of the cities. He thinks
they are on his way to Newark, New Jersey. So
there's a lot of gutsiness. You're absolutely right. I mean,
(32:21):
he took risks, and there was a lot of gutsiness
in what he did. That created the image of a
rich guy who wasn't just clipping his coupons. He's out
there building airplanes. He's investing in this new industry called movies.
He's not just sitting still. He's advancing science, technology or
(32:42):
understanding of the world and how we're going to get
around that world in airplanes, and clearly trying to demonstrate,
perhaps mostly for himself, that he has talent and ability
that isn't just about inheriting money. Exactly right. That's exactly right,
and I think is maybe as much as anything, what
droving was not just the interest in those areas, but
(33:04):
I honestly think trying to equal his father in part.
His father had created this great fortune, and that fortune
was what made all of these other ventures possible. I
mean people used to think about how are to use
and how Richie was the whole heart of the fortune
to the end of his days was that company invented
by his father, and that financed everything else. And I
(33:26):
think as a result of this, he was always trying
to show what he himself could do. But it wasn't
just in the minds of the public of foolhardiness. I
mean he headed to a science, aviation technology that the
idea that mankind, humankind is moving on in advancing. It's
interesting just from a psychiatric point of view that he
(33:47):
increasingly as he aged, suffered more with his O c
D symptoms and at the same time, something that's often
used by people who suffer from anxiety, you know, pathologic
anxiety and O c D use a defense mechanism that's
called counterphobic behavior. So instead of being afraid of something,
(34:09):
you don't contemplate it, you just jump into it and
do something extra scary, like you know, dive off the
diving board. And you could see evidence as his O
c D worsened in some ways, you know, he was
sort of noted to increasingly like separate his food and
count his peas and you know, sort of numerical and
(34:30):
like food shouldn't touch each other, and symptoms that we
know do classically happen with certain forms of O c
D that at the same time he's taking these incredibly
risky brave you know, I had a plane crash, but
I'm going to get it back into plane and do
still do something risky a real I think it's psychoanalytically,
you might look at this as coping defense mechanism for
(34:53):
his increasing anxiety. In other ways, that's a fascinating point,
and I think he fits that description perfectly. I mean
he had multiple plane crashes. I mean, if somebody had
one plane crash or one nearer miss, you might and
he was afraid of all the things. You might think
he would pull back, and in fact he moves forward.
In World War two, very serious plane crash outside of
(35:15):
Las Vegas that killed a couple of crew members. He
himself was hurt but survived. And then there was the
famous one after the war ended. I should go back
a little bit on this one. During the war, he
had two major contracts. Because there was a shortage of
metal h he wanted to build one huge transport plane
out of wood that became the famous Spruce Scoose, largest
(35:37):
plane ever built. Another contract was of a fighter plane.
Both of these contracts he was unable to deliver that
product before the war ended. Not totally his fault. I
mean you could say it was way too ambitious what
he planned to do, and this and that. But the
fighter plane, after the war was over, he was determined
(35:57):
to take it up and see how it performed. And
he was actually warned at the time that perhaps this
isn't the best time to do this. You shouldn't and
there's kinds of things you should avoid there intentionally took
a risk and the plane crashed in Beverly Hills and
almost killed it. And it's is actually a miracle based
on what happened to his body that he actually did survive.
(36:18):
Nobody on the ground was killed. But that christ was
a direct result of errors that he made in judgment
that he had been warned about. Similarly, with the Spruce Goose,
the huge flying boat, he did fly it briefly for
about a mile in Long Beach Harbor, but he was
also warned that this thing might have come apart in
(36:39):
the air because it was actually made out of wood
and so forth. But absolutely what you're saying, he took
these risks. There were some part of a piece of
his personality that said, I need to test this, I
need to show the world this, I need to show
this to myself. We can speculate on who was trying
to show it to, but these were unnecessary risks that
(36:59):
he can tenually took, even while he's worried about a
little german getting in his food. It is notable that
after the very bad crash that you mentioned, he suffered
many injuries, including head trauma. And that's very important because
it does seem that his symptoms of O c D
really became significantly worse after this crash. The pressure of
(37:23):
the two contracts to build those planes, which he failed
to do deliver on, along with the crash, those things
all seemed to contribute greatly to what happened to him
after that. By in the late forties, he's increasingly not
seen in public as much as he once was, and
then all through the fifties the same thing as true,
(37:45):
fewer and fewer people seen. He's living in the Beverly
Hills Hotel in one of the bungalows. Some men who
worked for him take over the other bungalows. When he
Mary Jean Peters, they were both living in separate bungalows
at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and in fact, one of
the most amazings that tis six they weren't married, I
guess twelve years. We computed that they actually lived together
only nine months of those twelve years. But this process
(38:08):
of separation and of sealing himself off from the rest
of the world, from the world a tiny world he
should control, accelerates from that mid nineteen on through the
rest of his life. That's a key word, you say,
their control that you know, if you love someone, if
you're married to someone, you know and they do things
in your environment that you find difficult. Because you have
(38:30):
O c D, you can't entirely control another person, so
that would be very very difficult. And head trauma depending
on where the trauma was to the brain, but even
just generally getting such a hard hit that you have
essentially some mild form of organic brain damage could very
much accentuate psychiatric problem that was already there. But there
(38:51):
was another issue too, and that is that he had
so many injuries and needed pain medications to control his pain,
which probably isn't very well controlled just in terms of
the pain medications that were available then, which were often
short acting and may not have controlled his pain very well.
So he may have been also struggling with chronic pain
(39:11):
and with addiction that was you know, created by physicians
who gave him the pain medications that he needed. This
is still continues to be a dilemma for people today
that you know. The thing about opioids in general is
they can treat pain and they often are needed. You
shouldn't leave someone in pain. But at the same time,
(39:32):
you often end up needing more of the same medication
to control the same amount of pain because we developed
tolerance to those medications, and if you try to cut back,
you go through withdrawal, and it's a very painful situation
to be in. Most people who get addicted to opioids
today do so because they were originally given to them
for a medical need, you know, post surgery or post
(39:54):
an injury. But if you're Howard Hughes and you can
get anything you want, no matter the cost and no
matter the legality of it, and you are surrounding yourself
with people who will basically not question anything you do,
even for your own good, then unfortunately you may be
left to stuff with the consequences of severe chronic pain
(40:15):
and an addiction. An addiction we know affects your judgment tremendously,
so one's ability to say, oh, this is not looking
good and you to do something about this would really
be impaired. We have evidence said right after his death
he was found to have needles broken off in his
arms from giving himself injections. And you can only imagine
if you would tolerate that, what kind of pain you
must be in it otherwise, absolutely right. And the drug
(40:38):
addiction is unfortunately such a major part of the last
chapter of his life. And you're right because of his wealth,
because there were doctors around him who were giving these things.
His main addiction was to coding, which is just about
the worst kind of thing to be continually addicted to.
I mean, coding's purpose is for a short term relief
(41:02):
from pain, maybe a terrible tooth extraction or some other
kind of surgery. But the idea of using coding continually,
the side effects are horrendous from your internal system and
so forth, and that producing other problems. So I don't
think there's any doubt about it. The drugs accelerated that problem,
and the ways as manifested itself was really disturbing, if
(41:25):
you'd come back with me from it. When we did
the book, there was a lot of speculation about how
could somebody this smart, who designed all of these things,
who had these beautiful women on his arm, How could
somebody like that have long, fair nails and behave in
this very bizarre way. So we were actually skeptical of
a lot of the initial stories that he was this
(41:46):
kind of crazy and so forth. Well, a lot of
evidence began piling up that all those stories were in
fact true. And then one day, as part of our research,
we were able to obtain something as the most chilling
document that I have ever seen about anybody. And it
was called the Procedures manu. And this was a manual
(42:07):
devised by these handful of yes men who worked around him,
who never argue with him about anything, about how to
do everything, how to open a can of fruit if
somebody has died in the company, here's a four page memo,
and how to send flowers that make sure that the
bill doesn't come back to the home office because there
(42:30):
might be germs on it. How to walk through the
door and give me something. Make sure you walk at
an angle, don't come straight in, like, don't breathe on me.
This thing was an inch and a half thick, and
it had been written by the aids because they were
continually berated by him when they had failed to do
things properly into his perfectionist view of the world. So
(42:52):
they wrote everything down says, well, this is how you
told us to do these things. Let's take a quick
break here. We'll be back in a moment. I think
people looked at that kind of ending for Hughes or
those last years of his life and thought, what a
you know, creepy, weird and villainous kind of behavior. But
(43:12):
if people could understand that that procedural manual that the
aids were simply writing down what they observed he required,
and have an idea of what it would be like
to live with that manual in your brain all the time.
That basically, you know, when you have obsessive compulsive disorder,
(43:32):
there is a thought telling you constantly you know what
needs to happen, and if it can't happen, the unbearable
anxiety and terror you will face until you can and
in often cases do some other behavior or correct it
in some way. That's the compulsion part, Right, You have
(43:53):
this thought obsession, and then you have the compulsion which
makes you feel momentarily better. So the guy's going to
walk in the or I'm terrified he's going to contaminate
me and and and make me sick. Oh okay, I
made him walk at an angle. I'm relieved, I'm saved.
And that relief is positive reinforcement for the brain, which
(44:14):
keeps the obsession in place. It keeps it alive, and
there are more and more and more, and so it's
torture for somebody with O C that they live with
that procedural manual in their head all the time. So
it's terribly sad. Of course, this is a treatable illness,
a very treatable illness, and sadly, had that been the
(44:34):
case at that time, and he'd been willing to do that,
he might not have suffered so much and might have
been able to participate more in the strengths that actually
conferred to him to some degree. Also because he had
O C D perfectionism and the innovation. What is so
sad about it is that he would think with the
(44:57):
less wealthy person, a person were plugged than to a community,
a person with a spouse, a person with some children,
a person with some other relatives, a person was some
close friends, that somebody might have come up and said, Howard,
you kind of got a problem here, but let's work
with this. Let's see what we can do here. We
(45:17):
don't really have to worry about how we opened this
can of fruit. But let's let's talk about this over here.
The other But he had been a loner his whole life,
and in his youth and in his middle manhood, it
wasn't such a big issue. He calls all the shots.
He's got so much money. Everybody says yes, Mr Hughes,
yes Howard, whatever you want, Howard. But later in life
(45:38):
he needed somebody to step up and say, okay, let's
work with you on this. But by then it was
too late because he surrounded himself with people who were
just yes people. But what we found absolutely astonishing. We
calculated that basically the last fifteen or sixteen years of
his life, he didn't really see many people at all
other than those six or seven or eight people who
(46:00):
were waiting on him twenty four hours a day. There
are a couple of exceptions, but even the guy who
ran all his Las Vegas operations in the sixties never
had a face to face meeting with it. In fact,
one of the funny things that we did the book.
People always say to so, what did you ever meet
Howard Used? And I said, nobody met Howard Used from
that nine on, because he had pulled into this zone
(46:21):
where he could control everything. But the funny thing was
he wasn't controlling anything. Unfortunately, of course, we now understand
about O. C. D. That controlling everything is a symptom
of the illness in an attempt to manage what is
your suffering. But we also understand that all that controlling
makes the disease worse. And it worked for him. He
(46:42):
was still able to, you know, help functions so highly
earlier on. But ultimately I think you know the disease,
but also the chronic pain. I mean, some of the
things that were described that you say seemed to be true,
that growing along fingernails, not wearing any clothing, just draping
something over your genitals and that's all, or picking anything
(47:06):
up with a tissue also speak to the possibility that
his chronic pains had developed into a syndrome Aladinia. That
when you have terrible pain, everything can become sensitized and
your ability to tolerate any touch at all, which is
terribly sad if you're you know, in terms of being
alone already, but any touch at all is really so
(47:28):
heightened that it's painful, and trimming your fingernails or wearing
clothing can be painful for people with Aladinia. That would
explain a lot because he spent a lot of those
last years basically in bed, and when you're in bed.
You're not really moving around very much. You've propped up
in your hospital bid watching movie after movie, sometimes the
(47:50):
same movie three times in one day. If you're not moving,
you're not in much pain. Well, a tragic ending for
Howard Hughes In in terms of his sufferings, certainly towards
the last part of his life, but fascinating that the
innovation and the perfectionism and the creativity and the risk
(48:12):
taking in business as well paid off in terms of
his strengths, which had a lot to do with his
mental illness as well, but his strengths which have continued
to this day. Right we still have medical institutions of
the hues name. Is there still technology and aviation in
the Hughes name. Huge Aircraft has been bought by other institutions,
but a lot of that work still does go on,
(48:34):
a lot of the satellite work that he wasn't directly
involved in the company by that point, but he had
created an environment in their original Huge Aircraft company that
brought some of the true best and brightest in their
fields together, and by then he wasn't meddling the way
he sometimes did when he was younger, but he had
created that field that brought together some astonishing companies, so
(48:56):
a lot of early satellites, a lot of other things
that created helicopters on down the line, very innovative and
still part of the system out there. The Tool company
bought by other companies at this point. But funny thing
is one of the greatest assets that he left was
he bought huge amounts of land when he did have
some money that he didn't develop. But we're just part
(49:17):
of his estate once once he died, which later provided
a lot of money to the folks that didn't inherit
that money. But you're absolutely right, he did achieve a lot.
He probably could have achieved more. The sad thing is
it's really a human failure of nobody to step up
and really help him when he needed that help. Not
that he would have necessarily welcomed it or allowed it,
(49:38):
but it's a great statement about how really we all
need somebody at some time in our life to kind
of step up and maybe even tell us something we
don't want to hear. He didn't have that, and it
it paved the way for a lot of his own
destruction down the road. And that mental illness is not
so simple that it can confer terrible suffering and it
(49:59):
can con for potential strengths. And that's said that there
weren't treatments around or that he could partake of at
that time that could have made a big difference in
his life. Well, that wraps things up for this episode.
Thanks for joining me today. If you'd like to know
more about Howard Hughes, check out James Steele's book Howard Hughes,
(50:23):
His Life and Madness. And if you'd like to know
more about the link between psychiatric illness and genius, as
you could see was the case with Howard Hughes, you
could check out my book The Power of Different The
Link between Disorder and Genius. And if you have a question,
you can tweet me at Doctor Gayl's Salts. Personology is
(50:46):
a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
doctor Gayl Salts and Tyler Klang. The associate producer is
Lowell Brulante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. M
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Hi. I'm
Dr Gail Saltz, and this is Personology. Today. We're going
to be speaking about Howard Robart Hughes, Jr. He was,
(00:25):
in his lifetime one of the most financially successful men
in the world. He was an American businessman, but he
was also a film director and producer. He was also
an engineer and a record setting pilot. He also gave
away a good amount of his money as a philanthropist,
(00:46):
but he also came to be known as reclusive and eccentric,
which probably had to do with his psychiatric illness obsessive
compulsive disorder. My guest joining me today is James B. Steele.
He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best selling author,
(01:06):
and he is the co author of the book Howard Hughes,
His Life and Madness. Howard Hughes was born in nine five,
perhaps on Christmas Eve, although that seems that I documents
say different things. But we'll say Christmas Eve in Humble, Texas,
(01:30):
which is kind of ironic for a man who was
anything but humble or Houston, Texas. It sounds like I
think it was Houston, because you know, one of the
mysteries of his life is that his birth certificate was
never found, and it was only when he in World
War Two came around that his aunts had to verify
(01:51):
as to when he was born and where the birth
took place. So it's just typical of a man who
lived his whole life with mystery that we don't even
have a real birth certificate for that is pretty fascinating
in it of itself, a man who would ultimately come
to be a mysterious figure in so many ways. An
only child, two parents who really didn't have much to
(02:16):
start with, but whose father And this is just interesting,
you know, when you think about what's nature and what's nurture,
that's a big question in the life of Howard Hughes,
and that his father had nothing. But his father, who
was originally from Missouri, discovered, or let you say, designed,
built a drill bit to drill oil, that's correct, and
(02:42):
it revolutionized the oil industry because prior to the invention
of this drill bit, conventional drills were basically destroyed when
they hit extremely hard rock formations. So this particular drill
devised a way to go through those formations, and in fact,
it developed a fascinating name. At the oil fields, people
(03:02):
called it the rock Eater because that's exactly what it did,
and revolutionized the oil industry and ultimately made Howard you Senior,
Howard's father fabulously wealthy, and that was actually the basis
of his son's fortune. What's also fascinating in terms of
what do you take away from your parents and learn
or what has to do with, you know, innate intelligence.
(03:23):
But he not only built this thing and revolutionized the industry,
but he chose to a patent and be rented, not
sell it, which really was instrumental in not only making
his fortune but keeping his fortune in the sense that
ultimately people were always dependent on renting these pieces. No
(03:47):
one else could make these pieces, and so this became
really for life in many ways, a source of Howard
Hughes Junior's money. Absolutely. And it's funny that the father
intuitively understood that the way you really make money in
business is to be a monopoly, and that's an effect
what he was, and everybody in the oil industry was
dependent on that, and he fought vigorously for years to
(04:11):
protect that patent, to make sure nobody else ripped it off,
and then Howard continued that same process, but you're absolutely right,
the leasing the renting of it assured not just the
father's fortune, but particularly his sons. So fascinatingly, Howard's father
was engineering, was very intelligent and innovative and business wise, intelligent, innovative,
(04:36):
and also somewhat ruthless in his pursuit. He was also
described as a loner. He didn't have very many friends himself.
The father, he was the businessman, and he was away
a lot. And that's just interesting because those words could
be used to describe young Howard as a boy exactly.
(04:58):
Howard was an only child and from early on a
loaner early on, very interested in mechanical things. As far
as I could tell in all the research we did
for our book, he really only had one friend from
his childhood and who basically was kind of his only
real friend. It was the son of the fellow who
had developed the tool company drill Bit with Howard Sr.
(05:21):
And in fact they weren't in close contact. They didn't
correspond much. But many years later, when Howard was famous,
flown around the world, created all kinds of achievements. He
was very unhappy with where he was in the world.
And he called Dudley, this boyhood friend, and he said, Dudley,
I've just messed up my whole life. I've messed it
up terribly. And Dudley couldn't figure out what he meant,
(05:44):
because at that point he was this famous aviator, this
famous designer of airplanes, fabulously rich, Hollywood starlet's hanging off
his arm. Whatever he meant by that, Dudley had no idea.
But the point of my story on this is that that,
as far as I could tell, and all the research
we did, was his only him. He had no siblings.
His father was away a lot with this business, so
(06:05):
often not home. His mother, on the other hand, was
a very different relationship. He was very, very close to
his mother, you could say really and what the term I,
as a psychiatrist would use a psychoanalysts and meshed. It
was hard to know where one began and the other
one ended. They were that kind of close. And it's
(06:25):
important and interesting to note that his mother is described
as being so nurturing as to being babying, being you know,
sort of couldn't stop nurturing him. Was fairly intrusive with
her nurturing. You will do it this way, you need
to wash this way, you need to be healthy this way,
and that she had a particular fear of germs herself.
(06:51):
She imparted that concerns about violent germs was the term
she used, which is an interesting personification of germs as
something though to be really feared and that were aggressive
in her mind, something that she seemed to pass on
to Howard. Again, it's always interesting when we think about
(07:12):
things like fears and phobias or obsessions. The impact of
your environment certainly is there, and we know that about
everything from simple phobias to O c D. But it's
also true that things like simple phobias and obsessive compulsive
disorder running families because there's a genetic basis for it,
(07:35):
and we think there's something biologic as well. But she
was afraid of violent germs, and fairness to her, there
was a time of the real polio outbreak where understandably
a lot of people were afraid about what you could catch,
and terrible things did happen. But she would tell him
to clean his body, try to kind of control what
he ate. He needed to eat very curative foods, and
(07:58):
talk to him a lot about being sick and be
generally overinvolved, but he describes really having this close and
nurturing relationship in a kind of positive way. Right. Absolutely.
I think he was very close to her, and I
think what you mentioned earlier, the fact his father was
away in the oil fields selling the drill bit, building
up the company that would become this great fortune. So
(08:19):
they were together much more than he was with the
entire family. It's true also that only children probably get
more attention than children who are part of a multi
child family. But he had been sick as a child,
and the mother was frankly obsessed by this. And some
of the most revealing letters we found were when she
(08:41):
finally got up the nerve to let him go to
camp when he was a young teenager. They sent him
from Houston up to northeast Pennsylvania. Houston those days there
was no air conditioning, unbelievably hot in the summertime. Human
also fear of malaria, other kinds of problems, which on
this day and age we don't think of a place
like that having that back in those days, it was
(09:01):
a real thing. So she sent him to this camp
up in Pennsylvania, and she worried the whole time. She
would send letters to the fellow who was running the
camp watch out for Howard. If there's anybody who's sick
near him, would you make sure that that boy gets
isolated and I put Howard somewhere else. I understand there's
a polio outbreak and that part of the world. Just
please take care of him. And you know Howard's delicate
(09:24):
makes you know this, that and the other thing. So
we have actual physical evidence in these letters that she
wrote repeatedly to the fellow who ran the camp, saying,
I'm really concerned about him. Will you be concerned about him?
Will you take special care to watch my boy because
he needs special care? Basically that's what she was saying.
In fact, she even had one time where she was
(09:44):
so anxious about this. She and her husband were in
New York. He was their own business. She said, I
have to I have to come see him, and she
apparently took the train to near the camp, and whether
or not they ever got together or not was never
revealed any of these records, but it was an indication
of just how on the impulse wasn't her to protect
him and to worry about his condition. So it's hard
(10:04):
from Howard standpoint not to absorb some of that concern
in some of that worry. I mean, you made such
a good point at the beginning about what's part of
nature and what do you pick up I'm paraphrasing you
in your environment. I think there's an awful lot that
probably both those channels flowed into Howard. It's worth noting
that the way his mother speaks and is described that
(10:27):
she herself may have had obsessive compulsive disorder, her intense
concern about cleanliness and germs. Of course those things weren't
diagnosed in those days, but that was a possibility, and
that similarly his father's mother, his grandmother, is also described
as having similar concerns and fears, which to have genetic
(10:52):
loading from both sides of your family with O c
D makes it not surprising at all that you would
struggle with it. You're absolutely the grandmother on his father's side,
I mean his father's mother. They lived in kiakak, Iowa,
and it was on the Mississippi River. His father was
kind of a famous regional lawyer for the railroads at
the time, and the grandmother had this terrible fear of
(11:15):
bugs and germans, like being in the closets and Howard
spent quite a bit of time as a boy with
those grandparents. Whether it was just for that visitor loan
or when he was passing through town not entirely clear,
but he saw first hand some evidence of that particular
thing as well, and so it seems totally natural to
him by the time he's like fourteen or fifteen years old,
(11:37):
that people should be worried about these things exactly. And
let's talk about him as a student. He was by
all accounts, extremely mathematically minded and had a propensity for
the kinds of sciences that lead to engineering. While he
seemed to have incredible aptitude, he wasn't a very good student, right,
(12:00):
which sometimes happens with people who were quite bright. As
we all know, he wasn't a particularly good student. He
didn't particularly like, as far as we could tell, the
organized activity that was involved in being in a school.
Even how Hard was the ultimate loner, and being in
that kind of environment means you're part of the community.
But he was very interested in engineering. He was very
(12:21):
interested in mathematics even and I believe elementary school was
they built some toy radio. This at a time where
there were not a lot of radios around actually he
built like the first transistor sort of CB type radio
exactly and was in the newspaper, was like eleven years old,
and it was a phenom in terms of electrical engineering
(12:42):
sorts of feats. That was his instinct, and those were
his instincts. He was very comfortable with numbers, He was
very comfortable with the kinds of engineering drawings, conceptual things
of that sort. So he was more at home with
them than it really was with people. And he had
already as a child, it sounds like an interest in flying.
That was something that appealed to him in those early days.
(13:04):
And aviation was the hot issue, I mean, the most
dramatic thing that was happening in the world when he
was a kid. I mean, the Wright brothers were only
I guess a couple of years before he was born
and was kiddie hawk. And so from then on there
was one aviation advance after another that formed part of
that whole story. So he sort of dove tailed perfectly
(13:28):
with his mathematics and the possibility of flying. So it
was a natural thing that he would later evolve into
that particular field. At that point, his father had made
enough money for him to do things that maybe most
boys in those days wouldn't have been able to afford
to do. He took flying lessons basically as a teen,
which is pretty exciting, expensive venture, certainly in those days,
(13:53):
but he already was sort of in pursuit of that
interest of his yes, And after his mother died, his
father spent quite a bit of time on the West
Coast in l A, where a lot of the early
aviation industry was starting to shape up because of year
round moderate temperatures where you could build certain kinds of things.
So before we get to his independence, let's let's talk
(14:15):
about for a minute about the death of his parents,
which happened at an early age and created a very
odd scenario for him as an only child. His mother
died he was seventeen. He was away at boarding school,
and she developed well what turned out to be an
(14:37):
ectopic pregnancy, which was in those days often deadly because
they didn't have a treatment for that, really, and they
often didn't discover it in time. And she said to him,
I'll be fine, I'll be fine. I'm going in for something,
but it's going to be fine, And of course she
did not emerge. She died, and that was really devastating
(14:57):
for both Howard and his father. Yes, and Howard at
the time was in school in Santa Barbara, and his
uncle Rupert Hughes, came up from Los Angeles and broke
the news to him, and then the two of them
took the train back to Houston. But it was a
devastating blow, not just a Howard but even to the father.
After that, I think he returned to school briefly, and
(15:20):
then of course he got the other dreadful news a
little over here after that, where his father, who had
appeared to be in perfect health, very robust kind of
figure as home in the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana,
as he was in chatting up people in the movie
community in l A, which he spent some time in,
(15:42):
suddenly just keels over at his desk in Houston one day,
that of a heart attack. So here's Howard at eighteen.
Up to this time, his evidence no particular sign of
independence or wanted to be his own person. He's been
a very loyal son to both the mother and the
father other But then something very dramatic happens. His relatives.
(16:04):
His father had a brother by name and Rupert, who
was a very famous author and screenwriter in California, and
then his grandparents. I think by this time we're also
living in California. The assumption was they would all oversee
the tool company, Howard's the fortune, the basis and family fortune.
But Howard, right away, right away, with no indication, with
(16:28):
no advanced warning, says I want to buy you out.
I mean, here's this eighteen year old kid. There's evidence,
no sign of any particular independence. Who the family is thinking, gosh,
she just lost both parents. He's eighteen years old, and
he wants to buy us out. And it, needless to say,
it created a tremendous rift in the family. They initially
resisted this, but eventually he was so determined and so
(16:52):
hardheaded and so stubborn about it, which was the hallmark
of his character throughout his life as a boy, and
I mean as young man and then as a mature
man that he had. They eventually said, okay, buy us out.
They were part owners somehow, or in the will they
became parted in the wild, they were part owners. They
were all in that together, but he was the majority
(17:14):
owner right exactly. And he remembered something his father had
told him once which in this case. He then starts
to use on the family. His father had had some
difficulty with one early partner, and his father said, whatever
you do, don't ever have a partner in this world.
So Howard took this to heart with his own family.
(17:34):
Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back in
a moment. His father basically told him business partners are dangerous,
you know, as sort of like his mother told him
germs or dangerous. And so his absorption of dangers and
fears was very total. That really caught his attention. And
(17:57):
I'm just thinking of of how he was is and
these influences over the course of his life, and his
being primed for danger signals and to do everything you
can to batten down the hatches and avoid danger. By
the way, after your two parents die, so you know,
of course you think the world is a pretty dangerous place.
(18:19):
That he would decide, you know, the most important thing
was to avoid this danger. And I think the point
you just made as an excellent one. He did see
these various dangerous and out of this group, I think
even stronger desire to be a loner. I mean, it
came naturally to being a loner. But basically I think
Howard felt, you can't trust anything in this world. You
(18:40):
can't trust the fact your parents are going to survive
a small operation and they're otherwise healthy. Father is going
to live to be an old man. Don't even trust
your relatives, don't trust your uncle or your grandparents, don't
trust anybody. You just have to rely on yourself in
this world. I think that's something that came out of that,
and it's sort of dovetailed perfectly with his sense of
(19:00):
being kind of a loaner anyway, and in so much
of his life it wasn't a problem. But eventually, and
I'm sure we'll get to that, it was a problem.
Fascinating and he, as you said, you know, self sufficiency
became the most important thing, the most important thing to him,
and he could financially be self sufficient vis a vis
this company, which then allowed him to use that money
(19:23):
to explore and develop and innovate other companies, which is
in the veins of his interests, which was interesting. He
did this by at the age of nineteen. Petitioning to
become legally emancipated was sort of a furthering of his
I'm not going to count on anybody in this world
it's me and I have to be the one, and
(19:46):
he basically starts Hughes Tool Company. He makes that the
center of things. But then he goes on to develop
these other institutions, not surprisingly a medical institution, given that
his parents both died of illness and he was so
afraid of illness and germs. I think that seems really
(20:06):
overdetermined that you would choose to make a medical institution.
Two things happened with the medical institution. People are always
asking him as he grew through life, what are you
going to do with your money? And that became also
a way to tell people that's where it's going to go,
and that appeared to be something that was a good
thing to do. Howard Is didn't need people for much
(20:30):
of his life, but he had this absolutely sixth cents
about what motivated the population and public opinion. He knew
exactly what would ring true. And to say that you're
going to leave your money to a medical institutional, that
that was a good thing. That must mean Howard's a
good person, and that must mean he's on the right
(20:50):
track and he's he has bigger issues and motivations at him.
Were there other indications besides this that Howard cared what
people thought of him, what his public legacy would be.
I'm glad you asked that, because Howard was obsessed by
his image, even though he himself was very shy in
many ways, and he all throughout his life he had
(21:12):
various public relations people churning out certain things about in
blatant life. He didn't he didn't have to worry about
that so much because by that time the image was built.
He wanted to create the image at all times that
he was possibly the richest man in the world or
one of the richest. He wanted to make sure the
image that he was a great corporate leader and designer
of machines and so forth. He wanted to conquer Hollywood,
(21:36):
which he could do because of his money, not to
make money. Most of his movies lost money. But he
was very conscious of the image. And when he did
the premier for his famous movie Hells Angels, which actually
has some of the most remarkable aerial sequences for the
planes of that time, the nine twenties that you'll ever see,
I mean, they truly are amazing. I mean, three people
(21:56):
have died in the filming of that movie because of
these things were so dare devilished. But anyway, you look
at those and you see wow. But what was typical Howard?
When that movie premiered, he shut down Hollywood, searchlights, planes
flying overhead, everything in the world focusing on that kind
of thing. So Hugh was, while shy personally, in many ways,
(22:17):
understood so well what it took to catch the public's attention,
and that continued throughout life in the other movies as well.
Did he talk to others about the importance of perhaps
surpassing his father in success. He did not talk about
that per se, but it was a conclusion we reached
in our book that that was one of the great
(22:38):
driving forces of his life. His father was a larger
than life figured to him, who had really died before
Howard himself reached his maturity. So maybe by at that stage,
Howard's not even noticing perhaps a few flaws in his father,
if he had any. I mean, the man is really
on a pedestal at that point. He's created this great company,
(22:58):
he's engineered this amazing is unfortune. It goes west with
him to Hollywood to see his uncle, and people are
dazzled by Howard Senior and a handsome man, very rich Man,
so on and and so forth. So I think his whole
life he wanted to do something that would equal that,
but we came to the conclusion in his own mind
he never did, even though he himself vastly exceeded the
(23:23):
fame of his father in multiple areas of interest, from
aviation to movies to other industries as well. That is
interesting because it's not unusual, as you point out, at
least through your teens to idolize a parent and see
them as a hero. And then usually as you move
along in your teens and early twenties, you start to
devalue them, and maybe then ultimately after your twenties or
(23:46):
late twenties, you start to come into a more just
a realistic view that includes everything. But yes, left with
this purely idealized view of a hero, it would be
difficult to, when you know what you know about yourself,
to feel that you could measure up. But I also
think another thing comes to bear, and that is because
(24:07):
of the many signs and symptoms of some form of
obsessive compulsive disorder. The flip side of that is that Howard,
there are many things about him and his work that
indicate he was extremely perfectionistic, that he was incredibly detailed oriented,
and that everything he did with the development of planes,
(24:29):
with the movies, that he would do something over and
over and over again because it had to be just right.
And you could say, well, you know, this is actually
a symptom of O c D, this level of perfectionism
that actually can make people suffer terribly in their lives
because nothing is ever exactly right. And sometimes people with
(24:51):
O c D of this form can't get anything done
because they have to keep redoing things, so nothing ever
gets completed, and they're striving for it to be just right.
But in the case of Howard Hughes, his perfectionism in
many ways was an incredible asset. Your description a second
ago is really a one paragraph description of what kind
(25:13):
of drove him. It was both the source of his
triumphs and later on it became the source of his
really his own destruction in a way. But you're absolutely
right the the O c D, the perfectionism you saw
it in particular with the airplanes and actually in the
making of the movies, and the reason he was able
to make these movies like Hell's Angels, which cost a
(25:33):
fortune and never made any money was because he had
all this money and he could do things the average
producer of a movie couldn't do, who had investors and
other people to answer to. He had no partners, He
had to man to spend. You can do whatever you
want if you own your own movie studio. There is
no one to tell you know, you can't do that. Exactly.
The one big institution he had to we owned most
(25:53):
of them, but not all of it turned out to
be a real problem for him, which was t w a.
The airplane. But that perfectionism you really saw not just
in health angels, but you also saw in the making
of the airplanes. You know, he designed and flew some
very innovative aircraft. The original ones were a cross country
(26:13):
Johnson and then he had his famous around the World
flight in and prior to that, a lot of people
thought of airplanes, it's just guys with leather caps and
they get in the cockpit and they buckety buck across
the Atlantic, and let's just an active, great personal heroism,
which of course it was. But in his case, the
(26:34):
round the World flight he took with several crew members
was not only in heroic jount but the plan they
designed and that he helped design and perfect was an
engineering and mechanical marvel for its time, the Lucky thirty eight.
So that was a case where the perfectionism was extremely important.
(26:54):
It got them out of a couple of close calls.
There was one close call in Shoe where they almost
crashed into a mountain. But I think if the instruments
hadn't been functioning properly, they might have been in some
real trouble. They would have been in some real trouble.
But anyway, later on in life, the perfectionism got out
of control. And there's one it's almost a funny incident
(27:16):
when he was having a battle that he was aircraft
company which didn't actually make an airplanes and made electronics.
He was having all kinds of trouble with the Pentagon
because he was a defense contractor people trying to get
decisions out of it. And as you pointed out, sometimes
the c D people have trouble making a decision because
they're afraid they're going to make the wrong decision the way,
that's that and the other thing, And pretty soon you're
(27:37):
just you're sitting there on this fence and it's so
what do you do when that happens? Well, in Howard's case,
it's almost comical. He's got this huge enterprise under government
contract and generals and their force people are breathing down
his neck. So what does he do. He orders the
study of the all the candies that are being sold
in the company's vending machines. He was kind of a
(28:00):
funny health note as well, but again it's just something
where he's able to make a decision on something that's
totally unimportant that kind of saves him from making this
big decision and diverse his attention. It's sort of something
he can focus on and move forward and then perhaps
have the issue that was kind of crippling him, the
obsessing issue, take a back burner, which actually might have
(28:21):
allowed him to then make that decision, which would be
interesting because what it would be is a personal work
around or like a self treatment you know of sorts
and something we might incognitive behavioral therapy use to you know,
teach a patient how to sort of unstick themselves, you know,
at any time. So that's kind of fascinating. He needed
(28:44):
something like that, I'll tell you it really did. Of course,
there were not those treatments at that time, and people
didn't talk about those things. The stigma was tremendous. But
as you point out, hues Aircraft was really a maker
of like satellites and technology, not airplanes. But he did
have this love of aviation and airplanes and he did,
as you just discussed, you know, build airplanes, set world records,
(29:08):
and he married his interests. Which is also really interesting
that he brought aviation to film in a way that
both improved the brand of aviation filming himself and putting
it in the films in a way that made aviation
sexier if you will, and have the public be more
interested in it and want to fly t w A.
(29:29):
And at the same time he used that to make
movies that he hoped obviously would be successful on groundbreaking
by using the appeal of aviation absolutely and in fact
you see in the case of t Way, he was
one of those who had a hand in designing t
Wway is famous plane which anybody young today is not
(29:50):
aware of. But it was this absolutely gorgeous plan called
the Constellation. Even gave it this wonderful name. It had
basically three tales, three fins at the rear, and it
became the great luxury airliner prop plane of its time,
and he was used it very much in his movie business,
very starlets back and forth the movie sets and things
(30:12):
of that sort. And there's just unbelievable numbers of films
where some famous Hollywood actress are standing on the gangway
of a constellation to come out, waving to the press,
waving to others, things of that sort. So it became
it was a marriage of these two luxurious issues, aviation
and movies. That's what was so much of Hughes's early
(30:33):
driving instincts. It's fascinating that while in certain areas of
his life he was obviously terrified of taking risks, you know,
when it came to issues that is O. C. D
touched on health and and well being and perhaps social issues,
taking risks. In terms of relationships, as you pointed out,
he really he had two definite but you know a
(30:57):
couple of year marriages. It seems that he was often
fairly certainly emotionally absent and often physically absent from those marriages,
did not have children. Was pursued by various starlets, but
it seemed more about superficial you look good with me,
I'm very wealthy, I look good with you. Sorts of liaisons,
(31:18):
but in planes, he really took risks and sadly ultimately
had a terrible plane crash. But he really did take risks.
That's at the heart of a lot of his image
and why people are in part of him. I mean,
in addition, he said a couple of ground speed records
in California with a racer he designed, one of which
(31:39):
christ but didn't hurt him. Then he set two transcontinental
flights from l A to the New York area six
and the other seven I believe, where you set the
record for flying across the country. This is one person
doing this in a little plane that took around eight
to nine ten hours. But here's one guy in a
(32:00):
cockpit flying through the night, and his compass went out
on one of the early into the flight. And here
he is flying at night, looking down at the lights
of various cities, or hopes of the cities. He thinks
they are on his way to Newark, New Jersey. So
there's a lot of gutsiness. You're absolutely right. I mean,
(32:21):
he took risks, and there was a lot of gutsiness
in what he did. That created the image of a
rich guy who wasn't just clipping his coupons. He's out
there building airplanes. He's investing in this new industry called movies.
He's not just sitting still. He's advancing science, technology or
(32:42):
understanding of the world and how we're going to get
around that world in airplanes, and clearly trying to demonstrate,
perhaps mostly for himself, that he has talent and ability
that isn't just about inheriting money. Exactly right. That's exactly right,
and I think is maybe as much as anything, what
droving was not just the interest in those areas, but
(33:04):
I honestly think trying to equal his father in part.
His father had created this great fortune, and that fortune
was what made all of these other ventures possible. I
mean people used to think about how are to use
and how Richie was the whole heart of the fortune
to the end of his days was that company invented
by his father, and that financed everything else. And I
(33:26):
think as a result of this, he was always trying
to show what he himself could do. But it wasn't
just in the minds of the public of foolhardiness. I
mean he headed to a science, aviation technology that the
idea that mankind, humankind is moving on in advancing. It's
interesting just from a psychiatric point of view that he
(33:47):
increasingly as he aged, suffered more with his O c
D symptoms and at the same time, something that's often
used by people who suffer from anxiety, you know, pathologic
anxiety and O c D use a defense mechanism that's
called counterphobic behavior. So instead of being afraid of something,
(34:09):
you don't contemplate it, you just jump into it and
do something extra scary, like you know, dive off the
diving board. And you could see evidence as his O
c D worsened in some ways, you know, he was
sort of noted to increasingly like separate his food and
count his peas and you know, sort of numerical and
(34:30):
like food shouldn't touch each other, and symptoms that we
know do classically happen with certain forms of O c
D that at the same time he's taking these incredibly
risky brave you know, I had a plane crash, but
I'm going to get it back into plane and do
still do something risky a real I think it's psychoanalytically,
you might look at this as coping defense mechanism for
(34:53):
his increasing anxiety. In other ways, that's a fascinating point,
and I think he fits that description perfectly. I mean
he had multiple plane crashes. I mean, if somebody had
one plane crash or one nearer miss, you might and
he was afraid of all the things. You might think
he would pull back, and in fact he moves forward.
In World War two, very serious plane crash outside of
(35:15):
Las Vegas that killed a couple of crew members. He
himself was hurt but survived. And then there was the
famous one after the war ended. I should go back
a little bit on this one. During the war, he
had two major contracts. Because there was a shortage of
metal h he wanted to build one huge transport plane
out of wood that became the famous Spruce Scoose, largest
(35:37):
plane ever built. Another contract was of a fighter plane.
Both of these contracts he was unable to deliver that
product before the war ended. Not totally his fault. I
mean you could say it was way too ambitious what
he planned to do, and this and that. But the
fighter plane, after the war was over, he was determined
(35:57):
to take it up and see how it performed. And
he was actually warned at the time that perhaps this
isn't the best time to do this. You shouldn't and
there's kinds of things you should avoid there intentionally took
a risk and the plane crashed in Beverly Hills and
almost killed it. And it's is actually a miracle based
on what happened to his body that he actually did survive.
(36:18):
Nobody on the ground was killed. But that christ was
a direct result of errors that he made in judgment
that he had been warned about. Similarly, with the Spruce Goose,
the huge flying boat, he did fly it briefly for
about a mile in Long Beach Harbor, but he was
also warned that this thing might have come apart in
(36:39):
the air because it was actually made out of wood
and so forth. But absolutely what you're saying, he took
these risks. There were some part of a piece of
his personality that said, I need to test this, I
need to show the world this, I need to show
this to myself. We can speculate on who was trying
to show it to, but these were unnecessary risks that
(36:59):
he can tenually took, even while he's worried about a
little german getting in his food. It is notable that
after the very bad crash that you mentioned, he suffered
many injuries, including head trauma. And that's very important because
it does seem that his symptoms of O c D
really became significantly worse after this crash. The pressure of
(37:23):
the two contracts to build those planes, which he failed
to do deliver on, along with the crash, those things
all seemed to contribute greatly to what happened to him
after that. By in the late forties, he's increasingly not
seen in public as much as he once was, and
then all through the fifties the same thing as true,
(37:45):
fewer and fewer people seen. He's living in the Beverly
Hills Hotel in one of the bungalows. Some men who
worked for him take over the other bungalows. When he
Mary Jean Peters, they were both living in separate bungalows
at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and in fact, one of
the most amazings that tis six they weren't married, I
guess twelve years. We computed that they actually lived together
only nine months of those twelve years. But this process
(38:08):
of separation and of sealing himself off from the rest
of the world, from the world a tiny world he
should control, accelerates from that mid nineteen on through the
rest of his life. That's a key word, you say,
their control that you know, if you love someone, if
you're married to someone, you know and they do things
in your environment that you find difficult. Because you have
(38:30):
O c D, you can't entirely control another person, so
that would be very very difficult. And head trauma depending
on where the trauma was to the brain, but even
just generally getting such a hard hit that you have
essentially some mild form of organic brain damage could very
much accentuate psychiatric problem that was already there. But there
(38:51):
was another issue too, and that is that he had
so many injuries and needed pain medications to control his pain,
which probably isn't very well controlled just in terms of
the pain medications that were available then, which were often
short acting and may not have controlled his pain very well.
So he may have been also struggling with chronic pain
(39:11):
and with addiction that was you know, created by physicians
who gave him the pain medications that he needed. This
is still continues to be a dilemma for people today
that you know. The thing about opioids in general is
they can treat pain and they often are needed. You
shouldn't leave someone in pain. But at the same time,
(39:32):
you often end up needing more of the same medication
to control the same amount of pain because we developed
tolerance to those medications, and if you try to cut back,
you go through withdrawal, and it's a very painful situation
to be in. Most people who get addicted to opioids
today do so because they were originally given to them
for a medical need, you know, post surgery or post
(39:54):
an injury. But if you're Howard Hughes and you can
get anything you want, no matter the cost and no
matter the legality of it, and you are surrounding yourself
with people who will basically not question anything you do,
even for your own good, then unfortunately you may be
left to stuff with the consequences of severe chronic pain
(40:15):
and an addiction. An addiction we know affects your judgment tremendously,
so one's ability to say, oh, this is not looking
good and you to do something about this would really
be impaired. We have evidence said right after his death
he was found to have needles broken off in his
arms from giving himself injections. And you can only imagine
if you would tolerate that, what kind of pain you
must be in it otherwise, absolutely right. And the drug
(40:38):
addiction is unfortunately such a major part of the last
chapter of his life. And you're right because of his wealth,
because there were doctors around him who were giving these things.
His main addiction was to coding, which is just about
the worst kind of thing to be continually addicted to.
I mean, coding's purpose is for a short term relief
(41:02):
from pain, maybe a terrible tooth extraction or some other
kind of surgery. But the idea of using coding continually,
the side effects are horrendous from your internal system and
so forth, and that producing other problems. So I don't
think there's any doubt about it. The drugs accelerated that problem,
and the ways as manifested itself was really disturbing, if
(41:25):
you'd come back with me from it. When we did
the book, there was a lot of speculation about how
could somebody this smart, who designed all of these things,
who had these beautiful women on his arm, How could
somebody like that have long, fair nails and behave in
this very bizarre way. So we were actually skeptical of
a lot of the initial stories that he was this
(41:46):
kind of crazy and so forth. Well, a lot of
evidence began piling up that all those stories were in
fact true. And then one day, as part of our research,
we were able to obtain something as the most chilling
document that I have ever seen about anybody. And it
was called the Procedures manu. And this was a manual
(42:07):
devised by these handful of yes men who worked around him,
who never argue with him about anything, about how to
do everything, how to open a can of fruit if
somebody has died in the company, here's a four page memo,
and how to send flowers that make sure that the
bill doesn't come back to the home office because there
(42:30):
might be germs on it. How to walk through the
door and give me something. Make sure you walk at
an angle, don't come straight in, like, don't breathe on me.
This thing was an inch and a half thick, and
it had been written by the aids because they were
continually berated by him when they had failed to do
things properly into his perfectionist view of the world. So
(42:52):
they wrote everything down says, well, this is how you
told us to do these things. Let's take a quick
break here. We'll be back in a moment. I think
people looked at that kind of ending for Hughes or
those last years of his life and thought, what a
you know, creepy, weird and villainous kind of behavior. But
(43:12):
if people could understand that that procedural manual that the
aids were simply writing down what they observed he required,
and have an idea of what it would be like
to live with that manual in your brain all the time.
That basically, you know, when you have obsessive compulsive disorder,
(43:32):
there is a thought telling you constantly you know what
needs to happen, and if it can't happen, the unbearable
anxiety and terror you will face until you can and
in often cases do some other behavior or correct it
in some way. That's the compulsion part, Right, You have
(43:53):
this thought obsession, and then you have the compulsion which
makes you feel momentarily better. So the guy's going to
walk in the or I'm terrified he's going to contaminate
me and and and make me sick. Oh okay, I
made him walk at an angle. I'm relieved, I'm saved.
And that relief is positive reinforcement for the brain, which
(44:14):
keeps the obsession in place. It keeps it alive, and
there are more and more and more, and so it's
torture for somebody with O C that they live with
that procedural manual in their head all the time. So
it's terribly sad. Of course, this is a treatable illness,
a very treatable illness, and sadly, had that been the
(44:34):
case at that time, and he'd been willing to do that,
he might not have suffered so much and might have
been able to participate more in the strengths that actually
conferred to him to some degree. Also because he had
O C D perfectionism and the innovation. What is so
sad about it is that he would think with the
(44:57):
less wealthy person, a person were plugged than to a community,
a person with a spouse, a person with some children,
a person with some other relatives, a person was some
close friends, that somebody might have come up and said, Howard,
you kind of got a problem here, but let's work
with this. Let's see what we can do here. We
(45:17):
don't really have to worry about how we opened this
can of fruit. But let's let's talk about this over here.
The other But he had been a loner his whole life,
and in his youth and in his middle manhood, it
wasn't such a big issue. He calls all the shots.
He's got so much money. Everybody says yes, Mr Hughes,
yes Howard, whatever you want, Howard. But later in life
(45:38):
he needed somebody to step up and say, okay, let's
work with you on this. But by then it was
too late because he surrounded himself with people who were
just yes people. But what we found absolutely astonishing. We
calculated that basically the last fifteen or sixteen years of
his life, he didn't really see many people at all
other than those six or seven or eight people who
(46:00):
were waiting on him twenty four hours a day. There
are a couple of exceptions, but even the guy who
ran all his Las Vegas operations in the sixties never
had a face to face meeting with it. In fact,
one of the funny things that we did the book.
People always say to so, what did you ever meet
Howard Used? And I said, nobody met Howard Used from
that nine on, because he had pulled into this zone
(46:21):
where he could control everything. But the funny thing was
he wasn't controlling anything. Unfortunately, of course, we now understand
about O. C. D. That controlling everything is a symptom
of the illness in an attempt to manage what is
your suffering. But we also understand that all that controlling
makes the disease worse. And it worked for him. He
(46:42):
was still able to, you know, help functions so highly
earlier on. But ultimately I think you know the disease,
but also the chronic pain. I mean, some of the
things that were described that you say seemed to be true,
that growing along fingernails, not wearing any clothing, just draping
something over your genitals and that's all, or picking anything
(47:06):
up with a tissue also speak to the possibility that
his chronic pains had developed into a syndrome Aladinia. That
when you have terrible pain, everything can become sensitized and
your ability to tolerate any touch at all, which is
terribly sad if you're you know, in terms of being
alone already, but any touch at all is really so
(47:28):
heightened that it's painful, and trimming your fingernails or wearing
clothing can be painful for people with Aladinia. That would
explain a lot because he spent a lot of those
last years basically in bed, and when you're in bed.
You're not really moving around very much. You've propped up
in your hospital bid watching movie after movie, sometimes the
(47:50):
same movie three times in one day. If you're not moving,
you're not in much pain. Well, a tragic ending for
Howard Hughes In in terms of his sufferings, certainly towards
the last part of his life, but fascinating that the
innovation and the perfectionism and the creativity and the risk
(48:12):
taking in business as well paid off in terms of
his strengths, which had a lot to do with his
mental illness as well, but his strengths which have continued
to this day. Right we still have medical institutions of
the hues name. Is there still technology and aviation in
the Hughes name. Huge Aircraft has been bought by other institutions,
but a lot of that work still does go on,
(48:34):
a lot of the satellite work that he wasn't directly
involved in the company by that point, but he had
created an environment in their original Huge Aircraft company that
brought some of the true best and brightest in their
fields together, and by then he wasn't meddling the way
he sometimes did when he was younger, but he had
created that field that brought together some astonishing companies, so
(48:56):
a lot of early satellites, a lot of other things
that created helicopters on down the line, very innovative and
still part of the system out there. The Tool company
bought by other companies at this point. But funny thing
is one of the greatest assets that he left was
he bought huge amounts of land when he did have
some money that he didn't develop. But we're just part
(49:17):
of his estate once once he died, which later provided
a lot of money to the folks that didn't inherit
that money. But you're absolutely right, he did achieve a lot.
He probably could have achieved more. The sad thing is
it's really a human failure of nobody to step up
and really help him when he needed that help. Not
that he would have necessarily welcomed it or allowed it,
(49:38):
but it's a great statement about how really we all
need somebody at some time in our life to kind
of step up and maybe even tell us something we
don't want to hear. He didn't have that, and it
it paved the way for a lot of his own
destruction down the road. And that mental illness is not
so simple that it can confer terrible suffering and it
(49:59):
can con for potential strengths. And that's said that there
weren't treatments around or that he could partake of at
that time that could have made a big difference in
his life. Well, that wraps things up for this episode.
Thanks for joining me today. If you'd like to know
more about Howard Hughes, check out James Steele's book Howard Hughes,
(50:23):
His Life and Madness. And if you'd like to know
more about the link between psychiatric illness and genius, as
you could see was the case with Howard Hughes, you
could check out my book The Power of Different The
Link between Disorder and Genius. And if you have a question,
you can tweet me at Doctor Gayl's Salts. Personology is
(50:46):
a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
doctor Gayl Salts and Tyler Klang. The associate producer is
Lowell Brulante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts. M
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