Citizen Hughes

by Michael Drosnin

  “I think that you can argue with Gov. Laxalt that every day the situation continues brings with it an ever increasing risk of the entire beautiful castle of Nevada gaming coming crashing down in one overwhelming debacle which could be blown up to rival Tea Pot Dome.

  “The President and his advisors would like nothing in this world so much as to find a basis under which he may attack Nevada gambling, because that is where the really big money is being made.

  “He comes out against organized crime, but, in the absence of uncovering some huge underworld casino or some huge undercover brothel, which is not likely—in the absence of something like this, the President has no photos, no actual symbol, no example he can point to, in his efforts to attack crime.

  “Bob, if he could just blacken Nevada gaming to the point where he could link it to organized crime, and make Nevada gaming the symbol of organized crime, then he could use all the figures, all the photos of Nevada casinos, all the pictures of Fremont Street with the flashing signs.

  “All this would immediately become the vivid symbol of organized crime. Las Vegas would be pictured as Sin City.

  “All the figures of gross gaming revenue, the figures of employment, the increased population, all this would be pictured to the public as one gigantic beehive of crime, a vast metropolis of sin, a vast factory for the industry of sin.

  “I tell you, when the nation reaches a point where they need only say a man is ‘linked to Nevada Gaming’ to villify him beyond measure, and practically strap him in the electric chair, then I say it is time to worry about it.”

  Hughes was getting so carried away in his lurid presentation of the threat that he almost lost sight of his plot: to present himself as savior, as the man who could grant a stay of execution.

  “So, I want you to convince the Governor that I will use every last dollar I have to prevent the President from using Nevada as his political football in his attack on organized crime,” he continued, ready to buy a reprieve.

  “I want you to convince Laxalt that he can count on me to prevent the President or anybody from damaging the reputation of Nevada Gaming, which I want to be treated like the New York Stock Exchange.”

  Right. And now for the hook.

  “But, if I am to fulfill this promise, I must have the support of the Governor and his Gaming Commission.

  “Bob, there will never be another opportunity like the one existing today to pick up an additional one or two casinos and to satisfy this crying drive inside of me against what I consider the many unfair competitive inroads—the competitive build up.

  “It would only take the acquisition of a very few additional casinos plus the elimination of these same casinos from the competitive group—in other words, just a small tipping of the scales—a small addition to one side of the scale and a small elimination from the weight resting on the competitive side—just a small change in the balance, and I would be satisfied.”

  On April 30, 1968, Hughes got the support of the governor and his gaming commission. It approved the billionaire’s purchase of the Silver Slipper and his planned purchase of the Stardust, granting him his fifth and sixth casino licenses, a small tipping of the scales that made him the undisputed king of gambling. He was not satisfied.

  The vote was not unanimous. Two commissioners had dared to challenge his sovereignty. “It is obvious from the vote that there is considerable serious concern over the extent of your acquisitions,” reported his lawyer, Richard Gray. “I do not believe we will be permitted to control so much of the economy of this state no matter what our intentions are.”

  Hughes was outraged. “I know God-damned well that people would not be making money around here as if they had a printing press if I had turned south out of Boston and gone to the Bahamas, as I almost did,” he fumed. “They should have some gratitude for the fairy-godfather who pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, the same fairy-godfather who started the whole ball rolling.”

  If Hughes didn’t quite see himself as the new Godfather of Las Vegas, he did feel that as its “fairy-godfather” he was entitled to own it all. The casinos. The hotels. The politicians. Everything.

  He saw himself as bringing the best of American capitalism to what had been an underworld money-laundry, but in a real sense Hughes was less part of the established order, more hidden, than the Mob. And he was also more corrupt. The mobsters were content to run the casinos and skim the take, while Hughes demanded absolute control over the entire state, driven to purify Nevada by corrupting it completely.

  His latest acquisition, the Silver Slipper, now became on odd fixture of Nevada politics. Its neon-lit high-heeled slipper revolving on top of a twenty-foot pole just across the Strip from the Desert Inn became a beacon for local statesmen. They flocked to the Hughes-owned casino next door, the Frontier, where his bagman Thomas Bell—law partner of the governor’s brother—handed out hundred-dollar bills drawn from the cashier’s cage at the Slipper.

  Over the next three years, $858,500 passed from the gaming tables of the Silver Slipper to Nevada politicians, always in hundred-dollar bills, always in cash. There was hardly a political race Hughes didn’t finance. He instructed Bell to support the likely winner, regardless of party or politics, and back both candidates if the race was too close to call. United States Senator Alan Bible got at least $50,000, his colleague Senator Howard Cannon got $70,000, Lieutenant Governor Harry Reid $10,000, Attorney General Robert List $9,500, District Attorney George Franklin $5,000, and twenty-seven state-legislature candidates trooped into Bell’s office to collect a total of $56,000. Judges and sheriffs and assorted commissioners all came by and left with cash-filled envelopes.

  From time to time, Governor Laxalt himself visited Bell to solicit contributions from the Silver Slipper slush fund. At Laxalt’s request the state Republican chairman got $15,000, and the governor urged that Hughes go all out for his would-be successor, Edward Fike, who personally picked up his $55,000. Fike’s Democratic opponent Mike O’Callaghan was more discreet. He sent an aide to get $25,000. The parade of office-holders and -seekers never stopped.

  Nor did the demands from Hughes for a return on his investments. From his penthouse lair across the street, he ordered Bell to “advise him on every single bill introduced in the Nevada legislature … to encourage members of the legislature to adopt his views … to defeat bills authorizing dog racing … to stop the sales tax, the gasoline tax and the cigarette tax … to stop the Clark County school integration plan … to prohibit governmental agencies from realigning any streets without his personal views being first given … to do whatever was necessary to shield him from having to appear personally in any courts … to advise him on all ordinances or laws regarding obscenity and pornography … to take whatever action necessary to prohibit rock festivals in Clark County … to prevent any change of the rules of various gambling games, and in particular, roulette … to discourage state officials from permitting communist bloc entertainers from appearing in Las Vegas hotels.”

  In short, to control the life and laws of the entire state. The list was endless. Nothing escaped his attention. And although he almost always got his way, he was never satisfied.

  “I feel we must go to work at once or the legislature will pass bills resulting in a Nevada I will not want to live in,” wrote Hughes, eager to exercise his veto power. “Send me at once a very brief summary of all legislation of any consequence that is likely to pass. I would like to know if under any circumstances there is any chance at all of overturning them.”

  Hughes harbored a deep suspicion of all new laws. But he was especially opposed to new taxes.

  “Please tell Gov. Laxalt that if he will follow my urgent appeal for avoidance of the increased sales tax, and if he will cut back a little bit in the unfair demands of the teachers, he may rely on me to assist in any fiscal emergency.

  “With further reference to the tax bill, I think Laxalt knows I would not permit the State of Nevada to be in any really serious positio
n of insolvency or poverty.

  “However, I would very much rather make some contribution or take some simple action, such as bringing additional industry to Nevada, or to bring the Hughes Medical Institute to Nevada, which would at least bring me a little personal recognition. I would rather do something of this kind voluntarily, than to have the sales tax passed and then have some tax collector take it out of my pocket from now on, no matter what the circumstances may be. Day in and day out.”

  Given the free-spending ways of the local lawmakers, they would soon pick his pockets clean. Hughes had to watch them every minute.

  “I just heard the most absurd thing on the news I ever heard—a $5,000,000 zoo!

  “Bob, this is all we need—a zoo bigger than the one in San Diego! Please, please kill this one some way.

  “It seems to me that these people in local government just dont have anything to do under the sun except dream up new ways to spend money.”

  In fact, Hughes didn’t want the Nevada legislature to meet at all.

  “There is a lot of pressure on Laxalt to call a special session,” he noted with alarm. “Bob, for many important reasons I am violently opposed to this.

  “Can’t you get some of the other important political figures to come to his assistance and announce their strong support of his decision to keep this state out of financial chaos by resisting all the efforts to lay open the treasury of the state to the mass of blood thirsty vultures who are trying to remove all restraint and simply turn the sack upside down?

  “Bob, if they have a special session in the present political climate, I assure you the state will emerge with the shirt stripped from its back and without five cents to buy a cup of coffee.”

  These vultures who were out to bankrupt his kingdom were, of course, the very same public servants who had sold their souls to Hughes at the Silver Slipper.

  “In all fairness, Howard,” Maheu reminded him, “the officials in Nevada have been most cooperative with us—at all levels.

  “I do not claim one iota of credit for the foresight you had when you instructed me to make political contributions to ‘worthy’ public servants. I can assure you that it is paying dividends, and when I mentioned that Bell had been successful in killing the fair housing bill, please believe me that I had no intent to delete any of the credit which is due to your foresight. Without ‘our friends’ we would not have had a prayer.”

  Indeed, Hughes was doing quite well. He had blocked the zoo and defeated dog racing and killed fair housing. But he was not happy.

  “I am not complaining about our treatment here,” he explained. “I just say that, because of certain people’s failure to keep accurately informed as to our desires, a large quantity of legislation which I consider highly undesirable is on the verge of being passed.

  “So, I am proposing that you meet with the governor in Carson and try to reach an understanding under which he would assist in an all-out campaign to scuttle most of the remaining legislation that I consider undesirable.

  “Assume the very strongest motivation for Gov. Laxalt, my question is: How much could he do?”

  If Hughes was never quite content with his one-man rule of Nevada, others were impressed. And mystified. Even frightened. His unprecedented buying spree was by now a staple of nightclub acts, but the jokes tended to elicit only nervous laughter.

  Johnny Carson greeted showroom audiences by saying: “Welcome to Las Vegas, Howard Hughes’ Monopoly set. You ever get the feeling he’s going to buy the whole damned place and shut it down?”

  Even Frank Sinatra, himself a Las Vegas institution, picked up the theme.

  “You’re wondering why I don’t have a drink in my hand,” the singer joked with his audience one night at the Sands. “Howard Hughes bought it.” Not long after, the billionaire also bought the Sands, and soon after that Sinatra stopped joking.

  “For two successive nights into the wee hours of the morning Sinatra has made a damn fool of himself in the casino at the Sands,” Maheu informed Hughes when the trouble began. “He moved around insulting people with vile language. Last night he drove a golf cart through a plate glass window and was disgustingly drunk. In an effort to protect him from himself Carl Cohen stopped his credit after he had obtained $30,000 plus in cash and had lost approximately $50,000. Sinatra blew his top and late this afternoon called me to tell me that he was walking away from the Sands and would not finish his engagement.

  “One of the reasons that Cohen cut off his credit is that this SOB was running around the casino stating in a loud voice that you had plenty of money and that there was no reason why you should not share it with him since he had made the Sands the profitable institution it is.”

  The Sands had long been Sinatra’s playground, the place he gathered with his “Rat Pack,” where he and Dean Martin and Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis, Jr., put on legendary shows. Indeed, Sinatra had once owned a piece of the hotel but had been forced to give it up several years earlier when he was caught consorting with Chicago Mob boss Sam Giancana. But the singer still considered the Sands his domain, and a few days later he came back to confront casino manager Cohen.

  Maheu sent Hughes a blow-by-blow description:

  “At six A.M. today, Sinatra appeared at the Sands, made one hell of a scene and insisted on seeing Carl Cohen. He threatened to kill anyone who got in his way, used vile language, and said he would beat up the telephone operators if they did not connect him with Cohen, etc.

  “In an effort to calm the situation, Carl agreed to meet him. Sinatra called Cohen every dirty name in the book, said he was going to kill him, pushed a table over on Carl, picked up a chair and attempted to hit Carl over the head. Carl ducked, took a pass at Sinatra and floored him. I understand Frank has a broken tooth.”

  Actually, it was two teeth. And Sinatra announced that he was quitting the Sands to sign with Caesar’s Palace.

  Hughes was upset. Not about losing Sinatra but about losing him to a rival hotel. He saw the entire brouhaha as a plot by the Caesar’s crowd to steal his property.

  “It seems to me that if they (Caesar’s Palace) want what we have (Sinatra), they ought to deal with us in a decent and honorable way and buy it,” he fumed. “Not try to take it for nothing.

  “I dont intend to take this lying down. Sinatra made three pictures for me at RKO. I know him backward and frontward. All actors are a little crazy. But I dont intend the Caesar’s group making us look weak and stupid.”

  Hughes of course had a plan.

  “My script is something like this,” he told Maheu. “Contact Sinatra now—before he gets too loaded. If he is asleep, give reasonable time only for recuperation. I urge you to tell him:

  “ ‘Howard doesn’t know if you remember the time when you were friends. But he remembers—it was back in the days when you were flying a Bonanza, one of the first ones on the coast. Anyway, he remembers, and when he heard of the recent events, he was distressed beyond measure. However, he was hesitant to inject himself between you and Cohen, since you had been close friends for such a very long time. He even remembers (or thinks he remembers) you introducing Sammy Davis Jr. to the public for the first time from the stage of the Sands.

  “ ‘Anyway, returning to recent events, the story that was related to him was so fantastic it seemed as if it could only have occurred in a nightmare, not reality.’

  “Please tell Frank that the only way I know to show that the recent events do not in any way reflect my feelings or wishes is to suggest that he visit the Sands or the Desert Inn and ask for $500,000 or $1,000,000 in chips and see what results he gets. I think he will find that he is not even asked to sign the marker.”

  Old Black and Blue Eyes disdained the offer. But the press treated the whole affair as if Sinatra had literally been kicked out of the Sands and suggested that he had been booted on Hughes’s orders. There was some talk that it all had to do with lingering jealousies over Lana Turner, or perhaps Ava Gardner, but the favo
rite rumor had it that when Hughes was told of the fracas he just asked, “Frank who?”

  In any event, it seemed symbolic of a revolution in Las Vegas. Sinatra and the old gang were out. Howard Hughes was in. Not only nightclub comedians noticed the change. Far from Las Vegas, others without a sense of humor also paid heed.

  On June 28, 1968, just as Hughes was about to take control of the Stardust, U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark brought his Monopoly game to a sudden halt. Clark threatened that if Hughes closed the 30.5 million-dollar deal, he would haul him into court for violating antitrust laws.

  Hughes was furious. He would not be intimidated. He would go right ahead with the Stardust deal. At first, he would not even consider a delay. He was certain that the entire country was as focused on the big showdown as he was. How would it look if he backed down?

  “Why must we delay the closing?” he demanded.

  “I am positive it is a mistake. It will focus the attention of the whole U.S. on this deal. The press, T.V., and Life Magazine will make an Irish Sweepstakes out of this. (They will even be booking bets on whether we will be able to take over or not.)

  “The whole country will be focused on this deal, and they will all know that it was the Justice Dept. who caused it with a charge of anti-trust violation. And that has a nasty sound in itself. Also, somebody will dig up the fact that I am presently being sued by T.W.A. on an anti-trust violation, that is the biggest civil law suit in history. I can just see the editorials, like: ‘Can’t that man go anywhere without running afoul of those anti-trust laws??’

  “Take my word, and I mean this, if we do not close now, this deal will never go through.”

  Maheu encouraged Hughes in his bravado.

  “You can bet your life that the anti-trust division will live to regret their contemplated action,” he boasted.

  “Yesterday, they had ‘first hand’ evidence that we have many friends in Washington who truly believe in us. Today, they have received many inquiries—including one from the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee—and that is just the beginning.