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