Posted on: October 28, 2024, 09:00h.
Last updated on: October 28, 2024, 07:20h.
What makes this myth so widespread, and challenging to dispute, is that it originated from a reputable Las Vegas news organization.
Recently, the Clark County Commission approved $1.5 million to relocate what is known to locals as “the Green House” (or “the Howard Hughes House”) from its current location to the Clark County Museum, 18 miles away in Henderson, due to its historic significance.
The house has been identified over the years in dozens of news stories by KLAS-TV, Las Vegas’ CBS affiliate station, as the former home of the eccentric billionaire during the eight months he resided in Las Vegas from 1953 to 1954.
However, according to Hughes’ closest surviving aide, that claim is entirely false.
Dream House
Featuring three bedrooms, two baths, a living room, kitchen and dining room, the Green House was built in 1951 as a bungalow for the Sun Villa Motel, later that decade known as the Blair House.
Hughes leased it from the motel’s owners, James and Beatrice Fulcher, but only used it as an office.
“He worked from there when he established the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,“ Paul Winn told Casino.org. “But he never spent a single night there.”
Winn, 93, was employed by Hughes’ company from 1957 until 1989 — first as an operations secretary and eventually rising to director of corporate records.
According to Winn, Hughes maintained a villa at the Flamingo for the entirety of his first stay in Las Vegas, to which he returned every night.
Winn said this information came directly from Kay Glenn, who ran the office in the Green House for Hughes as his operations supervisor, and who later became one of Winn’s closest friends.
Glenn — along with Bill Gay and Nadine Henley — constituted the innermost inner circle managing Hughes’ business and personal affairs. (In 2020, Glenn was the final member of that circle to pass away.)
This version of events makes more sense anyway. From an oil company he inherited from his father, as well as his own financial successes in aviation, film production and real estate, Hughes was nearly Elon-Musk wealthy by the 1940s. His primary residence then was a 10,000 square-foot palace in LA that sold last year for $23 million.
After his first Vegas sojourn, according to Winn, Hughes — known for flaunting his wealth — moved into three or four lavish bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Hughes was not going to slum it in anything as small and plain as the Green House. However, for his businesses, like most billionaires, he was happy to cut costs wherever he could.
“Hughes was not even in the office a lot,” Winn said. “He was only there a little bit.”
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