In the middle years of the 20th century Howard Hughes was one of the richest and most

famous people in the world.

He was tall, he was handsome.

He took his father's drill bit business and turned it into a corporate colossus.

He owned half of Las Vegas, he designed some of the most technologically advanced planes

of his era and once, after he flew around the world in record time, he was given a ticker

tape parade down Broadway.

He drives Lelly through the man-made canyons of Manhattan while paper streams from off

his windows of Lelly of Broadway.

Thus New York pays honor to the pilot who has carried the name of its fare around the

world and home again.

Hughes even owned a Hollywood studio directed his own movies and squired every famous actress

of the day around town.

Eva Gardner, Catherine Hepburn, Lana Turner.

Today we have a category for the celebrity playboy, a category for the entrepreneurial

genius, a category for the eccentric billionaire.

In his day, how was Hughes was all those things all in one.

But over the last 20 years of his life, Hughes became a reckless.

He vanished from sight, never seen, never heard.

With the exception of an interview he gave in the early 1970s, where he was asked about

his relationship with a man named Clifford Irving.

Yeah, I actually knew his dad, Jay.

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