Other times it was to complain that he had to rely on television for his information: “Once more my nervous system is subjected to the strain of seeing a news item I am not prepared for… Bob, I must be the least informed executive in the whole damned country concerning his own business. I have to learn more from the news media than anyone I know in a comparable position.”
But once Hughes proposed selling a major segment of his empire—the Hughes Aircraft Company, one of the nation’s leading defense contractors—to a firm he knew only from a TV commerciaclass="underline" saw a broadcast today with some advertising for a company called AVCO, and it seemed to me that they are in just about every business under the sun except making toilet bowls. So, maybe AVCO would be a good prospect.”
And often the billionaire’s viewing habits would have consequences far beyond his own domain. Seeing the world through television brought it down to manageable size, and Hughes was intent on controlling the little people who paraded across his screen.
“I hear nothing but politics on TV,” he wrote Maheu with childlike petulance.
“You are in charge of all political activities for my companies and me… yet I have had no single word from you as to which of the many political aspirants is someone we want in office and which is not.
“You promised I could pick the next governor.
“It seems to me that we should have had by now a hand picked candidate in every one of these races—someone who would be loyal to us.”
Whether he was watching a political campaign, an assassination, or the war in Vietnam, it was always with both the dispassionate remove of a man long inured to the fate of characters in TV dramas and the intense involvement of a contestant on “Let’s Make a Deal.”
“Did you see CBS News at 11:00 PM just completed?” he wrote Maheu one evening. “If not, please get a summary of the portion devoted to helicopters in Vietnam. More helicopters are being used than was ever contemplated and more helicopters are being lost than was estimated. CBS went on to say, over and over again, that this is a helicopter war….
“Bob, for you to have your Whitehouse relationship, while, at the same time, our Aircraft Division sits empty-handed with the best helicopter design in the world—the whole situation is just the damndest enigma I ever heard of.
“Cant you do something about it?”
Yet for all his efforts to control the world through television, Hughes himself was ultimately held in thrall by the machine. He was as trapped in its beam as in his penthouse prison, the true dimensions of his cell not the fifteen-by-seventeen-foot confines of the hotel room but the nineteen-inch diagonal of the TV screen.
Television was his other narcotic. Hughes needed it to blunt the pain of both his paranoid visions and his true conditions. Certainly his most central and deadening addiction, after money and power, was not the codeine he injected into his arms, legs, and groin, but the TV he shot into his brain in quantities sufficient to overwhelm even a well-balanced mind. Hughes clung to his TV set like an addict to his spike. Although he usually had several sets in reserve, the need to send one out for repair was almost more than he could bear:
“Let the TV man see if he can repair the Sylvania that just left my room, but only in compliance with the following:
“I dont want it placed anywhere near the number one Sylvania machine, and I want the TV man not to be working anywhere near or in the vicinity of the no. 1 machine.
“In other words, I dont want the man to be even within”—he started to write “twenty or thirty” then crossed it out—“40 or 50 feet of the no. 1 machine, because I dont want even the remotest, tiniest possibility of the TV man swinging an arm around, or backing up without realizing how close he is, and coming into contact with the no. 1 machine.
“If it should turn out to be impossible to repair the machine without taking it to his shop, then I will be willing for the TV man to take it (the no. 2 machine), provided he does not pass anywhere near the no. 1 machine, and provided the no. 1 machine is not touched in any slightest way and remains here in the hall or across the hall.
“In other words, provided the no. 1 machine is not disturbed in any way whatsoever, either by the TV man, the watchman, or any one else whomsoever.”
Hughes’s seeming reverence for the “no. 1 machine” would not last. Never fully satisfied, he was constantly changing sets, always wanting a sharper picture, better color, higher audio, and, especially, more remote control. With more money than anyone in the country, perhaps in the world, perhaps in all history, Hughes wanted no personal possessions, no luxuries, no worldly goods, nothing but a really good color TV. And still the perfect set eluded him. At times there was a veritable showroom of discarded RCAs, Zeniths, and Sylvanias—fallen idols gathering dust in and around his room. And still he’d send his aides in search of the ideal television.
“Lets get a brand-new very latest type portable,” Hughes instructed the Mormons in one of an endless series of memos. “When we have a really perfect result lets get rid of all the miscellaneous sets we have here and across the hall. Leaving only 2 of the very latest. Lets see if we can get a set with remote contrast or brightness. I am forever wanting this. Also I understand they have an auto fine tuning adjustment now. They claimed the remote had more functions than any other.
“Lets really try to get the best.
“Before we close the deal,” he added, in this as in all business affairs retaining final authority, “I want to know the price and the discount.”
As it turned out, the price was $3.65 million. And there was no discount. But Hughes had a new “no. 1 machine.”
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ‘Swinging Shift’—programming until dawn for your late, late entertainment!”
Howard Hughes settled back to watch the show. He should have been happy. He finally had what he wanted. An all-night program he himself had created, introduced with an announcement he himself had written, presenting movies he himself chose, on a television station he himself owned.
KLAS-TV (channel 8) was his new “no. 1 machine.” Hughes had been dickering to buy the local CBS affiliate almost from the moment he arrived in Las Vegas, and now it was his. No longer would the “Star-Spangled Banner” sign-off leave him alone with his dread at one A.M. No more would his Mormons have to beg for the westerns he wanted or the airplane pictures he loved. Never again would he have to face a blank screen.
Hughes was in control.
Not even Maheu would share that power. “This is one small corner of the kingdom that I expect to report directly to me,” he informed attorney Dick Gray, his chosen instrument of communication with the station. “I want Maheu to have nothing at all to do with this department.”
Still there were problems. Instead of a balky TV set, Hughes now found he had a balky TV station. Frantically, he tried to tune it in:
“Please contact the station manager of ch 8 and tell him the complaints of poor and unsatisfactory technical operation of the station have reached a point where they cannot be ignored any longer.
“1. Careless and unskilled operation of what would be equivalent to the projection machine in a movie theatre… almost as if the operator was momentarily engaged in some other duty or almost as if he were uncertain what film or tape was scheduled to be shown next, or as if he could not find the item next required.
“2. Consistent snapping in of the sound track of commercials at a sound level 10, 15, or even almost 20 db. above the sound level of the preceding film or tape. There must be twelve different commercials that blast in at a good 10 db above the normal entertainment level….