Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was at times a pilot, a movie producer, a playboy, an eccentric and one of the wealthiest people in the world. He is famous for building the Hercules airplane, commonly known as the Spruce Goose, and for his debilitatingly eccentric behavior later in life.

Estate

Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar claimed that late one evening in December 1968, he'd picked up a solitary Howard Hughes as a hitchhiker lying by the side of U.S. Highway 95, 150 miles north of Las Vegas, and that after giving Hughes a ride to the Sands hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Hughes had later made Dummar 1/16th inheritor of his $2 billion estate. However, the will presented by Dummar (which would have garnered Dummar $156 million) was rejected by a Nevada court as a forgery two years after Hughes's death. The 1980 movie Melvin and Howard is based on this event.

Related Topics:
Melvin Dummar - 1968 - Melvin and Howard

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More than forty wills and 400 claimants vied for part of Hughes' estate. The estate eventually settled with 22 cousins in 1983. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hughes Aircraft was owned by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who sold it to General Motors in 1985 for $5 billion. Suits brought by the states of California and Texas claiming they were owed inheritance tax were both rejected by the court.

Related Topics:
U.S. Supreme Court - Howard Hughes Medical Institute - General Motors - 1985

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In 1984, Hughes' estate paid an undisclosed amount to actress Terry Moore, who claimed to have been secretly married to Hughes in 1949 and never divorced; she went on to write a book about her affair with Hughes, titled The Beauty and the Billionaire. Since Moore was married to five other men after 1949, the question of bigamy arises.

Related Topics:
1984 - Terry Moore - 1949 - Bigamy

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