Howard Hughes

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Pat H. Broeske

In the 1960s, as his companies pioneered space and satellite ventures, Hughes lived behind the blackened windows of the Desert Inn penthouse suite, amassing a then-unsurpassed Las Vegas desert kingdom of casinos and hotels. He left the city in the dead of night in November 1970 and thereafter was a man on the run. Pursued by various government agencies, attorneys, process-servers, and the media, he was so isolated that the publishing world fell for an elaborate hoax perpetrated by writer Clifford Irving, who claimed he was working with Hughes on his autobiography.