Las Vegas is the least likely great American city, yet there it stands in the desert, thirsty and restless. Vegas doesn’t take without giving back, however. For the rent you bet, you get a few minutes–seconds, perhaps–of suspended animation when the fear of potentially losing too much or even everything charges through your body’s circuitry. Or perhaps it’s not fear but hope, the desire to be delivered from what you are, losing just as readily as winning able to do the job.
Originallysettled by Mormonsas part of their trek west but abandoned in 1857, the settlement became a railroad repair stop, which almost ceased to exist in the 1920s, when the Union Pacific Railroad reacted to the town’s support of thenational railroad strike of 1922by closing its Vegas operations. The building of the Boulder – laterHoover– dam 30 miles to the southeast kept Vegas afloat. World War II brought the Nellis airforce base (including its infamous and top secretArea 51) to the north. Along with its neighbour, theNevada Nuclear Test Site, the base helped supply a steady customer base for the embryonic modern Vegas.
The mob reinvented Vegas as “Sin City” in the 1950s and 60s. Howard Hughesoverhauled the Strip in the late 1960s and 1970s, famously buying the Desert Inn for US$13m instead of leaving its penthouse suite when asked to by its owners. Hughes would remain a recluse for four years in that penthouse, accruing four more casino properties: the Frontier for US$14m, the Sands for US$14.6m, Castaways for US$3m, and the Landmark for US$17m.
Yet anyone visiting Las Vegas today would find little, if any, evidence of that history.
Build again, build bigger
New buildings and billion-dollar hotel resorts prove the past is readily disposable in Las Vegas. Old Vegas has been expunged from memory just as it has been cleared from the four-mile Las Vegas Boulevard Strip, as the city demolishes itself to build again, and build bigger.
Of the four hotels that opened in spring 1955, only one still stands: theRiviera, where much of Martin Scorsese’s Casino was filmed. On April 20 2005, it became only the fifth Las Vegas Boulevard hotel casino to reach its 50th birthday. But it closed its doors as a going concern in May 2015, and demolition is slated for spring 2016.•
The first two excellent paragraphs of “Welcome to the Integratron,” Jody Rosen’s new T Magazine article about a large-scale “time-travel” contraption in the California desert that was purported to be ordered built in 1957 by Venusians:
“In the wee hours of Aug. 24, 1953, George Van Tassel, a 43-year-old former aviation engineer, was awakened by a man from outer space. Six years earlier, Van Tassel had moved with his family to Landers, Calif., a place of stark beauty and rainbow sunsets in the southeastern corner of the Mojave Desert, 40 desolate miles due north of Palm Springs. Van Tassel had the clean-cut look of a midcentury company man, and a résumé to match: He had worked for Lockheed and Douglas Aircraft, and for Howard Hughes’s aviation concern. But his spiritual leanings were esoteric. He settled in Landers because of its proximity to Giant Rock, an enormous seven-story-high desert boulder in whose shadow he would sit silently for hours at a stretch. He told friends that he went to Giant Rock to commune with the spirits of American Indians, who had regarded the boulder as sacred.
But on that night in 1953, Van Tassel’s visitor was not a Native American. He was, Van Tassel claimed, a Venusian: the captain of a ‘scout ship’ from Venus that had landed on the airstrip abutting Van Tassel’s property. The spaceman looked like a human, wore a gray one-piece bodysuit and spoke, Van Tassel told a television interviewer, ‘in the best English, equivalent to Ronald Colman’s.’ He informed Van Tassel that his name was Solganda and that he was 700 years old. (He looked no older than 28, Van Tassel said.) Van Tassel was ushered onto the spacecraft where he was told that Earthlings’ reliance on metal building materials was interfering with radio frequencies and disrupting interplanetary ‘thought transfers.’ Solganda also divulged a secret: a formula that Van Tassel could use to build a remarkable machine, a device that would generate electrostatic energy to suspend the laws of gravity, extend human life and facilitate high-speed time travel.”
Regardless of what actually killed him, Howard Hughes died of being Howard Hughes, eaten alive from the inside by neuroses. But that doesn’t mean he was alone at the feast. An autopsy suggested codeine and painkillers were among the culprits, and his personal physician, Dr. Wilbur Thain, whose brother-in-law Bill Gay was one of the executives angling for control of Hughes’ holdings, was treated like a precursor to Conrad Murray, though he was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.
From Dennis Breo’s 1979 People interview with Thain, who made the extremely dubious assertion that aspirin abuse claimed the man who was both disproportionately rich and poor:
Question:
Are you satisfied that Hughes received adequate medical attention?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
Everything possible was done to help Hughes in his final hours. At no time did the authors of Empire try to get in touch with me. Yet they say in the book that an aviator friend of Hughes called me in Logan, Utah two days before Hughes’ death and told me, “I don’t want to play doctor, but your patient is dying.” I am quoted as telling the guy to mind his own business, since I had to go to a party in the Bahamas. Well, the first word I actually got that Hughes was in trouble was about 9 p.m. April 4, 1976—the night before he died. I was in Miami at the time—not Utah. At about midnight I was called and told that Hughes had suddenly become very critical. I was stunned. I left Miami at 3:30 a.m., arriving in Acapulco at 8 a.m. April 5.
Question:
What was the first thing you did?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
Empire says the first thing I did was spend two hours shredding documents in Hughes’ rooftop suite at the Acapulco Princess. This is absolutely false. I walked straight into Hughes’ bedroom with my medical bag. He was unconscious and having multiple seizures. He looked like he was about to die. Other than one trip to the bathroom, I spent the next four hours with him.
Question:
Why did you then fly to Houston?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
The Mexican physician who had seen Hughes advised against trying to take him to a local medical center, so we spent two hours trying to find an oxygen tank that didn’t leak and preparing the aircraft to fly us to Houston. We left at noon. He died en route.
Question:
Was Howard Hughes psychotic?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
No, not at any time in his life. He was severely neurotic, yes. To be psychotic means to be out of touch with reality. Howard Hughes may have had some fanciful ideas, but he was not out of touch with reality. He was rational until the day he died.
Question:
Was Hughes an impossible patient?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
That’s a masterpiece of understatement. He wanted doctors around, but he didn’t want to see them unless he had to. He would allow no X-rays—I never saw an X-ray of Hughes until after he died—no blood tests, no physical exams. He understood his situation and chose to live the way he lived. Rather than listen to a doctor, he would fall asleep or say he couldn’t hear.
Question:
Is that why you didn’t accept his job offer after you got out of medical school?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
No, I just wanted to practice medicine on my own. I understand that Hughes was quite upset. I didn’t see him again for 21 years. He was 67 then. He had grown a beard, his hair was longer. He had some hearing loss partially due to his work around aircraft. That’s why he liked to use the telephone: It had an amplifier. He was very alert and well-informed. His toenails and fingernails were pretty long, but he had a case of onchyomycosis—a fungus disease of the nails which makes them thick and very sensitive. It hurt like hell to trim them. For whatever reason, he only sponge-bathed his body and hair.
Question:
What was the turning point?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
After his successful hip surgery in August of 1973 he chose never to walk again. Once—only once—he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom with help. That was the beginning of the end for him. I told him we’d even get him a cute little physical therapist. He said, “No, Wilbur, I’m too old for that.”
Question:
Why did he decide not to walk?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
I never had the chance to pry off the top of his head to see what motivated decisions like this. He would never get his teeth fixed, either. Worst damn mouth I ever saw. When they operated on his hip, the surgeons were afraid his teeth were so loose that one would fall into his lung and kill him!
Question:
What kinds of things did he talk about toward the end of his life?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
The last year we would talk about the Hughes Institute medical projects and his earlier life. All the reporting on Hughes portrayed him as a robot. This man had real feelings. He talked one day about his parents, whom he loved very much, and his movies and his girls. He said he finally gave up stashing women around Hollywood because he got tired of having to talk to them. In our last conversation, he told me how much he still loved his ex-wife Jean Peters. But he was also always talking about things 10 years down the road. He was an optimist in that sense. If it hadn’t been for the kidney failure, Hughes might have lasted a lot longer.•
A 1976 Houston local news report on the death of Howard Hughes, whose demise was as shrouded in mystery as was much of his life.
From a 1979 People Q&A with Wilbur Thain, who was the final doctor to treat Howard Hughes, a singular American character who lived in fear of the outside world but was betrayed from within:
People:
Was Hughes an impossible patient?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
That’s a masterpiece of understatement. He wanted doctors around, but he didn’t want to see them unless he had to. He would allow no X-rays—I never saw an X-ray of Hughes until after he died—no blood tests, no physical exams. He understood his situation and chose to live the way he lived. Rather than listen to a doctor, he would fall asleep or say he couldn’t hear.
People:
Is that why you didn’t accept his job offer after you got out of medical school?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
No, I just wanted to practice medicine on my own. I understand that Hughes was quite upset. I didn’t see him again for 21 years. He was 67 then. He had grown a beard, his hair was longer. He had some hearing loss partially due to his work around aircraft. That’s why he liked to use the telephone: It had an amplifier. He was very alert and well-informed. His toenails and fingernails were pretty long, but he had a case of onchyomycosis—a fungus disease of the nails which makes them thick and very sensitive. It hurt like hell to trim them. For whatever reason, he only sponge-bathed his body and hair.
People:
What was the turning point?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
After his successful hip surgery in August of 1973 he chose never to walk again. Once—only once—he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom with help. That was the beginning of the end for him. I told him we’d even get him a cute little physical therapist. He said, “No, Wilbur, I’m too old for that.”
People:
Why did he decide not to walk?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
I never had the chance to pry off the top of his head to see what motivated decisions like this. He would never get his teeth fixed, either. Worst damn mouth I ever saw. When they operated on his hip, the surgeons were afraid his teeth were so loose that one would fall into his lung and kill him!
People:
What kinds of things did he talk about toward the end of his life?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
The last year we would talk about the Hughes Institute medical projects and his earlier life. All the reporting on Hughes portrayed him as a robot. This man had real feelings. He talked one day about his parents, whom he loved very much, and his movies and his girls. He said he finally gave up stashing women around Hollywood because he got tired of having to talk to them. In our last conversation, he told me how much he still loved his ex-wife Jean Peters. But he was also always talking about things 10 years down the road. He was an optimist in that sense. If it hadn’t been for the kidney failure, Hughes might have lasted a lot longer.
People:
Do you have any regrets?
Dr. Wilbur Thain:
Sure, sure. I wish I could have treated him the way I wanted: Fix his teeth—that would have been Number One. It would have helped his diet. I wish I could have treated him just like any patient in a county hospital who comes in with a broken hip, bad teeth and rundown health. At the end Hughes was shrunken, wasted—he was 6’1″ and weighed 93 pounds. When his kidneys failed in Acapulco, a major medical center like Houston was the only hope. But knowing Hughes, he would have refused to be placed on dialysis. He always said, “I don’t want to be kept alive by machines.” Howard Hughes was still imposing that tremendous will of his—right up to the last.•
Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, the ego-driven Vegas oddsmaker who did as much to legitimize gambling in America as any, lived for decades on the edge before going over it. In addition to his casino and TV work, Snyder did public relations for Howard Hughes. From a 1974 People article:
People:
What do you do for a living?
Jimmy the Greek:
Basically, I’m a PR man. I have a firm called Jimmy the Greek’s Public Relations, Inc. We have offices in Las Vegas and Miami, 19 people on the staff, and we gross about $800,000 a year, representing companies like National Biscuit Company—the candy division—and Aurora Toys. For three-and-a-half years, I handled PR for Howard Hughes.
People:
What did you do for Hughes?
Jimmy the Greek:
Different things. Hughes was opposed to atomic testing so close to Las Vegas. Every time there was a megaton-plus test, the windows of the hotel shook, and there were already cracks in some of the buildings. He didn’t want the people he brought to Vegas hurt. Mostly, he was afraid of the radiation. Mr. Maheu, his manager, would call and say, ‘Mr. Hughes is against megaton-plus testing, Jimmy.’ And I’d say, ‘Well, what else?’ And he’d say, ‘That’s it, Jimmy.’ And you were on your own from there on. I was very happy working for him. And $175,000 a year isn’t hay.•
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“We are saddened that our 12-year association with him ended this way”:
In 1972, hoaxer Alan Abel bandaged his head and pretended to be the reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes at a press conference he arranged at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. “Hughes” announced that he was going to freeze himself cryogenically and be thawed out when the stock market reached record highs. He was then rushed in a wheelchair to a waiting limo. A few days later during another press conference, Abel revealed the truth.
In the first clip (a French-language one) you can see footage from the initial press conference. The second video (in English) covers the bandage removal.
Orson Welles’ 1974 cine-essay about the art of the hoax is sensational in both senses of the word, zestfully beginning as an examination of one fraud and stumbling ass-backwards into an even bigger scam. As if the engaging, globe-trotting Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory wasn’t a fascinating-enough figure for this uncommon documentary, his biographer, Clifford Irving, who was interviewed extensively by Welles for the film, proved to be a better one.
Failed fiction writer Irving seemed to hit his stride in 1969 when he published Fake!, a true-crime account about de Hory, a perpetually struggling artist who decided to exploit his incredible facility for mimicking the painting styles of masters. He’d whip up a Matisse or Picasso and feign being a former Hungarian aristocrat who was selling family treasures because he was cash poor. Plenty of art dealers knew it was a ruse, but since de Hory’s work was so convincing, they tacitly went along with the con to get rich. De Hory’s forgeries purportedly hang in museums all over the world, and his remarkable tale made the book a best-seller and gave Welles his initial subject.
But then a better subject emerged.
While the film was being made, Irving’s own more spectacular fraudbegan to be exposed. His new book, an “authorized” biographyabout reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, whom he had never met or spoken to, was proven to be a phony. The fallout gave Welles an even richer palette to work with, and his story gleefully bounces from faker to faker, examining how they did what they did and how they came undone. The resulting work is a playful, freewheeling meditation, a Godardian Welles film, that examines a pair of hoaxers from every angle with eagerness and a respect that’s far more than grudging.
The third hoaxer in the film is, of course, Welles himself, a self-professed “charlatan,” whose 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast about Martians invading Earth caused widespread panic in a country that was still very naive about media manipulation. Welles admired scammers because he knew that legitimate artists con their audiences into believing an illusion and that hoaxers are just their purer brethren and their creations valuable. As de Hory says of his uncanny canvases, “If you hang them in a museum long enough, they become real.”
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Welles made a nine-minute trailer that used material not in the final film. Click on the “Watch on YouTube” link to view the short.
