However Hughes was one of the richest man in the world, with the destines of thousands of people- perhaps even of governments- at his disposal, yet he lived a sunless joyless, half- lunatic life. In his later years he fled from one resort hotel to another Las Vegas, Nicaragua, Acapulco – and his physical appearance became odder and odder. His straggly beard hung down to his waist and his hair reached to the middle of his back. His fingernails were two inches long and his toenails hadn’t been trimmed for so long they resembled corkscrews.
Hughes was married for 13 years to Jean Peters, one of the most beautiful women in the world. But never in that time were the two seen in public together, and there is no record of their ever having been photographed together. For a while they occupied separate bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel (at $175 per day each), and later she lived in an opulent and carefully guarded French Regency house atop a hill in Bel Ait, making secretive and increasingly infrequent trips to be with Hughes in Las Vegas.
They were divorced in 1970.
“As far as I know.” a Hughes confident once said, “He’s never loved any woman. It’s sex, or a good secretary, or good box office – that is all a woman means to him” Hughes often said. “Every man has his price or a guy like me couldn’t exist,” yet no amount of money bought the affection of his associates. Most of his employees who have broken the silence report their disgust for him.
Why was Hughes so isolated and so lonely? Why, with almost unlimited money, hundreds of aids, and countless beautiful women available to him, was he so unloved?
Simple because he chose to be....
It is an old axiom that god gave us things to use and people to enjoy. Hughes never learned to enjoy people. He was too busy manipulating them. His interests were money- interests so consuming as to exclude relationship.
"Money can't buy happiness." I find it to be quite true.
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