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Billionaire Howard Hughes

The strange ways of HOWARD HUGHES were so famous that a James Bond villain was patterned after him. In the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever, evil billionaire Willard Whyte lives a secretive life atop his Whyte House hotel in Las Vegas. Howard Hughes did the same thing in real life, living in isolation atop the Desert Inn on the Las Vegas strip for much of the 1960s.

Hughes was always quirky, but he wasn't always a recluse. During the 1920s and 1930s he was quite a famous businessman and flyer, even getting a ticker tape parade down Broadway after he broke the record for an around-the-world flight in 1938.  But Hughes turned downright eccentric during his Vegas years, obsessing about germs and reportedly refusing to cut his hair or fingernails. He even declined to appear in person to denounce the false Hughes "autobiography" published by Clifford Irving (although he finally spoke with reporters in a telephone conference). Howard Hughes went unseen for years and then moved to his last seculsion in the Bahamas, dying in 1976.