The Titan Who Couldn’t Let Go

Before Elon Musk, before Steve Jobs, before the idea of a billionaire-as-visionary became a cultural trope, there was Howard Hughes.

He was born into wealth and turned it into something larger than life. By his mid-30s, he had built a career as a Hollywood producer, turned himself into the fastest man alive by setting airspeed records, and taken over Trans World Airlines, transforming it into one of the dominant carriers of the Jet Age. He poured millions into experimental aircraft — some successful, some disastrous — and wasn’t afraid to bet the entire farm on ideas no one else would touch. The most infamous of these was the Spruce Goose: a massive wooden seaplane designed to carry troops over the Atlantic during World War II. It flew exactly once, for less than a minute, but the symbolism lingered. Hughes was trying to outfly history itself.

He was brilliant.

He was bold.

He was also deeply unwell.

By the 1950s, Hughes had begun to unravel. What started as quirks — a fixation on cleanliness, a need for control — became pathology. He retreated from public life. At one point, he locked himself in a screening room for four months, naked, surrounded by tissue boxes and milk bottles, obsessively watching the same films on loop. Later, he would occupy the top floor of the Desert Inn in Las…