In the early 1960s, Greg Bautzer could lean back in his office and make a grand pronouncement. “There are only three things I’m really sentimental about. First, there’s my son. Second, there’s money. And third, there’s Howard Hughes. In that order of priority. I just love that goddamned guy.” Hughes had strong feelings for Bautzer, too. Since Hughes rarely went out and kept his distance even from the men who attended to his every need, Bautzer may have been his only friend. He wanted to be able to reach Bautzer at all times. Bautzer had a second private phone installed in his office just for Hughes. The billionaire called Bautzer at restaurants. He called him at home. He called at all hours of the night. He had a second phone installed at Bautzer’s secretary’s home so that he could reach her if her boss was unavailable.
Hughes’s demands were often unrelated to legal work. One Friday at 2 AM, Lea Sullivan awoke to hear Hughes asking her to procure a print of a film. Sullivan called a San Bernardino drive-in theater and got the print, but her job was just beginning. Hughes was not interested in watching the film. He wanted its plot and dialogue transcribed. Bautzer happened to come into the office over the weekend and was surprised to see her there, typing away as a projectionist screened the film for her.
Hughes wasn’t the only client that required hand-holding. Celebrity clients called Bautzer’s office for all kinds of things that had little or nothing to do with legal work. If Merle Oberon needed airplane tickets on TWA, she called Bautzer. When Jack Benny needed to take his driver’s test again at the department of motor vehicles, he called Bautzer to accompany him. Whenever possible, Bautzer asked his secretary to handle these day-to-day favors, but the nonstop people-pleasing was exhausting. “The stress of working in that office was tremendous,” said Sullivan. “We were representing the richest, most famous people in the world, and the pressure to meet their needs was incredible.”
As early as 1955, Bautzer felt the need to get away from Hughes. “That guy is driving me crazy,” said Bautzer. “I’ve gotta have a vacation.” In July he made reservations to travel to Italy and refused to tell Hughes where he was staying, even when Hughes insisted. “Gregson, I just have to know where you’ll be,” said Hughes, “in case something comes up in the RKO deal.” Hughes was trying to sell the studio a second time. Bautzer told Hughes that the RKO deal was dead. Hughes had changed his mind too many times and the buyers had given up. Bautzer left for Italy without giving Hughes his contact information. Lea Sullivan remembered the private line ringing in Bautzer’s office while her boss was away.
“Sullivan! Is that you?” Hughes asked loudly.
“Yes, it’s me, Mr. Hughes.”
“Oh, OK,” said Hughes, his voice dropping to a normal register. “Where is Greg?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Hughes.”
“Do you expect him back today?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Hughes. I really don’t know.” She told Hughes nothing. She was sworn to secrecy. Even if she knew he was coming back early, she could not tell Hughes.
Bautzer was in Reggio, looking at Italian women and drinking wine. After a few days of lounging in the sun, he decided to drive north to Capri. On impulse he stopped at a small village and checked into an inn. It was not planned and he had told no one he was going there. He had been in his room only a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Hughes. From then on, Bautzer kept getting calls, no matter where he drove. Hughes had sent detectives to trail him.
Hughes’s ability to locate Bautzer at any time was uncanny. One night when Sullivan was with Bautzer on a business trip to Oklahoma City, the cocktail hour arrived, but there was no watering hole to be found. Oklahoma City was a “dry” town. Bautzer needed a drink. Sullivan thought a cab driver could solve the problem. Sure enough, she found one who knew a private club, far off the beaten track. She and Bautzer had just settled in at a table when the waiter came over with a telephone. “Are you Bautzer?” he asked. “There’s a phone call for you.” It was Hughes. To this day, Sullivan does not know how he tracked them down.
Hughes and Bautzer shared a closeness that Hughes didn’t have with others. After Bautzer married Dana Wynter, Hughes would personally fly him to Palm Springs in a small plane, land at the tiny airstrip that was its original airport, and spend the night with the couple in their home. He and Bautzer would often stay up late talking business. Hughes was totally relaxed at their home. If he arrived without toiletries, Wynter would jump in the car with him and go to a drugstore. According to Wynter, there was nothing unusual about Hughes’s behavior at all, except that he required her husband to be available at all hours.
On one occasion, the Bautzers were in Acapulco and Hughes called. Wynter overheard her husband’s side of the conversation: Hughes wanted Bautzer to cut his vacation short and travel to Washington. “Yes, Howard…. No, Howard…. There’s no need for me to go to Washington. I can handle it from here.” Hughes didn’t take no for an answer easily, and the conversation went on like this for a while, with Hughes continuing to demand that Bautzer make the trip.
Wynter finally pulled the phone away from her husband. “Howard,” she said, “if Greg says he doesn’t need to go to Washington, he doesn’t need to go. And if he does, it will break up our marriage. And it will be your fault!” Hughes deferred to Wynter. From then on, when he asked Bautzer to travel on business, he would pause and say, “Now, I don’t have to talk to Dana, do I?”
Hughes depended on Bautzer for a variety of services, some legal and some that could be euphemistically described as extralegal. In the mid-1950s, Hughes asked Bautzer to help him date Elizabeth Taylor. “Have you asked her?” Bautzer said.
“No. I want you to ask her,” replied Hughes.
“But I wouldn’t know how.”
“I want you to take a proposal to her mother.”
“That you want to screw her daughter?” Bautzer asked.
“No. Not in so many words. You’re to say to her mother that I am prepared to pay a million dollars for Elizabeth to be my bride.”
“That isn’t the way it’s done, Howard.”
“It’s the way I’d like to do it.”
Bautzer wanted to placate Hughes, so he went to see Taylor’s mother, Sara. “I have a very unusual proposal to make,” said Bautzer. “Howard Hughes wants to marry your daughter.”
“But she doesn’t know Hughes,” said Taylor’s mother.
“There’s an inducement. He’s prepared to pay a million dollars for her.”
Mrs. Taylor thought for a second then asked: “Tax free?” Bautzer laughed and conveyed her message to his client. Hughes realized it was not to be and moved on. In 1957, he married actress Jean Peters. Hughes had dated the beautiful green-eyed brunette a decade earlier. Some have claimed she was the only woman he ever truly loved, although even with Peters, Hughes was never monogomous.
Hughes frequently used Bautzer’s services as a harem keeper. He had Bautzer sign women to acting contracts and pay them out of a corporate entity named Black Gold Productions, an obvious allusion to Hughes’s oil fortune. The Black Gold account was kept separate from the ones he used to pay established actresses. Its so-called acting contracts were an elaborate way to seduce a girl and pay her living expenses. Hughes would recruit a kept woman by promising to launch her acting career. He found his targets in various places. He would notice a woman in a restaurant. He would catch a glance of a profile in a passing car and take down the license plate number. He might even see a picture in a magazine. He then hired detectives to locate these women. After an intermediary like Pat Di Cicco or Walter Kane had presented the proposition and gotten the woman’s consent, Hughes would rent an apartment for her and provide acting, singing, and dancing lessons. Hughes would not meet the woman for several weeks. He would tease her with the prospect of a visit, and then repeatedly break the date, saying something important had come up. Sometimes he called the woman, saying he was out of town while he was actually in an adjoining room. By the time the woman finally met him, she was willing to do anything to get his attention. Other seduction techniques included buying her a dog and then having it kidnapped, only to pretend that he had found it and triumphantly return it. His tricks were devious but effective. An assistant named Jean Parker kept the books for Black Gold Productions and drafted the checks for Bautzer to sign. Parker technically worked for Joseph Schenck, although Bautzer paid her separately for her Black Gold bookkeeping services.
Bautzer didn’t always help Hughes score with women; sometimes he tried to protect the women. Tony Curtis recalled how Hughes once had Bautzer fly the entire Paris Symphony Orchestra to Hollywood on the pretext of a recording session just so could Hughes could “meet” the female violinist. When the eighty members arrived, Bautzer tracked down the violinist and warned her not to sleep with Hughes, but she didn’t listen. Once Hughes had made his conquest, he canceled the orchestra’s contract and sent her and the orchestra members packing.
In the 1960s, Bautzer’s recurring task for Hughes was to quash unauthorized magazine articles and biographies about the billionaire. In 1962, Hughes sent Bautzer, publicist Dick Hannah, and Washington attorney Clark Clifford to the offices of Life magazine to suppress an article, or at least get final approval over it. The team of envoys waxed eloquent, but the editors were unmoved. The article ran, emblazoned with the provocative heading “A playboy who became a secretive, besieged, and lonely man.” Bautzer was quoted in it complaining to Hughes about his late-night calls. Hughes was furious. Although Bautzer was working hard on his behalf, the magazine article had upset Hughes beyond measure. He wrote Bautzer a rambling memo demanding an explanation.
From the looks of things, it would be difficult to conceive how we could have brought our present relationship to a much more bitter and antagonistic status. I was so upset following our last conversation before my health commenced to recover from the ill effects of my loss of temper and explosion of blood pressure it brought our conversation to a conclusion. I am sure that, like everyone else, it is my tendency to see controversial matters from my side, but perhaps it is your nature, likewise, to look at things from your side.
Now I criticize you for seeming to be more interested in the management of Northeast Airlines than in anything else. You again answer, “I am doing a great job.” What good is a great job to me if it benefits Northeast Airlines, which I may only possess for another month at most and when Northeast Airlines is not the place where I desire you to direct your efforts when it is Life magazine and three or four other situations which are cutting into my body like a knife and destroying my efforts to recover my health and putting me daily closer to the grave with unbelievable rapidity and force. Your great job for Northeast Airlines might as well be a great job for Henry Kaiser in Honolulu, when I am about to be crucified and I would say it is an even money bet that they will cause Jean [Peters, Mrs. Howard Hughes] to take the same route as Marilyn Monroe.
Under these circumstances you may understand why even one minute of effort on your part devoted to Northeast Airlines evokes my extreme bitterness when I feel that time and that effort should have gone to Life magazine.
I await your reply. I don’t know if I will be able to answer this morning as I am about at the end of my rope.
Bautzer calmed Hughes down and stayed in his good graces, but there were a growing number of aspiring Hughes biographers, and he wanted Bautzer to stop them all. Film historian Ezra Goodman was writing a book on Hughes, so Bautzer and New York lawyer Chester Davis brought him to New York, put him up in the St. Regis Hotel, and bribed him $38,250 to instead write about silent film director D. W. Griffith. Goodman’s publisher, Lyle Stuart, wouldn’t stand for this kind of business interference and sued Hughes, Bautzer, Davis, and Rosemont Enterprises, the company that Hughes had set up to pay off Goodman. Bautzer heard of Stuart’s weakness for gourmet food and invited the publisher to a lavishly catered settlement meeting at the St. Regis. Stuart appreciated the gesture but stood his ground. “You’re not going to buy me off,” he said. “I know you aren’t going to believe this, but I don’t have a price. I didn’t go into publishing just to make money, but I’ve made a million. And you’re not going to threaten me. I know that Howard Hughes is a very powerful, very influential man who has lots of friends. I’ve got friends, too. And if we have to fight, I’ll fight.” As the lawsuit continued, Hughes had the audacity to sue Goodman for $38,250, claiming that the manuscript Goodman delivered on the life of D. W. Griffith was unsatisfactory, but his lawsuit was thrown out.
Bautzer’s next antagonist was Random House. Publisher Robert Loomis had signed Tommy Thompson to write a Hughes bio, but the poor quality of the writing caused Loomis to hire another writer, John Keats. Bautzer showed up at Loomis’s office and tried to convince him not to publish the book. Loomis was unmoved. Bautzer threatened his colleague Random House cofounder Bennett Cerf with litigation. Cerf ignored him. Bautzer sent a letter to Cerf stating that he needed Hughes’s permission. Cerf ignored the letter. Bautzer went to see Cerf and Loomis again. He told them that if Random House would pull the Keats book, Hughes would agree to an authorized biography. Cerf and Loomis doubted Hughes would ever go through with it and declined. Howard Hughes by John Keats was published in 1966.
In January 1972, Hughes heard some alarming news. McGraw-Hill was publishing an “autobiography of Howard Hughes.” His supposed coauthor was a novelist named Clifford Irving. McGraw-Hill had paid Irving an advance of $100,000 and given Irving a $400,000 check for Hughes, which Hughes had reportedly signed and deposited in a Swiss bank account. Bautzer made a statement: “Irving may have had some tapes, but Hughes didn’t give them to him. The autobiography is a complete and absolute fraud. I have represented this man for twenty-five years and the last thing he would ever do—this good American—is deposit a check to a numbered Swiss bank account.”
If Hughes planned to discredit Irving, it would have to be done in public. Since 1958, Hughes had kept out of sight. He was not about to appear in person. Bautzer arranged a news conference with seven journalists who had known Hughes for years. The journalists would be televised talking to Hughes over the telephone. At the January 7 conference, Hughes spoke over a public address system in a flat, nasal voice. Every reporter recognized his voice and confirmed his identity. After holding forth on a variety of topics, he clarified his connection with Clifford Irving. “I don’t know him,” said Hughes. “I never met him.”
Three weeks later, Bautzer filed suit against McGraw-Hill. On that same day, Irving confessed to forging Hughes’s signature and plagiarizing an unpublished book by Hughes’s former business manager Noah Dietrich. The autobiography had been ghostwritten by a writer named James Phelan, with whom Irving shared a mutual friend, and that friend had given him access to the manuscript in the hopes that he would rewrite it. Irving, his wife, and his coconspirator Richard Suskind were convicted of defrauding McGraw-Hill of $939,000. They all served time in prison.
The next flare-up was minor by comparison, but potentially more damaging. Joe Hyams was a respected Hollywood journalist. In 1974, Bautzer learned that he was writing an exposé of the “Howard Hughes personal contract-starlet-call girl system,” a setup that provided female escorts for Hughes’s business associates. Bautzer took him to lunch in order to promise him a much bigger assignment. “I’m not saying that Howard’s going to do his autobiography this month or next,” Bautzer said in a confidential tone, “but it will be soon. And when I recommend you as the writer, I don’t want him to say: ‘Isn’t he the fellow who did that unauthorized story about me?’”
Hyams had to think twice. “I estimated the Hughes book to be worth at least $100,000, maybe more,” he recalled. He agreed to kill the call-girl story. Of course, he never heard another word about an autobiography. Bautzer had to have been relieved that the story was never published, as he was signing the checks for Hughes’s women.
The April 1968 issue of Fortune magazine listed Howard Hughes as the richest man in the world, with assets worth $1.4 billion. Bautzer decided that Hughes should use some of his money to purchase the American Broadcasting Company. The television network had been in merger talks with other companies, including International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), but had broken off negotiations. Hughes thought it was a great idea. “I have no desire to produce a long line of ‘Batmen’, etc.,” he told Bautzer. “I have no desire to be associated with a lot of artistic crap. I have no desire to remake the entertainment policy of TV, as many people want to do. My only real interest is in the very areas in which I understand ABC is really hopeless—news and public events and the technical side of the business, in which field I am equipped to do a really outstanding job.”
Bautzer clearly had his own interests in mind when he proposed that Hughes buy the network. Bautzer was friends with James T. Aubrey Jr., who had been fired as head of CBS Television in 1965. In the intervening three years, Bautzer had tried to involve Aubrey in several ventures, including potentially producing feature films together. Prior to CBS, the executive had worked for ABC as head of programming in the late 1950s, when he was credited with lifting the network out of the doldrums. Now he and Bautzer were reported commuting to Las Vegas to see Hughes. If the tycoon bought the network, Aubrey was first in line to replace Leonard Goldenson as president. Having ABC as a client would provide all sorts of high-paying legal work for Bautzer and his firm.
On July 1, 1968, Hughes’s Toolco offered to purchase up to two million shares, or approximately 43 percent, of the outstanding common stock of ABC. The offer was $74.25 a share, a big markup from the current trading price of $58.87. The total offer was $148.5 million. Goldenson told stockholders that the offer was “substantially below the intrinsic share value.” On July 3, Bautzer met with Goldenson and ABC executive vice president Simon B. Siegel. “Mr. Hughes would like to work this out on a friendly basis,” Bautzer told them. According to Bautzer, Hughes had no antagonistic motive and was willing to provide financing to ABC. Its facilities were in need of a $90 million upgrade, which Hughes would be happy to underwrite. Despite Bautzer’s presentation, ABC could not visualize Hughes as a benign controlling stockholder. Neither could the Federal Communications Commission. In a letter to Bautzer, the FCC warned Hughes not to seek a controlling interest in ABC. He already owned a VHF television station. ABC owned five. If he bought ABC, he would exceed the legal limit.
On July 9, ABC filed papers to block Hughes’s purchase in United States District Court—and asked that he be compelled to appear in court. No member of the press had seen Hughes since 1958. ABC was trying to force his hand. They knew he would not want to appear.
Bautzer was roused at four in the morning by the ringing of his phone. One of Hughes’s aides was calling from the penthouse of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, where Hughes had taken up residence. The aide proceeded to read a memo from Hughes.
I hate to awaken you, Gregson, but I don’t like the way this thing is turning out at all. Up to now there has been no real issue about my being personally called at all. But at the hearing today or tomorrow, ABC will demand my appearance. This will bring into sharp focus all the old rumors of my death, disability, etc., etc. And thereafter if, for any reason, the deal fails to materialize, people will say that the reason was my unwillingness to appear.
Now, Gregson, the minute this slant is put on things I am very likely to be sued for the losses that will no doubt be incurred by those individuals who bought stock when it was at its peak in loyal support of their confidence in me and then will be forced to take a loss if the deal fails to go through. You see, normally, it would be held that any such losses would be simply the risk of the speculator. But here we have a man who, in the public’s concept, could win this fight if he would just try, but he is too content to lean back on his billion-dollar-ass and enjoy life (at least most people think I do).
If I suffer a massive loss of face after two years of improving publicity, if I wind up sued by individuals who invested with me in my gamble, if my reputation as a successful businessman-financier-industrialist is shot to hell … if this is the result of my ABC attempt, you may be sure that it will have been one of the saddest mistakes I have ever made, and I have made quite a few.
Now, Gregson, needless to say, this would be an awful disappointment to me. However, I did not muddle my way through ten years of the TWA lawsuits only to wind up in another one that could easily last another ten years. I don’t like litigation, and there is no prize worth incurring more litigation.
Bautzer realized that he must do something. He filed papers with the court requesting that he be allowed to answer questions on the record instead of Hughes. On July 12, a federal judge ruled that Hughes did not have to appear; Bautzer could testify for him. ABC’s action failed, and the offer remained open. Goldenson appealed, saying that Hughes had a history of antitrust litigation. He also quoted Elliot Hyman, the president of Warner Bros., who said that Hughes planned to use dummy corporations to acquire ABC stock. Bautzer had represented Hyman in his purchase of Warner Bros., and he could not have appreciated this move. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Goldenson said he would be delighted to sit down and talk with Hughes.
July 15 was the deadline for ABC shareholders to respond to Hughes’s purchase offer. By that date, Hughes had received 1.6 million shares of ABC stock. He was still 400,000 short. He had two choices. He could raise his offering price and extend the tender offer. Or he could keep the stock and sell it later. In either case he would have to abide by the outcome of proposed FCC hearings.
The scene at the Desert Inn was bizarre. Raymond Holliday, Hughes’s adviser, and Robert Maheu, his chief aide, were talking to him from phones in adjoining suites, trying to reason with him. Holliday had not seen Hughes in years. Maheu, who was his chief of operations, had never seen him. On July 16, at 5:15 AM Hughes sent Bautzer a message.
I am in a real predicament. Holliday and Maheu are absolutely twisting my arm off at the shoulder to persuade me to walk away from this tender. I am resistant to doing this for a number of reasons, the principal is that I feel some of the stockholders will be very disappointed if this happens. I am confident that dumping this much stock upon the market could cause a real break. Holliday and Maheu have as their major argument the claim that the Justice Department Antitrust Division will descend upon us and drive us crazy. You have often said several buyers were available. I don’t really want a buyer. What I mainly want is somebody with whom I could trustee this stock in one way or another, just until we could have a few meetings with Justice and the FCC. In other words, I just don’t want to have the stock transferred directly to me or Hughes Tool Company for fear this will be the signal for the Justice Department to light on us like a swarm of bees.
On July 16, 1968, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading on ABC stock, waiting for Hughes to declare his intentions. At noon, he announced that he was abandoning the ABC takeover. Hughes blamed his retreat on the “inordinate opposition” of ABC’s management. It was more likely the mandates of the FCC that he feared. If hearings were held, he would be forced to attend. This was impossible. For a year Hughes had been secluded in his bedroom. He was not fit, either physically or mentally, to testify in court. He could, however, transmit orders and spend money. This he continued to do.
In the same year, Hughes asked Bautzer to negotiate the purchase of several casinos. This included the Paradise Island Casino in Nassau, the capital of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The five-hundred-room hotel was owned by the Mary Carter Paint Company. Hughes wanted to buy all the Carter hotels. Hughes questioned Bautzer in depth about all the details of the Paradise Island operation, including the projected earnings, and the costs of everything from security to water and road maintenance. But most of all he wanted to know about the rats. “When I was there last they had a very serious rat infestation which was publicized to the hilt in Florida,” he told Bautzer. Hughes jokingly suggested that perhaps the rats had left the island when the name was changed from “Hog” Island to “Paradise” Island. The negotiations never resulted in a deal. Mary Carter took on a new name—Resorts International Inc. The company would go on to own successful resorts and casino properties.
Robert Maheu, who never had and never would meet Hughes face to face, once stated that Bautzer had not seen Hughes in person since 1956. Maheu was incorrect. A man named Maybe Tucker was Bautzer’s chauffer from the late 1960s to the mid-’80s. He recalled several meetings between Bautzer and Hughes, some of which took place in the backseat of Bautzer’s car. The final visit occurred at Bautzer’s house in Palm Springs in 1969. Bautzer’s son, Mark, was with them. After saying goodbye to Hughes, Bautzer sadly told Tucker and Mark that it was the last time they would ever see Hughes.
On April 5, 1976, Tucker was driving Bautzer through Bel Air. Bautzer was in the front seat with him. The radio was playing when there came a news bulletin that Howard Hughes had died. Bautzer made Tucker pull the car to the side of the road. According to Tucker, Bautzer wept like a child for ten minutes.
Following the billionaire’s death, there was wild speculation as to the whereabouts of his last will and testament. “Over a period of time Mr. Hughes talked to me about various forms of bequests,” Bautzer told the Los Angeles Times, “but he never asked me to draw up a will.” Bautzer said that Hughes was a brilliant man who could have written a will without an attorney, and that he had most likely left a holographic will—that is, one written by hand. In his 1972 press conference Hughes had said that he planned to leave his money to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Miami. A large-scale investigation was launched to search for the will. Special Administrator Richard C. Gano Jr. prepared a 274-page search report for the court claiming that two of Bautzer’s former employees had seen a document that appeared to be a Hughes will. Bautzer testified in Los Angeles Superior Court that he had not prepared a will for Hughes. To the best of his knowledge, Hughes did not possess a will. Nevertheless, the court ordered that Bautzer search his files. Bautzer looked for someone he trusted to perform the task. Bautzer’s longtime secretary Lea Sullivan had left him eleven years earlier when her second child was born, but Bautzer pressed her back into service.
While Sullivan agrees that Bautzer may not have drawn up a will for Hughes, she believes that one existed. She remembered talk of the document from her earlier time at the firm: “Hughes told Mr. Bautzer that he was sending his will over,” recalled Sullivan. “Mr. Bautzer told me, ‘We have to put it in the safe when it comes over.’” Sullivan was sure that it had been delivered. “If the Hughes office sent something over,” said Sullivan, “then nine times out of ten, it went in the safe. The two women who worked in the accounting office, where the safe was, swore that there was a will sent over and that it was in that safe. I have no idea who took it. But it was in there.”
When Bautzer asked Sullivan to find the will, he first sent her to a warehouse to look through all his old files. The building was very cold, so Bautzer hired movers to transport vast numbers of file cabinets to her home on Hutton Drive in Beverly Hills. “My dining room became the file room,” recalled Sullivan. Television reporters huddled outside her house as she pored over files going back to the 1930s. She could not walk out the front door without having a microphone shoved at her. Sullivan thought it was futile looking for the will in the files, since she knew it had been kept in an envelope in the safe. Nevertheless, she searched every one.
The search for Hughes’s will was intense, yet it turned up nothing more than a 1939 codicil. Gano told Judge Neil Lake that the only possibility of finding the will was an expanded search of Bautzer’s files. Bautzer told the court that to search five thousand files in 235 drawers would take about ten weeks and cost approximately $17,000. In August 1977, Judge Lake called the memory of Bautzer’s two former employees a “pretty thin thread” and halted the search.
If the will had gone into the safe in Bautzer’s office on Canon Drive, there is one likely explanation for its disappearance. In the mid-1960s, Bautzer merged his small Beverly Hills firm with one run by the chairman of the California Democratic Party, Eugene Wyman. The new firm was big, with over a hundred employees, and Bautzer would no longer have complete control over the documents in the office. He could no longer guarantee the security of Hughes’s secret papers. It is quite possible that at the time of the merger Bautzer returned the will to the Hughes office on Romaine Street with the rest of Hughes’s sensitive documents. Sullivan recalled occasions when Hughes’s men, “the Boys” as she called them, would come from his office to retrieve things from the safe. In the end, no will was ever located, and Hughes’s money went to medical research.
Bautzer often said that Hughes was the shrewdest businessman he had ever represented and that Hughes deserved credit for building an empire. “Howard’s success with Toolco has always been deprecated,” said Bautzer. “They said he just lucked into it. He didn’t. He worked endlessly, tinkering, calculating, jotting down dozens of ideas in an evening. He would leave a date to dash to the phone and talk to Houston—for hours. Once he interrupted a screening to cable a brainstorm to Toolco.”
Charles Knapp, the former president of Financial Corporation of America and American Savings & Loan, was a client and friend of Bautzer’s. Years after Hughes’s death, Bautzer would reminisce about him over lunch with Knapp and his wife, Louise, at the Polo Lounge. Bautzer told the Knapps he had been asked several times to write a Hughes biography, but he refused. Publishers only wanted him to write bad things, not good. Bautzer’s USC pal Richard S. Harris also witnessed how close he was to Hughes. “I sat in Greg’s office many times when he would buzz his secretary and say ‘Get Howard for me.’ Thirty seconds later there would be a buzz on the intercom and Howard Hughes would be on the phone. Knowing the peculiarity of the man and his reluctance to talk to anyone, I thought their relationship was remarkable.”