Come In, Come In, Wherever You Are!

In unconcealed desperation, Trans World Airlines last week took a radical new approach to an old puzzle. The puzzle: how to get hold of whim-driven California Industrialist Howard Hughes, 56.

Hughes, whose passion for privacy is equaled only by his delight in intricate business deals, has been tangled in legal battle with TWA for ten months. TWA charges that Hughes, who owns 78.2% of its stock, forced it to buy jetliners it did not want through his Hughes Tool Co., and is suing him for $150 million in damages. Hughes has countered with a $336 million suit charging that TWA's management is illegally trying to deprive him of control of the airline--but has consistently avoided the personal appearances in court demanded by TWA's lawyers. To force him to appear, TWA last week asked a Delaware court for a rare sequestration order against Hughes's estimated $250 million worth of Hughes Tool Co. stock. If the order is granted, Hughes will be legally barred from selling, voting or drawing dividends on the stock until he shows up in court.

Nothing less is apt to lure Hughes out.

Despite press photographers' incessant efforts to trap him, most U.S. newspapers and magazines have no photo of Hughes less than a decade old. Hughes maintains offices in Houston and Hollywood, but seldom visits either. Instead he operates through a telephone-message center which is manned 24 hours a day. Anyone who wants to see Hughes must call OLdfield 4-2500 in Hollywood and state his business. If Hughes deigns to answer--which he almost never does--he is more likely than not to set an appointment for 2 a.m. on a remote street corner.

Even in routine business dealings, Hughes is elusive. In the eight years during which he owned Hollywood's R.K.O.

studios, he never visited them. (He did fly over one day, noticed that R.K.O. looked a bit shabby from the air, and telephoned an order that it be painted.) Not even Hughes's closest business associates escape the shadow treatment. Two of TWA's five presidents during the 17 years that Hughes actively controlled the airline never met him. What finally drove TWA to last week's request for the court order was an admission from Hughes's personal attorney that he had not seen his boss in several months, had no idea whatever where he is.

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