Howard Hughes

Hughes inherited oil-drill money and burned it in Hollywood, producing The Racket in 1928 and Hell's Angels in 1930, then Scarface two years later - big, bloody, expensive. In 1932 he founded Hughes Aircraft Company and spent the next fifteen years chasing speed records and building planes, including the H-1 Racer in 1935 and the H-4 Hercules in 1947, a flying boat with the longest wingspan on earth until 2019. He won the Harmon Trophy twice, the Collier, a Congressional Gold Medal. He bought RKO Pictures in 1948; it died under him in 1957. A near-fatal crash left him in chronic pain, worsening OCD closed in, and deafness isolated him further. He moved his empire to Las Vegas, bought hotels and casinos, reshaped the city into something cleaner and colder. He died of kidney failure in 1976, barricaded and alone.