Written by City Cast Las Vegas co-host Sarah Lohman
In a recent City Cast Las Vegas podcast episode, Corey Levitan, resident mythbuster at Casino.org, brought up a famous story about Howard Hughes demanding a discontinued flavor of Baskin-Robbins ice cream. That story originated with Burton Cohen, president of the Desert Inn Hotel, where the business magnate-turned-recluse lived from 1966 to 1970.
“I want to say it was Banana Nut, but it doesn't matter … The point is (Hughes) was a creature of habit,” according to Cohen. “I got word we were running out of Banana Nut and called Baskin-Robbins in L.A. to have some shipped in. They'd discontinued the line and would only make something like 100 gallons. Then word came in the next day that he changed his mind and wanted something else and we had to switch. Somewhere at the D.I., they still might have old gallons of unopened Banana Nut."
Hughes’s favorite ice cream is often misreported as Banana Nut based on this story, but as you can see, Cohen doesn’t confirm that. Corey and I debated what the flavor might be. His sources have told him it’s Fresh Peach. So I decided to go down that research rabbit hole to settle it once and for all.
I found a 1966 Baskin-Robbins commercial on YouTube that lists 17 of the famous 31 Flavors. (The ad is a beautiful, Peter Max-style trip by the way.) Then I compared that to a list of the company’s flavors in 1970. Even though I didn’t know all the 1966 flavors and Baskin-Robbins changes its menu seasonally, there are several standard ice cream flavors that appeared on every menu since the company was founded in 1945 — including Fresh Peach, which was on all the menus in the 1960s and 1970s I saw.
The most significant difference between the ‘66 and ‘70 menus? The discontinuation of four different banana flavored ice creams: Banana, Banana Cake, Banana Marshmallow, and Banana Rocky Road. So while I can’t say with certainty which banana ice cream Howard Hughes adored, it does seem that Cohen correctly half-remembered it was a banana flavor.
Will this discovery change the world? No. But it’s always worth correcting often-repeated misinformation! I’ve reached out to Baskin-Robbins for comment, but they have yet to respond.
