The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

by Taraborrelli, J. Randy

  “So what do you think, Nick?” Conrad asked again after they had gone to each room and were now back where they had started, in the living room.

  “Nice, Pop,” Nicky said, leaning against the black-felted pool table. He then turned his attention to the table, set the balls up in a rack, removed the triangle, and selected a cue stick off the wall rack. Bending over the table, he sized things up and then took his best shot. The balls went scattering, four of them flying swiftly into side pockets. He nodded his satisfaction and put the stick down. Then, turning to his father, he said he was impressed with the job Conrad had done on the remodeled guesthouse but, in the end, he still preferred his own little apartment in Hollywood. Conrad studied his son carefully. “Well, I insist that you move in here,” he said, his tone now firm.

  As Conrad spoke, Nicky began to look self-conscious, and as Mamie would later recall it, “he seemed so small and weak to me as he stood there with his father, this imposing, powerful presence.” Shuffling his feet, Nicky managed to say, “Okay, Pop. I’ll think about it.”

  “Fine, then,” Conrad concluded. “I will arrange to have your things packed and brought here right away.” Now seeming pleased, Conrad looked at Mamie and said, “I have rather a headache, my dear, so I will take my leave. So very nice to meet you.” She extended her hand to him. He kissed it gallantly. Then he walked away, leaving her and Nicky standing in the living room of the cottage.

  “Wow,” Mamie exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I know,” Nicky said, shaking his head in dismay. “Wow.”

  That night, after Nicky and Mamie made love, the two lay naked on top of the bed, chain-smoking cigarettes and chatting about their strange experience at Conrad’s home. “I’m awfully sorry about it,” Nicky told Mamie. He said he felt he should apologize for his father. “He means well. But…” His voice trailed off.

  “Well, I think you might love it in that little cottage,” Mamie said, according to her memory of the conversation. She added that she could even redecorate it for him, if he wanted her to do so.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Nick said, taking a puff. Lost in thought, he exhaled a plume of white smoke upward to the ceiling. He said he wasn’t moving because he believed his father’s true motivation was just to keep an eye on him. “It’s his way of controlling me,” he concluded.

  “Well, I think he just loves you, sweetheart,” Mamie said, curling up close and relaxing into him. “Like me.”

  He kissed her tenderly on the forehead. “Yes. But he thinks I’m a loser,” Nicky said, suddenly seeming sad.

  “That’s not true,” Mamie said.

  “It is,” he said. “He respects one thing. Strength.”

  “But you are strong.”

  “Then I need to prove it by keeping my own apartment,” he decided.

  She said she understood.

  Nicky then became lost in a distant memory. He was thirteen and he and his father were in a department store attempting to buy him a new suit for a birthday party. Conrad and a superior-acting store clerk were going from one department to another picking out jackets and shirts and ties for Nicky while the teenager sat in a chair and waited impatiently. Finally, Conrad stood before his eldest son, his arms overflowing with clothing, beads of perspiration dripping from his forehead. “I looked up at him,” Nicky recalled with a little smile, “and I said, ‘Wow, Pop. You sure worked hard on this goddamn thing, didn’t you?’ ” He laughed. “I love him so much,” Nicky said. “All I want to do is please him. That’s about all I want to do.”

  “Laying there in that moment, I suddenly felt that I really understood Nicky Hilton,” Mamie Van Doren recalled. “He respected his father so much, yet he felt that his father didn’t respect him in return. I suddenly got it that the reason Nicky drank so much was because he knew that his father had such low expectations of him. Nicky wanted a lot, but constantly fell short of the mark, and it got to the point where he started thinking maybe his father was right about him. After all, Conrad Hilton couldn’t be wrong, could he? He was totally dominated by Conrad. Because of that, I knew he and I would be hopeless. If he valued his father’s opinion so much, and his father didn’t approve of me, I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance with Nicky. After that night, I gave up on the idea of having a future with Nicky Hilton.”

  PART SEVEN

  The Big Boon

  The Hilton Junket

  With the passing of the years, things seemed to get worse for Nicky Hilton, but not so for his father. Conrad Hilton continued to make an indelible mark on American history as a true pioneer of its hotel industry.

  In 1954, Hilton bought the Statler hotel chain with its eleven hotels for $111 million, which at the time was the largest real estate deal made since the historic Louisiana Purchase 150 years earlier. The following year, he further streamlined his hotel operation by creating a central reservation office, which he called Hilcron. Though no one had ever heard of such a concept, Conrad had created a system whereby customer reservations could be made at any of his hotels anywhere in the world simply by calling a telephone number or sending a telegram to a central address. That same year, 1955, Conrad also innovated the concept of air-conditioning in every room, which was unheard of at the time. Also in 1955, Conrad opened the Hilton Istanbul, the first modern hotel built in post–World War II Europe. It would be responsible for a 60 percent increase in tourism in Turkey during its first year of operation. At about this same time, he also opened the Continental Hilton in Mexico City and the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles.

  The opening of the Beverly Hilton in August 1955 was, as usual, a star-studded affair that involved a solid week of carefully orchestrated, splashy activities. Money was never an object when it came to these events. “We have the finances to spend on impressing people, and there’s nothing wrong with it,” Conrad had told his staff. “The sky’s the limit,” he exclaimed. “Whenever we open a hotel, it’s to be considered a cultural event.”

  The opening of the Beverly Hilton provides a textbook example of what these affairs were like during Conrad’s heyday. On August 4, 1955, members of the media as well as Hilton employees from all over the world and personal friends were flown to Los Angeles and then taken to the new Hilton hotel at the busy intersection of Beverly, Santa Monica, and Wilshire Boulevards. Upon his arrival, each person was handed a specific itinerary of exciting upcoming events, which would commence on the fourth and end on August 12.

  For instance, according to the schedule, among the events on the evening of the sixth was a “Dinner Preview and Tasting” at the hotel’s L’Escoffier restaurant. The next night, after a full day of press conferences and speeches, a special cocktail reception was held at Conrad’s home from seven to nine. It was attended by many celebrities, including, of course, Conrad’s companion Ann Miller—sporting a striking emerald necklace given to her by Conrad—and other show business luminaries such as Debbie Reynolds, Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Diahann Carroll, and Lena Horne. Also present were notables from many walks of business who had become regular invitees to such events, such as Henry Crown, who owned the Empire State Building, and Y. Frank Freeman, president of Paramount Pictures. To make sure the event generated an appropriate amount of media buzz, newspaper columnists such as Louella Parsons and Cobina Wright were also on hand.

  On August 8, Hilton’s invited guests were taken on a full tour of the new hotel before enjoying another full day of luncheons and dinners.

  The next day, two more extravagant luncheons were scheduled, one hosted by Paramount Pictures Corporation and another by 20th Century-Fox Studios. That same day, August 9, everyone was taken to Disneyland at 4 p.m. Afterward, a “Black Tie Victory Dinner” was scheduled in the Bali Room of the Hilton.

  On August 10, “the flag raising ceremony and official opening luncheon for gentlemen only” was scheduled. That afternoon, a “luncheon for ladies only” was held at Conrad’s Casa Encantada, hosted by Olive Wakeman. Also helping to host the affair was Marilyn Hilton, m
aking a stylish impression in a Persian lamb sweater, a gift from Barron. Zsa Zsa Gabor—now divorced from George Sanders, mostly as a result of her public and stormy affair with Dominican Republic playboy Porfirio Rubirosa—even stopped by to greet the ladies, looking smashing in a beaded cashmere sweater. After the luncheon, there was “The Hilton Champagne Ball” and then “The Hilton Barbecue Party,” followed by “The Hilton Private Event” (white dinner jacket required) and then “Conrad’s Special Evening Event” (black tie only).

  “You were swept off your feet by these activities,” recalled Margaret O’Brien. “It was exciting and fun but also a lot of work. Sometimes it felt like a job! But the extravagance was overwhelming. Money was being spent like there was no tomorrow. Everything was first-rate.”

  The merriment culminated on Sunday, August 14, when the Beverly Hilton was finally opened to the public, with a dapper Conrad Hilton standing at the end of a bright red carpet in a sharp-looking tuxedo, personally welcoming the first couple of hundred guests to his newest establishment.

  “I’m not sure that anyone does this kind of thing today,” said veteran actress Ruta Lee, who attended many such Hilton functions around the world. “There was always a celebration somewhere, and if you were on the list, you were always on the go, taking off on a chartered jet for some exotic location or another.

  “The kind of organization it took to pull off just one of these events was staggering, and Conrad would do two, three, sometimes four a year,” Ruta Lee added. “The buzz in Hollywood was always, ‘Are you going on the next Hilton junket?’ And if you weren’t, you did everything you could think of to get on that darn list. Luckily, I was on the list. But to tell you the truth, pretty much every celebrity in town was on it! You would look around and think to yourself, my God, who isn’t here?”

  Though these Hilton junkets usually went off without a hitch, the occasional unexpected event would occur. For instance, the opening of the Hilton Hotel in Rome was interrupted in June of 1963 by the death of Pope John XXIII. That junket would have to be called off and rescheduled at a tremendous cost. A ballet company from the British Isles hired by Conrad to perform was canceled just in the nick of time before boarding its flight to Rome. As a result of the cancelation, a chef was stuck with twelve hundred desserts—peaches stuffed with ice cream, wrapped in batter, and baked lightly with crushed almonds. “We threw away a shitload of peaches that night,” Nicky said with a laugh when recounting the story.

  In 1956, an earthquake occurred in the midst of the Mexico City junket, which so frightened members of the press that many of them asked to be whisked out of the country as soon as possible. One reporter was so shaken up, she had to have psychiatric treatment. She sent Conrad the bill. And he paid it!

  The Hilton junket in Hong Kong happened to fall in the middle of the so-called Three Years of Great Chinese Famine (1958–61), a time of widespread food shortages, drought, and terrible weather conditions. Many members of the media and other socialites who had been invited decided to pass on it. Those who did show up were met with a daily ration of two gallons of washing water, one quart of drinking water, and two pints of toothbrushing and/or shaving water. “It wasn’t the best week of my life, put it that way,” is how entertainer Debbie Reynolds recalled it.

  The Berlin Hilton opened the same week in November 1958 that Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev decreed that the United States had six months to vacate West Berlin. Despite the ensuing unrest, Conrad decided to go ahead with the junket.

  As it happened, Khrushchev would turn out to be the least of Hilton’s problems. A dancing bear had been hired to perform in the hotel’s main ballroom to kick off the festivities. Unfortunately, in the middle of his performance the animal caught a whiff of fresh pheasant being cooked in the kitchen for dinner. Without warning, the bear broke away from his trainer and galloped out of the ballroom and down the hall, following the scent and frightening everyone in his wake. The food and beverage manager, hearing the sounds of people screaming, “Get out of the way!” bolted from the kitchen to see what was going on, and in doing so ran right smack into the arms of the bear, which had just rounded a corner. At that moment, the trainer managed to secure the animal, who seemed as stunned as the poor hotel employee. When the whole thing was over, the food and beverage manager couldn’t contain his anxiety; he burst into tears and fainted dead away. He then had to be carried away by three members of the Hilton security team, past a crowd of stunned hotel guests, into the elevator and up to his room. “Never a dull moment at a Hilton junket,” is how Hedda Hopper put it in her report of the chaotic mishap.

  At the Nile Hilton opening in Cairo in March 1959, a blustery sandstorm interrupted the proceedings, blowing away the large Bedouin tent that had been erected in the middle of the desert for a press corps dinner. In the process, more pounds of roast lamb than Conrad cared to remember were dusted with hot sand fresh from the Sahara. “Don’t remind me!” he once said with a laugh when asked about that particular junket.

  Of that Cairo junket, singer/actress Anne Jeffreys recalled, “The propeller plane—there were no jets, of course—was overloaded with stars, and as stars will do, we had overpacked for the occasion. Therefore, Conrad was forced to hire another plane to follow us, which was filled only with our luggage.

  “When we arrived, we were bowled over by the beauty of Cairo, until we realized that none of the electrical outlets worked for American equipment. I had just washed my hair to prepare for the opening night ball and had gone to dry it, when I found that the dryer didn’t work! So I called my best friend, Ann Miller, in the suite next to mine and told her about it, and she said, ‘Oh my God! The same thing just happened to me. What shall we do?’ Because it was such a hot day in Cairo, we decided to use the weather to our advantage. Both of us went out onto our balconies, and there we were—a blonde and a brunette with about three yards of hair between us—swinging our wet locks over the Nile River, trying to get them to dry. Ann asked, ‘We’ll never forget this moment, will we?’ And we never did!”

  “I have so many memories of the Middle East junket,” added actress Jane Russell. “For instance, I still can’t believe that I had the chance to climb a pyramid, on my hands and knees! Me and Anne Jeffreys and Hugh O’Brien. We got about halfway up, which I think was equivalent to about forty stories. Your jaw would drop, it was that amazing, and all thanks to Conrad’s largesse. I remember that we went straight from Egypt to Athens for the opening of the Hilton there. Who would spend this kind of money today? I actually can’t imagine a businessman doing today what Conrad Hilton did back then.”

  As well as personal fun shared by celebrities, there were important socioeconomic strides made during Hilton junkets. For instance, in 1958, Conrad Hilton opened the Havana Hilton and made national headlines when, during his keynote speech at a luncheon with Cuban officials and businessmen—which, incidentally, he delivered in purest Castilian, having mastered the Spanish language—he dealt another blow to Communism. He noted that “ordinarily labor works for capital; the usual thing is for employees to work for employers. But in the building and operation of our new Havana Hilton we have reversed the picture; the employers are working for their employees.”

  Conrad was referring to the fact that Hilton Hotels did not own the Havana Hilton, but had leased it from the Cuban Catering Workers’ Union. It was an unusual Cuban-American business relationship where the workers had a stake in the property and were encouraged to become owners of shares in the business, a real stake in the enterprise. They would be partners rather than just workers. Conrad described it as “a new weapon with which to fight Communism, a new team made up of owner, manager and labor with which to confront the class conscious Mr. Karl Marx.” He noted that Marx never owned, managed, or worked an enterprise in his entire life, “but from his world of inexperience he has managed, for a whole century, to convince hundreds of millions of people to be at each other’s throats.” He said he was happy to say that “the project we ar
e dedicating today gives the lie to Marx, Communism and all they stand for.”

  “Hilton openly attacked Communism for the first time in a foreign country when he spoke in Havana,” wrote Vincent Flaherty, who had attended the luncheon, for the Los Angeles Examiner. “Hilton is out of Cuba now, but that beautiful 30-story hotel he dedicated remains as a mute but powerful reminder of all he had to say.”

  Barron Climbs the Ladder of Success

  Ever since he was denied a job back in the 1940s by his father because his salary demand was too steep, Barron Hilton had been adamant about finding his own way, carving his own niche. However, his wife, Marilyn, had asked him to at least think about joining the family enterprise. “It’s your legacy,” she told him at one family dinner, according to a witness. “In the end, you know you and your brothers are going to have to take over the business when Dad [Conrad] dies, so I don’t know why you are being so hardheaded about it,” she said, always a practical woman. “You may not think there is a premium on money and power right now,” she said, “but I can assure you that others do, and they will be coming after the Hilton Corporation when Conrad dies; that is, unless his sons are in charge,” she said. “Hotels are this family’s life’s blood. You must know that by now.”

  In the end, Marilyn Hilton prevailed. When Conrad offered it to him, Barron took the corporate job of vice president in charge of television. “We became one of the first chains in the country to offer TV sets in every room,” he would later recall. At this same time, Barron also took interest in an idea Conrad had of investing in what would eventually become a huge enterprise in this country—the credit card business.