The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (18 page)

PART FOUR

Sons of the Father

Transition

O
bviously, the marriage to and subsequent divorce from Zsa Zsa Gabor had taken an enormous emotional toll on Conrad Hilton. It had been draining. Making matters so much worse, the union had shut him out from the sanctuary of his religion, which had left a huge hole in his psyche. By the time he was divorced, he felt exhausted. A free man once again, he now hoped to put all the psychological turmoil behind him. Also, with this newfound freedom he could at last receive the sacraments of his faith once more, and that was no small comfort. Still, he was sad that it hadn’t worked out. “I’m not even sure where it all went wrong,” he would say. “I just never dreamed it would all end so badly. It had such a promising start. My God, I was crazy about her!”

After it was over with Zsa Zsa, Conrad Hilton did what most people expected he would do; he threw himself into his work. Now the owner of three of the best hotels in Chicago—the Palmer House, the Stevens (renamed the Conrad Hilton), and the Blackstone—and with two huge successes in New York City, the Roosevelt and the Plaza, Conrad Hilton turned his eyes 250 miles to the south, to Washington, D.C., where he set his sights on the Mayflower.

The Mayflower had quite a distinguished history. Construction on the hotel began back in 1922 by land developer Allen E. Walker, following the Beaux-Arts design of Robert F. Beresford of Warren and Wetmore Architects at a cost of $12.9 million. When it opened in 1925, it was nicknamed the “Grande Dame of Washington,” and was said to contain more gold trim than any other building except the Library of Congress, evidence of which can be found in the ornate gilt columns standing guard in the hotel lobby. Located near the Dupont Circle neighborhood at 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW, it was deemed by Harry S. Truman to be Washington’s “second best address.”

Shortly after opening, the Mayflower hosted the presidential inaugural ball for Calvin Coolidge, a tradition that would continue for decades to come. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a guest at the hotel when he worked on his historical “nothing to fear but fear itself” inaugural address. Truman, who succeeded FDR, resided there for the first ninety days of his presidency, following the death of Roosevelt, before moving to Blair House during the dismantling and rebuilding of the White House in 1948. Truman also announced his intention to run for the presidency from the Mayflower.

Conrad Hilton bought a controlling interest in the Mayflower in December 1946 for $2.6 million and later increased his stock for a total investment of $3.5 million (about one-fourth of the original construction cost). The Mayflower gave Hilton access to the powers of government much as his New York properties had put him at the center of the country’s business and financial world, and much as the Stevens and the Blackstone had given him a huge presence in the most important city in America’s heartland, Chicago. Now he was nothing if not a coast-to-coast presence, and his mantra seemed to be, “Give me more worlds to conquer.”

In December 1946, just after Conrad closed the Mayflower deal, the Hilton family came together with other friends and business associates of the Hiltons for the eighty-fifth birthday celebration of Mary Hilton in El Paso. About a year later, Mary would suffer a heart attack while in Long Beach, where she was staying at the Hilton Hotel with her daughter Helen. For a couple of weeks, she would rally and then weaken again, her children at her side in the hospital the entire time. Finally, on August 27, 1947, she died peacefully in her sleep.

Not surprisingly, Mary Hilton’s death hit Conrad hard. She was unfailingly there whenever he needed her, whether for financial aid—as had happened quite often—or for emotional support. Without her, he felt an anchor missing from his life. He believed that his success had true meaning when he could share it with his mother, and with her absence he knew that nothing would ever be the same. Still, he realized—to hear him tell it—that he had a clear responsibility to Mary to go on with his work and see to it that he not only continued to dream big dreams, but did everything in his power to make those dreams come true. “I have to do it for her,” he said at the time. “After all she gave me, I owe her that much.”

Mary Genevieve Laufersweiler Hilton was buried next to her beloved husband, Gus, in Socorro, New Mexico.

With his marriage over and his mother gone, now Conrad Hilton felt more alone than ever before. Of course, he had his sons, but Nicky was twenty-one and Barron twenty. Though he was close to them, both were becoming independent, with their own lives. Eric was just fourteen, but he was being raised by Mary and Mack; Conrad didn’t see much of him.

It was at this time that Conrad began to keep company with the MGM film star Ann Miller. A beautiful, leggy brunette with a big, brassy personality, Ann was the epitome of Hollywood razzmatazz—an all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood performer. She was a hell of a tap dancer, and because Conrad loved nothing more than being on the dance floor himself, he couldn’t help but be drawn to this unflappable entertainer who claimed that she was able to do five hundred taps per minute. Along with her exuberance, Conrad also admired her levelheaded determination.

At just twenty-four, Ann was fresh out of a stormy two-year marriage with steel mogul Reese Llewellyn Milner. She was just beginning a romantic relationship with William V. O’Connor, future chief deputy state attorney general of California and Governor Edmund Brown’s right arm, and who, incidentally, had introduced her to Conrad.

After his divorce from Zsa Zsa Gabor and for many years to come, Conrad would regard Ann Miller as someone who would fill the void of flash and glamour that he had come to appreciate. She would often be at his side adding her glittery panache, especially at his hotel openings, where the two would take to the dance floor and thrill onlookers with routines carefully choreographed in advance. However, as she once insisted, “I was
not
having an affair with Conrad Hilton. We were always just good friends and, I might add, marvelous friends. We had a wonderfully warm relationship. He looked young, acted young. He was always the life of the party. But romance? Forget it.”

Raising the Rich

C
onrad Hilton had been raising his two sons, Nicky and Barron, as a single parent for many years; the exotic Zsa Zsa Gabor hadn’t been much of a mother figure at all. The boys’ biological mother, Mary Hilton Saxon, was also not particularly accommodating at this time and sometimes added stress to the equation. For instance, a tragedy was just barely averted in August 1940 when Conrad left Nicky, fourteen, and Barron, almost thirteen, in her care.

At the time, Mary and her husband, Mack, had fallen on hard times after Mack lost his school coaching job. Trying to help out, Conrad allowed the couple and little Eric to temporarily move into a suite on the ninth floor of the El Paso Hilton. One weekend, Mary asked if Nicky and Barron could spend a couple of nights with her at the hotel; Conrad agreed and dropped the boys off. Mary and her sons then had a fun day together, and Barron and Nicky also spent time bonding with little Eric. But that night, Mary somehow fell asleep while smoking a cigarette; her bed went up in flames. After a bellboy noticed smoke billowing from a ninth-floor window, he summoned the fire department. Meanwhile, Mack Saxon—who was asleep in a room across the hall with Eric (since there weren’t enough beds in Mary’s suite for all of them)—was awakened by the smell of smoke. He raced into the hallway to find Mary standing there with Eric, choking and sobbing hysterically. He scooped her and the boy up and got them out of the suite as quickly as possible. Then he raced into her suite looking for Barron. When he finally found the boy, he rescued him as well. But where was Nicky? By the time Mack went back into the suite to search for Conrad’s namesake, the room was so filled with thick black smoke that it seemed impossible to locate the boy. Luckily, Mack found a gasping Nicky standing in front of a living room window, desperately trying to open it for air. He grabbed the teenager and pulled him out of the suite, which by now was engulfed in flames. Though no one was injured, the frightening ordeal generated screaming headlines the next day in the
El Paso Herald
.

Had Mary been intoxicated? Was that the reason she fell asleep while smoking in bed? Conrad wasn’t sure, but he suspected as much. From then on, he would severely limit the time she would be able to spend with her sons without his supervision. However, he stopped short of taking Eric from her and Mack; the boy continued to be raised by them. Eric was happy with the situation as it existed. After all, he was living the only life he had ever known and he was satisfied with it.

Whereas Nicky and Barron went to exclusive private schools and then military academies, Eric went to public schools. Whereas Nicky and Barron lived in an enormous mansion in Bel-Air, after the incident at the El Paso hotel Eric lived in a row home in a modest housing project in northern Virginia called Fairlington Villages. These were rental units built for the federal government’s civil service employees and for the families of military personnel working in the gigantic Pentagon building. (After losing his coaching job, Mack Saxon had joined the Navy and began to work in its aviation physical training program at the Pentagon, thereby making him and his family eligible for housing quarters in Fairlington Village.) It was a simple, no-frills lifestyle, not exactly the kind one would expect to be lived by Eric, the youngest scion of America’s greatest hotelier. Even though he didn’t have much closeness with his youngest son, Conrad would still sometimes extend himself. For instance, he would sometimes fly Eric to the West Coast for a Hilton Hotels–related gala, or would include him on a junket for the opening of a hotel in another city.

He may not have always been present for Eric, but Conrad saw Nicky and Barron through myriad problems of teenage angst and rebellion. He did have some help. His mother-in-law, the mother of his first wife, Mary, came to live with them for a while and was helpful with the children. They were remarkable boys, actually, who enjoyed indulging their father in esoteric discussions about life and what it took to become successful in it. Conrad had told them that, based on his own experience, it was all a matter of prayer and hard work, that this was his “master plan” for great success. That didn’t make complete sense to either of the boys at an early age. “But there has to be more than that, Pop,” Nicky argued when he was about thirteen. “I also think there’s something else at work,” Barron agreed. “There’s a missing ingredient there, Dad.” The three spent many hours in Conrad’s study talking about all of the possibilities and trying to figure out just what was missing from Conrad’s equation for success, until finally the answer occurred to Conrad while he was on a business trip to New York. When he returned, he called the boys into the study and filled them in on what he now believed to be the missing element of his “master plan.” “Dreams,” he said. “You’ve got to
dream
. That’s what’s missing, sons. It’s prayer, it’s hard work, but it’s also… dreams.” The boys agreed and accepted the new theory.

Though both Hilton heirs had terrific senses of humor and were handsome and popular, neither was a particularly good student. Conrad was always tougher on Barron than he was on Nicky, though. It was as if he sensed that Nicky was doing the best he could, but just didn’t have the faculties to excel in his studies, whereas he felt that if Barron would only apply himself he could be an A student. Limitations he could understand, a lackadaisical approach he could not. Nicky could goof off and Conrad seemed okay with it, but if Barron did the same thing, it was grounds for a major domestic crisis.

Conrad saw Barron’s mediocre grades as a distinct character flaw. He hated the idea of mediocrity and wanted more than anything for his sons to excel. “All men are equal before God and before the law,” he would later say in a graduation address at Michigan State College in East Lansing on May 19, 1950, “but it is nonsense to say that they are equal otherwise. There are a hundred ways in which people are not equal, in which they never will be equal, no matter how many laws are passed. Mediocrity is the price we pay for complete equality. If there is one thing our country needs today, it is to rid itself of mediocre—and find for itself—superior citizens, superior businessmen, superior fathers, mothers and wives, superior statesmen.”

Conrad had what some might have considered a rather unorthodox way of handling Barron’s pedestrian performance in school. As if reprimanding an unruly employee at the Hilton Corporation, he would schedule a meeting with Barron in his study to outline his rules and regulations for acceptable conduct, or as he explained in his memoir,
Be My Guest
, “our mutual responsibilities, allowances, duties, restrictions and privileges.” After Barron reluctantly agreed to these stringent terms and conditions, each would be memorialized in a written contract, which both father and son would then sign. As far as Conrad was concerned, he now had an irrevocable deal with Barron. However, being a teenager rather than a company employee, Barron would inevitably dismiss the contract and do exactly what he wanted, much to Conrad’s consternation. Actually, in some ways the relationship began to mirror the one Conrad had with his own hard-to-please father, Gus. Conrad had gone up against Gus every chance he got, and Barron did the same. In time, Barron’s grades would improve, but he would never be a straight-A student. He would eventually end up dropping out of high school. Conrad certainly wasn’t happy about it, but Barron’s mind was made up. He didn’t want to continue with high school, and for him that was the end of it.