The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (2 page)

“… for the rest of your life?” the attorney asked, finishing her sentence with a smile. Now even he seemed swept away by Zsa Zsa’s memories of the one man who had both enchanted and vexed her for the better part of her days.

“Yes,” she answered, smiling back at him and nodding. “For the rest of my life.”

PART ONE

Conrad

Curse of the Ambitious

O
n a brisk December morning in Los Angeles in 1941, Conrad Hilton stood on the outdoor patio of the master bedroom of his Spanish-style mansion on Bellagio Road in Beverly Hills. As was his morning routine, he gazed out into the distance at the lush landscape of the Bel-Air Country Club and took it all in. It had just stopped raining, the cloud cover having dispersed to reveal a vast, unblemished blue sky over a pristine eighteen-hole golf course. The air smelled fresh and clean. Gently sloping green hills for as far as the eye could see gave way to the skyscrapers of nearby Westwood, standing like sentinels against the horizon. A magnificent three-hundred-foot white suspension bridge that crossed the canyon between the tee and the green glistened in the golden glow of a new morning sun. Such a panoramic view could actually take a person’s breath away, or at the very least pull him into reverie.

Conrad was a raconteur of the first order, and one of his favorite stories had to do with the time, back in October 1936, that billionaire Howard Hughes landed his airplane on the eighth fairway in order to impress Katharine Hepburn. “Kate was learning to golf right out there with an instructor,” Conrad would say, pointing into the distance. “And sure enough, old Howard just landed his two-seater plane—a Sikorsky amphibian—right on the fairway. Then, as if this was the most normal thing in the world, he jumped from his plane with clubs in hand and walked up to Kate and her instructor and said, ‘Mind a third?’ Doggone if he didn’t join her golf game right then and there for the back nine! How about that?” Conrad would ask, slapping his knee and laughing hard. “Now
that’s
how you impress a lady!”

Conrad Hilton was also quite impressive. A lanky New Mexican who spoke with a languid southwestern drawl, he stood over six feet tall, his receding hairline now gray at the temples. With chiseled features, penetrating blue eyes that sometimes appeared green, and a close-cropped gray mustache, he took great pride in the fact that he had managed to retain his good looks even as he approached his fifty-fifth birthday, just weeks away.

Standing in his maroon velvet robe and matching slippers with insignias, Conrad faced the limestone courtyard to his left and watched as members of his dutiful gardening staff hosed it down. Meanwhile, other household employees descended upon the outdoor furniture with towels, drying off the tables and chairs in case anyone might want to later enjoy the comfort of the patio. Off his right side, he could hear the shouts of his young sons as they played a rowdy game of football with their school chums. The constant ringing of telephones could also be heard from another wing in the house. Since a great deal of Conrad’s growing West Coast business was temporarily being conducted from his home while his new Beverly Hills office was being renovated, the lines of communication usually started ringing early and continued for most of the day. His office staff would arrive at around ten. Until then, there was no one to answer the phones. No matter the cacophony, it was always very formal in the Hilton manse, in a manner that might be considered Old World traditional. On this morning it appeared to be business as usual.

“Breakfast is served, sir,” announced a voice behind Conrad as his personal maid, Maria, rolled a metal cart into the room. Her full name was Maria Elena Espinoza de Amaté. She and her husband, Juan, had migrated from Spain two years earlier. Maria began working for Conrad shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, supervising the other six maids who took care of the property. Her husband was also employed by Conrad as one of the property’s many groundskeepers. There was something special about Maria’s relationship with Conrad, though. She wasn’t just an employee; he thought of her as a friend. Still, it was always with the proper “Mr. Hilton” or “sir” that she addressed him.

“Would you like to be served on the patio, sir?” Maria asked. “It’s such a lovely day.” When Conrad agreed that her suggestion was a good one, Maria quickly set a table for one on the patio, starting with the unfurling of a fresh white organdy tablecloth. Many years later, her daughter, Connie, would recall, “My mother often told me that it was the same thing every day: One plate. One set of utensils. One cup for coffee. One glass for juice. She would put a single rose in a crystal bud vase as a centerpiece. As she would serve his meal, usually something simple like scrambled eggs or pancakes, Mr. Hilton would watch with a grim expression. ‘It’s just you and me, again, Maria,’ he would say to my mom. ‘It’s just you and me.’ They had that kind of relationship.”

Conrad had been married, back in 1925, to Mary Adelaide Barron in a union that had produced three children: Conrad Jr.—known as Nicky—Barron, and Eric. He and Mary divorced in 1934, almost a year after Eric was born. The marriage ended so badly that some felt Conrad never really got over it. Because he was a devout Roman Catholic, the divorce left him perpetually unsettled, with deep unresolved conflicts of faith. Since then, he had dated a few women, but would always lose interest quickly. No woman ever seemed to have a permanent hold on his heart—not since Mary Barron, anyway.

To say that Conrad Hilton was a good catch would be an understatement; he was already becoming known as “the Innkeeper to the World.” With a dozen hotels bearing his name having already opened in Texas, California, and New Mexico, he next had his sights set on New York and then… the world.

Conrad was a new breed of businessman for his times—optimistic when there seemed little reason to be, especially during the war and the Depression. He had faith in America and in her ability to rise once again, to be a nation greater than ever before and to prosper if just given a bit of time to do so. But more than anything, he wanted to be at the forefront of this national renaissance. He was also a firm believer that the eventual expansion of his hotel empire to Europe would stimulate the tourist industry there, and by extension, the travel industry as well, bringing much-needed American dollars to the strife-torn continent.

Instead of sitting down at the table on the patio to enjoy his breakfast, Conrad walked back into his elegantly appointed bedroom. Decorated with expensive antiques and fine oil paintings, this room, with its deep blue domed ceiling and expansive floor-to-ceiling windows, had long been a place of repose where the busy mogul could retreat after a hectic day. Maria de Amaté was the only one of his maids ever allowed entry into this sanctuary. She had made it her mission to keep the room alive with vibrant colors by filling it with fresh-cut flower arrangements on a daily basis. They permeated the room with the sweet fragrance of the outside gardens.

Against one wall of the bedroom there was an old-fashioned handmade Spanish wooden bed, so austere in its design that it looked as if it belonged in a monastery. Next to it was a carefully constructed bedside shrine with religious statues, candles, prayer books, and a shiny gold crucifix before which Conrad would kneel and pray every night on a small Persian rug. When he was just a boy of about ten, his first confessor, Father Jules Derasches, had told him that if he said the Hail Mary and then “Saint Joseph, pray for us” three times in rapid succession, God would always take care of him. Therefore, every single day for the last forty-some years, he had made sure to start each prayer session with his God with those specific prayers, in that exact order.

His religion was always a source of comfort for him. Still, he often wondered how it was that a man so accomplished could also be so lonely. “I guess you could say it’s the curse of the ambitious,” he observed to a close friend when describing his life. “Perhaps I am a walking cliché,” he would admit. “I have everything. Yet it sometimes feels as if I have little.” He’d been alone for so long, it had gotten to the point where his greatest passions seemed to take the form of inanimate objects; he now referred to his hotels as his women. “She’s a great dame, that one,” he would say of one of his Texas holdings, the Abilene Hilton. “No woman can match her,” he would opine of his Dallas Hilton. “Luckily for me, she could not find a better suitor,” he observed of the Sir Francis Drake in San Francisco. Besides his religion, the only thing that truly mattered to him—that gave him the most pleasure—was his work. Might that one day change? He was open to the idea, but not particularly hopeful.

Despite reservations about any lack of romance, Conrad Hilton knew he had a good life. He deserved his success; he had worked hard for it. But still… something was missing. However, it wouldn’t be long before Conrad would once again do what he had often done whenever he felt a lack of something in his personal life: He would go about the business of filling the void. And even though he would one day look back on this time and admit that he probably should have just left well enough alone—some of the choices he was about to make would haunt him for the rest of his life—he wasn’t the kind of man to play it safe. He was shrewd; he liked to take chances. He wanted to live his life for all it was worth, damn the consequences!

Humble Beginnings

T
o fully understand Conrad Nicholson Hilton’s remarkable journey from humble beginnings to the very pinnacle of fame and success, one must hark back to his father, August Halvorsen Hilton—known as Gus and born in Norway on August 21, 1854—a robust, imposing Norwegian immigrant, and to his mother, Mary Genevieve Laufersweiler—born in Iowa on December 3, 1861—a small, soft-spoken, deeply devout Catholic of German heritage. They were married on Lincoln’s birthday in 1885 in Fort Dodge. Gus passed along to his son his determined work ethic and driving ambition; Mary provided his moral compass and spiritual path.

Though devoted and utterly committed to each other, the Hiltons were actually polar opposites—in appearance, temperament, personality, and demeanor. Gus was a big man, over six feet and handsome as a matinee idol with his deeply set dark eyes and well-groomed handlebar mustache. Mary wore her chestnut hair parted in the middle and pulled into a severe bun; a couple of years after marrying, she would go gray though still a young woman. She had luminescent brown eyes, a strong nose, and a full mouth against a round face. He was loud and opinionated; she was quiet and respectful. Both were devoted to the rigid tenets of the Catholic Church. This was the solid foundation upon which they would build their long life together.

Following the birth of his sister Felice almost two years earlier, Conrad was born on a snowy Christmas Day 1887. Named for his maternal grandfather—Conrad Laufersweiler—and the Fort Dodge doctor—Nicholson—who delivered him, he was the second of nine children (four daughters and five sons), all within an eleven-year period. He would be known by all as simply “Connie.” Most of the children were born in the adobe dwelling that also housed Gus’s general store, A. H. Hilton, in San Antonio, Territory of New Mexico, located in the midst of vast high deserts and stark mountains, halfway between Albuquerque and El Paso, Texas, near the Rio Grande.

Conrad looked like a force to be reckoned with, even as a youngster. Photographs of the time show a sturdy boy with big ears, carefully groomed brown hair, intense eyes, and a downward-sloping smile. While others in family portraits are seen grinning, Conrad appears serious and focused. Because he was the family’s firstborn son, he was expected to take his place in the general store while still quite young. Thus it was at his father’s elbow that he began his apprenticeship into the world of business, mastering the laws of supply and demand and honing the entrepreneurial skills that would serve him so well for the rest of his life. An adventurous, high-spirited lad, he also undertook on his own such productive ventures as going into the produce business, first by cultivating a piece of his father’s land and then by planting and later selling vegetables door-to-door. Though he could barely peer over the counter at Gus’s store, he was there almost every day after school; this was where he would first learn the value of hard work and tough negotiation.

It was during this time that the Hiltons suffered their first real sorrow, the death of two-year-old Julian, their fifth child and third son. After the loss, the family was inconsolable; for the first time, there were no baby noises in the home. However, joy returned in 1898 when baby Rosemary arrived. With the cradle once again filled, the house now felt like a home. Two more children would be added to the brood when Gus Jr.—called “Boy”—was born in 1901 and Helen, their fourth daughter, in 1906. As the family expanded, so did their home, with Gus adding a room onto the original structure for each of his eight children upon their arrival. There would be no sharing of rooms for his kids; each would have his or her own space, which was practically unheard of during the pioneering days of the expanding frontier. That’s not to say, however, that the accommodations were lavish. Pictures of the homestead show a dilapidated structure that looked as if it might collapse at any moment. “We’re talking cowboy country here,” observed one of Hilton’s relatives from the family’s third generation. “Cowboy hats, horses, stagecoaches, dirt roads, moonshine, saloons… the works.”

Conrad seemed content attending the one-room schoolhouse to which he rode to and from on his little pony, Chiquita. Though he excelled in English and learned Spanish from his Native American and Mexican friends, Mary came to believe that Conrad was, by about the age of twelve, receiving a substandard education. Therefore she packed him off to Goss Military Institute in Roswell (later renamed the New Mexico Military Institute), which was quite a blow for the home-loving youngster. He didn’t want to go, but he also didn’t have much choice. There he would continue his education and be required to wear the uncomfortable gray flannel, black braid–trimmed uniform of a cadet. Beyond arithmetic, he was not a good student, repeatedly being caught off school property after hours, often at music halls in which youngsters were not allowed—just one of the many ways he rebelled against the rigid strictures of military school. When the school burned to the ground, his celebration of a certain return to his home in San Antonio was short-lived; Colonel Goss simply rented another building and continued operating the institute. However, this time fearful that the school was not providing her son with the proper attention to nonsecular matters, Mary pulled the boy out of it and enrolled him at St. Michael’s in Santa Fe, a parochial institution that suited her on two counts: It was Catholic and it was strict.