The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (27 page)

Nicky didn’t look up at his father. He tipped the fedora he was wearing down below his eyes. “I like her,” he said simply. “And I haven’t been happy since Elizabeth. Betsy makes me laugh. She’s fun. And she’s got a classy chassis, too, Pop. So just leave it alone, all right?”

“I’m just saying, maybe take it slow, okay, kid?” Conrad asked. “There’s no hurry, right?”

Nicky’s answer was silence. He wouldn’t allow himself to be drawn into a discussion about Betsy; he kept his hat covering his eyes. Finally, he said, “I get it, Pop, okay? We got other dames here today, don’t we? Obviously I’m not in that deep, right?”

“All right. I’m just a little worried about you, that’s all,” Conrad said before taking his leave.

After he was gone, Nicky tipped his fedora up above his eyes, looked at Bob Neal, and said, “Sometimes it would be nice if he would just see the best in me, instead of the worst. I mean… would that be so bad?”

Bob Neal thought it over. “Actually, you might want to do the same for him, Nick. Would
that
be so bad?”

Nicky grinned at his friend. “
Asshole
,” he said with a swift, playful punch to Bob Neal’s arm.

The Shadow of Her Smile

O
h, baby, I’m so sorry about what happened last night,” Nicky was saying to Betsy. The two were on the telephone. Betsy was so hungover she was finding it hard to focus on the conversation. It had been a rough night of partying on the Sunset Strip.

“What do you mean?” she wanted to know

“Have you looked in the mirror?” he asked, his voice well modulated and controlled. If ever a relationship could be viewed as toxic—a term certainly not used to describe such pairings in the 1950s but one that today certainly does apply—the one between Nicky Hilton and Betsy von Furstenberg qualified. Both were drinking too much, both were addicted to Seconal, and, by her own admission, both were physically abusive of one another. On this morning, she got out of bed, walked over to the vanity, and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Much to her surprise, she had a black eye. She didn’t even remember how it happened. “Well, one thing led to another,” Nicky explained when she came back to the phone, “and the next thing I knew, you slugged me and, well, I slugged you back,” he said. “I got a shiner, too. Can you believe it?”

“Oh well,” she said with a sigh. “Give me a call later and we’ll have a nice quiet dinner and talk it over, okay?”

“Okay, baby,” he said. “Sorry. Bye.”

“It actually was no big deal,” Betsy would recall many years later, “which shows you how bad things had become. It had just been another night in our life together, one of us as bad as the other, both dragging each other down. I enabled him, he enabled me. I look back on it now all these years later and wonder how we ever got through it. But in our defense, drinking was much more accepted back then. Nobody saw anything wrong with it. It was actually considered to be glamorous and a big part of living the good life, to have cocktails all the time.”

In September 1951, Nicky and Betsy announced their engagement, saying that that they planned to wed aboard a yacht in the Caribbean in January. Though Betsy told gossip columnist Louella Parsons, “I’m too thrilled to talk,” it’s not likely she ever really felt she and Nicky were destined for marriage. “I’m not sure he even asked me to marry him,” she recalled many years later. “It was more like, we were drinking one night and leaving a club and the media was all over us asking about our future, and one of us flippantly said, ‘Oh, we’re engaged.’ The next thing we knew it was in all of the papers, ‘Elizabeth Taylor’s Ex-Husband Is Marrying a Baroness.’ ”

If Only

A
fter her divorce from Conrad Hilton, Zsa Zsa Gabor married actor George Sanders. She was not happy, though, and felt that he was unkind. When he received his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in
All About Eve
, he didn’t even thank her or so much as mention her name in his acceptance speech. That night, after the show was over and everyone had vacated the venue, Zsa Zsa sat alone in the dark, cavernous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Feeling sad and worthless, she listened to the sounds emanating from backstage—actors and actresses, producers and directors and others connected to the film industry celebrating their victories and commiserating over their losses, but reveling in their camaraderie just the same. “I could hear their laughter and their merriment,” she would recall. And she thought to herself, “If I only had a career. If only I had… power.”

It was a compelling thought, the idea of her attaining power during this time. In the 1950s, women generally didn’t think in terms of finding their own power. Men were thought of as being powerful, women feminine. Of course, in show business, there were any number of women who could be aptly be described as being overtly powerful—great actresses such as Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, even, to a certain extent, Marilyn Monroe. It’s likely that when Zsa Zsa spoke of wanting power she was thinking in terms of having some influence in the entertainment world—like her husband, George Sanders—and perhaps even parlaying that power into a lucrative career so that she didn’t have to be so dependent on any man for her survival. This isn’t to say that she would ever be the kind of woman who would be independent of a man; that wasn’t who she was either. “What I wanted was to look into the mirror and see someone I could be proud of,” she once explained. “I knew no one would take me there, I would have to do it on my own.”

Lately, Zsa Zsa had been talking about trying for a serious career in show business; she just wasn’t sure how to go about it. Sanders was less than encouraging, believing her to have no discernible talent. He agreed that she was quite witty, but he didn’t see how she would be able to utilize that character trait in show business. She was uncommonly beautiful, he had to concede as much, but so were many other women in Hollywood. Beauty would not necessarily distinguish her, or so he thought. It was ironic, then, that while George Sanders was out of town for three months making the movie
Ivanhoe
in England, his brother, Tom Conway, called upon Zsa Zsa to assist him in what can only be called a “show biz emergency.”

Tom Conway was on his way to the taping of a local Los Angeles–area television program he was appearing on called
Bachelor’s Haven
, a panel show where celebrities answered questions sent in to the TV station from the lovelorn. There was an opening on the panel of three; would Zsa Zsa like to appear on it?

This was actually the perfect star vehicle for Zsa Zsa Gabor. It required what she knew she could do best—be gorgeous with her stylish wardrobe, be funny with her continental accent, and be quick with her Hungarian wit. “I can do this,” she decided. “I
want
to do it.” But still, she didn’t know if she could pull it off; she was terribly fearful, especially since she had never been before a television camera.

Zsa Zsa’s mother, Jolie, who happened to be visiting, did everything she could think of to encourage her daughter. Still, Zsa Zsa was unsure. Therefore, Jolie picked up the telephone to recruit the one person she felt could convince Zsa Zsa to take the chance of a lifetime, someone who had spent most of his days taking big chances—Conrad. Even though the two had suffered a contentious relationship of late, Jolie knew that deep down they still had a deep, soulful connection. Still, when she told Zsa Zsa that Conrad was on the telephone, Zsa Zsa balked at speaking to him. She thought he had called to pick a fight with her. “Oh my God! I can’t speak to
him
now,” she said. “He’ll just upset me.” However, her mother insisted. “He is
family
,” she said. “Now, you speak to him!”

“Jolie explained to me what’s going on,” Conrad told Zsa Zsa once she got on the line, “and I think you should do the program. Trust me.”

Zsa Zsa could not have been more surprised. Never would she have expected his encouragement, especially after some of the terrible things they’d said to each other in recent years. “I can’t believe you are telling me this,” she said. “Really, Connie? You
sink
I should?”

“From the moment I met you,” he told her, “I knew you were something special. There’s no one like Zsa Zsa, my dear. You are one of a kind, for better or worse,” he added with a chuckle. “I think it’s time to let America in on our little secret. So, I say do it, Georgia.”

She was immediately brought to tears, especially by his calling her “Georgia,” which he hadn’t done in years. She thanked him profusely and made up her mind: She was going to give it a try. What did she have to lose?

Zsa Zsa Finds Her Niche

I
f ever a woman was an overnight sensation, it was Zsa Zsa Gabor, thanks to
Bachelor’s Haven
. Wearing a stunning black off-the-shoulder Balenciaga gown, a large diamond bracelet, matching earrings, and a twenty-carat solitaire, she was an instant hit, not just because of her glamorous appeal but also because of her wicked sense of humor. “My goodness, look at those diamonds,” the show’s host, Johnny Jacobs, said. “Oh, these?” Zsa Zsa said dismissively, holding her hand out for inspection. “These are just my
vorking
diamonds.” From that moment on, she had the audience in the palms of her silk-gloved hands. “All I know is that my career was handed to me on a silver platter,” she would say.

Though the show was a West Coast broadcast, reports of Zsa Zsa’s snappy, irreverent answers and her quick sense of humor soon spread across the country, thanks to newspaper and radio coverage. After the first segment, she was asked to become a regular on the program.

One woman wrote in to the show, “I’m breaking my engagement to a wealthy man. He gave me a beautiful home, a mink coat, diamonds, a stove, and an expensive car. What shall I do?”

Zsa Zsa shot back, “Give him back the stove.”

Another woman complained that her husband was a traveling salesman, “but I know he strays even when I’m home. How can I stop him?” she asked. “
Dah-ling
, shoot him in the
legs
,” Zsa Zsa suggested.

Still another man wrote in that he was a bachelor who had a great many oil wells, and he wondered if he should marry since he had just turned fifty. Zsa Zsa thought it over for a moment and answered, “For this man, life is just beginning. He is just now becoming interesting. I do not
sink
I should give him advice. In fact, I
sink
I should see this man…
personally
.”

She continued to bring down the house; the
Hollywood Reporter
dubbed her “the most beautiful girl to ever be on a television screen.” She would even be nominated for an Emmy for her work on
Bachelor’s Haven
.

“Looking back, I realize that all I did was do what I have always done: flout convention and say what I really think, no matter the consequences—and poke fun at myself while doing it,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “Noël Coward used to say that he had a talent to amuse. It seemed that I had a talent—of sorts—to shock in a comical way and to ad-lib without the help of script writers. I found it was much better being myself than trying to be someone else. So, no matter what I was doing or how I was doing it, it was always honest, always… me.”

In October 1951, Zsa Zsa appeared on the cover of
Life
magazine, looking gorgeous in a studio-posed black-and-white photograph. This was a huge career boost, of course, though she was used to being in the press. Along with
Life
, she would also find herself on the cover of
Collier’s
,
Paris Match
, and the
London Picture Post
, all in one month’s time. The primary reason for all of the attention this time, though, was not because of one of her marriages or some personal scandal, but rather a result of her work on
Bachelor’s Haven
. To commemorate the publication of the
Life
magazine spread, Zsa Zsa hosted a spectacular party at her home—and offered each of the guests a signed copy. “
Mah-vellous
,” Conrad said, imitating her accent, when Zsa Zsa gave him his magazine. She was visibly happy to have his approval. “Are you proud of me?” she asked him. “I certainly am,” he told her. “You found your niche, my dear. Now make lots and lots of money.” That sounded like a good plan to her.

From this time onward, it would be a rapid rise to the top for Zsa Zsa Gabor, beginning when MGM offered her a film role in
Lovely to Look At
, the adaptation of the Broadway musical
Roberta
. It wasn’t a big role—she played Mignon, the French maid—but it made a huge impression on the public, as well as on her bank account, because she was paid $10,000 for the job, a huge amount of money at that time. All of her lines were in French, with English subtitles. (Conrad’s companion Ann Miller was also in the film.) Zsa Zsa would then have starring roles in no less than eighteen more movies throughout the 1950s, including the role as singer Jane Avril in a performance many still consider to be her best, the Academy Award–winning
Moulin Rouge
(directed by John Huston), as well as
Lili, We’re Not Married
, and
The Story of Three Loves.
In 1958, she would become known for starring in the campy science fiction cult film
Queen of Outer Space.