The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (47 page)

“Are you sure?” Pat said.

Barron lowered his head. He was clearly distraught. Finally, he managed to say that if his brother did have a problem with him, he had “forgiven him,” adding, “We put all of that aside before he died.” He said that he and Nicky had reached an accord. “I loved my brother very, very much, Pat,” he concluded.

As Pat looked at her brother-in-law, she recognized that he was as overwhelmed by everything that had happened in recent years as anyone else in the family, and maybe even more so. Resting her hand atop his, she told him that she believed him and was sorry for his loss. “I’m just so happy we could talk about this,” she said. “It’s been killing me,” she concluded.

“Me too,” he said sadly.

During the weeks following Nicky’s death, Trish Hilton kept replaying the moment she heard of his passing as she tried to make sense of his death. It was 9:30 in the morning when she got the call about Nicky from his accountant, Richard Cohen. Her mother and stepfather were visiting and it was all they could do to keep her from running into the street in hysterics, overcome with grief. She believed then, as she does today, that it wasn’t really a heart attack that caused her husband’s death. She believes that Nicky accidentally overdosed, and then perhaps suffered a heart attack as a result. Considering all he had been through with alcohol and drugs, her gut told her that they were the real culprits behind his death.

As she had done every night, Trish had visited Nicky the evening before his death. He seemed better than he’d been in recent months, the news of the annulment from Elizabeth Taylor still fresh and still seeming to motivate him toward real change in his life. “I’m sorry,” Nicky told Trish. “I’ve made a real mess of everything, haven’t I?” He seemed so bewildered, she didn’t know quite how to respond. “I am someone you never have to apologize to,” she told him. She tried to assure him that he was going to get better. “You’re a Hilton,” she continued, trying to be strong. “And while we Hiltons do sometimes make mistakes,” she continued, “we never give up.”

He chuckled. “So I’ve been told,” he said. Nicky then bowed his head as if he was so ashamed of the way things had turned out, he couldn’t even bear to look at his wife. In response, Trish lowered her own head and then leaned in so that her forehead touched his. They sat in that position for a few moments, not saying a word to each other. It was as if there were nothing left to say. Silence was a relief. Finally, Trish sat back and studied her beleaguered husband of the last decade, the father of her two boys. Though he was just a shadow of the handsome man she had long ago met at a racetrack, there was still something about him—a twinkle in his eye, or maybe it was the way he smiled—that continued to remind her of the man she had fallen for so very long ago. He had never lost his little-boy quality. “So… okay,” she said, coming out of her daydream. “See you tomorrow, then?” Trish asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, seeming tired.

“I love you, Nicky,” she reminded him.

“I love you too,” he said, forcing a smile.

“See you tomorrow,” she said again.

“Yes. For sure. See you tomorrow, Trish.”

The Wake at Casa Encantada

A
bout a hundred people showed up for Nicky’s wake at Conrad Hilton’s home, Casa Encantada. Eric Hilton and his wife, Pat, stood nearby as Barron spoke to some of those present. Trish Hilton had chosen not to attend the gathering, deciding instead to go back to her own home and spend the time alone with her two children. “We Hiltons believe that God has a plan for all of us,” Barron Hilton said. “It’s not our place to question God. All we can do is abide by his will, as difficult as that may be.” As Barron spoke, his father sat in a corner, staring vacantly into space while chatting with his longtime family friends Carole and Larry Doheny. Marilyn, Barron’s wife of twenty-two years, watched him with great concern. “He’s just trying to stay in control,” she said to Pat Hilton. “He’s a man. And worse yet, a Hilton man. And Hilton men have to believe they have everything under control. But this is so hard on him…”

Pat nodded her head in agreement. As Eric’s wife, she knew that Marilyn was certainly accurate in her assessment of Hilton men. “That splendid Hilton pride,” she observed with a bit of a smile.

Barron really was not that hard to understand. Quite simply, he believed in the Hilton brand with all of his heart and would do anything in his power to protect it. In his mind, the reputation of the company was always of paramount concern. Barron was a company man. Some would say he was cold, distant, not sentimental. Others would say that he was pragmatic and single-minded, pretty much like his father. “How can we best honor what Conrad Hilton has put into place?” was the question that he would ask his children on a regular basis. In fact, he was grooming his son Steven from almost the beginning to take a leadership position in the company. (Steven M. Hilton is today chairman, president, and CEO of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.)

By the end of the 1960s, no one could argue with Barron’s track record. As president and chief executive of the Hilton Corporation, Barron saw the company’s profits double in a three-year period, from $6.6 million in 1966 when Barron was promoted, to $12.2 million in 1969. In that same period, revenues rose 18 percent to $231 million. By 1969, the chain owned, managed, or franchised sixty-seven hotels and inns in fifty-six U.S. cities, with an occupancy rate 10 percent above the industry-wide average of 61 percent. This increase was despite the fact that the average room rate at a Hilton hotel had increased 21 percent, from about $17 a night to about $21. On the New York Stock Exchange, Hilton shares reflected the company’s fortunes by leaping from 7⅛ in 1966 to 57½ in 1969—a gain of 80.7 percent. While it was true that the company had lost a fortune by divesting itself of its international division, a decision that both Barron and his father would lament, Barron was never one to live in regret. Instead, he outlined plans that included $50 million worth of expansion at U.S. airports and in Hawaii, where Hilton hotels ran an 80 percent occupancy rate.

Barron, like Conrad, was a man who paid great attention to the day-to-day operations of his hotels. He had reduced the size of the company’s payroll, upsetting many employees but enhancing the corporation’s bottom line. To save on food preparation costs, he decided to no longer use fresh eggs for salads and sandwiches. Instead, he now bought frozen hard-boiled eggs in footlong rolls. Once thawed, they were ready to slice and serve. Also, by centralizing the purchase of housekeeping items under a subsidiary, Hotel Equipment Corp., Barron saved the parent company money on everything from carpets to cutlery. “Everything is about the bottom line,” he said in 1969. “That’s where I keep my eye, all the time.”

Marilyn and Barron certainly enjoyed an affluent lifestyle, thanks to his position at the company and his salary of about $100,000 a year. That wasn’t much; today it would be worth roughly a half million a year. However, it was in his share of booming Hilton stocks where Barron had enjoyed his biggest financial gains. He and Marilyn and their eight children lived in a palatial estate in Holmby Hills with a swimming pool, tennis court, putting green, sauna bath, and film projection room. They also owned a half dozen automobiles, including a black Rolls-Royce convertible, as well as their own private jet and helicopter. Often Barron would fly about the country visiting as many as a half dozen hotels in a single day. In 1969, he was mulling over the idea of buying his own airline that would operate charter flights from major U.S. and European cities to his resort hotels.

“I don’t think I have ever seen a marriage quite like theirs,” Trish Hilton would say of Marilyn and Barron, who would be married for fifty-six years. “I never heard of them having a fight. I once asked Marilyn what the secret of her long marriage was, and she said, ‘I accept him for who he is, and he does the same for me.’ What more does any spouse need other than such total and absolute acceptance?”

“I’m the luckiest man in the world,” Barron told a small group of friends and relatives at Nicky’s wake. “Somehow, God has blessed me with a wife who puts up with me, understands me, and supports me unequivocally,” he said as he continued to hold court, with everyone listening intently. His kind words about his supportive spouse made some feel uncomfortable about the fact that Trish was not present for her husband’s wake at Casa Encantada. Did she blame the Hiltons for what had happened to Nicky? It certainly seemed that way. “I shudder to think what might have happened to Nicky if Trish hadn’t come along,” Barron said, maybe picking up on the awkward moment. He said that Trish had been, as he put it, “a godsend,” especially during recent times.

As everyone spoke, Zsa Zsa Gabor fanned herself and looked unwell. She was grief-stricken by Nicky’s death. He meant a lot to her. At one point, she was so inconsolable that Francesca, now twenty, was seen talking softly to her, holding her close. As all of this was going on, Conrad just sat in a corner and listened, occasionally nodding but looking sad. Though Barron and Eric Hilton would both continue to work for the Hilton Corporation, their primary concern for the next decade would be the welfare of their aging father. Both had noticed that Conrad was now quieter, more reflective than he’d been in the recent past. Eric would share with Pat his concern that Nicky’s death had somehow extinguished the fire that had always been in Conrad’s belly.

Nicky’s widow, Trish, empathized with Conrad’s great sense of loss; of course, she felt it too, keenly. “Things were never quite the same for me after losing Nicky,” she says. “My heart was broken, and the next ten years would be difficult. I had a hard time dealing with it, and then raising my children as a single parent.”

Trish says that she did remarry, an attorney from Wayzata, Minnesota. “I don’t think I was in love with him, though,” she recalled, “as much as I just felt that my children—who were getting to be fifteen, maybe sixteen—needed a father. However, it didn’t work out, and we divorced after about six years. I didn’t have any more children, and I never would—not without Nicky.”

To this day, Trish, who lives in Palm Beach, Florida, receives a courtesy discount on accommodations at any Hilton Hotel. “I have what they call a fifty-dollar stay, which, obviously, means I don’t have to pay more than fifty dollars for any room, anywhere.” These days, she counts Barron Hilton’s daughter Hawley, who also lives in Palm Beach with her husband, as one of her dearest friends. They see each other on a weekly basis. Of course, Trish remains close to the sons she had with Nicky, Conrad III and Michael Otis. It’s also worth noting that Conrad N. Hilton III is on the board of directors of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

“I must say that in the last twenty, twenty-five years, I have been very happy,” Trish Hilton said. “I haven’t had what you would call an exciting life after Nicky, but it’s been peaceful and I’ve been content. After all of the pain I went through with Nicky, I somehow came out of it a better person. I will never forget Nicky Hilton, though,” she concluded wistfully. “He will always be the great love of my life.”

PART TEN

Secrets

Conrad’s Warning to Zsa Zsa

D
uring the final years of Nicky Hilton’s life, Conrad Hilton was also coping—as always—with turmoil presented by circumstances surrounding another child, his daughter, Francesca, as well as her mother, Zsa Zsa Gabor. In August 1971, things took a bad turn between Conrad and Francesca, and it’s likely that at least some of the reason for the disintegration of their relationship had to do with the ongoing irritation of Zsa Zsa.

First, a little backstory.

In October 1968, Zsa Zsa was in the middle of negotiations for a massive advertising campaign for Smirnoff vodka. Unhappy with the work being done by her representation, she asked Conrad to step in and close the deal for her. She offered to give him 10 percent of the total she would be paid. In response, he told her that because he wasn’t a licensed theatrical agent, he would not be able to officially represent her. However, he offered to assist her agent in closing the deal.

For a period of about three months, Zsa Zsa was on the telephone with Conrad almost every day, constantly asking one question or another. Finally, when it was over and the deal was struck to the tune of $250,000, a huge amount of money for the time, (equivalent to more than a million dollars today), she was grateful. Conrad didn’t take a percentage either, which she felt was extremely generous of him. For the final campaign, Zsa Zsa was photographed dripping with rubies and diamonds in a bouffant cream-colored gown. “
Don’t darling me if it’s not Smirnoff
” ran the ad copy under her stunning photograph. “Your guests expect Smirnoff Vodka just as Zsa Zsa does!”

In some ways, Zsa Zsa felt that the Smirnoff negotiation had brought her closer to Conrad. He disagreed, to the point where he was just tired of her and needed some time away from her. However, she had gotten accustomed to calling and chatting, and she rather enjoyed it.

This same thing had happened five years earlier when Conrad helped Zsa Zsa negotiate a $100,000 deal to endorse the new Paper-Mate Pen with ad copy that read, “Zsa Zsa Gabor says, ‘
C’est Magnifique
… no more ink-stained hands or clothes with my Paper-Mate Pen!’ ” At that time, after the deal was consummated, Conrad stopped returning her calls or responding to her many messages. Now he again decided on that course of action.