The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (68 page)

As of this writing, Paris Hilton is in a steady long-term relationship with a successful model, the Spanish-born, twenty-two-year-old River Viiperi. During an appearance on
The Wendy Williams Show
on May 2, 2013, she said that she hoped to start a family with him. “I think that’s the meaning of life, to have children and have a family one day,” she explained. “I am so in love. I feel so lucky to have met him. He’s one of the kindest, most loyal men I’ve ever met in my entire life, and he treats me like a princess.”

How Did Conrad Do It?

R
ick Hilton’s family has kept a high public profile in recent years. Along with Paris, Nicky (whose full name is Nicholai Nicky Olivia) and her brothers, Barron II and Conrad III, are in the public eye.

Nicky, born on October 5, 1983, has run a couple of successful clothing lines and has designed a line of handbags. She has also worked extensively as a model. In 2006, she even dabbled in the hotel business by opening two Nicky O Hotels, one in Miami and the other in Chicago, careful not to use the name Hilton on it. “I’ve been around hotels my whole life,” she told
People
magazine in 2006. “I know a good hotel when I see one.” Unfortunately, she learned the hard way that it’s a tough business; the hotels didn’t last long.

“Nicky is actually a savvy woman,” says one person who worked with her in her hotel enterprise. “She talked a lot about her great-grandfather Conrad, and her grandfather Barron, and also her dad, Rick. These men have had a big influence over her and her sister, Paris. Having worked with Nicky, I can tell you that she’s a smart businesswoman who has made a fortune for herself, if not in the hotel business certainly with her lines of clothing. She and Paris understand how to create and develop a brand. They understand marketing and promoting, and if that isn’t all from the canon of Conrad Hilton, I don’t know what is.”

Like her sister, Nicky has also made headlines with her personal life, such as when she married childhood friend Todd Andrew Meister in 2004, a marriage that was eventually annulled.

Nicky’s mother, Kathy, hosted a network reality television show for NBC in 2005,
I Want to Be a Hilton
. In the series, fourteen young people, male and female, engaged in competitions relating to art and culture, beauty and fashion in order to gain the opportunity to live a glamorous high-society lifestyle. One by one, each contestant was eliminated by Kathy Hilton, using the catchphrase “You’re
not
on the list.” The winner was finally awarded a $200,000 trust fund, a new apartment, clothing, and, according to the NBC press release, “the opportunity to become friendly with the Hiltons.”

Some critics were puzzled by Kathy Hilton’s program, because they felt it promoted a stereotype of the Hiltons as being silly and superficial, which was obviously not her intention. “When I was a kid people wanted to be an Oscar Mayer Weiner,” wrote a critic for the
Hollywood Reporter
. “Now they want to be a Hilton. Or so we’re told. Not that the two are very different, actually. You don’t want to know what’s really inside either one—and both tend to hide behind their buns. ‘I Want to Be a Hilton’ supplies further evidence of the decline and fall of Western civilization.”

Kathy Hilton’s business instincts are usually quite astute, as she has proved with many aspects of her daughter Paris’s career. However, with her foray into network television, she likely learned that a fine line exists between taking a tongue-in-cheek approach to the family’s flamboyant reputation and exploiting it in a way that might be viewed as distasteful. Unfortunately, her series ran for only one season. Most recently, Kathy, who at fifty-five remains a stunning—and often outspoken—blonde, has been seen as a regular on the OWN network reality program
Life with LaToya
, starring her longtime friend LaToya Jackson.

Kathy and Rick’s sons, Conrad III and Barron, have led mostly quiet lives, though both did put the family in headlines when they were involved in separate high-profile automobile mishaps. Luckily, both young Hilton men have the advantage of coming from a close-knit family with parents who have not only been loving but often strict. It obviously doesn’t mean the Hilton offspring won’t sometimes get into trouble. It does, however, mean that they have a strong foundation upon which to stand when faced with problems.

“Look, it’s not easy raising kids these days,” Kathy Hilton has said, “and just because we’re Hiltons doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same kinds of problems as everyone else, only ours are magnified by the media. We are a close family. We have a great love for one another. We have always been willing to tell the truth to one another and face the consequences, knowing that we, as a family, will be okay. And, of course, we also believe in the old adage: This, too, shall pass.”

As they have gotten older, this next generation of Hiltons has also become interested in their family history, particularly in the life of their great-grandfather Conrad. Part of their interest may be because of the inclusion of an intriguing story line in the AMC series
Mad Men
in which advertising man, Don Draper, lands the account of a successful hotelier named… Conrad Hilton. The creators of the show actually went to great lengths to try to depict Hilton in as accurate a way as possible. “The producers knew pretty much nothing about Conrad, so they contacted us,” confirmed Mark Young of the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management. “We were able to supply a lot of information, photographs, and other memorabilia from which they were able to build their character. They wanted to be as accurate as possible in capturing Conrad, the way he walked and talked, the Stetson hat, all of it, his personality.

“Since
Mad Men
, many young Hilton family members—the offspring of Nicky, Eric, and Barron—have been here to the archives,” says Young. “Conrad Hilton was such an icon in our culture, but to them he’s their grandfather or great-grandfather. They want to know about him, what influenced him, how he became the man he became. ‘Tell us about Conrad,’ they would say. ‘How did Conrad do it? How did Conrad achieve what he did in his lifetime?’ It’s a great and inspiring family story, and I think it matters to them a great deal, as well it should.”

End of an Era

T
oday, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation is a private holding company, a
family
institution that is not public and thus not vulnerable to any sort of takeover attempt. With Hiltons sitting on the board of the foundation, the family maintains complete power and control over it.

In 1996, after thirty years as CEO of the Hilton Hotels Corporation, William Barron Hilton finally retired. Steve Bollenback succeeded him, while Hilton continued to chair the board.

In 2007, the Hilton Hotels Corporation, with its nearly three thousand hotels in seventy-six countries, was acquired by the private equity firm of Blackstone Group LP. The company agreed in February of that year to a cash deal of $20.1 billion from Blackstone. “It could be argued that this news marks the end of an era,” wrote a journalist for
Fortune
magazine. “The company started by Conrad Hilton, in effect, no longer exists.” Barron Hilton explained, “Despite my tremendous family pride, I knew Hilton Hotels Corporation had grown to the point where it could thrive, even without a Hilton family member at the helm. I had been a member of the Hilton Foundation board since 1954. It was only after the sale of our companies that I proudly became chairman of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.”

At the end of 2007, Barron Hilton announced a contribution of about $2.3 billion—which amounted to 97 percent of his net worth—to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. Furthermore, he contributed approximately $1.2 billion—his profit from the sale of the Hilton Hotels Corporation to Blackstone—into a trust that would also eventually benefit the foundation. “That gift, together with other personal assets, should bring the Foundation’s corpus to more than $4 billion,” he wrote in a letter to the Giving Pledge organization. “Today, we concentrate on a few strategic initiatives: safe water development, homelessness, children, substance abuse and Catholic sisters. Other major programs include blindness prevention, hotel and restaurant management, education, multiple sclerosis, disaster relief and recovery, and Catholic schools.”

“Speaking for the family as well as the foundation, we are all exceedingly proud and grateful for this extraordinary commitment,” said Barron’s son Steven M. Hilton, president and CEO of the foundation. “Working to alleviate human suffering around the globe, regardless of race, religion, or geography, is the mandate of the foundation set by my grandfather, Conrad Hilton, and now reinforced by my father, Barron Hilton.”

Barron’s decision in regard to his wealth begs the question: Is he really just doing to his heirs what his father did to him, that which he spent so many years contesting in court? It’s not an easy question to answer, at least not until Barron dies and his last will and testament can be carefully examined. At this point, it isn’t clear how much money his heirs will inherit. However, from all available evidence, it seems that they will inherit and then have to split between them just 3 percent of his entire net worth, with the rest going to the foundation. It also seems fair to reason that whatever decisions Barron has made in regard to his own will will likely be more ironclad—or at least not as open to analysis—as his father’s. In other words, it’s likely that Barron’s heirs will not benefit from a will that has in it a clause (like “Barron’s Option”) that would be open for reinterpretation.

Today, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation—which in October 2012 relocated from traffic-congested Century City, California, to a bucolic, sprawling seventy-acre campus in Agoura Hills at the base of Ladyface Mountain—spearheads many important charities around the world. The Hilton organization distributes about $60 million a year. (It also awards an annual $1.5 million humanitarian grant.) As well as supporting Catholic sisters, its priorities include caring for vulnerable children, especially those suffering from HIV and AIDS; assisting transition-age youth out of the foster care system and into the mainstream of America; ending chronic homelessness; preventing substance abuse; and providing safe water. The foundation also responds to international disasters, and has a special concern of overcoming multiple sclerosis. The foundation’s board of directors includes Barron Hilton as chairman emeritus and Eric Hilton as a member. The chairman, president, and CEO of the foundation is Barron’s son Steven M. Hilton. Barron’s daughter Hawley Hilton McAuliffe is also on the board, as is Nicky and Trish Hilton’s son Conrad N. Hilton III. Conrad’s longtime friend and adviser Donald H. Hubbs is now the director emeritus.

As of December 31, 2011, the assets of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation were approximately $2 billion—probably more money than Conrad Hilton ever could have imagined making in his lifetime. After all, almost a hundred years ago, he was a man with just $5,000 to his name, all of which he decided to use to purchase the ramshackle Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas. If not for the help of his devoted mother and an assortment of friends, he never would have been able to put together the balance of the $40,000 purchase price. From there, his empire grew not only in this country but around the world. His is a true, genuine American success story, or as his son Barron once proudly put it, “It’s definitely one for the record books, and not a day goes by that I don’t sit and marvel at what my father did with his life. It is my hope that others are inspired by my father’s story, and by our family’s steadfast adherence to his charitable philosophy.”

Marilyn Hilton: Rest in Peace

B
arron Hilton, who at the time of this writing is eighty-six years old, suffered the loss of his beautiful and effervescent wife, Marilyn Hawley Hilton, in 2004. Marilyn was struck down in her prime by a most debilitating disease, multiple sclerosis. “Barron and I were walking down the stairs when a cry alerted us that Marilyn had fallen,” the late foundation board member Gregory R. Dillon once recalled. “We ran back to see what happened to her. [Marilyn’s] legs had given out, and it was after that incident that we found out what her problem was. It took some time to do so, since they gave her all sorts of tests, before the doctors finally diagnosed MS. She went on, however, for years thereafter… leading a full life, though her later years were not too comfortable. But Marilyn was a trooper.”

Over the years, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation would award almost $15 million to the medical community in the name of MS research. “As often happens, the suffering of a loved one opens the hearts of family members serving on a foundation board to the plight of all other families who also have a loved one struggling with the same disability,” explained Marilyn’s son Steven Hilton.

Marilyn Hilton passed away on March 11, 2004, at the age of seventy-six due to complications from her disease. At the time, she and Barron had been married for fifty-seven years. Besides Rick Hilton—the father of Paris—the children of Barron and Marilyn Hilton are: William Barron Jr., Hawley, Steven, David, Sharon, Daniel, and Ronald. Most lead quiet lives out of the spotlight. However, Steven Hilton, as earlier mentioned, is the chairman, president, and CEO of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and Hawley Hilton McAuliffe is on the board of directors. It was reported that Marilyn Hilton had a portfolio worth about $60 million—smart investments over the years into which she was guided by her husband—which was divided among her children.