by Sean Smith
He had just started singing ‘Good Life’, when he took everyone by surprise by leaping into the water, which, a little undramatically, only came up to his knees. He managed to get his microphone wet, which brought the song to an abrupt halt. That didn’t bother his audience, who began to jump in and splash around as well. Kim, who, dressed in sweats, was looking about as casual as she ever gets, explained that he wanted to be closer to the fans on the other side of the lake. ‘It was an exciting, crazy night!’ she said. After he had been firmly helped out of the water by guards, Kanye sang another five songs: ‘Stronger’, ‘Jesus Walks’, ‘Power’, ‘Touch the Sky’ and ‘All of the Lights’.
His escapade lightened the mood of what could have been a very sombre few days. Despite the excitement her journey to Armenia generated, there was a serious point to it all. Kim wanted to draw attention to what many – and certainly all of the Kardashians – regard as the first modern genocide.
She had flown in just before the one hundredth anniversary, on 24 April, of the slaughter of more than 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Muslim Ottoman Turks. It preceded the Holocaust in Nazi Germany by a generation, but became a footnote in the history of the twentieth century, scarcely covered in school history lessons. Kim was determined to change that. She blogged, ‘Every year, I honour the memory of the martyrs who were killed during the 1915 Armenian Genocide.’
This didn’t sound like the sort of issue that might concern a woman posting selfies to her Instagram followers or sharing information online about her favourite salad or how to bleach your eyebrows. She explained, ‘So many people have come to me and said, “I had no idea there was a genocide.” There aren’t that many Armenians in this business. We have this spotlight to bring attention to it, so why would we just sit back? I will continue to ask the questions and fight for the genocide to be recognised for what it was.’ There are a few household names from Armenia: Cher, Andre Agassi and the popular French singer Charles Aznavour were three of the best known before the Kardashians became so famous.
Not only is their country a fleeting presence in history lessons, it doesn’t feature largely in geography classes either. The Republic of Armenia is a landlocked, mountainous country wedged between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Turkey is to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east and Iran to the south. Since it achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia has relied on tourism to the beautiful country to bolster a struggling economy still reliant on Russian gas. An estimated third of the 3 million-strong population live in poverty.
The premier, Hovik Abrahamyan, welcomed Kim and Khloé with open arms, realising they were putting Armenia on the map for millions of people around the world. The sisters were joined by two previously unheralded Armenian cousins, Kourtni and Kara Kardashian, who hadn’t shared the limelight with their famous American relatives until now.
Prime Minister Abrahamyan praised the Kardashian contribution to the ‘international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide’. Kim, in turn, repeated her pledge to campaign for worldwide acknowledgement of the atrocity.
She apologised for not being able to speak Armenian and said she and her sisters were intent on learning the language, which doesn’t feature in the curriculum of the exclusive private schools of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Even her father, Robert Kardashian, so proud of his heritage, wasn’t a fluent speaker.
Kim’s efforts to reveal a more serious side to her public image received an unexpected boost when Pope Francis condemned the cruelty of the genocide during a service at St Peter’s in Rome. Many commentators acknowledged that the combination of Kim Kardashian and the Pope was a PR disaster for Turkey.
After the family left Armenia, there was one more important stop to make before they flew home. They travelled to Jerusalem for North to be baptised into the Armenian Apostolic Church. The hour-long ceremony at the Cathedral of St James in the Old City was conducted in both Armenian and English, and ended with North being anointed on the head with holy water.
Kim followed the custom of these occasions by wearing a striped wraparound floor-length dress and flat shoes and covering her head with a white shawl. Kanye looked relaxed and happy in white trousers and sweater. North, in a white christening gown, went to sleep. It had been a long trip for a little girl but, as a reward, she was treated to a day out in Disneyland on her second birthday in June.
The ‘state visit’ to Armenia was a triumph for Kim, although her one disappointment came when President Obama failed to use the ‘g word’ (genocide) in a speech marking the anniversary. He couldn’t risk antagonising Turkey, an important ally in the ongoing fight against terrorism. Kim, who doesn’t blame modern-day Turkish people, observed, ‘It’s very disappointing he hasn’t used it as a president. We thought it would happen this year. I feel like we’re close …’
When she had first arrived in Armenia, Kim made a point of saying that her father and his parents, now all dead, would have been hugely proud of the visit and what she was trying to achieve. Like her, they had been born in the United States. It was the previous generation of Kardashians, Kim’s great-grandparents, who preserved the family line by fleeing Armenia just before the mass slaughter of their countrymen.
In leaving the remote village of Karakale, where the family originated, they were heeding an extraordinary warning made by an illiterate and sickly boy who had visions about the future. Efim Klubnikin predicted, ‘Those who believe in this [prophecy] will go to a far land, while the unbelievers will remain in place. Our people will go on a long journey over the great and deep waters.’
Although he made the prophecy first as an 11-year-old boy in the 1850s, he repeated his warning 50 years later, just in time for some 2,000 Armenians to leave before the nation’s holocaust. Kim’s forebears were among the lucky ones. Accounts testify that ‘every soul’ in Karakale was murdered. The village is now an entirely Muslim settlement, near the city of Kars, in the harsh, snow-covered environment of eastern Turkey.
In an extraordinary twist, Klubnikin urged his ‘believers’ not just to flee to the United States, but to settle specifically in Los Angeles. Kim’s great-grandparents sailed independently to a new life, and met and fell in love on the boat from Germany. They were among some of the last to flee, not setting sail until 1913.
At the time of the massacres, Armenia was still in Russia. The First Republic of Armenia was formed in 1918 and became a founding member of the Soviet Union four years later. Strictly speaking, the Kardashian ancestors were of Russian-Armenian stock and the family name was Kardashcoff, which doesn’t trip off the tongue as well as Kardashian, although they could still have called their famous boutique DASH.
By the end of the First World War, the Kardashian family was beginning to establish itself at the centre of the new Armenian community in Los Angeles. Many had settled in a poor, slum-like neighbourhood known as ‘The Flats’ in Boyle Heights, East LA. The area was a gateway to the city for newcomers, and one that they aspired to leave. The Kardashians were no exception.
The displacement of some of a nation’s finest men and women bred great spirit and a desire for achievement. Friendships forged in adverse circumstances would last a lifetime, binding successful Armenian families together. A fierce loyalty was the hallmark of the community.
The rise in fortunes of the Kardashians began with a rubbish collection business and moved on to hog-farming. From there, it was a natural progression to opening a slaughterhouse for meat processing, as an outlet for their livestock concern. The Great Western Meat Packing Company started up in 1933 in the city of Vernon, 5 miles south of downtown LA. It’s a very unprepossessing, almost exclusively industrial area, full of warehouses and plants – and slaughterhouses. Vernon is not a place where you would want to live.
Arthur Kardashian, Kim’s grandfather, was born in Los Angeles in 1918 and married her beautiful grandmother, Helen Arakelian, who was a year older, when he was 20. He took over the family business with his brother Bob
when their father retired and built it into one of the most successful Southern Californian enterprises, with a turnover of more than $100 million.
Art and Helen became pillars of a new prosperous Armenian community, settling in the affluent suburb of Baldwin Hills, a million miles away from The Flats. Former California Senator Walter Karabian, a frequent guest, described their home as ‘beautiful’ and ‘upscale’. In the space of a generation, the Kardashians had risen from hard-working immigrants to millionaires. They possessed an ideology of success and how to achieve it that they would pass on to their children and grandchildren.
Kim adored her grandparents. Particularly, she was close to Helen, who died, aged 90, in 2008. ‘Nana was seriously so much fun,’ she said. ‘She was your typical Armenian grandmother and always cooking the best Armenian meals. Our favourite when we visited was a breakfast dish called beeshee, which is a pancake topped with lots of sugar.’ Her grandparents eventually retired to Indian Wells, near Palm Springs, where they originally had a holiday home. When Helen died, she and Art had been married for 70 years.
The biggest influence in Kim’s life was her beloved father, Robert Kardashian, who was born in Baldwin Hills in 1944. She observed, ‘My father always taught us never to forget where we came from. We grew up learning so much about our Armenian ancestors that we will teach to our own kids one day.’ She is clearly giving North a head start in that regard.
2
Tower of Strength
Robert Kardashian is a name that sounds as if it belongs to a very serious person. In reality, Bob, or Bobby as he was known, was funny and fun-seeking, a young man with a reputation as a practical joker, who never wanted to be tied to the family meat-packing business. It didn’t suit his style at all. He would leave that responsibility to his elder brother, Thomas, known as Tommy, who was four years his senior. An elder sister, Barbara, pursued a successful career as a dentist.
He followed them both to USC – the University of Southern California – in Los Angeles where he studied business administration from 1962 until 1966 and, like his brother, was the senior manager of the student American football team, the formidable USC Trojans. Both brothers were keen on sport, particularly football, and could play to a high, if not professional, standard.
Robert decided to continue his education at the University of San Diego, where he graduated in 1969 with a law degree. Tommy observed that his younger brother went to law school to avoid going into the family business. The elder Kardashian already had a Rolls-Royce and Robert was determined that he would have one too. On his return to Los Angeles, aged 25, he joined the firm of two USC law graduates, Richard Eamer and John Bedrosian. After two years, he became a named partner in Eamer, Bedrosian and Kardashian of Beverly Hills.
Bedrosian, a fellow ‘hye’ (the Armenian word for an Armenian), developed the firm’s interest in healthcare, while Robert found entertainment law more to his taste. One of his friends, George Mason, who founded the Armenian newspaper The California Courier, observed, ‘He’s not the kind of man who wants to be chained to a desk and take a briefcase full of work home with him every night.’
If Robert had stuck with his partners, he would have ended up considerably wealthier. They established National Medical Enterprises, which became one of the top healthcare providers in the US before it was sold in the 1990s. As a result, they moved into the realms of the super-rich.
Robert, though, enjoyed the world of celebrity more than the boardroom. He met the man who would change the future for him and his family on a tennis court in Beverly Hills one Sunday morning in the spring of 1970. A game of doubles was set up by the maître d’ at the Luau, which was a popular local place for young playboys on the prowl.
Robert and his brother Tommy were a formidable pairing, but they were concerned they had met their match in O. J. Simpson and Al Cowlings. These two had both won sporting scholarships to USC, but did not enrol there until after the Kardashians had left. Orenthal James Simpson, known as ‘The Juice’, was the most famous college footballer in the US and the winner of the prestigious Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player of the year. In UK terms, it would be the equivalent of discovering that your weekend tennis game was against David Beckham.
O. J. was already a celebrity. Robert and Tommy were well known in the fashionable bars and restaurants of Hollywood, but they mixed more with professional people. O. J. would change that.
To their surprise, experience narrowly won the day for the Kardashian brothers. The four all became friends and the one-off game became a weekly ritual. Robert and O. J. got on particularly well, despite their very different backgrounds. O. J. had been brought up in a poor area of San Francisco, belonged to a street gang and served time in a youth detention centre. When he moved from college into the professional game, he became one of the most sought-after names in the celebrity world and, by 1971, was said to have earned enough money from endorsements to retire.
Robert recognised the selling potential of his new friend. O. J. would be perfect as the public face of some business ventures. Robert had the ideas and O. J. had the fame, and together they started several stores and restaurants.
They both still had a strong affinity with USC and one of their more successful enterprises was a fashion boutique on the campus called jag O. J. – a play on the popular student cocktail of orange juice and Jägermeister. It sold top-of-the-range jeans and casual wear and they made a tidy profit when they sold the shop after a couple of years.
One of Robert’s policies where his start-ups were concerned was not to hang on to a business for too long, whether it was successful or not. He formed a corporation with O. J. called Juice Inc. and opened a frozen yoghurt shop in Westwood Village, which they called Joy and, once again, sold after a couple of years.
The association with O. J. opened up a new world for Robert Kardashian and his brother. They moved into a house in Deep Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills, which they turned into a bachelor’s playground. O. J. was always around, helping to attract a constant stream of guests for tennis and pool parties. In the mid-seventies, he even stayed with the brothers for six months during an off-season as the star running back of the Buffalo Bills. There were three Rolls-Royces parked in the driveway then. Robert had finally acquired one – and he was still in his twenties. O. J. also rented space in Robert’s offices to oversee his growing business concerns away from football. Robert’s legal secretary, Cathy Ronda, became O. J.’s personal assistant. The connection between the two men was a very strong one.
Robert wanted to pursue interests in music, one of his great loves. His fortunes were transformed in 1973, when he set up a magazine, Radio & Records, with his brother Tommy and a new partner, Robert Wilson, who had many music contacts. They had spotted a gap in the market for a weekly trade publication for radio and the music industry in general. At least a third of the pages were charts and statistics. Record company executives could see what radio stations in Alabama or Iowa were playing that week. The idea was to turn it into something that was an essential read for anyone working in the world of music and, to that end, it succeeded brilliantly. It became widely known as R&R, a sister to the famous Billboard, and an industry bible.
Eventually, the success of this and some of the ventures with O. J. allowed Robert to reduce his law commitments until, in 1979, he was able to stop practising altogether. By that time, he had fallen in love.
When Robert George Kardashian met Kristen Mary Houghton, he was a lawyer, an entrepreneur and a very eligible bachelor living in Los Angeles. She was an 18-year-old girl from San Diego growing accustomed to the finer things in life, thanks to a relationship with a professional golfer 12 years her senior.
They bumped into each other at the renowned Del Mar Thoroughbred racetrack, which boasted the famous slogan ‘Where the Turf Meets the Surf’. In the summer months, Hollywood stars would mingle with the cream of moneyed society in a beautiful setting by the ocean. A consortium of famous actors from the golden age, i
ncluding Gary Cooper and Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy, had clubbed together to build the course. They were led by Bing Crosby, who was on the gate greeting racegoers when it opened in 1937.
The meeting in July was a little like Royal Ascot, in that the wealthy and well-connected would travel from San Diego, 20 miles south, or Los Angeles, 100 miles to the north, to be seen and to show off their new hats. It was definitely a place to interest an aspiring socialite.
According to Kris, Robert barrelled up to her outside the exclusive Turf Club and said that she was someone he knew, even though he kept getting her name wrong, insisting she was called Janet. She thought he bore a striking resemblance to the pop singer Tony Orlando, who memorably sang ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’. With his big, heavy moustache and slick black disco hair, he might also have been mistaken for a seventies porn star. She was a shapely brunette with great sex appeal. She had oomph.
He persisted with his corny chat-up lines and asked for her phone number, which she refused to give him. He trailed after her for the rest of the day and even introduced her to his elder brother Tommy, who was with him that afternoon. Naturally, her reluctance to give him her number lit the blue touch paper of his enthusiasm. At the time, she thought he was too old, although, at 30, he was four months younger than her boyfriend.
In her autobiography, she refers to the golfer only as Anthony. That wasn’t his name, of course. Much later, he was revealed to be a forgotten, if handsome, face on the PGA tour called Cesar Sanudo, who was from a modest Mexican family. He had been a caddie before graduating to playing golf himself. He was on the tour for 14 years at a time when great names like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson ruled the fairways. The irrepressible ‘Super Mex’, Lee Trevino, was one of his best friends on tour.
Although Cesar won only one tournament, the 1970 Azalea Open Invitational at the Cape Fear Country Club in North Carolina, he was a popular figure, always at ease with ordinary golfers and film stars like Bob Hope and Clint Eastwood. He also played golf with presidents, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George Bush, Sr.