The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

by Taraborrelli, J. Randy

  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

  To 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 th
e 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.

  Conrad’s summer vacations were spent back in San Antonio, working for five dollars a month at A. H. Hilton, an ever-growing business that now housed the post office, the telegraph office, the Studebaker dealership, a livery stable, and a lumber/building materials operation. Gus Hilton was nothing if not entrepreneurial. Not only was he managing the store, but he also bartered with prospectors, giving them provisions, clothing, food, and money in return for a percentage of their profits. On some days he would take off into the wilderness to sell tobacco and food to beaver trappers, sometimes trading his goods for theirs. Gus was busy all of the time, tough and unyielding not only in business but at home as well; he expected a lot of his children, but mostly from Conrad. Actually, he saw something of himself in Connie, and wanted nothing more than to see the boy make something of himself. Therefore, he pressured him a great deal and was often critical when some observers felt it may have better served the boy to just be encouraging.

  If Conrad believed his yeoman’s work for his father would be rewarded with any sort of permanent position at A. H. Hilton, he was wrong. In the fall, he was off to another school, St. Michael’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a move that, once more, he was dead set against having to make. He implored his mother that it was “a great waste of time. All the things I want to know I am learning at home.” Mary Hilton was not moved, however, arguing that he would have plenty of time to learn his father’s business—later. What Conrad needed at this time in his life, she reasoned, was a solid foundation. End of argument. Thus Conrad transferred to St. Michael’s College, where he stayed for two years, once again spending summer vacations working in Gus’s general store, but now at an increase in salary to fifteen dollars a month.

  Along with Conrad’s salary raise, at fifteen he shot up in height to six feet, making him almost as tall as his father. Though they could now look at each other eyeball to eyeball, the son’s increase in stature did not alter Gus’s attitude toward him; he was still a stern, overbearing taskmaster, giving Conrad more responsibility in running the store, but riding herd on him every step along the way and questioning his every decision and suggestion.

  That summer, with all the hard work he was doing and lessons he was learning, Conrad Hilton would feel quite often with the passing years that something was lacking in his life. One day, he found on his mother’s sewing table a copy of a book by Helen Keller, the twenty-three-year-old Alabama native, born deaf and blind. Late into the night in his room, he surreptitiously read her autobiography, Optimism, the message of which he found transformative. Keller wrote, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope,” and, “Optimism is the harmony between man’s spirit and the spirit of God pronouncing His works good.” These precepts were in perfect alignment with those already instilled in Conrad by his mother. With a newfound courage gleaned from Keller’s book, Conrad eventually announced to his parents that he would not be returning to school. His decision was final, he said, even though he was only fifteen. Gus responded without appearing to show the slightest sign of annoyance. “All right,” he decided. “I guess you’ll be worth twenty-five dollars a month on a full-time basis.” And, surprisingly enough, his mother, Mary, went along with it too. “I believe now, looking back, that my parents took note of my conviction, and this encouraged them to change their minds,” he would later explain. “I must say, I did make a good case for myself.”

  By 1904, Gus’s skillful operation of his store enabled him to become quite wealthy, not just from the store’s booming success, but also from smart investments, one of which was in the mining business. Known throughout the territory as “Colonel Hilton,” he then added to his fortune by selling a coal mine for $135,000. Feeling flush and generous, he treated the entire family to a vacation trip to St. Louis for the World’s Fair, celebrating the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, and also the site of the Summer Olympic Games, the first to be held in the United States. Emboldened by the journey, Gus soon decided that a change of scenery was in order for his family. After researching the towns on the Pacific in Southern California, he decided that Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, would be an ideal place in which to settle down, with its warm climate and easier lifestyle. Upon their arrival, Mary immediately enrolled the children in school, convincing Connie to now finish his education. They lived there until Conrad finished high school. Meanwhile, Gus went back and forth to San Antonio, tending to his store, to which Connie (and the rest of the family) would return when his schooldays were over.

  In 1907, the financial panic that came without warning hit the country and all but wiped out Gus Hilton’s finances. Gathering his family about him, Gus spelled out the dire situation and asked for suggestions. Casting his eyes upon the floor, nineteen-year-old Conrad after a few moments of silence looked up, broke into a smile, and announced, “We should open a hotel. Let’s take five or six of our ten rooms [of the house in which they lived] and make a hotel. This place needs a hotel!” Conrad further suggested that while his father ran the hotel, his mother and sisters could handle kitchen duty. He would be responsible for baggage. He further speculated that two and a half dollars a day for each bed would be a reasonable amount to charge guests. Much to his amazement, his father actually thought the idea might work! One might say that this suggestion was Conrad Hilton’s first real brainstorm—the first of many, as it would happen.

  Within six weeks, news of the new hotel spread throughout the area and all the way to Chicago: “[The word was that] if you have to break up your sales trip, break it at San Antonio and try to get a room at Hilton’s,” Conrad later recalled to author Whitney Bolton. “They serve the best meals in the West and they have a boy there who is a crackerjack at making things comfortable for you.” He added, “Everyone got something out of our hotel. Travelers got cleanliness, comfort and a good table for their $2.50 a day, even though we served three bountiful meals. We all worked hard, and no one harder than my mother. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for what those days taught me… and I’d give a million dollars for one of the suppers she served.” Not only did Conrad manage the hotel, but he worked the desk, was the concierge, and did pretty much everything he could think of to keep the enterprise afloat. His father was pleased, though of course not exactly effusive with his praise. However, he indicated his pride in his son by giving him control of the store in San Antonio when he turned twenty-one. It would now be called A. H. Hilton and Son.

  With the family solvent thanks to Conrad’s bright idea, he enrolled at the New Mexico School of Mines at nearby Socorro, close enough that he could spend weekends in San Antonio or overnight if he were needed. What he learned in Socorro proved invaluable as he excelled at higher mathematics, providing “the best possible mental muscles necessary” for whatever career he would choose.

  In 1911, when he was twenty-four, the Territory of New Mexico was admitted to the Union, and over Gus’s strenuous objections—and also those of his brother Carl, who was now attending the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland—Conrad entered the political arena. He was swiftly elected to a seat in the lower house of the new state’s first legislature, serving one two-year term as New Mexico’s youngest representative. He would go on to author eight bills, one having to do with prohibiting violence in motion pictures, another with proper highway markers. “It seemed that he could do pretty much anything he set out to do,” said his son Barron, “and when he entered politics, which was a bit of a surprise turn for him, people began to see that he had big ambitions, that he didn’t feel there was a ceiling to what he could achieve.”

  A handsome young man by this time, Conrad Hilton had a full head of brown hair parted on the right, a wide nose, penetrating blue-green eyes, and a full mouth. With his New Mexican drawl, he seemed polite and affable to all who crossed his path. Because he found working as a l
awmaker slow and dull, his days in that field were now numbered, by his own admission—even though he hated proving his father right. His social life was anything but boring, though. He was out on the town every night, attending lavish balls at the state capitol, becoming a popular member of Santa Fe high society, and proving to be a proficient and much sought-after dancing partner.

  Returning to San Antonio, more frustrated and more determined than ever to make it without his father’s help and counsel, Conrad Hilton reasoned that since there was no bank in his small hometown, he would become a banker. Once again, Gus warned against it, arguing that the town was much too small for a bank, and besides, there were banks already established in nearby Socorro. Undeterred, and with about $30,000—$3,000 of it his own and the rest scrounged from friends and investors—Conrad opened the New Mexico State Bank of San Antonio in September 1913. Though he was just twenty-six, he believed that the locals would entrust their savings to his new bank. However, customers failed to materialize and by year’s end the bank would close its doors. Another failure. Would his father always be right?

  Restless for new challenges, in 1916, Conrad, at twenty-nine, took on the management of a musical group formed by his violin-playing sister Eva with two of her female friends, calling themselves the Hilton Trio. These girls were a real sight in their long, full skirts (which buttoned down the middle) wrapped by wide cloth belts, long-sleeved flouncy blouses, and enormous picture hats. Always the great multitasker, not only was Conrad their manager, but he was their agent and roadie as well. Though his father warned him that the undertaking was risky and likely to fail, Conrad was certain that people would flock to see the trio. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Despite his best efforts, his first entrance into show business was a colossal failure, barely breaking even in the course of a year. Failing was bad enough, but failing in front of his critical father was much worse.