The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

by Taraborrelli, J. Randy

  Conrad Hilton bought a controlling interest in the Mayflower in December 1946 for $2.6 million and later increased his stock for a total investment of $3.5 million (about one-fourth of the original construction cost). The Mayflower gave Hilton access to the powers of government much as his New York properties had put him at the center of the country’s business and financial world, and much as the Stevens and the Blackstone had given him a huge presence in the most important city in America’s heartland, Chicago. Now he was nothing if not a coast-to-coast presence, and his mantra seemed to be, “Give me more worlds to conquer.”

  In December 1946, just after Conrad closed the Mayflower deal, the Hilton family came together with other friends and business associates of the Hiltons for the eighty-fifth birthday celebration of Mary Hilton in El Paso. About a year later, Mary would suffer a heart attack while in Long Beach, where she was staying at the Hilton Hotel with her daughter Helen. For a couple of weeks, she would rally and then weaken again, her children at her side in the hospital the entire time. Finally, on August 27, 1947, she died peacefully in her sleep.

  Not surprisingly, Mary Hilton’s death hit Conrad hard. She was unfailingly there whenever he needed her, whether for financial aid—as had happened quite often—or for emotional support. Without her, he felt an anchor missing from his life. He believed that his success had true meaning when he could share it with his mother, and with her absence he knew that nothing would ever be the same. Still, he realized—to hear him tell it—that he had a clear responsibility to Mary to go on with his work and see to it that he not only continued to dream big dreams, but did everything in his power to make those dreams come true. “I have to do it for her,” he said at the time. “After all she gave me, I owe her that much.”

  Mary Genevieve Laufersweiler Hilton was buried next to her beloved husband, Gus, in Socorro, New Mexico.

  With his marriage over and his mother gone, now Conrad Hilton felt more alone than ever before. Of course, he had his sons, but Nicky was twenty-one and Barron twenty. Though he was close to them, both were becoming independent, with their own lives. Eric was just fourteen, but he was being raised by Mary and Mack; Conrad didn’t see much of him.

  It was at this time that Conrad began to keep company with the MGM film star Ann Miller. A beautiful, leggy brunette with a big, brassy personality, Ann was the epitome of Hollywood razzmatazz—an all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood performer. She was a hell of a tap dancer, and because Conrad loved nothing more than being on the dance floor himself, he couldn’t help but be drawn to this unflappable entertainer who claimed that she was able to do five hundred taps per minute. Along with her exuberance, Conrad also admired her levelheaded determination.

  At just twenty-four, Ann was fresh out of a stormy two-year marriage with steel mogul Reese Llewellyn Milner. She was just beginning a romantic relationship with William V. O’Connor, future chief deputy state attorney general of California and Governor Edmund Brown’s right arm, and who, incidentally, had introduced her to Conrad.

  After his divorce from Zsa Zsa Gabor and for many years to come, Conrad would regard Ann Miller as someone who would fill the void of flash and glamour that he had come to appreciate. She would often be at his side adding her glittery panache, especially at his hotel openings, where the two would take to the dance floor and thrill onlookers with routines carefully choreographed in advance. However, as she once insisted, “I was not having an affair with Conrad Hilton. We were always just good friends and, I might add, marvelous friends. We had a wonderfully warm relationship. He looked young, acted young. He was always the life of the party. But romance? Forget it.”

  Raising the Rich

  Conrad Hilton had been raising his two sons, Nicky and Barron, as a single parent for many years; the exotic Zsa Zsa Gabor hadn’t been much of a mother figure at all. The boys’ biological mother, Mary Hilton Saxon, was also not particularly accommodating at this time and sometimes added stress to the equation. For instance, a tragedy was just barely averted in August 1940 when Conrad left Nicky, fourteen, and Barron, almost thirteen, in her care.

  At the time, Mary and her husband, Mack, had fallen on hard times after Mack lost his school coaching job. Trying to help out, Conrad allowed the couple and little Eric to temporarily move into a suite on the ninth floor of the El Paso Hilton. One weekend, Mary asked if Nicky and Barron could spend a couple of nights with her at the hotel; Conrad agreed and dropped the boys off. Mary and her sons then had a fun day together, and Barron and Nicky also spent time bonding with little Eric. But that night, Mary somehow fell asleep while smoking a cigarette; her bed went up in flames. After a bellboy noticed smoke billowing from a ninth-floor window, he summoned the fire department. Meanwhile, Mack Saxon—who was asleep in a room across the hall with Eric (since there weren’t enough beds in Mary’s suite for all of them)—was awakened by the smell of smoke. He raced into the hallway to find Mary standing there with Eric, choking and sobbing hysterically. He scooped her and the boy up and got them out of the suite as quickly as possible. Then he raced into her suite looking for Barron. When he finally found the boy, he rescued him as well. But where was Nicky? By the time Mack went back into the suite to search for Conrad’s namesake, the room was so filled with thick black smoke that it seemed impossible to locate the boy. Luckily, Mack found a gasping Nicky standing in front of a living room window, desperately trying to open it for air. He grabbed the teenager and pulled him out of the suite, which by now was engulfed in flames. Though no one was injured, the frightening ordeal generated screaming headlines the next day in the El Paso Herald.

  Had Mary been intoxicated? Was that the reason she fell asleep while smoking in bed? Conrad wasn’t sure, but he suspected as much. From then on, he would severely limit the time she would be able to spend with her sons without his supervision. However, he stopped short of taking Eric from her and Mack; the boy continued to be raised by them. Eric was happy with the situation as it existed. After all, he was living the only life he had ever known and he was satisfied with it.

  Whereas Nicky and Barron went to exclusive private schools and then military academies, Eric went to public schools. Whereas Nicky and Barron lived in an enormous mansion in Bel-Air, after the incident at the El Paso hotel Eric lived in a row home in a modest housing project in northern Virginia called Fairlington Villages. These were rental units built for the federal government’s civil service employees and for the families of military personnel working in the gigantic Pentagon building. (After losing his coaching job, Mack Saxon had joined the Navy and began to work in its aviation physical training program at the Pentagon, thereby making him and his family eligible for housing quarters in Fairlington Village.) It was a simple, no-frills lifestyle, not exactly the kind one would expect to be lived by Eric, the youngest scion of America’s greatest hotelier. Even though he didn’t have much closeness with his youngest son, Conrad would still sometimes extend himself. For instance, he would sometimes fly Eric to the West Coast for a Hilton Hotels–related gala, or would include him on a junket for the opening of a hotel in another city.

  He may not have always been present for Eric, but Conrad saw Nicky and Barron through myriad problems of teenage angst and rebellion. He did have some help. His mother-in-law, the mother of his first wife, Mary, came to live with them for a while and was helpful with the children. They were remarkable boys, actually, who enjoyed indulging their father in esoteric discussions about life and what it took to become successful in it. Conrad had told them that, based on his own experience, it was all a matter of prayer and hard work, that this was his “master plan” for great success. That didn’t make complete sense to either of the boys at an early age. “But there has to be more than that, Pop,” Nicky argued when he was about thirteen. “I also think there’s something else at work,” Barron agreed. “There’s a missing ingredient there, Dad.” The three spent many hours in Conrad’s study talking about all of the possibilities and trying to figure out j
ust what was missing from Conrad’s equation for success, until finally the answer occurred to Conrad while he was on a business trip to New York. When he returned, he called the boys into the study and filled them in on what he now believed to be the missing element of his “master plan.” “Dreams,” he said. “You’ve got to dream. That’s what’s missing, sons. It’s prayer, it’s hard work, but it’s also… dreams.” The boys agreed and accepted the new theory.

  Though both Hilton heirs had terrific senses of humor and were handsome and popular, neither was a particularly good student. Conrad was always tougher on Barron than he was on Nicky, though. It was as if he sensed that Nicky was doing the best he could, but just didn’t have the faculties to excel in his studies, whereas he felt that if Barron would only apply himself he could be an A student. Limitations he could understand, a lackadaisical approach he could not. Nicky could goof off and Conrad seemed okay with it, but if Barron did the same thing, it was grounds for a major domestic crisis.

  Conrad saw Barron’s mediocre grades as a distinct character flaw. He hated the idea of mediocrity and wanted more than anything for his sons to excel. “All men are equal before God and before the law,” he would later say in a graduation address at Michigan State College in East Lansing on May 19, 1950, “but it is nonsense to say that they are equal otherwise. There are a hundred ways in which people are not equal, in which they never will be equal, no matter how many laws are passed. Mediocrity is the price we pay for complete equality. If there is one thing our country needs today, it is to rid itself of mediocre—and find for itself—superior citizens, superior businessmen, superior fathers, mothers and wives, superior statesmen.”

  Conrad had what some might have considered a rather unorthodox way of handling Barron’s pedestrian performance in school. As if reprimanding an unruly employee at the Hilton Corporation, he would schedule a meeting with Barron in his study to outline his rules and regulations for acceptable conduct, or as he explained in his memoir, Be My Guest, “our mutual responsibilities, allowances, duties, restrictions and privileges.” After Barron reluctantly agreed to these stringent terms and conditions, each would be memorialized in a written contract, which both father and son would then sign. As far as Conrad was concerned, he now had an irrevocable deal with Barron. However, being a teenager rather than a company employee, Barron would inevitably dismiss the contract and do exactly what he wanted, much to Conrad’s consternation. Actually, in some ways the relationship began to mirror the one Conrad had with his own hard-to-please father, Gus. Conrad had gone up against Gus every chance he got, and Barron did the same. In time, Barron’s grades would improve, but he would never be a straight-A student. He would eventually end up dropping out of high school. Conrad certainly wasn’t happy about it, but Barron’s mind was made up. He didn’t want to continue with high school, and for him that was the end of it.

  As for Nicky, he just continued to maintain his below-par grades, sliding by without his father’s attention or worry. “How come my pop gets all bent out of shape when Barron flunks something, but when I do, it’s okay?” Nicky asked Everett Long, one of his best friends at the time. “It’s like my pop doesn’t give a shit if I graduate or not.” Everett Long laughed. “Consider yourself lucky,” he told Nicky. “You don’t need the old man riding you anyway.” Years later, Long would recall, “I remember Nick saying to me, ‘I could murder someone and end up in jail and my dad would probably say, “Oh, gosh darn that Nicky!” But if Barron ended up in jail, my dad would die of a broken heart.’ ”

  Predictably, Nicky soon became intensely competitive where Barron was concerned. If Barron had a girl, Nicky wanted a girl. If Barron got a new car, Nicky wanted a new car. It would be the pattern throughout their teenage years. Nicky just felt that Conrad preferred Barron, and so he would always work to try to reverse that situation, or at least be Barron’s equal in all things. “Nicky could do anything he set his mind to, he just needed people to believe in him,” said Robert Wentworth, who was also a friend of both Hilton sons. “He needed that kind of encouragement. I’m not sure he ever got it at home.”

  The boys may have been competitive, but they were also quite unusual youngsters in the sense that they both loved to express themselves, giving speeches when they were teenagers to nobody, really, other than each other and their father. Conrad would call these little speeches “stirring orations on important subjects.” He wrote, “I could recognize my father’s persuasiveness in this new generation. When Nick tried to convince me, his lone listener, ‘Resolved: We Need Better Hospitals’ or ‘Resolved: We Have Too Many Schools,’ I had visions of Gus and his cowbell storming about New Mexico for better roads.”

  After school, both Hilton sons ended up in the service. Barron had volunteered for the Navy as soon as he was old enough at seventeen, and soon found himself assigned to Pearl Harbor. Nicky served as a radar man aboard the battleship North Carolina. In one letter to Conrad, Nicky wrote that he realized that his personal wealth—or, more specifically, the wealth of his father—didn’t matter one iota in the service. “You have to learn to take it and like it over here,” he wrote. “It doesn’t matter in the service how much money your dad has because you’re in exactly the same boat with everyone else. If I was ever a smart aleck, or Barron either, and I guess we were, this is a fine place to get it kicked out of you.”

  In August 1945, when the war was finally over, Conrad was happy and relieved to have Nicky and Barron safely back home. However, neither son showed any interest in the hotel business. Likely because both had grown up in the huge shadow of their father’s enormous success, now neither wanted to compete with him. True, when Barron was seventeen he worked as a doorman at the El Paso Hilton. He also worked in the garage at the Town House. But that was about as close to the hotel business as he wanted to get. He and Nicky—and even Eric—made it clear that they were not going to be following in their father’s footsteps. Conrad was disappointed, but he tried his best to reconcile it, realizing, as he put it, “You have to let sons find their best path in life.”

  There was no denying that both Nicky and Barron were brimming with youthful potential and masculine allure. The Hilton brothers had grown into strikingly handsome men who oozed wealth and charisma. Nicky in particular had movie-star looks. His brown eyes were warm and inviting, as was his dazzling, porcelain-white smile. He added to his glamour boy appeal with impeccable grooming. His thick dark hair was always perfectly coiffed, groomed to perfection with expensive hair cream, comb-grooved, but with a careful, casual tousle—much like the teen idols of the day. He had yet to develop the full ladies’ man image he would soon acquire, instead coming across as a younger, more innocent and boyish version of Burt Lancaster or Robert Mitchum. For his part, Barron was tall and slender with a regal bearing, dark curly hair, and an attractive intensity. He also dressed in impeccably tailored suits and exuded sophistication and charm.

  Immediately after the service, Barron was able to enroll in the University of Southern California Aeronautical School—which did not require a high school diploma at the time—where he would go on to earn a twin-engine rating. However, he would drop out after just a year. “I didn’t seem to get along with school,” he would remember in 1981, “but I did well in arithmetic. It’s somewhat embarrassing that I didn’t really complete an education,” he said. “I regret that to a degree.”

  Though he had dropped out of high school and then college, by the time he turned twenty-one, Barron Hilton’s youthful days of irresponsibility and unreliability were relegated to his past. It was as if some mechanism in him switched on when he came of age, and suddenly he was his father’s son: motivated, interested, invested, ready to make a fortune, and determined that he didn’t have to have a full education in order to make it happen. Conrad agreed that Barron had what it took to advance in whatever profession he chose, and he was willing to give him a chance to figure out what that would be. It would probably be in the field of aeronautics, which was fine
with Conrad. He knew that Barron would find his own way.

  Unfortunately, Conrad didn’t have the same confidence in Nicky. After the service, Nicky’s ambition seemed to involve little more than enjoying his freedom and having a good time. Conrad also felt that Nicky was too idealistic. “Nicky was the kind of guy who just believed that everything was going to be okay,” said Everett Long. “He wanted the best for everybody, even if he was in competition with Barron. He considered it a friendly competition. I’m not sure Barron felt exactly that way. I think Barron was a little tougher than that. Anyway, Conrad felt that Nicky was drifting. Eventually, he felt he had to step in and help steer Nicky in some sort of direction. He sent Nick down to Texas to work in the boiler room—the heating facilities—of his El Paso hotel for a short time. Then he coaxed him into studying hotel management in Switzerland at Ecole Hôtelière in Lausanne. Nicky didn’t want to go, though, and fought it tooth and nail. His reasoning was that Conrad hadn’t forced anything on Barron, why was he forcing this on him? Of course, the reason was because Barron seemed to have some sort of direction, whereas Nicky didn’t.”

  After about six months of schooling, Nicky returned to Los Angeles, still no closer to having any sort of direction or goal. Conrad then offered him a job as a manager of the Bel-Air Hotel, in which Conrad had a major interest. Again, this was not Nicky’s dream and he resented another attempt to push him into the hotel business. However, he figured that since Barron wanted nothing to do with it, it would give him a leg up in his competition with his younger brother for Conrad’s approval. So Nicky took the job at the Bel-Air Hotel with reluctance, but soon realized he was actually good at it. He had a way with people, he had a great deal of charisma and personality, and he was funny and bright. “People gravitated to him and he was efficient in his job of managing that hotel,” said Everett Long. “He had a lot of responsibilities and, for a minute there, I think he even had Conrad’s approval.”