Divorce—Hollywood Style
I want you to end this marriage,” Conrad Hilton told Nicky one day at the end of November 1950, according to what Nicky later said. “Sometimes,” Conrad told his son, “a woman can bring out the worst in a man. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” He did. After all, how many times had Zsa Zsa Gabor driven him to the brink of fury? Though he was always able to control himself—he didn’t have the temperament for violence in any way, shape, or form, and he also rarely lost his temper—he was surprised just the same at how angry she could make him. In many ways, he didn’t like the man he had become as Zsa Zsa’s husband, and from what he could tell, Nicky was going through the same thing as Elizabeth’s spouse. “End it, son,” he told him. “Get the hell out now, while you still can.”
“I don’t have to,” Nicky told him. “I got a call from some hot-shot lawyer yesterday. She’s divorcing me!”
Conrad shook his head sadly. “Well, here we go again,” he said. “Another divorce the church isn’t going to recognize, only now it’s going to be your cross to bear.”
“I know, Pop,” Nicky said. “The only difference is that I will never go through this again. I’ll never marry again. I can promise you that.”
On December 1, 1950, MGM announced that Elizabeth and Nicky were separating. A statement from Elizabeth said that “there is no possibility of a reconciliation.” Three weeks later, Elizabeth filed divorce papers, charging that throughout their brief marriage Nicky had treated her “in a cruel and inhumane manner.” She also cited “great and grievous mental cruelty and mental pain, suffering and anguish.” She did not stipulate any charge of physical abuse. For his part, Nick’s lawyer filed an answer denying all charges of cruelty.
On Friday, March 9, 1951, barely three months after it was announced that they were divorcing, Nicky Hilton and Elizabeth Taylor were back in touch. He picked up the telephone that morning to find Elizabeth calling him. She was now romantically involved with director Stanley Donen, she said, but she missed him very much. Nicky couldn’t believe his ears. That she missed him was perhaps not surprising, but that she was already in another relationship did give him pause. Their divorce wasn’t even final yet! He was reminded of the fact that he had met her on the day she ended her engagement to William Pawley. Or as Conrad had said of Elizabeth, “Fast worker, that one.”
Elizabeth’s latest romance with a film director gave even more credence to Nicky’s fear that had it not been him standing next to Elizabeth at the altar, anyone else would have sufficed, just as long as she was obtaining some measure of freedom from her mother and MGM. As far as he was concerned, he’d been duped by Elizabeth, and he wished he’d never met her.
Now the reason for his unhappiness and confusion was on the phone with him. She missed him, she said, and he had to agree that he missed her too. Despite their combative relationship, at the core of it all they really did love each other. If only things could have been different, they mused. He wanted to see the best in her. That’s just the way he was wired; he looked for the best in people. She said she was sorry for the way it had gone on their honeymoon, and if it had been up to her, she would just as soon have been alone with him, “somewhere… anywhere.” After piling on endearment on top of endearment, sentiment on top of sentiment, the next thing Nicky knew, he and Elizabeth were trying to figure out how to spend time together.
As it happened, Nicky was to host a party in Palm Springs on Saturday night honoring a physician who was in town from Chicago, and while he was in the desert he hoped to take in some golf. Perhaps she could accompany him? She was delighted with the invitation and eagerly agreed. Within a matter of hours, he found himself sitting next to her in his red convertible, driving through the desert from Los Angeles to Palm Springs with the top down, her raven-colored hair blowing in the wind as she nuzzled into his shoulder. Impatient for each other, they stopped on the side of the road and, almost invisible in the ink-black desert night, made fierce love to one another in his car under desert stars. Now that the pressure and angst of their marriage had subsided, she was much harder for him to resist, and apparently she felt the same about him.
An hour later, once they arrived in the Springs, the couple checked into the Thunderbird Ranch and Country Club in nearby Rancho Mirage—the first eighteen-hole golf course there. Was the divorce still on? Yes, they decided. They should not be together. He had learned an important lesson about marriage; it was not to be entered into lightly. It could be said that, at least based on Taylor’s future matrimonial track record, this was a lesson she would never learn. For now, though, she was happy, as was he. That night, in a quaint ranch-style cottage—far away from the prying press and from overzealous fans—Nicky Hilton and Elizabeth Taylor, still for all intents and purposes Mrs. and Mrs. Conrad Hilton, were together… and completely alone, the way he had always wanted it.
PART SIX
Spoils of the Rich and Famous
America’s Dad
On November 21, 1950, Conrad Hilton addressed the National Conference of Christians and Jews at his Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. He called the speech “The Battle for Freedom,” and as he would later observe in his autobiography, Be My Guest, it “came from a heart filled with a deep and abiding love for and faith in our country and our way of life.”
“The essence of Communism is the death of the individual and the burial of his remains in a collective mass,” Conrad intoned to those attending the conference at the Waldorf. Continuing the train of thought, he added, “This is a crucial time in the destiny of our nation, in the destiny of mankind. The remaining free peoples of the world must be strengthened and defended. In this struggle for freedom, at home and abroad, our greatest weapon, both a sword and a shield, will be our love of, and faith in, God.”
Conrad Hilton had agonized over this speech for a number of weeks, later admitting that he felt his delivery perhaps “lacked persuasion and the professional polish to put it across.” Yet he never questioned his qualifications to render such a speech. He always felt a true and sincere calling to showcase his patriotism as well as his faith, and was never shy about doing so.
Apparently it was Hilton’s friend the hotelier Henry Crown who helped persuade him that his “Battle of Freedom” speech was well worth sharing, that it deserved to be heard. As the oft-told story goes, Crown met with Conrad at his home to debate whether or not Hilton should have a platform for more than just the buying and selling of hotels, but to actually impact the country—maybe even the world—with his thoughts and views about politics and religion. Crown and Conrad talked at length about Conrad’s mission—and that was the word Conrad often used, “mission,” when it came to sharing more than just his hospitality with the nation. Hilton had a real need to speak out against Communism, and he believed that he could be a persuasive spokesman in that regard. This isn’t to say that he was a boastful or even extremely outgoing man. He wasn’t. But when it came to speaking out for his beloved country, he wasn’t the least bit hesitant. His biggest concern was that if he was going to be viewed as someone to whom people should pay heed, he wanted to be sure that his message was well crafted. If he had any apprehensions about his speech, they had to do with whether or not it was strong enough.
As it turns out, Conrad’s fears were unfounded. Not only would his speech resonate with those present to hear it, but “The Battle for Freedom” would soon be printed and reprinted in newspapers and magazines across the country, resulting in thousands of letters coming in to him, as Hilton later noted, “from every corner of the land and from people in all walks of life.” He recalled, “The receipt of these letters was one of the great inspirational experiences of my life. I was profoundly impressed with the depth of feeling which they expressed.”
Hilton would call one of those many letters “as important as any I have received in my life.” It was from a young boy named Daniel Paolucci, who wrote, “I have read your talk in the Herald Tribune, and I think it was
wonderful. Especially that our faith in God was our only hope. You are right, and I think if everyone would fall down and pray we would have real peace.” It was thus that Hilton would be inspired to compose a speech that would eventually become first known as “Uncle Sam’s Peace Prayer,” and then better known as “America on Its Knees.”
Hilton, with his unapologetic dedication to the American ideal and his devotion to God, saw prayer as the primary solution not only to obtaining peace but also to neutralizing the insidious agenda of Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. With his campaign against alleged Communists, McCarthy had created a kind of demagogic terrorism that shook the principles upon which this country was founded. (The reckless manner by which the senator continued to make accusations of disloyalty without much proof, or based on very slight evidence, would become known as “McCarthyism.”) Not only did Hilton hope that “America on Its Knees” might encourage national patriotism, he also hoped it would influence Americans to stand strong in the face of McCarthy’s fearmongering.
In “America on Its Knees,” Conrad intoned, “We pray that you save us from ourselves. The world that you made for us to live in peace, we have made into an armed camp. We live in fear of war to come. We’re afraid of a terror that flies by night and the arrow that flies by day. We have left your altars to serve the false gods of money and pleasure and power.” Hilton prayed for God’s guidance to “fill us with new faith, new strength and new courage, that we may win the battle for peace. Be swift to save us, Dear God, before the darkness falls.”
“America on Its Knees” was broadcast nationally on May 7, 1952, and later published on July 4 of that year. Hilton also appeared on Ralph Edwards’s television program, This Is Your Life, that same year to deliver his prayer, standing on a stage by himself in a striped tie and black jacket, looking more like a minister than a hotelier.
Later, in an address given at the meeting of the American Hotel Association on October 10, 1952, in St. Louis, Conrad noted, “Within twenty-four hours after ‘America on Its Knees’ was in print, I was deluged with letters and requests for copies of this pictorial message. From almost every country in the world, from every state in the Union, from the old and the young, from rich and poor, from military and civilian, from cynics and the unsophisticated, from philosophers and advertising men, from rabbis, ministers and priests, from wise men and crackpots from every level of society, from children of eight to oldsters of ninety-two, came requests for one hundred and sixty thousand reprints, and messages that sometimes brought tears to my eyes.”
Stewart Armstrong, who would go on to work with Nicky Hilton in the Inns Division of the Hilton Hotels Corporation, recalled, “As affable as he was, you couldn’t be in a room with Conrad Hilton and not feel the weight of his growing influence. I know that Nicky was conscious of it, too. ‘I try not to think about it,’ he once told me. ‘I already don’t feel like I’m worthy to be at the same dinner table with the man; how am I supposed to feel when I see him on television or hear him on the radio reciting that prayer for so many millions of citizens? It’s daunting,’ he told me. ‘So I try not to think about it.’ But I also know that Nicky was extremely proud of his pop. There were many times when I was with him and Barron and Eric, and the sons would say, ‘Can you believe this thing?’ talking about the impact Conrad was having on the entire country. ‘How in the world did this happen?’ Eric would say. ‘It seems unbelievable. I mean, he’s just… Dad.’ But while that was true at home, on the national stage Conrad Hilton had become a lot more than that, influential in ways that none of us could ever have anticipated at the time. In some ways, you might say he had become America’s Dad.”
Casa Encantada
In December 1950, around Christmas and his sixty-third birthday, Conrad Hilton purchased the grand estate that would for the next three decades be known as Casa Encantada, or House of Enchantment. This was an opulent two-story, 35,000-square-foot modern Georgian mansion, which sat on eight and a half lush acres at 10644 Bellagio Road in Bel-Air.
Before he made the final decision to buy the estate, Conrad asked to be able to spend a morning there alone to meditate and pray in its surroundings. Despite the place’s enormity—seventeen bedrooms and twenty-six bathrooms!—Hilton still felt a great sense of peace on the premises, with its floor-to-ceiling windows inviting the outdoors into each and every room. He simply knew he had to own it. The home, which was perched on a hill overlooking the Bel-Air Country Club, had cost more than $2 million to build during the Depression in 1938, which would be about $20 million by today’s standards. Conrad bought it at a steal for just $250,000, furnished. This purchase afforded a jubilant conclusion to what had been a difficult 1950 for the Hilton family, primarily because of what Nicky had gone through with Elizabeth Taylor. As soon as Conrad bought the estate, Nicky moved into it. It was so big, father and son rarely even saw one another.
“In a word, it was spectacular,” Zsa Zsa Gabor once said of Casa Encantada. “Conrad had great taste, I will say that much for him. It was a palace.” Indeed, according to photographs taken of the property when Conrad lived at Casa Encantada, the home was lavishly and tastefully furnished. In the entrance hall were found fourteenth-century bronze statues of Devi and Siva from India. A pair of Ming vases from ancient China stood in the foyer. Blanc de chine vases from Denmark adorned the parlor. The drawing room featured eighteenth-century panels painted by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, a favorite artist of Conrad’s, who died in 1805. An eighteenth-century Viennese clock was a stunning centerpiece in the enormous, high-ceilinged drawing room with its panoramic view of the country club. A grand semicircular staircase led from the first floor to the second. Upstairs, Conrad’s master bedroom suite looked as if it had been decorated for a king, boasting gold silk walls with matching bedspreads and draperies, along with gold cashmere carpeting. In one corner of the room stood a green Italian marble fireplace.
Conrad would say that every time he looked around at the ostentatious surroundings, he couldn’t help but think of his beloved mother, Mary Laufersweiler Hilton, and how absolutely amazed she would have been by such a palace. He also knew that she would have thought it was much too excessive for her son—and he would have agreed—but still, she would have been impressed. She likely would have marveled at how far the family had come from the small adobe home in New Mexico in which she had raised her children.
Many visitors would say that Casa Encantada looked more like one of Conrad’s jaw-dropping hotels than it did anyone’s home. Once, when Conrad’s granddaughter Linda (Eric’s daughter) was a small girl, she took a wrong turn in the house and was hopelessly lost. “Somehow, I got separated from the pack,” she recalled many years later. “Probably something shiny caught my eye, and then I was lost. I really didn’t think anybody was ever going to find me.” As she walked from one enormous room to the next, the young girl became more and more frightened. Compared to the modest eight-room home in which she and her family lived in Texas, this house with its sixty-one rooms provided quite a culture shock. At one point, Linda stumbled upon one of the elevators, but she was afraid to get into it because, as she would recall, it reminded her of a coffin. “It was all so freaky,” she recalled, laughing at the memory. “I just remember being lost in this big, big house and hoping to somehow catch up with everybody else. I just remember that you had to stay close when there was a party, or you’d never be seen again.”
The Los Angeles Times once noted of Casa Encantada that it was “one of the finest homes west of the Mississippi.” But maybe Nicky Hilton put it best when he said at the time, “I look around here and I think to myself, ‘Jesus Christ! Will you just look at what my pop has been able to do with his life?’ I mean, if this isn’t the good life, I don’t know what is.”
“He’s Getting Worse”
The surroundings may have been plush, but that didn’t necessarily mean that everyone living at Casa Encantada was happy. “I don’t care, just give me a cup of coffee, pour some brandy in it,
and get off my back,” Nicky Hilton—now twenty-three—hissed one morning. He didn’t look well. It appeared that he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. His dark hair, usually so meticulously styled, was disheveled and looked unwashed. There were dark circles and bags under his eyes. Wearing a short white terrycloth robe, he had a lit cigar hanging from his lips. Slumped in a chair at a table in the massive kitchen of the Hilton estate, he glared at the chief maid of the household, Maria de Amaté, through glassy eyes.
Maria and her husband, Juan, a groundskeeper, lived on the premises. Their little girl, Connie, was often seen playing in a sandbox with the children of other maids and butlers, most of whom didn’t live at the estate but often came to work with their parents. On this morning, Maria was working with another maid, Delores Hall, in the kitchen when she found Nicky, looking as he usually did these days—melancholy and hungover. She had merely asked what he wanted for breakfast when he snapped at her. “Yes, Mr. Hilton,” she said, ignoring as best she could his abrupt outburst. She then poured him a cup of hot coffee.
“What are you so nervous about?” Nicky asked irritably. Apparently he noticed a slight tremble of her hands. But she wasn’t at all nervous. Maria suffered from severe arthritis, especially in the mornings, and was just having trouble holding the heavy, coffee-filled pot. “Look at you,” Nicky said with an air of disgust. “What are you doing still working here if you can’t even pour a pot of coffee?” That was enough. After all, he was not the lord of the manor. Maria put the coffeepot down on the table with a thud. “You may get away with talking to the others around here like that,” she said. Though she spoke with an accent, her voice was steady and firm. “But you will respect me, Mr. Hilton. I won’t have you talking to me like that.”
The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty Page 19