The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

by Taraborrelli, J. Randy

  “Jolie explained to me what’s going on,” Conrad told Zsa Zsa once she got on the line, “and I think you should do the program. Trust me.”

  Zsa Zsa could not have been more surprised. Never would she have expected his encouragement, especially after some of the terrible things they’d said to each other in recent years. “I can’t believe you are telling me this,” she said. “Really, Connie? You sink I should?”

  “From the moment I met you,” he told her, “I knew you were something special. There’s no one like Zsa Zsa, my dear. You are one of a kind, for better or worse,” he added with a chuckle. “I think it’s time to let America in on our little secret. So, I say do it, Georgia.”

  She was immediately brought to tears, especially by his calling her “Georgia,” which he hadn’t done in years. She thanked him profusely and made up her mind: She was going to give it a try. What did she have to lose?

  Zsa Zsa Finds Her Niche

  If ever a woman was an overnight sensation, it was Zsa Zsa Gabor, thanks to Bachelor’s Haven. Wearing a stunning black off-the-shoulder Balenciaga gown, a large diamond bracelet, matching earrings, and a twenty-carat solitaire, she was an instant hit, not just because of her glamorous appeal but also because of her wicked sense of humor. “My goodness, look at those diamonds,” the show’s host, Johnny Jacobs, said. “Oh, these?” Zsa Zsa said dismissively, holding her hand out for inspection. “These are just my vorking diamonds.” From that moment on, she had the audience in the palms of her silk-gloved hands. “All I know is that my career was handed to me on a silver platter,” she would say.

  Though the show was a West Coast broadcast, reports of Zsa Zsa’s snappy, irreverent answers and her quick sense of humor soon spread across the country, thanks to newspaper and radio coverage. After the first segment, she was asked to become a regular on the program.

  One woman wrote in to the show, “I’m breaking my engagement to a wealthy man. He gave me a beautiful home, a mink coat, diamonds, a stove, and an expensive car. What shall I do?”

  Zsa Zsa shot back, “Give him back the stove.”

  Another woman complained that her husband was a traveling salesman, “but I know he strays even when I’m home. How can I stop him?” she asked. “Dah-ling, shoot him in the legs,” Zsa Zsa suggested.

  Still another man wrote in that he was a bachelor who had a great many oil wells, and he wondered if he should marry since he had just turned fifty. Zsa Zsa thought it over for a moment and answered, “For this man, life is just beginning. He is just now becoming interesting. I do not sink I should give him advice. In fact, I sink I should see this man… personally.”

  She continued to bring down the house; the Hollywood Reporter dubbed her “the most beautiful girl to ever be on a television screen.” She would even be nominated for an Emmy for her work on Bachelor’s Haven.

  “Looking back, I realize that all I did was do what I have always done: flout convention and say what I really think, no matter the consequences—and poke fun at myself while doing it,” Zsa Zsa recalled. “Noël Coward used to say that he had a talent to amuse. It seemed that I had a talent—of sorts—to shock in a comical way and to ad-lib without the help of script writers. I found it was much better being myself than trying to be someone else. So, no matter what I was doing or how I was doing it, it was always honest, always… me.”

  In October 1951, Zsa Zsa appeared on the cover of Life magazine, looking gorgeous in a studio-posed black-and-white photograph. This was a huge career boost, of course, though she was used to being in the press. Along with Life, she would also find herself on the cover of Collier’s, Paris Match, and the London Picture Post, all in one month’s time. The primary reason for all of the attention this time, though, was not because of one of her marriages or some personal scandal, but rather a result of her work on Bachelor’s Haven. To commemorate the publication of the Life magazine spread, Zsa Zsa hosted a spectacular party at her home—and offered each of the guests a signed copy. “Mah-vellous,” Conrad said, imitating her accent, when Zsa Zsa gave him his magazine. She was visibly happy to have his approval. “Are you proud of me?” she asked him. “I certainly am,” he told her. “You found your niche, my dear. Now make lots and lots of money.” That sounded like a good plan to her.

  From this time onward, it would be a rapid rise to the top for Zsa Zsa Gabor, beginning when MGM offered her a film role in Lovely to Look At, the adaptation of the Broadway musical Roberta. It wasn’t a big role—she played Mignon, the French maid—but it made a huge impression on the public, as well as on her bank account, because she was paid $10,000 for the job, a huge amount of money at that time. All of her lines were in French, with English subtitles. (Conrad’s companion Ann Miller was also in the film.) Zsa Zsa would then have starring roles in no less than eighteen more movies throughout the 1950s, including the role as singer Jane Avril in a performance many still consider to be her best, the Academy Award–winning Moulin Rouge (directed by John Huston), as well as Lili, We’re Not Married, and The Story of Three Loves. In 1958, she would become known for starring in the campy science fiction cult film Queen of Outer Space.

  There’s never really been anyone quite like Zsa Zsa. “It’s funny, I met Courtney Love the other day at the market,” her daughter, Francesca, has said. “I was getting her autograph for my stepdaughter, and I told her my mother is Zsa Zsa Gabor. She said, ‘Oh my God! How cool is that?’ ”

  Filling Elizabeth’s Shoes

  Though the sky seemed to be the limit for the ever-ascending Zsa Zsa Gabor, the same couldn’t be said for her former stepson Nicky Hilton and his lovely fiancée, Betsy von Furstenberg. Within a couple of months, Betsy got the full picture of what a future with Nicky would be like… and it wasn’t good. “He was so complex,” she said. “On one hand I had never met anyone who believed so strongly in others. As competitive as he was with Barron, I could truly see that he wanted the best for him, and for his dad, and for all of his friends. He was so sweet like that. But the problem for me was that he had no motivation,” she remembered. “He still had his important position at the Bel-Air Hotel, but he was hardly there and I can’t even imagine how he kept the job. I was no help. I was too young. I didn’t know what to do.”

  The memory of Elizabeth Taylor was proving to be another kind of problem. She was not the sort of woman a man easily forgets. “He was tormented by the failure of his marriage to Elizabeth,” Betsy said. “He once told me that she was his first love and that he didn’t think he would ever be able to get over her. I felt he had somewhat romanticized the relationship, that it hadn’t been as good as he believed it had been in retrospect. Whenever we would fight, he would call me by her name. I was walking in her shadow.

  “I remember once we went to a movie theater for an opening and we found out she was there as well, sitting somewhere behind us. Nicky didn’t want to run into her. ‘Let’s just wait for her to leave,’ he said, almost begging me. So we waited and waited, but as it happened, she was waiting us out too! Finally, the theater was nearly empty and she was still sitting with someone, waiting for us to come up the aisle, I guess so that she could have a good look at me. We said hello, and that was it. From that moment on, the evening was ruined for us because Nick fell into a deep depression. I did begin to feel that I would always just be filling Elizabeth’s shoes.”

  In early 1952, when MGM opted not to renew Betsy’s movie contract, she decided to return to New York to appear in a show there called Dear Barbarians. She would be back and forth between Manhattan and Los Angeles for the next six months, but it was clear that her relationship with Nick was on the wane. He was sad, but he said that he had given up on finding happiness. “Maybe I’m just not meant to be happy,” he told his friend Bob Neal.

  “How can you say that, Nick?” Bob asked. “You have the world by the balls! You’re living the dream, pal,” he exclaimed. “You got money. You got power. Your family is sitting on top of the whole world. The rest of us, we’re all do
wn here wishing we were Hiltons.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better… or worse?” Nicky asked.

  “You just have to get out of this goddamn mausoleum,” Bob told him, according to his memory of the conversation. “You have to bounce back, man. Listen to me. Elizabeth Taylor is not thinking about you. I guarantee it. No way is that crazy broad thinking about you, Nick. She’s out getting laid somewhere. And you know it’s true.”

  “Shut up, Bob,” Nicky said angrily. “Don’t say that about Elizabeth.”

  “Look, I’m just telling you the truth,” Robert said.

  Nicky nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he conceded sadly. “But shut up anyway.”

  Assault

  In the spring of 1952, Conrad Hilton hosted a party at his home to celebrate the acquisition of his first hotel in Europe, the Castellana Hilton in Madrid, which would finally open on July 14, 1953. (In its first year of operation, the Castellana Hilton would bring in more than $1 million worth of U.S. tourists.)

  While a dozen flamenco dancers performed outside to the sounds of a thirty-piece orchestra, more than a hundred formally dressed Hilton employees from around the world feasted on a sumptuous buffet of Spanish cuisine. Wearing a dapper black suit, Conrad held court, along with his sons Barron and Nicky, also in finely tailored suits. Even Eric had flown up from Texas. “This was a time when men were men and women were women,” is how Betsy von Furstenberg, who was present, put it. “The gentlemen were always impeccable in their black or gray suits with crisp white shirts and black ties, the women gorgeous in their cocktail dresses with waists cinched so tightly we could hardly breathe. Everyone smoked. Everyone drank. Everyone drove off in cool cars. Everyone was sexy.” The star-studded affair boasted a guest list that included Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, James Stewart, and Doris Day. “About three hours into the party, Nick was pretty drunk on Dewar’s,” recalled Betsy, “as, of course, was I.”

  Barron looked at Nick with disapproval and wanted him out of the party. He was afraid Nick would embarrass himself and his father. “You’ve had too much to drink, Nick. Now, let me see to you,” Barron said as he pulled Nicky along by the elbow. But Nicky wasn’t having it. “I’m not a child,” he kept saying, “stop treating me like one.” Betsy followed the two of them into one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  “You’re in bad shape, Nick,” Barron said, according to what Betsy recalled. He asked Nicky to stay in the room and sleep it off.

  “Get bent!” Nicky shouted at his brother, using 1950s slang for “drop dead.” He added, “I’m not drunk, Barron. I know when I’m loaded and I’m not loaded. So get away from me!” From the way he slurred his words, he was clearly inebriated. He insisted that he was going to go back downstairs, because “Pop needs all of us down there, not just you, Barron. Me and Eric, too. Why are you trying to get all the attention?”

  “You can’t represent Dad this way,” Barron reasoned. Again, he asked him to just stay in the bedroom and sober up. Barron then summoned the maid, Maria, on the intercom system to ask her to bring a pot of black coffee to the room. Afterward, Barron tried to lead Nicky to a chair, gently pulling him along by his arm. But suddenly Nicky broke free. He then spun around and, in one quick motion, punched Barron right in the face with a powerful left hook. It was so quick and sudden, the three of them—Nicky, Barron, and Betsy—just stared at one another for a stunned moment. Almost instantly, Barron’s nose began to bleed. As soon as Nicky saw his younger brother’s white shirt become streaked with red, he crumbled. “Holy shit! I’m so sorry, Barron,” he said. He began to cry. “I can’t believe I hit my own brother.” Upset, Barron left the room.

  Though Betsy sat down next to Nicky and tried to console him, it was impossible. “I can’t believe I did that to Barron,” Nicky said, his head sunk low to his chest. “He’ll never forgive me.”

  “He’s your brother,” Betsy said. “Of course he will forgive you.”

  “But how can I forgive myself?” he asked, distraught. “I’m better than this, Betsy. I’m a Hilton. I’m better than this.”

  “Look, things got out of hand, that’s all,” Betsy said, trying to calm him down. “It’s okay, Nicky. It’s okay.”

  Though it obviously was not okay, for Nicky Hilton it was at least a wake-up call. The next day, he ended it with Betsy once and for all. “We’re not good for each other, baby,” he told her, sitting with her in his white convertible with the red interior. “I need some time alone to pull myself together.”

  She knew he was right. She had wanted to end it herself several times, but didn’t have the nerve. “I’m just going to worry about you so much,” she told him, her eyes filling with tears. “Just the thought that you’ll be out here doing whatever it is you’ll be doing, and I won’t know you’re okay. It kills me, Nick.”

  He smiled at her. “I feel the same way about you, baby.”

  “If I call you in the middle of the night and tell you I’m in big trouble, Nick, will you come?” she asked. “Will you show up?”

  “In a heartbeat,” he answered. “I’ll be there so fast, Betsy, your pretty little head will spin.”

  They kissed. She got out of the car. And that was the end of that.

  Now more determined than ever to straighten out his life, Nicky again made the decision to stop drinking, and also to stop with the pills. “That’s it,” he told Conrad and Barron. “I can’t let what happened the other night ever happen again. I’m done. I’m going to get clean.”

  Magic Words

  See, this is what happens when you’re bangin’ women with no sense,” Robert Wentworth was telling Nicky Hilton. It was about a week after the disastrous Hilton party and the two friends were chatting in the parlor of the Hilton estate. Wentworth was referring not only to Elizabeth Taylor but also to Betsy von Furstenberg. “These crazy broads, Nick, I’m telling you, they will ruin you, pal,” he said. “You got to set your sights higher. You got to get a better class of dame, Nick!”

  Nicky had to agree. “My old man always says that growing trouble is like a snowball rolling down a mountainside,” he said, taking a drag from a cigarette. “It just gets bigger and bigger until you put a stop to it. I got nothing to show for any of it but misery. Then I gave my own brother a knuckle sandwich!”

  “Guess we can’t really blame that on Betsy, though, can we?” Robert asked.

  “No, Bobby. We can’t,” Nicky agreed. “She’s a good kid. She really is.”

  For Nicky Hilton, it simply may have been a case of too much too soon. He was blessed with exceptional good looks and great wealth. He was given a stellar position at a prime location in his father’s business at an early age. As with everyone born with a silver spoon, he could have gone down one of several paths. Barron—with all the same privileges—got married, started a family, and had begun to build his own fortune. But Nicky succumbed to more wild and glitzy temptations. Still, as Robert Wentworth recalled it, “Elizabeth was history. Betsy was history We just chalked them up to having been two crazy broads from the unpredictable life and times of Nicky Hilton.”

  “You know, Bobby, I think maybe I was a little rough on Elizabeth,” Nicky suddenly said. Wentworth was surprised to hear him admit as much since he never had in the past. “Something just got a hold of me,” Nicky continued. “She made me so crazy. I’m not proud of the way I dealt with it. I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “Well, you can’t let it happen again, Nick,” Robert said. “It’s not good and you know it.”

  Nicky nodded but didn’t say anything. He seemed lost in thought for a few moments. Then he smiled. “You know, we were at a party once,” he said, now in a daydream about Elizabeth, “and she looked so beautiful. I remember I was across the room just staring at her and thinking what a lucky bastard I was. And she winked at me and mouthed something to me. I couldn’t figure out what she was saying; her lips were just moving. So I walked over to her, and I said, ‘What are you trying to say, baby? What is it?’ And she leaned in and w
hispered in my ear, ‘I’m not wearing any panties.’ ” He chuckled and slapped his knee. “God damn it! I just wanted to take her right then and there. Know what I mean?”

  The two friends shared a good laugh.

  “Well, a man can never hear that enough, I guess,” Robert Wentworth concluded.

  “Yeah,” Nicky agreed, laughing. “Those are some magic words, all right.”

  Mamie

  There’s something about this one, she’s different,” Nicky Hilton was telling his friend the actor John Carroll. “She’s smart. She’s a knockout, too. I really like her.” He and Carroll were sitting in Nicky’s apartment at 882 North Doheny Drive in Hollywood. It was the end of February 1954. After the physical altercation with Barron, Nicky decided to move out of Conrad’s home and take an apartment. He said he needed distance from his father, and a small apartment in Hollywood seemed the perfect refuge for him. Incidentally, Marilyn Monroe lived in the same complex, having moved there from the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1953. The apartment building, which had been built just two years earlier, was quite comfortable but modest, especially in contrast to his father’s opulent estate. No one knew for certain how many rooms were in Conrad’s Casa Encantada, but there was no question as to how many were in Nicky’s apartment—three: a living room that doubled as a bedroom, a kitchen, and a bathroom.