The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty

by Taraborrelli, J. Randy

  “I don’t know. I have a lot of questions.”

  “The only question you need to ask yourself,” Bill offered, “is: ‘Do I love him?’ ”

  “Yes,” she answered without hesitation. There was no doubt about that in her heart. She loved him very much, and she was quite sure he loved her as well. “But is love enough?” she asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Bill said, laughing. He was a pragmatic man. In his world, people simply fell in love and got married. They didn’t examine complex emotions, pick them apart, and try to understand them. He’d been happily married to his wife, Stella, for many years and just wanted the same for his sister. “I say let people think what they want,” he concluded. “You and Conrad know the truth, and that’s all that matters.”

  Bill’s simplicity on the matter seemed to cut through Frances’s qualms, clearing out the overanalyzing that had clouded her decision making. “Okay,” Frances decided. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to say yes! Can you believe it?” she asked, barely able to contain her growing excitement. “Can you believe that I am going to marry Conrad Hilton?”

  Best Friend’s Advice

  Every morning for more than twenty years, Frances Kelly and her best friend, Helen Lamm, would attend 6:30 mass at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Westwood. Helen had worked for Fawcett Publications from 1940 to 1955, first as a secretary and then as the coordinator of celebrities for commercial endorsements. Now she was an employee of Kelly Girl, the successful temporary employment agency.

  Helen had met Frances at a Kelly Girl convention at the Beverly Hills Hotel back in 1960. The company had hired a spokesman from United Airlines to lecture its employees on how a woman should pack for a trip. This idea may sound a bit strange today, but back in the 1950s and early 1960s, traveling by airplane was still a daunting adventure for the average American. With travel becoming such a major part of the lives of everyone, advice on how to pack for a trip was actually something people found useful and valuable. The woman sent by United to give the talk? Frances Kelly.

  “A woman should be able to travel the entire country with a single suitcase,” she told the group while standing behind a lectern. Addressing her mostly female audience, she demonstrated the most efficient ways to fold clothing, where to put high heels in the suitcase, and how to pack as many outfits as possible in one suitcase.

  As songs like Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” and “Mack the Knife” played on the hotel’s sound system at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool, Frances and Helen shared cocktails and life stories under the sun and became fast friends. They remained so all of these years later. Their daily church ritual was a big part of their friendship. All of that changed, though, when Frances met Conrad. Now, suddenly, Frances was going to mass with him every morning.

  “Of course I thought it odd,” recalled Helen. “But I had met Connie—though I always felt odd calling him that, and preferred ‘Mr. Hilton’—and had many dinners at his lovely home with Frannie. I knew how much she liked him; they were so darling together. I thought, ‘How wonderful that she has met a new friend’; it’s so difficult to meet new friends at our age. That’s all I thought it was, a nice friendship.”

  One afternoon in the spring of 1976, Frances telephoned Helen to suggest that they go to mass together the next day, “like old times.” When Helen picked up Frances at her apartment at 512 Kelton Avenue in Westwood, she couldn’t help but notice the unwavering, radiant smile on her face. Ordinarily, Frances was a lighthearted person who enjoyed life to the fullest, but on this day, according to what Helen would remember, Frances seemed particularly “jaunty.” Helen suspected something was up, but the two old friends attended mass as usual. Afterward, they sat in the car for a moment in the church’s parking lot. Frances was beaming by this time, seeming ready to burst with some sort of good news. “I have something I have just been dying to tell you,” she said.

  “What’s that, Frannie?”

  “You know that gentleman I’ve been going to mass with—Mr. Conrad Hilton?” Frances began.

  “Yes?”

  “Well,” she said, pausing for a moment. “I am going to marry him!”

  Helen could not have been more surprised. “What!” she exclaimed as she leaned over to embrace her friend. “I knew you were friends, and I knew you liked him and he liked you, but I had no idea…”

  Frances’s smile grew even broader.

  Helen was silent for a moment. “How did this happen?” she finally managed to say.

  “I don’t even know how to explain it,” Frances began. She said that what she felt for Conrad was different from the way she had ever felt about any other man. “And at my age,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Why, I’m sixty-one!”

  “Well, how old is he?”

  “He’s…” She hesitated. “I think he’s, perhaps, eighty-seven or eighty-eight?” She posed it like a question rather than an answer. “Is that too big an age difference, Helen?” she asked. “Please tell me. Am I being an old fool?”

  “Oh, pish-posh,” Helen answered. “You are never too old to fall in love.”

  As in her telephone conversation with her brother, Frances’s exuberant mood quite suddenly shifted. Her nagging doubts had returned. “You know, his lifestyle is nothing like anything I have ever experienced,” she observed. She wondered if she would be able to fit into his world of wealth and privilege, power and prestige. For instance, when Conrad wanted to go somewhere, he just boarded his own private jet and took off. He had told her that he hadn’t been on a commercial airliner in thirty years! “I don’t know if I could live like that, Helen! You know how we are,” she concluded. “We’re just ordinary girls.”

  “Speak for yourself!” Helen shot back, feigning umbrage. She then turned serious and looked her friend directly in the eyes. “Let me ask you one question, Frannie: Why should you settle for an ordinary life when you can have… an extraordinary life?”

  Frances had to admit that her good friend had a point.

  “Well, then I say yes! Do it, Frannie,” exclaimed Helen. “Marry this man before he changes his mind,” she joked.

  “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do,” Frances concluded, her courage once again boosted by a close and trusted person in her life. “God help me, Helen, because it looks like I’m going to be a blushing bride at the ripe old age of sixty-one.”

  “Please, can I ask you just one favor?” Helen asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Don’t wear white, Frannie! Please!”

  At that, the two best friends burst into laughter.

  Family Concerns

  While Frances Kelly’s friends and family were unequivocally happy that she was marrying Conrad, that view wasn’t exactly shared by some of those in Conrad’s family—at least not at first. When Conrad introduced Frances to Barron and Marilyn and to Eric and Pat, they all found her to be perfectly charming. No one wanted Conrad to be alone, as he had been for so many years, and they were all happy that he had finally found someone with whom he could share his life. However, this wasn’t the typical scenario of an elderly single parent having a last shot at love. No matter how lonely Conrad had been, there were legitimate practical concerns to a potential union for him. What would it mean to the corporation, to its assets, and to its heirs if Conrad were to now suddenly marry? While it was a delicate subject, it was one that could not be avoided and had to be addressed early on. “Some people worried that [Frances] might be a gold digger,” recalled Tom Parris, a former Hilton Hotels Corporation vice president. “Certain members of the family were upset.”

  “My mom told me that, yes, there was worry when Frances began dating Conrad, mostly from Barron, not so much from Eric,” said Anna Fragatos, whose mother, Evelyn, was also a close friend of Frances in Los Angeles. “After all, he was worth a half billion dollars. Was she a gold digger? That was the question a lot of people were asking at the time.”

  According to well-placed sources in the Kelly fam
ily, a meeting was held at Barron’s home to discuss Conrad’s engagement shortly after he asked Frances for her hand in marriage. Because Barron Hilton wanted Conrad to be happy and have love in his life, he took no issue with his father’s wanting to remarry; he had met Frances and felt she was a kind person. Still, he felt it prudent to err on the side of caution and have some legal document in place protecting the family and the company in case of divorce. After all, there were hundreds of millions of dollars at stake. It stands to reason that as head of the company, Barron would be concerned.

  Another issue was Conrad’s age; he was going to turn eighty-eight in December. There was a question as to the logic of complicating his will at a time so close to what was likely to be the end of his life. According to the Kelly family, the question was posed: Why couldn’t Frances just move into Casa Encantada and she and Conrad live happily as companions for however many years they had left together?

  Marilyn had already discussed with Conrad the possibility of simply living with Frances, gently bringing up the subject over lunch with him just a week earlier. It turned out that he had a good reason, he said, for wanting to marry Frances.

  Now that his first wife, Mary, was gone, his union to Zsa Zsa was totally invalid—at least according to the tenets of the Catholic Church, which had never recognized it anyway. Conrad was now free to marry in the church once again, which was something he wanted more than anything else at this time in his life. He said it would mean the world to him. “So I think we have to let him have it,” Marilyn said. “I mean, how can we deny him this wish?”

  It was decided then to proceed with caution and to be discreet. Though no one wanted to upset Conrad or insult Frances, there was nothing wrong, it was concluded, in having a reasonable prenuptial agreement in place and ready for their signatures.

  The Thorn in His Side

  I’ve enjoyed quite a few accomplishments in my life,” Conrad Hilton was saying. “But do you want to know what I think was a real achievement?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye. He was sitting at the bar in his home with his future brother-in-law, Bill Kelly.

  “What’s that?” Bill asked.

  Conrad waited a beat to deliver the punch line: “The fact that I got out of my marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor for only $35,000.” (This figure does not include five years of monthly alimony already paid to Zsa Zsa.)

  “But that’s a hell of a lot of money, Connie,” Bill exclaimed.

  “Well, at the time it really was,” Conrad said. “It’s peanuts today. But believe you me, she has never let me forget it,” he said. “That woman has been a thorn in my side for thirty years now.”

  “Well, ex-wives will do that,” Bill said with a conspiratorial grin.

  Conrad nodded his head. He then fell silent for a moment, seeming to slip down into his thoughts. “The fact that I married her is a mystery to me now, I have to admit,” he finally said. “It was the biggest mistake of my life. But at the time, I just wanted her so badly. I just had to have her,” he recalled. “However, you know what they say,” he concluded with a wince. “Be careful what you wish for…”

  “You just may get it,” Bill finished.

  At that, the two men clinked their glasses.

  With his marriage to Frances Kelly quickly approaching and the reality of wedded happiness at long last within his grasp, Conrad Hilton couldn’t help but feel wistful about his two earlier marriages. However, it really wasn’t his marriage to his first wife, Mary, that occupied his thoughts these days. Rather, it was the one to Zsa Zsa that frequently haunted him, especially after he became serious with Frances. With his new marriage in the offing, the subject of Zsa Zsa kept coming up for one reason or another, such as when Conrad joked about his settlement with her to Bill Kelly.

  On one of Conrad and Frances’s Sunday drives together, they came upon the house Conrad had owned in Bel-Air back in the days when he was married to Zsa Zsa. He mentioned to Frances that he liked the simpler ranch house better than massive Casa Encantada because it was “cozier” and suited him more. “And see that tree right over there?” Conrad told Frances as they drove slowly past the estate. “That very tree was watered by the tears of Zsa Zsa Gabor when I told her I couldn’t marry her.”

  For her part, ever since her divorce from him in 1946, Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was fifty-nine in 1976, still harbored a great deal of resentment about marriage to and divorce from Conrad, but, true to her nature, had managed to turn some of it into comedy. “Conrad Hilton was generous to me in the divorce settlement,” she would say. “He gave me five thousand Gideon Bibles.” (She once used that line in her Las Vegas act, with Conrad in the audience. “So why didn’t you read one, then?” he cracked out loud from his seat, to the delight of the crowd.)

  By 1976, Zsa Zsa had been married seven times—once before Conrad, and five after him. The sixth marriage, to Jack Ryan, creator of the Barbie doll, ended in 1976 in an acrimonious divorce. Three days after her divorce from Ryan, on August 27, 1976, Zsa Zsa married Irish American attorney Michael O’Hara, her seventh and present husband. The couple lived in Bel-Air.

  Zsa Zsa was still famous as a talk show guest, but the money she made appearing on such programs was negligible—a few hundred dollars an appearance, at best. That said, she was still a wealthy woman, worth about $6 million at this time, due not only to her earlier career but also to settlements along the way from a string of well-to-do husbands.

  Though she’d been married many times, Conrad hadn’t married again since his union to Zsa Zsa. Now that his first wife, Mary, was gone, Zsa Zsa always figured that when Conrad passed away she would be the widow apparent. It was her hope, then, that there would be some provision for her in Conrad’s will. It would have been more than welcome. However, she had her own money and she didn’t actually need his—and she had always maintained as much. It was her daughter, Francesca—who was twenty-six at the time—about whom she was most concerned. It was for that reason that she never pushed Conrad too far, never pressed him too hard on the issue of money. She would bide her time, careful never to alienate him and jeopardize her daughter’s possible inheritance—though at times she certainly did come close.

  This uneasy truce changed dramatically when Mary Frances Kelly came into the family. Now, with word of Conrad’s engagement spreading, Zsa Zsa realized that she would no longer be the most recent wife, that she would be nothing more than the second wife—of thirty years ago! One day in his office, in front of witnesses, Zsa Zsa peppered Conrad with questions about his fiancée. For instance, she wanted to know Frances’s age. Conrad answered honestly. At sixty-one, Frances was two years older than Zsa Zsa. “My goodness, Connie! It’s so May-December, isn’t it?” Zsa Zsa asked. “Well, I think you are an old fool to get married at your age,” she added. Conrad shot back, “And I think your romantic experience does not qualify you for an opinion.”

  It could be said that Francesca was at this time on thin ice where Conrad was concerned. He had already expressed doubt as to her paternity—and that was when her mother had a real (or, it could even be argued, imagined) place in his life. Now that he was engaged to Frances, the question became, how would the new arrangement impact Francesca and her inheritance?

  Of course, logically, one would think that Frances’s place in Conrad’s life should have had no effect whatsoever on Francesca’s inheritance. However, in fairness to Zsa Zsa, it had long ago become necessary to suspend all logic and reason when it came to the subject of money and how Conrad Hilton saw fit to distribute it to family members. Always true to his antithetical nature, Conrad was quite philanthropic when it came to his favorite charities, while at the same time relatively parsimonious with his own relatives. Simply put, Zsa Zsa was worried that the money she expected to secure Francesca’s future—and maybe a little of her own, too—might now go to Frances and to members of her family. Indeed, it was around the time that Frances came into the picture that Zsa Zsa began to become even more concerned about her only daughter’s inter
ests.

  The Marital Agreement

  During the early days of Conrad Hilton’s courtship with Frances Kelly, rumors began to circulate within the family that he was thinking of marrying her. Barron made it clear right off that he believed some sort of prenuptial agreement should be in place. This was not unreasonable. However, Conrad Hilton, for all his business savvy, was adamantly opposed to any such agreement. He simply wanted to marry Frances and, as he put it to one family member, “let the chips fall where they may.” Sources in Frances’s family say that when Conrad and Frances sat down with one of the Hilton lawyers who had drawn up the prenuptial document, Conrad flatly refused to sign it. “Oh, just sign the darn thing,” Frances reportedly told him. “It’s okay, Connie. Truly it is.” Still, he would not sign it.

  At the time, there were some who felt that Conrad wasn’t thinking clearly, blaming it on his advancing years. Others just took him at his word when he said that he didn’t want to embarrass or humiliate his fiancée by entering into a contract with her. He said that he believed her when she said she didn’t want anything from him but his love, and he didn’t want to act as if he were challenging her in that regard. While that may have been a romantic way to look at things, with possibly hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, the Hilton Corporation’s board of directors—not just Barron—had good reason to want that prenuptial agreement in place.

  Again according to Hilton/Kelly family history, one of the Hilton Corporation’s lawyers met with Frances on his own, with Conrad not present. This attorney asked Frances if she would mind at least signing a declaration that would limit the money she would receive upon Conrad’s death, and also provide for her afterward. The document was called an “antenuptial,” which was basically another term for “prenuptial.” She said, yes, of course. To the Hiltons, her agreeing to sign such a declaration spoke volumes about her intentions where Conrad was concerned.