Off screen, she noted that he had resumed his affair with character actor Keenan Wynn, cast in the film as a cub reporter.
“I think I’ll skip that and have an omelet,” she said. She also turned down his invitation for the holiday in Dallas, but graciously thanked him anyway.
She found him blunt but amusing, and filled with colorful anecdotes from his early days, claiming, “Before I started buying every deluxe hotel in America, I sold coffins. And when I was growing up, Indians were still a problem. I lived in fear that out on the trail, they’d abduct me and turn me into a squaw. They often did that to young white men they captured. At our homestead, I slept with a gun under my pillow. If a redskin broke into our house, I’d send the bastard to that happy hunting ground in the sky.”
When Lana met Conrad Hilton, his marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor was crumbling. According to press reports, Conrad, a devout Catholic, had a lingering guilt about having married “such an international hussy,” and even insisted that they sleep in separate bedrooms.
During their courtship, Conrad one night had presented Zsa Zsa with her choice of either of two small gift boxes, each containing a diamond ring, from Tiffany’s. Apparently, he had configured the episode as a test that would determine if she were “the diamond-drenched caricature of a fortune-hunting blonde,” as depicted in the newspapers.
Clever fox that she was, Zsa Zsa opted for the smaller diamond during her acceptance of his proposal of marriage.
Zsa Zsa had already spread the word in Hollywood that in spite of his age, her husband “vas a vonderful lover, virile, vell-endowed, and masterful in bed. It’s more than ten inches long and ever so thick. Getting banged by him is like having a baby come through your womb.”
The next morning, instead of telling her what a wonderful night he’d had with her in bed, Conrad complained about the failure of his marriage to Zsa Zsa.
“She is the world’s most self-centered woman. She expects me to indulge her every whim. She has never forgiven me for putting her on a budget, a very strict budget.”
“I don’t know what kind of husband Conrad would make,” Lana said to Grey. “According to his reputation, he has a girl in every port. In his case, those “ports” include El Paso, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, and New York.”
He shared a late breakfast with her that morning in the lobby of his hotel. Finally, he got around to discussing their intimacies of the previous night. “That time with you was what I had expected when I married Zsa Zsa, who I plan to divorce.”
“Will you be looking for another wife any time soon?” she asked.
“Not right away. I don’t want to put down Zsa Zsa too much. Being wed to her brought me, in many ways, more laughter and gaiety than I’ve ever known. But it brought me more headaches and heartaches as well. It was a little like holding a Roman candle—beautiful and exciting, but you were never quite sure when it would go off. And it is surprisingly hard to live up to the Fourth of July every day.”
Although he had promised to take her dancing that night at the Stork Club, some emergency suddenly manifested itself in Texas, and he informed her of it with the news that he’d be flying away to the southwest that afternoon. Then he told her that his son, Nicky, would arrive at the hotel later that day. “I’msure the kid would love to escort the ever-gorgeous Lana Turner out for a night on the town. He specializes in movie stars.”
Unknown to both Lana and his father, Nicky had spent the previous night in Bel Air (California) in the bed of his stepmother, Zsa Zsa, who had told him—and later everybody else, too—that “He’s even better in bed than Connie, and I thought he was the greatest stud. I guess it’s his youth. He did, however, inherit his equipment from his father—and does he know how to use it!”
[After Lana’s return to Hollywood, Lana told Virginia Grey, “I knew Conrad was still burning to have me. I was flattered by his attention. After all, he was the most famous and one of the richest men in America. If I married him, I could continue my movie career, reign as Queen of MGM, and also become Empress of the Hilton Hotel chain, with free suites wherever I went.”]
***
The evening after her intimacies with his father, Nicky Hilton arrived in her suite at the Waldorf with the intention of escorting her to the Stork Club. Even though he had a reputation for violence against women, Lana was impressed with Nicky Hilton’s courtly manners and good looks.
Speaking in a soft Texan drawl, with a reputation as a playboy and for seducing movie stars, he was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a tailor-made suit from London’s Savile Row.
In their usual race to see which woman got him first—a game that Lana was playing with Joan Crawford—Crawford had already won, having seduced Nicky during one of her previous visits to Manhattan. She had booked a suite at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. As he told friends later, “We did it on the living room floor. It would have been a memorable experience, but she had the most awful breath.”
Nicky candidly admitted to Lana that he’d fallen in love with her after her appearance with Clark Gable in Somewhere I’ll Find You. “I fell asleep that night and dreamed that, in real life, I was the one holding you in my arms.”
She found Nicky a “clean-cut All-American boy. His wild eyes seemed to undress me, but I couldn’t hold that against him, now, could I?”
Although they dined on caviar and the world’s most tender steaks at the Stork Club, both of them admitted that they’d have happily settled for a hamburger smothered with onions at some joint.
They didn’t agree on everything. He named Ezio Pinza as his favorite singing star. She detested both him and his voice. In her future, she would display her utter disdain for Pinza when, in 1951, she co-starred with him in Mr. Imperium.
She knew very little about Nicky’s background He had dropped out of Baltimore’s Loyola College at the age of nineteen and joined the Navy. After some gay sailors spotted him nude in the shower, he attracted lots of propositions and an occasional lover. As he told Cary Grant, “I’m not really that much into guys. But I like it when they worship me and service me. They do all the work.”
He also told Grant, “My father is called ‘the man with 100,000 beds. My goal in life is to try each of them with a different partner.”
Even though the Hilton heir looked like he’d just graduated from college, he was a man of the world, having launched affairs with members of both sexes since he was fourteen years old. He was at ease with famous people, having spent his teenage years meeting (often seducing) industrial tycoons, presidents, senators, Texan oil men, movie stars, and fading members of the European aristocracy.
Although he almost never worked, he held two important positions—one of them Vice President of the Hilton Corporation; and the other as manager of the swanky Bel Air Hotel, an upscale jewel that he referred to as “my fuck pad.”
In time, either before or after Lana, Nicky spread his charms among Jeanne Crain, French actress Denise Darcel, Mamie Van Doren, Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, and such socialites as Kay Spreckles and Hope Hampton. Terry Moore reportedly said, “Making love to him was like fornicating with a horse. And such stamina!”
After a night of passion, Lana admitted to Virginia Grey, “I was ready to take him as my next husband, but Van Johnson warned me that he was a Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde kind of guy. He’s a gambler, a woman-beater, an alcoholic, a closeted heroin addict, and a sex maniac.”
Nicky never wanted to date Lana exclusively. Each managed to fit the other into their schedules during his visits to the West Coast. They were seen together riding along Bel Aire’s bridle paths, or at exclusive Hollywood parties. He escorted her to lavish dinners thrown by his rich and powerful friends. At one party, she met a rising politician, Richard Nixon. She would soon meet another rising politician, John F. Kennedy.
“Daddy Conrad” never dated her again, but was often seen out with her friend from MGM, tap-dancing Ann Miller. In her memoirs, Miller wrote, “Conrad and I were just good friends.”
After Lana’s “Weekend at the Waldorf” with hotel heir, Nicky Hilton, he later became the first husband of Elizabeth Taylor. The photo above depicts them at their wedding in 1950, a marriage that lasted less than a year.
During the course of his first date with Elizabeth’s blonde competitor, in Manhattan, Nicky couldn’t stop praising Lana’s looks. Adorned with diamonds, she wore an Irene-designed, magenta-colored gown with towering high heels in a style referred to in 1945 as “Joan Crawford fuck-me shoes.”
“If that’s what she wants to call it,” Lana quipped. “Such good friends, they sleep in the same bed in the same suite.”
Nicky would ultimately marry another friend of Lana’s, Elizabeth Taylor, in a “fantasy wedding” in 1950.
Lana was very cynical about the nuptials: ”Perhaps I was a little jealous,” Lana said. “After all, Nicky was a great lover and the most eligible bachelor in America. Every woman he took out, he screwed, and each of them, including Elizabeth, was a great beauty. He was wild with women and with the Hilton money.”
After eight months of marital horror, Elizabeth admitted to Lana, “The fucker often beats the shit out of me. He’s a big gambler, heavy drinker, a monster. We’re great in bed, but our troubles begin when I’m on the way to the bidet.”
That was a line she might have borrowed from Ava Gardner.
“I’m divorcing him,” Elizabeth, meeting with Lana in the makeup department at MGM, told her early one morning. “If you want him back, you can have him.”
“Thanks for the offer, dear, but I’ve moved on. As is obvious to all of us hapless gals, Nicky is just not husband material. Even if he marries again, he’ll never be true to one woman.”
“You and I should follow in Nicky’s footsteps,” Elizabeth said. “Why should we be faithful to just one man? That’s so old-fashioned. People call me a scarlet woman. I’m not…Color me purple!”
***
For a brief time during April of 1946, Lana told friends that Charles P. Jaeger, an executive of the American Broadcasting Company, “is my one and only.” A picture taken of them nightclubbing was published in newspapers across the country, and rumors persisted that marriage was imminent.
Back from a trip to New York, Lana phoned Louella Parsons. “Charlie is tall, very handsome, and oh so wonderful,” she gushed. “He really knows how to treat a lady. He’s just what I’ve been looking for all my life. Yes, he has proposed to me, but I haven’t made up my mind. I’m still thinking it over.”
On April 14, passengers spotted Lana and her infant daughter, Cheryl, aboard a TWA Constellation flight leaving Los Angeles heading for New York. Jaeger accompanied her.
At the Stork Club in Manhattan, Lana is seen dining and nightclubbing with ABC executive Charles P. Jaeger.
Hollywood insiders, most of them seeing pictures of Jaeger for the first time, didn’t quite consider him the male beauty Lana raved about. He was reasonably attractive and well-groomed, but hardly the matinee idol Lana had described to her friends.
After they arrived in Manhattan, Cheryl was transferred to the care of a nanny, as Lana made the rounds of the chic spots, including the Stork Club. Jaeger, ever so attentive, was at her side.
She had claimed that he proposed to her. But when questioned by reporters, he answered, “We’re just friends.”
On at least two separate occasions, they were seen theater-going together in New York, attending a performance of Born Yesterday, which would, in 1950, be adapted into a movie in which Judy Holliday would beat out frontrunners Gloria Swanson and Bette Davis for the coveted Oscar.
Jaeger also took Lana to a performance of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. At this point in his career, Williams was no longer an unknown, struggling over script details for Marriage Is a Private Affair. At this point, he was Broadway’s overnight sensation, and the most sought-after playwright in the entertainment industry. In her future, Lana would campaign for two coveted roles in plays he’d write, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth.
Lana and Jaeger didn’t seem on the same page about their upcoming wedding. On yet another occasion, he admitted that marriage might be in the offing, but it might take place “anywhere from a week to five years from now.”
However, when Lana was questioned, she said that the marriage was scheduled in less than a month. “I have always wanted to be a June bride.”
She made those remarks in New York. When questioned, after her return to Los Angeles, she said, “Mr. Jaeger and I know each other, but we’re not even engaged.”
Suddenly, Jaeger exited from Lana’s life, and Lana, the next week, was seen dating Huntington Hartford, one of the richest men in America and heir to a vast A&P fortune.
***
In 1946, photographers caught up with Lana and Huntington Hartford together at a nightclub in Miami. Again, as with Jaeger, there were rumors that marriage was imminent.
[One of them mocked her with rumors of having previously monogrammed her towels with “HH” when she thought that Howard Hughes was going to marry her.]
If Lana had married Huntington Hartford in 1946, she would have a choice of places where she could live. She would also be marrying a man who dated from the A-list. Before her, he’d bedded the two richest women on the planet: tobacco heiress Doris Duke and the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton.
After Lana, Marilyn Monroe would loom in his future. As he said when he was dating her, “If I went for Miss Turner, the blonde bombshell of the 1940s, why not the blonde bombshell of the 1950s, too?”
Hartford not only dated powerful women, but he forged friendships with powerful men, too. Among them were Errol Flynn, Richard Nixon, Aristotle Onassis, Howard Hughes, Charlie Chaplin, and John Jacob Astor VI. He was also “pals,” as he called them, with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
Hartford’s homes included villas at Cap d’Antibes and in Palm Beach, a flat in London, an apartment in Paris, a 24-acre estate outside Los Angeles, and a roomy duplex on Beekman Place in Manhattan. In time, he would own Paradise Island (formerly Hog Island), across from Nassau in The Bahamas.
He confided to Lana that he planned to spend his millions while he was still alive and could enjoy the rich lifestyle. “I prefer to be a man of leisure—sailing, partying at the best of clubs, and surrounding myself with beauty, not only the world’s most beautiful women, but the world’s most stunning art treasures.”
He had very strong opinions about art, both painting, sculpture, and even writing. He considered Picasso, Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner “vulgar.”
He was also interested in becoming a Broadway producer, and pitched a project to Lana. He wanted her to consider appearing in an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, with her in the title role. He told her that the play would be perfect if Errol Flynn were cast opposite her as “The Master of Thornfield.”
Alas, her affair with Hartford ended about as abruptly as her affair with Jaeger. There was no fight, no formal parting of ways. She described her last night with him as “a lot of fun.” At breakfast the next morning, she sensed no farewell.
Mildred had wanted her to marry Hartford, telling her daughter that he would bring her the financial security she’d need when her beauty faded. When she didn’t see him calling on Lana again, she asked, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “After our last breakfast, he kissed me passionately at the door, the kind of kiss a soldier gives the girl he’s leaving behind before going off to war. He never called again.”
She later read that Hartford had been seen out and about with Gene Tierney.
With contempt in her voice, Lana told Mildred “that Tierney woman usually takes my sloppy seconds: Howard Hughes and Victor Mature come to mind.”
Unknown to Lana, Tierney would soon appear in The Razor’s Edge (1946) with Tyrone Power, a man (“Lana’s greatest love”) who would loom in her future.
After moving on from Tierney and Lana, Hartford spent the re
st of his life squandering his vast fortune. He said, “The golden bird, coming to life, has somehow wriggled out of my hand and flown away.”
At the age of 97, the former tycoon died on Lyford Cay in The Bahamas. He had outlived Lana by thirteen years.
***
As if Lana couldn’t find her own men, her best pal, Ava Gardner, often fixed her up with one of her cast-offs. Hollywood’s most beautiful blonde and Hollywood’s most beautiful brunette often shared lovers—and not just Frank Sinatra. Gardner even married Lana’s first husband, Artie Shaw. As Lana told Mildred, “Now Artie won’t be hanging around me all the time.”
Lana had also sampled the charms of Mickey Rooney before Gardner was foolish enough to marry him.
She had just co-starred with Burt Lancaster in The Killers (1946), based on the famous short story by Ernest Hemingway.
[Hollywood footnote: in 1964, Ronald Regan would play a brutal crime kingpin in a remake of The Killers. It would be his last motion picture before he found a new profession.]
Gardner had had a torrid affair with Lancaster, but it was time for her to move on. She extolled his male beauty and after-midnight charms to Lana, who said: “Tell me more. I’m more than interested in auditioning him.”
To publicize The Killers, Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner were driven to Malibu, where they strutted for photographers on the beach in their bathing suits. They took turns posing piggyback atop each other.
According to Ava, “Burt was such a marvelous athlete, he seemed able to make himself pounds lighter. That’s how he could ride my back…no pun intended.”
Lancaster was a well-muscled athlete, having been a circus acrobat before his gigs in Hollywood. Filled with robust energy, he was strikingly handsome, with an intense glare. The author, Norman Mailer, said, “His grip could crush, and I never looked into eyes as chilling as his.” Lana used an odd word to describe his smile…“piercing.”
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