Years later Zsa Zsa famously quipped, “Conrad Hilton was very generous to me in the divorce settlement. He gave me five thousand Gideon Bibles.”
While the actual settlement was small, Zsa Zsa wasn’t destined for skid row.
About a year later she was the victim of what the press billed as “the biggest individual haul in New York criminal history” when a pimply faced, tan-gloved gunman wearing dark glasses robbed her of twenty-five pieces of jewelry worth more than a half-million dollars.
On April Fool’s Day, 1949, she became Sanders wife, in a quickie ceremony before a judge in Las Vegas. He was the third of her nine husbands. Zsa Zsa went on to make a series of mediocre films, did the TV talk-show circuit, and in 1989 famously slapped a Beverly Hills cop who had stopped her for a traffic violation and spent three days in the slammer. Along the way she had an affair with Porfirio Rubirosa—“machismo incarnate,” as she called him—the internationally infamous Dominican playboy, who during a couple of heated lovers’ spats gave her a bloody nose and a much-publicized black eye.
CHAPTER 20
The ringing telephone in midmorning awakened the pretty young actress from a sleeping-pill-and-liquor-induced sleep. Groggy, she fumbled for the jangling receiver and put it to her ear. She’d been out at a party until who knows when, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Wiping away the cobwebs, she heard the lazy Texas drawl telling her how sorry he was about what had happened the night before.
Her fiancé was apologizing profusely, but she couldn’t imagine why. “I’m so sorry, honey. I truly am…I’m just so sorry,” the Texan repeated, and when she asked for a third time, “What are you so sorry for?” he suggested, “Oh, you better go look in the mirror, honey.”
Stumbling to the bathroom in her bachelorette flat on Doheny Road, off the Sunset Strip, she tried to focus on her reflection in the mirror. As her vision improved, nineteen-year-old Countess Elizabeth Caroline von Furstenberg-Hedringen, better known on the MGM lot as Betsy von Furstenberg and to the gossip press as “Madcap Betsy,” suddenly saw the reason her fiancé was being so apologetic. Sometime during another wild night out there had been a tiff, and he had ended it by drunkenly throwing a punch. Staring into the mirror, Betsy saw she had a big black eye.
Giving shiners to gorgeous young gals seemed to be the prerogative of handsome young playboys like Rubirosa, and Conrad Nicholson “Nick” Hilton Jr., the country’s best-known playboy back in 1951, was no exception.
Having taken a Seconal or two—Nick and Betsy’s prescription sleeping drug of choice as a chaser to the alcohol they drank—she hadn’t remembered feeling, let alone receiving, Nick’s punch.
Recalling that incident more than a half-century later, von Furstenberg—retired Broadway and TV soap opera leading lady, New York socialite, novelist, children’s book author, and grandmother—says, “I was feeling no pain, obviously. I don’t know what party we were at, but there wasn’t a commotion. It was just between he and I and then the next morning he called to apologize. I took it very lightly because, obviously, it was just a moment. If you aim right, it doesn’t take much of a blow to give you a black eye. I’ve had several black eyes since then because I used to have a very bad temper of my own.
“Actually, I think I laughed when I looked in the mirror,” she continues. “It wasn’t anything like, I’ll never see you again, I’ll never speak to you again, or how could you do such a thing? We did a lot of wild things in those days.”
When they became serious in 1951, Betsy and Nick, who was still in the process of divorcing Elizabeth Taylor, had decided to “go on the wagon,” realizing their drinking had gotten out of control. While Nick would become known through the 1950s in the gossip columns as a boozer and brawler, Betsy possessed a respectable public image, having been on the covers of Life and Look and given an MGM contract after a critically acclaimed stint on Broadway.
But privately she liked her liquor so much that a businessman friend had started calling her “Betsy von Thirstyberg.” Betsy had started drinking at fourteen, and fancy restaurants, knowing she was underage, served her alcohol out of a demitasse cup.
“Everybody in those days drank a lot,” she points out. “I didn’t think I had a problem, but to make it easier for Nick to stop I stopped drinking, too. But it didn’t last long and before you knew it we were off and running again.”
Years later she saw that she had been “an enabler” for his alcoholism “with my own jolly drinking.”
It wasn’t just what drinking did to their physical well-being that was of concern. In Nick’s case, drinking turned him from a “sweet” young man into a monster. “It was worse for him because when he drank he became very abusive,” notes von Furstenberg. “He’d get physically violent.”
This became apparent at a lively party at his brother Barron’s house, a fun occasion that suddenly turned into an ugly Hilton family scene. Nick, who von Furstenberg saw as the “black sheep,” had been knocking down shots of Johnnie Walker Black, his drink of choice, when he had words with Barron and hauled off and slugged him. “I never saw him do anything like that when he was sober,” she states. “But when he drank too much he’d get into a fistfight, or something like that.”
The scene at Barron’s became maudlin. “Nick cried, ‘I hit my brother. I hit my brother,’” recalls von Furstenberg as if it were yesterday. “Nick was very, very upset about it. He was mortified and was terribly ashamed of himself. He stopped drinking for a time after he hit his brother, but to keep him on the wagon was beyond me. Then he’d get drunk and do something like that again. He was just destined to have this terrible, tragic life.”
NICK HILTON’S PROPENSITY for violent behavior when he was drunk exploded during his 205-day marriage to Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor—the “marriage and love match of the century,” as the world press ordained it, at least in the beginning.
Many years later “La Liz,” after eight marriages to seven husbands (Richard Burton and Elizabeth were married twice), appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live, and divulged, “Nick kind of got a kick out of beating the [shit] out of me.” (The producers bleeped the “S” word.) When she made the charge, Nick had been dead for more than three decades, and she had not accused him of beatings when she divorced him. But his abuse of her was well known.
It started out like a fairy tale, or so it seemed at the time with the Hollywood spin machine at full throttle. In fact, it wasn’t a fairy tale at all. Most of the story of their “love affair” was spun by studio publicists, Hollywood gossip columnists, and movie magazine hacks and handed down as fact through the years.
Nick was twenty-three when he first laid eyes on seventeen-year-old Elizabeth. It was at the Mocambo, the same Sunset Boulevard hot spot where his father gave Zsa Zsa her engagement ring. Elizabeth was there for the wedding party of her friend the actress Jane Powell. Nick was there to get loaded. Like practically every hot-blooded American man at the time, Nick was knocked out by the gorgeous brunette’s hypnotic violet eyes, and those spectacular glamour girl breasts.
Elizabeth was nearly finished shooting A Place in the Sun with the boyish and closeted Montgomery Clift, the man with whom Elizabeth had developed a close friendship and on whom she had a big crush, though she knew he was gay. By coincidence, the film, based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy, was about a man entangled with two women—the leitmotif of Nick’s notorious womanizing.
Ellis Amburn, one of Taylor’s biographers, says, “It seems to me she was so aroused from working with Monty who was gay and really couldn’t consummate anything with her that Nicky—dark eyes flashing mischief and desire—just picked up from there. He gave her jewelry and that was always a good way to Liz’s heart. Ironically, for someone so pretty she was desperate to get married.”
Turned on by Elizabeth’s looks, Nick called a friend, Pete Freeman, whose father ran Paramount Pictures, her film’s distributor, and asked him to set up a date. The two had lunch at a Mexican restaurant across Melr
ose Avenue from her studio; Liz found Nick attractive, Nick was smitten, and by the time she arrived back at her dressing room, three dozen yellow roses were waiting for her along with a note, “To bring back the Sun—Nick.”
By the time she met and fell for Nick, Elizabeth already had two well-publicized romances and had earned a gossip columnist’s sobriquet, “Liz the Jilt.” Elizabeth’s mother, Sara Taylor, a former actress and a driven and ambitious stage mother in the same league as big Kathy and Jolie Gabor, was one of those forces behind the new relationship.
Sara Taylor was suitably impressed when Connie invited her and her husband to dinner at his new abode, a 64-room, 35,000-square-foot behemoth, Casa Encantada—the House of Enchantment—on ten glorious Bel-Air acres, which he’d bought for a song fully furnished, including the Ming vases.
Like William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper king, Connie Hilton, the hotel king, now possessed his own Xanadu. The two-story Georgian mansion with an ocean view cost $2,500,000 alone to build during the Depression by a frumpy nurse, Hilda Olsen Boldt Weber, who had inherited her millionaire patient-husband’s fortune and wanted to shine in Los Angeles high society. When she was going broke and needed money, Connie picked up the place for $250,000. It was a deal he boasted about for the rest of his life. (Not long after he bought the place, the seller gambled away the proceeds on the ponies, and committed suicide.)
The estate, at 10644 Bellagio Road, was more like a Hilton hotel in terms of size, only far ritzier—Hilton hotels didn’t come equipped with fourteen-karat-gold fixtures in their bathrooms, and Connie’s Casa had twenty-six such johns, and much more: walk-in silver, fur, and wine vaults; massage rooms; rare paintings; garage space for twenty-four cars. Sara Taylor was transfixed and came away dreaming of a Hilton marriage for her daughter, just as big Kathy would for little Kathy years later.
Nick and Elizabeth began spending private weekends at the Hilton estate, at the Hilton lodge at Lake Arrowhead, or at the home of brother Barron. The first time they went out publicly to a charity benefit at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, they were besieged by photographers. “Is it always like this?” Nick asked as flashbulbs blinded him. She responded briskly, “You’ll get used to it.”
But were they really in love? Passionate, yes. In love, no. If anything, Nick was in love with the idea of being in love. Moreover, as Hilton family friend Hank Moonjean observes, “Nick was like a cat in heat. Every gal he took out he screwed, and all were great beauties.”
As for marriage to Elizabeth, Nick viewed it as a way to play catch-up with Barron, who had already gotten hitched and had two children. Nick also saw marriage as a way to show his father, whose respect he would never win no matter how hard he tried, that he was ready to settle down and be responsible like his younger brother. Besides all of that, Elizabeth was the trophy wife.
As for Elizabeth, marriage was an escape hatch from the clutches of her controlling and domineering mother, plus the Hilton money didn’t hurt. She also was envious that her actress pals like Jane Powell were getting married. “Liz would have had a nervous breakdown,” said a friend, “if she hadn’t become a married woman.”
If any marriage was arranged, the Hilton-Taylor merger was—engineered and stage-managed behind the scenes by Connie, working hand in hand with Sara Taylor, and with the stamp of approval of MGM, Elizabeth’s studio. Except for the two stars of this production—in essence, two very mixed-up kids—everyone else had an agenda, and much to gain.
Bedazzled by Elizabeth’s fame, her beauty, and particularly her paycheck, Connie telephoned ex-wife Zsa Zsa to boast, “By golly, my son is marrying a young actress called Elizabeth Taylor who earns five thousand dollars for a radio show.” When Zsa Zsa emphasized that Elizabeth was, in fact, America’s most popular starlet and made tons more money as an actress in films, his response once again was, “Hell, she makes five thousand dollars a radio show!”
Connie had only one demand before he gave his blessing, and that was that Elizabeth, who wasn’t a Catholic, agree in writing to raise her children with Nick in the faith. Elizabeth thought his requirement was preposterous and on a par with some of the clauses in her studio contract. To keep peace, she agreed; in her heart she knew no children would come of the union, and she never converted to Catholicism (though she would convert to Judaism when she was married later to crooner Eddie Fisher). As part of the quid pro quo, Connie had put aside $100,000 for Nick’s firstborn, and as a wedding gift Connie gave Elizabeth a block of Hilton stock—one hundred shares—and told her to think of the Waldorf-Astoria (which he had finally got his hands on in October 1949 for $3,000,000) as her New York home away from home.
Meanwhile, the suits at MGM were floating on air; they saw a publicity bonanza because Elizabeth’s next big film, Father of the Bride—a comedy about a wedding—was scheduled for release in conjunction with the Hilton-Taylor nuptials. MGM publicists also were hoping for what they called Nick and Elizabeth’s “little dividend.” The studio was planning a sequel to Father of the Bride, called Father’s Little Dividend, starring Elizabeth, and was hoping for a real baby tie-in.
The Hilton-Taylor “love affair” was the “Brangelina” of its day. When word leaked that a marriage was impending—Connie broke the embargo by telling a New York reporter the precise date—Louella Parsons, who had a line into Elizabeth, asked her about the future. Elizabeth’s glib response was “Nothing comes off until the ring goes on.”
When Nick went to buy the sparkler at George Headley’s, the fashionable Beverly Hills jeweler, and demanded to see “something nice,” Headley, who knew Nick’s playboy reputation, quipped, “Blonde or brunette?” Nick responded, “Platinum and diamonds.” The result was a ten-thousand-dollar, four-carat affair.
Nick took Elizabeth to El Paso to meet his mother who had been widowed just nine months earlier. Excited by the prospect of the world’s most beautiful movie star paying a visit to Mary Barron Hilton Saxon’s modest house, Eric Hilton invited his El Paso High School pals to the meet and greet.
“Eric called me all excited and said, ‘Come out to the house to see Elizabeth Taylor. She’s gonna be here!’” recalls Bob Keller, a classmate and football teammate of Eric’s. “We’re all seniors in high school and drooling over Liz, so we go out there and she wouldn’t even give us the time of day. We were like little punks to her. Here she was going with Nick Hilton and she wasn’t going to have anything to do with a bunch of high school kids. I never thought much of Elizabeth Taylor after that.”
Bob Suddarth, one of Eric’s closest friends back then, says Nick spent most of his time during the short stay away from Elizabeth “shooting dice with the boys in the private room reserved for men at the El Paso Country Club. One time Elizabeth came in looking for Nicky and it caused quite a stir because women weren’t allowed, but she just came bustin’ into the room where he was gamblin’ with the boys.
“After Elizabeth’s visit Eric always had a saying. He’d put out his hand and he’d say, ‘Shake the hand that shook the hand [Nick’s] that’s been inside Elizabeth Taylor.’”
PHOTO INSERT
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
CONRAD HILTON surrounded by his three sons. From left, the first-born, NICK, whose life of broads, booze, and brawling made him a favorite of the gossip columns and tabloids in the fifties. ERIC HILTON was raised by his mother and her second husband, Mack Saxon. Eric later became a Hilton executive. BARRON, Conrad’s second-born and Paris’s paternal grandfather, went on to run the Hilton empire.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF MILTON H. SAXON
MACK SAXON was a champion on the gridiron and a renowned womanizer who had an adulterous affair with Connie Hilton’s first wife, MARY BARRON HILTON. Connie and Mary were divorced in 1934 after she took off with the football great.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
“THE MOBLEY a wasn’t exactly hotel,” Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather once said, “it was sort of a flophouse.�
� But CONRAD HILTON had the golden touch and rightly predicted the Cisco, Texas, way stop would be the first link in his worldwide chain.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
Dancing the light fantastic was one of CONRAD HILTON’s favorite pastimes when he wasn’t buying hotels. Here he does his favorite two-step with his daughter-in-law, PATRICIA SKIPWORTH HILTON, to celebrate the opening of yet another Hilton Hotel.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
CONRAD HILTON was a staunch Catholic who had two divorces and was a known womanizer who once took his second wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor, to a brothel. So he wasn’t concerned about downing the bubbly in the presence of a religious leader—at least when he was looking the other way.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
MARY BARRON HILTON SAXON, the matriarch of the contemporary Hilton dynasty, kept up a semblance of friendship with her hotel mogul first husband. Often left alone because of Connie’s love affair with hotels, the mother of his three sons had an affair of her own that ended their marriage.
FROM THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF PAT HILTON
Playboy NICK HILTON had some of the most glamorous women in Hollywood at his feet, and one of them was teenage beauty NATALIE WOOD. The lovebirds infuriated Nick’s father, Conrad, when they holed up together in bed during the opening ceremonies of the Mexico City Hilton.
COURTESY KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
House of Hilton Page 19