But before Nick had a chance to give his side of the story on the witness stand, the judge granted both sides a divorce after a reported $500,000 financial settlement was reached.
“I’m the loser in this fight,” Nick told reporters outside the courtroom. He claimed any romantic relationship with John Wayne’s wife was “ridiculous…. Everybody leaves out the fact that I was a guest of Betsyvon Furstenberg, not Mrs. Wayne. Betsy was my only reason for being in the house, not Chata.”
Some months later, Betsy, then back in New York, got a call out of the blue from Nick. “He was staying at the Plaza and he wanted to see me,” she says. “I stopped by and went up to his suite, and he was immediately very affectionate and very sweet. I just said, ‘Look, I have to leave.’ I literally had like fifteen minutes. I kissed him good-bye and that was the end of it. I think he wanted to get back together again, but it was just hopeless, though I really adored him while I was with him.”
As with Elizabeth Taylor, Betsy received a gift from Connie—a chunk of Hilton hotel shares that she immediately sold off.
Nick, who couldn’t stay out of trouble, also became embroiled in a headline-making child custody case involving stunning actress Claire Kelly, who was being groomed as the next Rita Hayworth, and her ex-husband, George DeWitt, host of a popular TV game show, Name That Tune. In 1956, Confidential ran a story about Nick and Kelly’s involvement that was headlined “Nicky Hilton—He Prefers Scotch On The Rocks To A Honey On The Divan!” Subsequently, during the DeWitt-Kelly child custody case, DeWitt filed court papers accusing Kelly of “adulterous, immoral, and scandalous conduct” with Nick and Frank Sinatra. Nick remained mum, but Old Blue Eyes was furious, denied the charge, and had DeWitt blacklisted from show business, according to DeWitt’s brother. DeWitt later died virtually penniless, while Nick’s reputation was further tarnished because of the latest scandal.
CHAPTER 23
By the start of the Eisenhower-Nixon decade of the 1950s, Connie Hilton had become the world’s most famous innkeeper with fifteen hotels in the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico—properties valued at more than $125 million. And more—many more—were about to open.
Time magazine had devoted a cover to Hilton, calling him a “party-loving, party-giving host” who knew how to treat his VIP guests and make the likes of Howard Hughes, Tallulah Bankhead, Gertrude Lawrence, and Noel Coward, among many others, feel like they were at home in Beverly Hills or on Park Avenue.
Connie had more than eleven thousand employees and bragged to his friends and the media that it would take him forty years to sleep in every bed in his more than 12,000 hotel rooms.
Fortune, engorging his already swollen ego, called him “an acquisitive genius…a fast man in an appraisal…a smart negotiator…[a] dashing trader…an extremely resourceful financial strategist who knows every move in the book.”
Connie saw his hotels as cities within cities, with guests living a full life without ever having to step outside. “They have nightclubs, banquet halls, and shopping centers,” he proclaimed. “You can read a book in the library and use the safe deposit vault as a bank. If you get sick, there’s a hospital, with a doctor and a nurse. You can park your car, eat your head off, and sleep till noon. Home was never like that!”
Still, the man wasn’t all business.
Despite his empire rising, he quit work every day at 6 P.M. Never later. That was a rule of his he rarely ever broke. A businessman, he firmly believed, had to have fun.
In his sixties, but as energetic as when he first danced the dance with Zsa Zsa, Conrad escorted pretty ladies in droves, the younger, the better, café hopping until three in the morning. He bought a World War II PT boat, the kind Jack Kennedy commanded, and had it converted into a pleasure craft to cruise the Pacific near his spectacular estate. He had a getaway on Lake Arrowhead where he raced on the waters in his Chris Craft. He kept a number 2 iron in his office to practice his swing, scoring in the high 80s, and bragged that he won a close match with his friend President Eisenhower.
On the business side, he had formed a new division, Hilton International, starting with three hotels in Bermuda. Then came the Caribe Hilton, in San Juan. Connie saw the future and rightly perceived that the world was shrinking, that jet air travel would make it easier for people to leave the United States and arrive in Paris in time for breakfast.
With the cold war raging, Connie had wrapped himself in Old Glory as a true patriot and anti-Communist for ideological and business reasons. He gave serious, intense speeches and even conceived a poem called “America on Its Knees,” all of which received wide press coverage and letters of public support.
Connie’s strong anti-Communist stance was an asset as he expanded his chain abroad; his hotels were used as propaganda machines and unofficial listening posts and intelligence-gathering centers in Europe and the Middle East as the cold war grew hotter. As one longtime Hilton family member notes, “Anything Washington asked him to do, he’d jump.”
Connie, in fact, later acknowledged that the U.S. government had asked him to begin putting up hotels in foreign countries that were getting Marshall Plan aid after the Second World War. Washington’s concept, at least on the surface, was that the hotels would help the U.S. foreign aid program by stimulating American dollars into travel and trade. “The government gave me a list of European countries,” Connie allowed, “and I had to have these countries request funds to help finance the hotels before we could go ahead.”
The Hiltons were the tallest, most luxurious, first truly modern edifices in some of those foreign cities. Moreover, they brought with them American culture (cheeseburgers were served in the restaurants)—a shrewd political and business move to draw American tourists nervously venturing overseas for the first time, and to indoctrinate foreigners in the American way of life in the face of the “Red Menace.”
When America finally landed a man on the moon in the “space race” with the Soviet Union, Hilton buoyantly celebrated. He proclaimed he’d open the first hotel on the moon. A national advertisement showed the gloved hand of an astronaut carrying a hotel room key, the fob of which carried the words “Lunar Hilton.”
After astronaut Neil Armstrong made his historic moonwalk, Barron and Marilyn Hilton threw a spectacular space-age sit-down dinner for some two hundred celebrity guests at their estate. The tables were decorated with enormous white Sputniks sprinkled with silver stars and white orchids—all bathed in blue moon-glow lights. The pièce de résistance was the Lunar Hilton menu offering the diners “Tranquility Sea-Food Savoy,” “Roast Celestial Sirloin,” “Starspuds,” and “Apollo Pois,” topped off by “Galaxy Glace,” “Saturn Fours,” and “Café Orbit.”
WHILE CONNIE WAS ATTEMPTING to capture the hearts and minds of those heathen Reds, his number one son, Nick, was trying to capture as many redheads—and blondes and brunettes—as a hedonist could handle.
Like wolves in the henhouse, Nick Hilton and Bob Neal had set up bachelor pads in the same building on palm tree-lined Horn Avenue near Havenhurst Drive in swinging West Hollywood—an area literally teeming with gorgeous young starlets, models, groupies, and rich-husband hunters.
“We called it the ‘Pussy Belt’ because there were more girls in apartments up and down Havenhurst than anywhere else in LA,” Neal fondly recalls. “There’s an old saying out there that between Nick Hilton and Bob Neal nothing got away. Nothing escaped. Nick had it all. There wasn’t one girl who ever turned him down for a date. And by ‘date’ I mean jumping in bed.
“Nick was usually a second-date artist. He had to get laid by the second date. Most of the time he wasn’t turned down. Most guys gotta string it out and beg and give candy and brandy and all that shit,” continues Neal, “but not Nick. Most of them went for it. He was a high scorer. I never heard any complaints. If a girl made it with Nick she never forgot it!” Whenever Neal spotted a likely candidate for Nick, he’d make a duck-like sound, their code for “Pussy Alert.”
On the ra
re occasion when Nick couldn’t get a girl to be his arm candy and go partying with him, he had a real mallard duck accompany him for drinks. His partnership with the duck began when Nick had been partying at one of his usual haunts, the Luau, in Beverly Hills, a spot known for the beautiful babes at the bar. He had gotten so drunk that the bartender sent him home in a cab to sleep it off. Waiting on the corner for a taxi to return to the nightspot, Nick saw the duck waddling across the street. He picked up the bird, got into the cab, and brought it back to the Luau, where he set it on the bar and ordered a bourbon for himself and one for the duck, which he named Charley, in honor of Charley Morrison, who owned the Mocambo. A crowd had gathered to watch the fun, which consisted of Charley taking a drink and then pooping on the bar, and after a time the duck just sort of fell over. Nick said, “Oh, don’t worry about him, he’s just a little hungover.”
Noreen Nash Siegel Whitmore, an actress who at the time was married to Dr. Lee Siegel, the “physician to the stars” who had become Nick’s doctor and confidant after the first “Dr. Feel Good” left the inner circle, recalls, “Nick would come by our house with the duck, and for a while he took the duck everyplace. At parties he’d put the duck in someone’s pool.”
Then, suddenly, the duck was gone. When Al Mathis, the Luau’s owner, asked Nick what happened to it, he responded, “He must have died of cirrhosis of the liver.”
FISTFIGHTS WERE A CONSTANT in Nick’s life because of his drinking. One night at the Mocambo, a fight broke out over him using profanity, and a beautiful blond model from Texas was knocked to the floor and suffered a sprained back when she got in the way as Nick traded blows with her boyfriend, an air force navigator.
Ever protective of the prestigious Hilton name, Connie was furious about Nick’s increasingly bad press. As Dorothy Kilgallen reported, “Nicky Hilton’s usually indulgent father has given him the off-to-Siberia treatment since his latest escapade on the front pages.”
Nevertheless, the bloodshed, the alcohol, and the headlines continued to flow. There was the “slugfest” at a Sunset Strip nitery, and five broken bones and a few head stitches that Nick received after a spar with his chum Francis Warford “Joe” Drown, who owned the Bel-Air Hotel.
“Nick would get drunk to where he didn’t know who he was,” says Bob Neal. “We were down at his old man’s house in Palm Springs, and he was out of his mind. We were outside and he couldn’t find the key and it made him so fuckin’ mad he pounded the door and stuck his arm through the glass and goddamn near bled to death.
“When the ambulance guys came, he was going to kill all of them. They were putting him on a stretcher and he was battling them.”
The Hilton Hotel heir had mostly escaped any form of punishment for his alcohol-induced crimes and misdemeanors, but he couldn’t get away scot-free forever with his bad behavior.
Newspaper readers were greeted with a shocking Weegee-style tabloid photograph with their morning coffee on May 15, 1954. Under the glaring headlines “Hotel Heir Gets Room With Bars” and “Nicky In Clink” was a film noirish shot of a ravaged-looking twenty-seven-year-old “Playboy Nicky Hilton, heir of the wealthy hotel family…” in a Los Angeles County Jail cell “crying bitterly” after being “arrested by a stationful” of Hollywood sheriff’s deputies on a drunk charge.
He had been thrown into the slammer after his Beverly Hills neighbors at 882 North Doheny Drive—a low-slung apartment complex where Marilyn Monroe lived on and off with her then-boyfriend, the New York Yankees slugger Joe DiMaggio—complained of loud cursing and fighting in progress that “could be heard for blocks.”
Deputies said that when they arrived Nick shouted, “You want a fight? Here I am.” Nick then bolted out of his second-story flat, threw punches, and was finally thrown to the ground on the sidewalk and handcuffed. When the officers finally got him into the backseat of their radio car, Nick started yelling, “I can buy and sell the lot of you, and I’m going to do it, too.” He then solidly kicked a deputy in the back of the head, who had to struggle to keep control of the swerving patrol car.
Though “barely able to walk unassisted,” Nick started throwing punches at the sheriff’s substation while he was being booked. He gave his occupation, truthfully, as “loafer” and turned over his gold cufflinks and eleven dollars and sixteen cents in change. (As Bob Neal points out, Nick was “a very strong guy. I’m talking about physically strong. He could have twisted a guy’s head off.”)
Decades later Neal, who had an apartment below Nick’s on Doheny, recalls the fight was with their actor pal John Carroll, who received a black eye when they began throwing punches after returning from a nightclub. “Carroll almost beat him up. They were both drunk. John Carroll was a pretty tough guy, too—a big, rangy guy.”
Released from county jail the next day on twenty-five dollars’ bail, Nick told a swarm of reporters that he had “a story that will blow the lid off Los Angeles,” but he wouldn’t reveal what it was. It was enough, though, to generate national headlines such as “Nicky Hilton, Freed From Jail, Threatens ‘Exposé’.”
Several days after his arrest, Nick was given two years’ probation by Beverly Hills municipal-court judge Charles J. Griffen. He warned Nick he’d face a year in prison if he violated it. “Any more trouble with liquor and you’ll be right back here again,” the judge told him.
Despite Nick’s subsequent stint of rehab at the Mayo Clinic, nothing could be done for him. Observes Neal, “Nick and booze—they just didn’t mix.”
CHAPTER 24
Nick had a “secret formula” to deal with the hordes of women who wanted to be with him, and the ones he was obsessively chasing. It was quite simple: “Never take any of them seriously.” He was especially wary of all those women he thought were “wanting to mother” him, especially after his divorce from Elizabeth Taylor. But his bad-boy quality was what brought out the maternal instinct in women of all ages, from an ingenue like Betsy von Furstenberg to Nick’s doctor’s wife, Noreen Siegel.
Decades later Noreen observes, “Nick was like this hurt child. There was something so engaging about that for a lot of women. He made you want to take care of him. A lot of women he went with”—and she knew a number of them, such as Natalie Wood and Kim Novak—“would kind of hold his head when he got drunk and kind of take care of him. Nick always put his head on your shoulder and he’d say, ‘Oh, I don’t feel good.’ He seemed to want and need that sort of attention.”
While Nick could be loud and obnoxious when inebriated, he was virtually a mute when sober. A man of few words, he especially despised the press. In rare instances Nick did communicate with journalists, including a brief interview with a wire service correspondent on the subject of women. “If you hear or read about me going head over heels in love with any girl,” he told United Press’s Jay Breen, “just mark it down as one hundred percent fiction. This new system [of not taking females seriously] is working too well to jinx it.”
Asked what kind of girl he’d like to marry if he took the step again, Nick glibly responded, “There are only three types, the way I see it. They’re blonde, brunette, and redhead. After that girls are all the same.”
Nick’s womanizing became legend through the 1950s. According to the gossip columns, it went something like this: “Nicky Hilton’s latest heart-interest is a beauty named Ilsa Bey…. Nicky Hilton has been dating Gloria DeHaven. They choose the quiet little spots far away from Mocambo and Ciro’s…. I saw Nicky Hilton drinking lemonade with Ruth Ann Binns…. Nicky Hilton whose pop owns those hotels, is more interested in Mona Knox than in Fort Knox…. Nicky Hilton is pursuing Pat Morrissey…. Nicky Hilton around with beautiful Conover model Kim Smith who denies she is just one of Nick’s knacks…. Nicky Hilton’s latest is the movie’s Piper Laurie….
“Nicky Hilton is dating beautiful Betsy Steiner of the Copacabana chorus…. Nicky Hilton and Laura Bartlett of the Riviera chorus line left some of his $5,000 card game winnings at Nino’s Continental…. A beautiful young
concert singer named Russell Lee—a strawberry blonde—is Nicolo’s current big thrill…. Nicky Hilton has it bad for Paula Stewart, a New York showgirl…. Nicky Hilton’s visits to Boston have been for the purpose of wooing Rusa Lee, the young concert pianist…. Nicky Hilton who dates in all directions, dating Mary Murphy, the film beaut…. Nicky Hilton appears to be deeply smitten over Melinda Markey…. Nicky Hilton and Lili St. Cyr have found each other. What fun!…Nicky Hilton was with a studio messenger girl, Arlene Soloff, at the Luau…. Nicky Hilton stripping his gears over striprootzy Lee Sharon….
“Nicky Hilton sends bokays to Margaret O’Brien who’s a big girl now…. Nicky Hilton and Andrea Petti playing petticake…. This week’s Nicky Hilton item: Barbara Schmidt, the Rose Bowl Queen…. Joe Boulton & John Carroll, rich Nancy Metcalf & Nicky Hilton…. Joe Stalin has come back to life here in Denmark but a gal from Dallas and Hollywood who’s been around with Nicky Hilton has caused more excitement…. Nicky Hilton fraternizing with Zabra Norbo at the Villa Maria….
“Nicky Hilton is squiring an Oriental Princess around town, Shih Hsieh, attractive daughter of the Gov. of Formosa…. Surprising sights: Nicky Hilton stag at Blue Angel…. Nicky Hilton—seven weeks on the wagon—was at El Morocco with glamour gal Carey Latimer, a frequent date…. Nicky Hilton’s latest coast dates are with model Kim Smith…. Happy days are here again. Dick Haymes’ ex-wife, Nora, dating Elizabeth Taylor’s ex-husband, Nicky Hilton…. Nicky Hilton and Barbara “Wiggles” Nichols have found each other….
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