House of Hilton

by Jerry Oppenheimer

  Connie had celebrated his ninety-first birthday a little over a week earlier on Christmas Day and had been working right up until just before the holiday when he became ill. With him at his birthday celebration at Casa Encantada, with its nineteen servants, were some members of the Hilton tribe and his third wife, Mary Frances Kelly Hilton, whom he had married in December 1976, when she was sixty-one and he was eighty-eight. They had been good friends for years; Mary Frances was a chum of one of Connie’s sisters, was a religious Catholic, had served with the Red Cross during World War II in the South Pacific, and had worked for an airline. When she and Connie tied the knot, there were fears she “might be a gold digger,” says former Hilton Hotel Corporation vice president Tom Parris. “Certain members of the family were upset. But she was actually very good to Conrad.”

  A funeral mass was offered for the hotel czar at St. Paul’s Church, where Nick’s mass had been held. A memorial mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York drew dignitaries from around the world. Connie’s body was flown to Dallas, where he was buried in Calvary Hills Cemetery next to one of his brothers, August Harold Hilton. His death certificate was signed by Dr. Webster Marxer.

  Connie’s final will and testament, one of thirty-two such documents he had drafted over the years, left an estate worth hundreds of millions, but less than two million dollars was bequeathed to survivors, among them Barron, who received $750,000; Eric Hilton, $300,000; and Zsa Zsa’s daughter, Constance Francesca Hilton, $100,000. The big prize, Connie’s 27.4 percent controlling interest in the hotel chain he had started with a fleabag in Texas, went to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to be used for charity, which he called in his will “a supreme virtue, and the great channel through which the mercy of God is passed on to mankind.”

  Barron, who had become chairman and chief executive of the hotel and casino superpower, went to court in 1983 and sued the foundation. His lawyers claimed that there was a little-understood provision in the old man’s will that permitted Barron to buy the stock for about $165 million—the market value when his father died. At the time he made his challenge, the value of the stock had soared to $490 million.

  One of the key witnesses at the 1986 trial, which Barron subsequently won, was one of Connie’s top advisers, James Bates, who testified that the innkeeper to the world didn’t want to leave “unearned wealth to relatives and members of his family.” Bates told the court that Connie believed in “a strong work ethic” and that his goal was to have all of his relatives and children “get out and go to work and earn their own living.”

  If that was the case, Connie isn’t “rolling over in his grave,” as a number of Hiltons contended years later, about his great-granddaughter Paris’s moneymaking hustle, although he’d probably be offended at what she did to earn her millions. But no one could question the fact that Paris had certainly inherited her great-grandfather’s work ethic, good or bad.

  EPILOGUE

  In the summer of 2006, Paris Hilton, then twenty-five, and having been in the public eye going on nearly a decade, was on a major promotional tour—hawking everything from her first single and her first record album, to her first music video and her first videogame (which she embarrassingly called by the wrong name at its highly publicized introduction), to her signature perfume line.

  With the money rolling in from her numerous and sundry lucrative ventures, Paris ordered a 190-mile-per-hour Bentley convertible and considered buying a fancy Manhattan apartment and becoming truly bicoastal, not that she didn’t already seem to be everywhere at once—partying in New York on a Friday night, boogying in a trendy Hollywood club on Saturday night, and exhibiting herself in a London hot spot on Sunday night, at least according to the gossip columns.

  With her home base in Hollywood but playing often in New York, she pondered snapping up an almost $8 million, four bedroom, six-and-a-half-bath bachelorette pad in Hilton family friend Donald Trump’s building on Park Avenue, a short walk from what had once been the jewel in the crown of Connie Hilton’s empire, the Waldorf-Astoria. Paris’s mother, Kathy, who had considerable influence over her firstborn’s career choices and personal decisions just like her mother had over her, was said to have done a walk-through of the apartment and given the place two thumbs up.

  No doubt Paris’s great-grandfather would be extremely proud of the Hilton entrepreneurial spirit that Paris had inherited and was aggressively exhibiting. At the same time she rarely talked, or seemed to know much, about Conrad Hilton’s history. Though she believed his ambition and drive “runs through my veins,” she thought he “was a bellboy”—a bellboy!—“and had a dream to do a hotel chain….” Her “hope” by the middle of the first decade of the new millennium was to become a bigger mogul than the great hotelman. However, she asserted, “I don’t want to be known as the Hilton heiress,” while, in fact, her fame came about only because she had the Hilton name attached to her. Paris had achieved the kind of stardom her late maternal grandmother, big Kathy, and her mother, little Kathy, had themselves always wanted. Of her daughter’s madcap, moneymaking antics, Kathy Hilton once haughtily boasted, “My daughters are stars, and stars may do anything they please.”

  Other Hilton family members saw it differently.

  “Yes, Kathy’s very proud of Paris’s ambition and drive and claim to fame,” says a Hilton, rolling her eyes and fuming at Paris’s publicity-seeking ways. “Kathy’s okay with anything Paris does. Any-thing. I can’t say that for the rest of the family. Paris is an embarrassment. In my opinion she’s tarnished the Hilton name forever. She makes her great-uncle Nick seem like a saint.”

  Paris had become one of those celebrities many people loved to hate; her fame and infamy had provoked schadenfreude around the world. The more outrageous she acted, the more publicity she received, and the more money she made. If anyone understood the shallowness of celebrity culture in the early years of the twenty-first century, it was the Hilton gal. As the British social critic Taki pointed out, “Paris underlines our ongoing interest with celebrity-for-the-sake-of-celebrity today…our apparent interest in her and her ephemeral emptiness says more about us than it does about Paris.”

  But Paris had become inured to criticism and attacks—the ka-ching of the cash registers racking up sales of whatever she was peddling made up for the slings and arrows. She was able to cockily thumb her nose at all those naysayers who put her down, those who thought of her as everything from “spoiled brat,” “stupid,” “dead-eyed dope,” “superficial,” and “publicity whore,” to a bimbo who fixed herself up to look like “a high-class escort.” As one savvy marketing expert had noted about her, “You don’t have to have stories saying nice things about you; you just have to have stories saying something about you.” And as Paris declared, “I’m laughing all the way to the bank.” She claimed her image—“the whole Paris thing…It’s all a game.”

  With her TV appearances, record, books, and movies, Paris was being thought of in mid-2006 as the “dominatrix of all media.” As a child, though, she wanted to be a veterinarian. (She was once quoted as saying that in every girl’s life there should be four pets: a Jaguar in the garage, a mink in the closet, a bed with a tiger in it, and a jackass who pays the bills. It was much the same philosophy handed down by big Kathy.) As an adult, Paris saw herself as “a businesswoman, a brand…. There’s nobody else like me.” She modestly envisioned herself as an icon. “It’s just something I always wanted to be,” like Monroe and Madonna. “I love that timelessness.”

  The Paris blitzkrieg was amply demonstrated when hundreds of her fans descended on Macy’s famed Herald Square department store in Manhattan. They were there to buy Paris’s “fragrance”: $49 a bottle, or $76 for the gift bag, which included a stuffed Tinkerbell dog and a Paris T-shirt. (Paris claimed $220 million of her perfume had been sold.) The purchase gave her followers the exclusive right to stand in a sweaty line on grubby Broadway for more than two hours to meet Paris face-to-face for about thirty seconds and get her per
sonalized autograph on a glossy headshot. All were warned, “No personal memorabilia will be signed while Ms. Hilton is on-site.” (On the other hand, Paris, unlike her own customers, liked to get her stuff for free if she could get away with it. One such incident occurred not long after the Macy’s event, when she strode into a chic Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, jewelry boutique seeking a pricey silver dog tag as a freebie. Her line to merchants on such occasions was “You get publicity, and I get whatever I want.” The jeweler didn’t buy it, but other shopkeepers in the past had; after all, Paris wearing their things meant enormous exposure and sales.)

  The lineup of Paris’s fans outside of Macy’s included adolescent boys and girls with their mothers in tow; cosmetically enhanced suburban teenage Paris wannabees wearing fashionably low-slung jeans and strappy high-heel sandals; plain-Jane secretary-types on their lunch break; Upper East Side ladies who lunch; downtown club kids; some oddballs; and lots of gay boys. (The flamboyant celebutante had, indeed, developed a large gay following, much like a drag queen star. In 2005, Paris had been crowned a gay diva when she was named—along with her mother—as grand marshals of the Los Angeles Gay Pride parade. The getup Paris wore that day became part of an exhibit at the Hollywood Museum, along with outfits of such gay icons as Bette Davis, Judy Garland, and Paris’s personal favorite, Marilyn Monroe. Paris even learned her red carpet wiggle from a popular black drag queen, the voguer Willi Ninja. Paris believed she was embraced by gays because “I’m free-spirited. I’m real. I like to have fun. I enjoy life and I think that’s what the gay community’s all about.” She made no mention of the AIDS epidemic that was still killing off members of that community, like Ninja.)

  A full-page Macy’s ad in the New York Post, the daily tabloid that had first recognized Paris’s outrageousness in its “Page Six” gossip column—she was known to personally call the column with items about herself—and the first to dub her a “celebutante,” “celebutard,” and “heir-head,” had announced her appearance at the store. “Spending an afternoon with a hotel heiress and world-famous socialite,” blared the ad. “That’s hot!”

  And so they came, packing Macy’s first-floor fragrance arcade, tossing credit cards and cash at harried salesgirls in order to possess the outrageous entrepreneur’s perfume, which offered “a feminine, flirtatious charm and classic sophistication,” and in the process get to meet her and secure her autograph.

  Paris seemed to represent different things to different people. As a whole, she felt that “people think of me as like an American princess fantasy, like Tinkerbell the fairy, the little blond pixie.” A well-dressed mother of a ten-year-old boy carrying a homemade sign reading “I Love You Paris” said her whole brood actually loved Paris. “We all watch The Simple Life as a family. I’m obviously not thrilled about that X-rated video she was in, but we don’t really focus on that. I think her talent is appealing to all people. We adore her.” But she had difficulty defining whatever talent it was that Paris had. “Well, she’s Paris Hilton. That’s all. That’s enough.”

  A man of indeterminable age with a shaved head, who was sporting a Spice Girls T-shirt and rose-colored boxing shorts engraved with the names of Naomi Campbell, Hillary Clinton, and Reese Witherspoon, and with the words “Fountain of Youth 1969” over the crotch area, said he had met other celebrities through the years with “better talent than Paris,” but he loved her because “Paris is the total package. She shows that anybody can make it. She represents the American dream, whether you’re born rich like her, or if you come from the projects. She has determination.”

  A gay Hispanic man announced he was a big fan because Paris “is, like, very different. She’s very crazy. She’s very flamboyant. People dislike her because she’s rich and beautiful, but they’re just jealous. Paris is smart. She knows how to promote herself, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks. I respect that.”

  Arriving fashionably late by twenty minutes to screams of “Paris! Paris! Paris!” she was showcased on a thronelike platform in front of a battalion of paparazzi, and every so often between signing autographs she struck sultry poses for the cameras. Although other celebrities try to avoid photographers, Paris learned early on to use them to her best advantage. Her rule: “It’s better just to smile than give the middle finger, or [be] rude to them, because that’s what they want you to do. They want to get a bad picture.” (Paris sometimes affected a pose, and, when she felt it was perfect, she’d actually yell to the stunned photographers, “Shoot!”) Kathy Hilton, keeping a critical eye on her daughters’ performance, sat nearby on the Macy’s podium, and later posed (along with Rick Hilton) for digital snapshots with some of their daughter’s fans, who were rather disappointed because Paris herself skipped out in a sea of security.

  However, Paris was extremely gracious throughout the tedious Macy’s event—after all, the cash registers for her product didn’t stop ringing up sales. She smiled sweetly and chatted briefly but amiably with each fan seeking her autograph—people who had eagerly shelled out hard-earned money for her fragrance package just to meet her. As one wag noted as he watched her sign hundreds of photos, “I’ll bet she’s never written so many words at one time in her life—but they’re all the same words, ‘Paris Hilton.’”

  An enormous detail of plainclothes security guards, along with brawny uniformed members of New York’s finest, one of whom acidly referred to himself as the “Paris Pussy Patrol,” kept tight surveillance over her. As fans climbed a few steps to stand in front of their idol and get her autograph, their shopping bags and handbags had to be turned over to, and examined for weapons by, bodyguards, some with bulges in their jackets. “What the fuck!” exclaimed one tailored, coiffed, and trash-talking twentysomething who refused to give up her $5,000 Birkin bag “for privacy reasons” and left the line after an hour’s wait. “She’s just Paris friggin’ Hilton, not the friggin’ Queen of England.”

  One of those waiting in line to secure Paris’s autograph was a dapper, mustachioed businessman by the name of David Hans Schmidt. He was not a fan, but he had a vested interest in talking to her face-to-face.

  Known in the tabloid world as a “celebrity porn peddler,” Schmidt had earned a purple reputation after he arranged for Bill Clinton’s gal-pal Paula Jones’s Penthouse spread and brokered topless shots of convicted killer Scott Peterson’s girlfriend, Amber Frey.

  In Paris’s case, Schmidt made worldwide headlines in early 2006 when he became the broker for all of the contents of her Los Angeles storage locker after she failed to pay the rent on it. The locker was said to contain a trove of Paris memorabilia, including raunchy photos, videotapes, and sex toys, along with personal documents, letters, and more than a dozen diaries reportedly brimming with tales of X-rated dalliances, all of which Schmidt hoped to sell back to her, or someone else. One figure bandied about had been $20 million. Most of the weekly tabloids and celebrity glossies, who often pay for such mother lode, had passed on buying the material, considering it too risqué.

  To prove he was genuine, Schmidt showed Paris a G-rated photo of herself as a child with her sister, Nicky, that was part of the locker’s contents. When Paris asked him what she should write on her photo, he said, “Make it out to, ‘The guy who has my storage locker stuff.’” Paris told Schmidt, who was looking to do a reality show called The Sultan of Sleaze, that she’d meet with him in Los Angeles, presumably to talk about buying back her belongings. Though she had been described as “incredibly upset and angry and victimized” by Schmidt after news broke of his involvement, Paris diplomatically signed her photo, “To David, Love Paris Hilton xoxo.”

  That night Paris made another appearance, this one at a trendy downtown Manhattan club called Butter, where she wasn’t as diplomatic. She had a fiery confrontation there, one of several over a period of weeks, with one of her archenemies, the nineteen-year-old actress and playgirl Lindsay Lohan. (Paris tended to have schoolgirl-like feuds; members of her enemies list have included Lisa Marie Presley—who Pa
ris claimed threw a drink at her “because she thinks I fucked Nic Cage!”—Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Sophia Bush, Jessica Simpson, Hilary Duff, and Mischa Barton, who once accused Paris of “hating everyone around her age who is more successful,” to which Paris responded, “I could care less…she seems to be spending a lot of time thinking about me.” Paris also was accused of planting a false story in the New York Post about diamond heiress Zeta Graff, a onetime gal-pal of Paris Latsis. Graff brought a lawsuit claiming that Hilton had fabricated the story that Graff had attacked her in a London nightclub. Hilton admitted the incident never took place but denied planting the story, though her publicist at the time claimed she instructed him to give the story to the Post. During a deposition Paris went after Graff, declaring, “She is old and should stay home with her child, instead of being at night clubs with young people…. She is not cute at all.”)

  With Lohan, there appeared to be an extended history of bad blood. Some weeks before the Manhattan incident, Paris and Lohan had gotten into a brawl at the Los Angeles hot spot Hyde. Paris’s party-pal Brandon Davis, who once squealed about Paris’s alleged racial and religious slurs, made headline-making sexual innuendoes about Lohan to the paparazzi stationed outside the club. Paris, who was said to have been furious because Lohan was seeing her ex, Stavros Niarchos III, was at Davis’s side, laughing and seemingly egging him on, all of which was caught on video and aired on the Internet. Later, Davis offered Lohan a semblance of an apology for referring to her as “fire crotch,” among other lewd remarks. Not long after the verbal assault, Davis was admitted to Passages, a $75,000-a-month rehab center for cocaine and alcohol addiction, under orders from his wealthy family, but soon left.