In the bathroom of club Butter on the evening of Paris’s perfume-touting personal appearance at Macy’s, Paris and Lohan, who was with a party that included Prince, Sean (Diddy) Combs, and Beyoncé, were said to have had another “huge fight.” Comparing the bout to a “high-school catfight,” the New York Daily News gossip column asked, “Sometimes don’t you wish there was a principal who could suspend Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton?”
AS PART OF HER mid-2006 promotional tour, Paris had made a heavily advertised guest appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. Letterman had had her on his show a number of times because he enjoyed using her as a foil for his snarky humor, and he just plain enjoyed laughing at her. She’d often been the target of his wacky “Top Ten” lists. Following her appearance in 1 Night in Paris, Letterman did the “Top Ten Paris Explanations” for her starring role, two of which were: “He told me we were making a workout video,” and “It was a tender act of love between me and my then-boyfriend—Rick something.”
After Paris’s Sidekick 2 cell phone was famously burgled and hacked, and the private numbers of her celebrity pals in her phone book were posted all over the Internet (another headline-making incident that invariably helped push up sales of the device to the teen and young adult market because of her involvement), Letterman’s Top Ten list included hilarious fictional voicemail messages such as “It’s Bill Clinton. I’ve been meaning to call you for some time,” and “Sorry I missed you. You must be at work…. Just kidding.”
For Letterman, chatting with Paris was like pulling teeth; in interviews with him, and with other talk-show hosts, she never had much to say. Her only reason for sitting on Letterman’s couch before millions of viewers across America that night was to talk about her singing career and get free plugs for her first-ever single, “Stars Are Blind,” one of the tunes on her first CD, released in summer 2006.
The song was featured on her first music video that one critic described as looking like a Calvin Klein underwear commercial shot on a beach. It showed a skimpily clad Paris writhing around with a hunky boy-toy as her lyrics droned on for more than three minutes. (Paris had spent several days on a Malibu beach shooting the video, which was directed by the same man with whom she had collaborated for the infamous and short-lived Carl’s Jr. hamburger commercial.) The music video, like Paris’s infamous X-rated see-all, was uploaded to the Internet and was part of the marketing for her inaugural eponymous album—a mix of reggae, pop, and hip-hop, which was being rolled out nationally by her label, Heiress Records, in conjunction with Warner Brothers. (She claimed she even composed some of the tunes, but most were written by lyricists who had worked for pop superstars like Gwen Stefani, Christina Aguilera, and Madonna.)
Always a star performer on the Internet, Paris’s “Stars Are Blind” video was aired on MTV.Com’s “Hot 5 on Overdrive,” and was rated the all-time best performance on a single day. At the same time, the single became one of iTunes Top 20 downloaded songs overnight.
When New York disc jockeys began playing “Stars Are Blind,” they expected to get hate e-mails and nasty text messages from outraged listeners who despaired of her singing. Instead, Paris was getting positive reviews.
One New York radio station program director, Scott Shannon, said he was “shocked” that “it actually isn’t a bad record.” However, two of his deejays expressed hope for Paris’s sake that she isn’t asked to sing live. As one pointed out, Paris “got significant [technical] help from [the record’s] producers—though that’s true for a lot of songs today.”
Sharon Dastur, the program director for one of the Big Apple’s major FM stations, observed, “Everyone realizes Paris Hilton is the epitome of pop culture, and we’re a pop culture station. So we were going to let the listeners decide. Our jocks play it and ask what the listeners think.”
Within the first week of the single’s release, Paris’s voice was being heard on more than fifty stations across the country, and in many such markets was the number one requested song. “We knew it was going to polarize our audience,” observed Romeo, the music director and on-air personality of one of New York City’s top stations, Z-100. “We were right…half of the calls said they hated the song, but it was still among the five top requested songs [and then became] our number one requested song…. Her timing is perfect, she has the sound of summer—pure pop with a reggae beat.”
But media predictions that Paris’s single would hit Billboard’s Top 10 in the first week failed to materialize. In fact, it didn’t make the top 200 in the first week of release.
The New York Post’s music critic, Dan Aquilante, snarkily observed that “the socialite media whore demonstrates that, with enough time, loads of cash and electronic vocal manipulation, anyone can be a pop star…. The lyrics, which she reportedly had a hand in writing (sure), are mostly puppy-love growls that will appeal to young teens. Those older kids who knew Hilton’s history will have a rough time finding the honesty in lines like, ‘If you show me real love, I’ll show you mine.’” He noted that her producers had “‘fattened up the skinny heiress’ sound by layering her voice upon her voice—several times. The echo effect is almost imperceptible, but manages to erase any trace of thinness. It also erases any trace of identity.” He speculated that Paris wouldn’t sing live on stage because the “knob twisting production is so complicated” that “it would be nearly impossible to reproduce the sonics…”
The New York Times gave “Stars Are Blind” a glib mini-review, declaring, “The melody is a bit cramped, almost as if it were written to accompany a singer with moderate range (must be coincidence); the bridge is aimless, but it’s over soon enough.” The Times added, tongue-in-cheek, “A quick Internet search turned up very little information about the singer, name of Paris Hilton.”
The nationally syndicated gossip columnist Liz Smith, usually known for her adulatory celebrity items, observed, “I do not think Madonna need worry.”
The Boston Herald’s website declared, “Paris Hilton is once again a multimedia sensation—but this time there’s no nudity involved.” The site’s critic, Heather V. Eng, described Paris as “an amateur porn star, reality TV simpleton, and the world’s most famous person for doing absolutely nothing…”
Just before “Stars Are Blind” began receiving airplay, Paris told a magazine in Hong Kong that she had to overcome shyness—shyness!—to become a singer. (Interestingly, however, shyness was one of the problems her maternal grandmother, big Kathy, suffered from when she was Paris’s age and was asked to get up and sing. “Kathleen always needed a few drinks in order to ease her nervousness,” her friend Jane Hallaren recalls.)
Paris, on the other hand, admits to no need for such relaxants, her arrest in September 2006 for allegedly driving while under the influence notwithstanding.
“I have always had a voice and always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out,” she confidently revealed. “I think that is the hardest thing you can do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it is what I am most talented at and what I love to do the most.”
But when David Letterman asked her to sing for his vast television audience, she nervously declined, claiming she wasn’t prepared. But she did reveal musical talents theretofore unknown. She boasted that she played both the violin and the piano.
Letterman moved on to other subjects, such as the latest season of her hit reality show, The Simple Life 4: Till Death Do Us Part, and the current state of her love life. Paris claimed that her much-publicized feud with costar Nicole Richie was strictly a publicity ploy to generate ratings, which is a complete contradiction from her earlier statements in which she claimed that Richie “cannot stand being around me because I get all the attention and people don’t really care about her…. [W]hen I brought her on to my show, she got very jealous and turned on me for no reason…. She let fame go to her head. I never want to speak to her again—ever.”
Some months earlier, appearing o
n CNN”s Larry King Live to plug her roman à clef about the Hollywood fast lane, Richie said one of the bitchy characters in her book had “things in common” with Paris. When asked about her relationship with Paris, she stated emphatically, “We’re no longer friends” and that there was no chance they’d ever be friends again. “We do run into each other. We just don’t talk.” Admitting to having recovered from addictions to heroin, cocaine, and pills, Paris’s friend since they were two years old confessed, “We just went in two separate directions…. I had to make some decisions in my life about what’s right for me and what’s not and so that’s what I did.”
Richie also acknowledged reports that she had been receiving “late-night prank calls.” But she stopped short of accusing her former best friend. (Stories about the calls had been reported in the tabloids.) “I’ve been getting prank calls. I’m not going to say who they’re from.” (In season four of The Simple Life, in the wake of the feud that Paris maintained never existed, she and Richie were never seen on camera together.)
When asked by Letterman about her breakup with Paris Latsis, Paris Hilton contradicted assertions that his parents refused to have her in the Latsis family and had broken up the relationship. Said Paris, “We’re just better as friends…. I just wasn’t ready to get married. I just want to be single. I love it.” She maintained she was thrilled not to have a man in her life and was savoring the freedom to pursue her moneymaking enterprises. “I’m single for the first time in my life,” she continued. “I just want to be alone. I’m just going out with my sister and my girlfriends. It’s cool not having to answer to anyone. I’ve never had time to get to know myself. I always put all of my energy into the man. I don’t get to spend time on me. I’m just getting to know who I really am, until I can find someone else.” (A year earlier, she was quoted in Newsweek magazine as saying she planned to start a family in 2007. But not long after her Letterman appearance, she announced to the world that she was going to remain celibate for a year. “I’m doing it just because I want to. One-night stands are not for me. I think it’s gross when you just give it up…. You have to make guys work for it.” Was a book on relationships next on Paris’s to-do list?)
Anyone watching Paris’s ladylike performance that night on the Letterman show would have thought her years of infamous partying were finally behind her, that she’d finally grown up. But later that night she showed up once again at Butter and, according to one report, confronted Lohan, yelling, “I can’t believe you and Stavros! You are ridiculous!” Paris was said to have barraged the actress with insults and curses. Lohan took what was described as the “high road” and didn’t return the fire.
After Lohan left the club, Paris, performing a one-eighty from her reserved appearance on Letterman’s couch, did what was described as a “stripperish” dance on a banquette for a small group of professional basketball and football players.
That’s hot.
With her album released, Paris hit No. 1 in The Guinness Book of World Records, not for her singing, but rather as “the most overrated celeb” based on polls in magazines in which readers chose their least favorite celebrity.
That’s not hot.
Author’s Note on Sources
From the start of my research, I felt that if one wanted to know how Paris Hilton became a singular phenomenon of the new millennium, one had to know where she came from. Since House of Hilton is the first contemporary independent biography of the hotel dynasty, I was faced with the daunting task of tracking down creditable, knowledgeable sources. This was especially true in attempting to paint an accurate as possible portrait of Ms. Hilton’s never-before-scrutinized maternal roots.
While a historical and genealogical trail existed for the paternal side of her family because of the dynasty’s decades-long, high-profile international business and social standing—Conrad Hilton’s very readable 1957 autobiography, Be My Guest, was a start—I quickly discovered that, curiously, virtually nothing was publicly known about the maternal side of Ms. Hilton’s genealogical tree. That part of her story had to be developed by tracking down dozens of private sources—few were known in the public domain—and interviewing them.
With all of that in mind, I would like to point out that all source quotes—persons interviewed by me or my researchers—are written in the present tense (“she says,” “he asserts”). Quotes from all other sources, such as magazine articles, newspaper stories, and books, are written in the past tense (“he maintained,” “she stated”).
For example, all of the quotes attributed to the long-deceased Conrad Hilton came from Be My Guest or from numerous periodicals. Similarly, quotes attributed to Ms. Hilton’s late maternal grandmother, for instance, came from interviews with family, friends, and acquaintances, or from sources otherwise stated in House of Hilton. Once again, the same is true of quotes attributed to Paris Hilton and her parents, among others.
The Hiltons over the decades have been boldface names in gossip columns, movie and scandal magazines—many, such as Confidential, are now defunct—contemporary daily and weekly tabloids, celebrity magazines, and a number of Internet sites, all of which were particularly valuable for my research.
I’ve attempted to cite these sources by name where applicable in the context of the book’s chapters. Among them, in no particular order of importance, are: the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, US Weekly, People, Variety, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, TV Guide, Life, Parade, Blender, and Radar (and all of their related sites on the Internet).
Among the websites used for my research are:
Gawker.com
TMZ.com
PerezHilton.com
IMDB.com
Moono.com
SocialiteLife.com
NewYorkSocialDiary.com
RadarOnline.com
MetaCafe.com
CNN.com
GlamourGirlsOfTheSilverScreen.com
Eonline.com
Selected Bibliography
Adams, Cindy. Jolie Gabor. New York: Mason/Charter, 1975.
Amburn, Ellis. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World: The Obsessions, Passions, and Courage of Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Cliff Street Books, 2000.
Bolton, Whitney. The Silver Spade: The Conrad Hilton Story. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1954.
Collins, Joan. Past Imperfect. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984.
Dabney, Thomas Ewing. The Man Who Bought the Waldorf. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950.
Finstad, Suzanne. Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood. New York: Harmony Books, 2001.
Frank, Gerold. Zsa Zsa Gabor: My Story. Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1960.
Heymann, C. David. Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1995.
Hilton, Conrad. Be My Guest. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1957.
Hofler, Robert. The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson. New York: Avalon Publishing Group, 2005.
Johns, Howard. Palm Springs Confidential. Fort Lee, New Jersey: Barricade Books, Inc., 2004.
Kelley, Kitty. Elizabeth Taylor: The Last Star. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1982.
Lambert, Gavin. Natalie Wood: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
Leigh, Wendy. One Lifetime Is Not Enough: Zsa Zsa Gabor. New York: Delacorte Press, 1991.
Moore, Terry. The Beauty and the Billionaire. New York: Pocket Books, 1984.
Mungo, Ray. Palm Springs Babylon. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Parish, James Robert, with Gregory W. Mark and Don E. Stanke. The Hollywood Beauties. Carlstadt, New Jersey: Rainbow Books, 1979.
Reynolds, Debbie, and David Patrick Columbia. Debbie: My Life. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1988.
Wharton, Annabel Jane. Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
> Wood, Lana. Natalie: A Memoir by Her Sister. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984.
Acknowledgments
I’m indebted to so many people—more than one hundred sources—who helped make this book possible. I can’t thank them enough for their generosity and kindness, their forthrightness and candor.
Along with the Hilton dynasty’s enormous financial, philanthropic, and social success, scandal underscored the lives of a number of contemporary members of the family, and my probing into that colorful history opened some long-healed emotional wounds. In particular, I want to thank Trish Hilton, the widow of Nick Hilton, for agreeing to be interviewed for the first time about her often hellish life as his loving and supportive wife.
Over the years, especially as Paris Hilton came to fame, Trish and her two sons were contacted by journalists and TV talk show producers. Friends had suggested she write her own book. But she refused all entreaties to talk.
More than three decades after Nick’s death, she still felt a strong sense of loyalty to her deceased husband and to the Hilton dynasty. With my book in progress, though, she finally concluded that the true story should be told, and she agreed to numerous interviews.
Beyond that, she opened many doors to sources who were in her and Nick’s and the Hilton family’s circle who otherwise would have been unknown to me, among them Carole Doheny, Bob Neal (who regretfully died as this book neared completion), and Noreen Nash Siegel. Their colorful remembrances of the Hiltons added greatly to this biography.
I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Pat Skipworth Hilton, the first wife of Conrad Hilton’s third son, Eric. Pat’s reminiscences about life in the Hilton family, and her thoughtful impressions and entertaining anecdotes about everyone from Conrad to Paris, were all-important.
House of Hilton Page 29