The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (38 page)

“
But why?
” Zsa Zsa asked, exasperated. “Why is it that
everyone
in this family wants Conrad Hilton’s respect?” She said she thought it was strange, the way they were all vying for his approval. “As I told Trish yesterday, he’s just a man like any other,” she noted. She added that he was not a god, contrary to what many people in the family seemed to believe.

Nicky mulled it over. “I guess we just want him to acknowledge that we learned a little something from his example,” he said thoughtfully. “Because it’s true, isn’t it?” He added that, in his view anyway, everything the Hiltons would ever achieve was intrinsically connected to who Conrad was and would always be in their lives. “Even you, Zsa Zsa,” Nicky said with a patient smile. “Don’t you think Pop influenced you to create this big, sensational life for yourself?”

Zsa Zsa nodded. “I suppose that’s true,” she said, somewhat reluctantly. She added that she used to think to herself, “ ‘Oh my God, if I could just have the kind of life Conrad Hilton has.’ He would always say, ‘
Be big, think big, do big
.’ I guess I must have listened, because look at me now,” she exclaimed with a wide gesture of her arms and hands. “Who is bigger than Zsa Zsa?” she observed grandly.

“No one,” Nicky said with a grin. “No one I know, anyway.”

“
Exactly
,” Zsa Zsa said. “If only I had a little humility, I’d be
perfect
, now wouldn’t I?” she asked. At that Nicky doubled over laughing. Watching the two of them, Trish couldn’t help but join in the laughter.

“I remember thinking, ‘What a family I have married into,’ ” Trish Hilton would recall. “Yes, there was something sad and poignant about the way they were all hopelessly vying for Conrad’s attention and approval. But at the same time, there was something inspiring about their unity in it. They had this bond, this kind of ‘for better or worse’ family bond that made me just want to be a part of it. It wasn’t exclusive. Once you were in the Hilton family, It was
inclusive
, at least that’s how I saw it. It was ‘all for one, one for all.’ Even when they were
against
each other, you still felt they were somehow
for
each other.”

“Oh, he will make you
crazy
,” Zsa Zsa told Trish in speaking of Conrad Hilton. “Trust me, dear. One day you will come to me and you will say, ‘Zsa Zsa, he has really done it. He has finally made me crazy.’ ”

“Probably sooner than you think, too, Trish,” Nicky added with a wink.

Success

I
n December 1962, Conrad Hilton turned seventy-five, a milestone birthday in anyone’s life, and for some a time to adapt to a slower pace of living and spend more time exploring leisure activities. Not so for Conrad Hilton, though. He was still full of vigor, ambition, and curiosity—still involved in the day-to-day decision making of his company, attending all of its board meetings, and constantly looking to the future in terms of potential acquisitions. Of course, he suffered from certain conditions that are usually unavoidable manifestations of aging. He had arthritis in his knees and bursitis in his left shoulder. His mind wasn’t as sharp as it had once been; he sometimes forgot the names of people. His eyesight had begun to fail him; he now allowed Olive Wakeman to read to him the daily profit-and-loss reports from his hotels. But he was still thin, mostly agile, and usually able to cut a rug with the best of them, which he never failed to demonstrate at Hilton press junkets around the world.

Conrad did have pangs of sadness regarding his fading youth, however. The main reason for his wistfulness was the lack of romantic love in his life. He had been married twice and had a myriad of beautiful female friends, but his true love, the person he could view as a soul mate with whom he could share himself on every level, had never materialized. But on the whole, he’d long ago made peace with his life. He was proud of himself and what he had achieved in his seventy-five years. After all, the Hilton name was now as emblematic of American culture as Pepsi-Cola and American Express.

Conrad owed a great deal of his success to the country’s postwar economic boom. The amazing progress that had been made in jet air travel in the 1950s made the world a smaller and more accessible place, and there was nothing like feeling right at home at a Hilton hotel no matter where one traveled. Globally, it’s almost impossible to calculate how much money Hilton hotels have generated. For instance, the Castellana Hilton in Madrid brought more than a million dollars in tourist revenue in its first year of operation in 1953. The Istanbul Hilton increased tourism in Turkey by 60 percent in its first year of operation in 1955.

By the end of 1962, hotel occupancy in America was down 30 percent from the immediate postwar high of 90 percent, but Hilton was still at the top of his game, even with room rates and salaries increasing across the board. That isn’t to say that he didn’t have competition, though. The Sheraton hotel chain had the Hilton chain beat by nine hotels—a total of sixty-nine properties in the world. But it had fewer rooms (29,000) and a much smaller overseas presence (just fourteen abroad, eleven of which were in Canada). “It’s an American operation, for the most part,” Nicky Hilton would say of the competition. “Which is fine and good. And which is not what we are.” Pan American Airways also had a chain of hotels called Intercontinental Hotels, with nineteen properties around the world. But again, theirs was such a small presence compared to that of the Hiltons, and no competitor company was expanding anywhere as rapidly as the Hilton chain.

From San Francisco to New York, Berlin to Trinidad, Puerto Rico to the Nile there were Hilton hotels. In 1962 alone, Hilton hotels opened in Tehran, London, Portland (Oregon), Rotterdam, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York City (where the $57 million New York Hilton had just opened, of which the Hilton Hotels Corporation actually owned only 25 percent and ran the hotel on a management contract). Plans for 1963 included openings in Milwaukee, Honolulu, and Montreal (at the airport, which constituted the property as an “Inn” and was therefore in the purview of Nicky Hilton).

Also being planned in 1963 were junkets for the Hong Kong and Tokyo Hiltons, both scheduled for June. By the end of 1963, the Hilton Hotels Corporation would own, lease, or manage sixty properties in nineteen countries around the world, with more than 40,000 rooms and 40,000 employees. It should be noted that unlike Chicago’s Palmer House or the Conrad Hilton (formerly the Stevens) or Houston’s Shamrock Hilton—all examples of hotels owned wholly and outright by Conrad Hilton—the hotels overseas were either leased or run on a management contract.

Also worth noting is the level of confidence the Hilton name had earned around the world by the beginning of 1963. For instance, tourists had once been reluctant to visit the Nile, fearing the local drinking water. But once they realized that they could check into a Hilton hotel—where they could avail themselves of reliable plumbing and electricity, direct-dial telephones, and other creature comforts, not to mention special perks like air-conditioning in each room and refrigerators in the bathrooms that generated their own ice cubes—most reluctance to travel to the area seemed to be lifted. The Nile Hilton had brought in more than $12 million in foreign tourism since its opening. Along with the fact that people of every nationality worked at Hilton hotels around the world, it was impossible to escape the conclusion that Conrad Hilton had brought people together from all walks of life, earning money together and spending it as well—thus the slogan Conrad had adopted for his international hotels: “World Peace Through International Trade and Travel.” Or as his friend Henry Crown put it to
Life
magazine in 1963, “Next only to the Peace Corps, Connie Hilton’s hotels around the world have done more for the U.S. than any other thing. And the State Department ought to be the first to say so.”

Though 1963 would always be remembered as a tragic and even traumatizing year in this country because of the November assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it was still a booming year for the travel and hotel industries. It would end with the Hilton Hotels Corporation’s assets totaling a staggering $289 million—an amount that would today be equivalent to a little more than $2 billion. That sum included all of the domestic and international hotels, as well as the inns and other subsidiaries such as the Carte Blanche credit card business, of which Barron Hilton was in charge. Conrad and his family controlled about a third of the company’s stock, and the rest was divvied out to investors, the biggest being Conrad’s longtime friend hotel mogul Colonel Henry Crown.

Sibling Rivalry on the Rise

I
t gives me the greatest of pleasure to first introduce the new chairman of the Executive Committee of Hilton International. My son, Nicky Hilton,” Conrad Hilton intoned. “Or as I like to call him, Conrad Hilton Jr.”

It was the evening of October 1, 1966, and Conrad Hilton was hosting another of his lavish parties at Casa Encantada, this one to announce the promotions of his two eldest sons, Barron to president and chief executive officer of the Hilton Hotels Corporation’s domestic division, and Nicky to the position of executive in charge of the international subsidiary of the Hilton Corporation. So vital and arresting did Conrad look in his white tuxedo jacket and black tie, it was difficult to reconcile that he was rapidly approaching his eightieth birthday. Though Conrad was still chairman of the board of the Hilton Hotels Corporation, he had recently stepped down as president and chief executive officer—thus the vacancy filled by Barron—to devote most of his attention to the company’s all-important international division, now headed up by Nicky.

The gathering over which Conrad presided on this Saturday evening took place on one of his estate’s many lavishly landscaped courtyards under a night sky aglow with stars, the towering glass buildings of Westwood shimmering in the distance. This was not a raucous celebration. Rather, the event was designed to project the dignity of true accomplishment in the world of business. That said, there was still a strong sense of success and achievement in the air; everyone was quite excited. These were the best of times, and everyone seemed to realize it. As a little more than a hundred guests, all in formal wear, enjoyed the refined tranquility, a ten-piece orchestra provided the perfect backdrop of pleasant but unobtrusive cocktail party music.

In his new position, Nicky Hilton would be responsible for all of the Hilton-leased hotels abroad in twenty-five countries. Actually, Nicky began his work with the international division at the start of 1966, but the official announcement would not be made until this night in October. It was a tremendous responsibility, but one his father—and the corporation’s board of directors—had decided the forty-year-old Hilton scion could handle. Ever since his marriage to Trish McClintock seven years earlier, Nicky had worked hard to rehabilitate his image not only in Conrad’s eyes but in those of his younger brothers, Barron and Eric, as well. Nicky was more devoted to the company than ever; Hilton hotel business rarely left his thoughts. In recent years, he had done an excellent job of heading up the company’s Inns Division, increasing its profit margin by more than 30 percent in the last three years. Meanwhile, in his private life, he had grown to truly love Trish and his sons, Conrad and Michael, who meant the world to him.

The party to announce the dual promotions of Nicky and Barron was attended by many of the Hilton Hotels Corporation’s officers and board members, such as billionaire hotelier Henry Crown and his wife, Gladys, to whom he had been happily married since 1946. Conrad’s first wife, Mary Saxon, mother of Eric, Barron, and Nicky, was present, as was his second wife, Zsa Zsa, along with Francesca. (Six months earlier, Zsa Zsa had divorced her fifth husband, Texas oil baron Joshua S. Cosden Jr. “We were both in love with him,” Zsa Zsa explained at the party. “I fell out of love with him, but he didn’t!”)

As uniformed waiters passed through the crowd with tall Baccarat crystal flutes of Veuve Clicquot and a variety of seafood hors d’oeuvres, Nicky Hilton—looking Rat Pack suave in a perfectly tailored black jacket and matching pants with a crisp white shirt and black bow tie—walked up to the makeshift stage to join his father in front of the microphone at a wooden podium, the front of which was emblazoned with the Hilton Hotels insignia.

“Those of you who know me well probably believe that this is the last thing in the world you’d expect from me, the idea of being a big shot with my pop’s company,” Nicky said with a grin. “Don’t forget, I’m the guy who once described myself in the press as a professional loafer,” he added. Everyone laughed—everyone, that is, except for Conrad. A flicker of annoyance crossed his face.

“Seriously, I want to thank my father for this vote of confidence,” Nicky continued, turning to face Conrad. “I promise, I won’t let you down, sir,” he said. Then, as if suddenly overcome by a strong and unexpected wave of emotion, Nicky took a step toward Conrad and wrapped his arms around him in a tight embrace. The hug just lasted a moment, though, before Conrad pulled away and made his way back to the microphone. “And now,” he said, “I would like to introduce the new president and chief executive officer of the Hilton Hotels Corporation’s domestic division, and that would be my son Barron.”