The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (7 page)

When he got back to California from his trip to Florida, Conrad met Arthur Foristall, who was his spokesman but also advised him on business matters. After talking things over, Hilton called Kirkeby to make his offer. Then came the give-and-take that resulted in Kirkeby’s counteroffer of $850,000 for the purchase of the property.

“Think he’s had enough time to wonder?” Conrad asked Arthur.

“Sure,” Arthur said, laughing. “Put the ol’ guy out of his misery now, why don’t you, Connie?”

Conrad chuckled and picked up the telephone. “Operator, a long-distance call to New York,” he said. Finally, Kirkeby was on the line again. “My friend, you have a deal at eight and a half,” Conrad said. Then, after a beat, he added, “I’ll mail you a check today to bind the deal.” He smiled at Arthur and hung up. “Easiest deal I ever made,” he said. “You know, maybe I ought to do this more often.”

With just two long-distance telephone calls, he had struck another major deal: Conrad Hilton had just purchased the Town House for $850,000. (Most of this amount would be the profit from his recent sale of the Sir Francis Drake, the storied San Francisco landmark.)

“Conrad Hilton was able to use certain events to the benefit of his business,” notes Cathleen Baird, former director of the Conrad N. Hilton Archives at the University of Houston. “He realized with the prospect of a possible Japanese invasion—as many people thought—on the West Coast, property value was decreasing, and as a result he was able to negotiate the purchase of the Town House at… you could almost say… a bargain-basement price.”

As soon as the Town House purchase was complete, Conrad would make significant changes to it, as he always did after buying any property. That was the way he made his imprint on a new acquisition, by personalizing it with his own special touch. To the Town House he added a swimming pool with white beach sand and an expansive tennis court, before ultimately transforming it into a hotel from its former status as an apartment building. (Of course, he also paid for the relocation of the few tenants still living there when he bought it.) It was an immediate success. Whereas its gross profit for 1941 had been $33,000, in 1942 under Hilton’s ownership the Town House as a luxury hotel took in almost $200,000. From that time onward, it always earned at least a quarter of a million in profit. Hilton liked the property so much, he would establish corporate offices there and also provided certain units to friends to stay in when they were in town. It would become a preferred home base for him, his business associates, and any number of relatives.

Courting Zsa Zsa

I
t had been about a month since meeting Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Conrad Hilton couldn’t seem to get her off his mind. This was quite unusual for him. Women ordinarily did not hold his interest for more than a couple of dates, and if they became intimate, that was usually the kiss of death as far as the relationship was concerned. Afterward, he lost interest. He hadn’t yet been intimate with Zsa Zsa, and maybe that’s why he was still hooked.

When the Town House was finally his, Conrad drove over to Zsa Zsa Gabor’s apartment, picked her up, and took her there. He wanted her to see what he had just acquired, his latest achievement. It was the first time in many years—since his marriage to Mary, in fact—that he would have the satisfaction of sharing with a woman something he was so proud of. Soon the two of them stood in front of the imposing building, she in a fur coat she’d borrowed from her sister, he in a sharp suit with his Stetson hat. In a photograph taken that day, they appear so formally attired, it might as well have been a holiday rather than just an ordinary Wednesday.

“So what do you think of it?” Conrad asked Zsa Zsa as the two gazed up at the structure. “I just bought it,” he said in his southwestern drawl.

For a moment, Zsa Zsa seemed speechless. “This is
yours
now?” she managed to say. “This
mah-vellous
building is all yours?”

“That it is,” Conrad answered, grinning with pride. If he had hoped to impress her, he had most definitely succeeded.

“What in the world are you going to do with it?” she asked. “Maybe one day you will let me live here?” she asked, batting her eyes at him.

“Perhaps,” he said, nodding at her and smiling.

“Maybe we marry one day?” she said, looking hopeful.

“Maybe,” he said, gazing at her. She was so intoxicating, he really couldn’t get enough of her and the smell of her French soap. She had such a dazzling smile, such a terrific complexion, such perfect cheekbones, and all with a tight little—and bountiful—package that screamed out sex appeal. She represented his chance for real passion in his life, and he knew it. He wasn’t going to let it go, either.

Attorney Gregson Bautzer, the friend of Zsa Zsa’s who had been with her when she met Conrad, had warned her, “Don’t ever mention marriage to him. He’s a confirmed bachelor. Mention marriage and you’ll never see him again.” What Bautzer didn’t know is that this enchantress had already mentioned marriage to Hilton, on the night they met, and that he had pursued her anyway, and now seemed interested in a future with her.

As if making up for lost time in his life, Conrad had begun sending roses to Zsa Zsa every day, followed by regular telephone calls every morning, making it his first duty of the day, much to the chagrin of Eva Gabor, Zsa Zsa’s apartment mate, who as a working actress complained that she needed her sleep. (The two sisters slept in a double bed together in the small, cramped apartment.) Conrad not only took Zsa Zsa to daily lunches but to dinners almost every night. The two would then go out dancing after their meal, hitting all of the hot spots on Sunset Boulevard. He had never been out as many nights during the week at this time in his life as he’d been with Zsa Zsa, and instead of wishing he were home in bed resting for the next day’s work, he was actually enjoying himself. (Again, poor Eva Gabor felt differently, with Zsa Zsa interrupting her much-required beauty sleep by coming home so late at night. Inevitably, Zsa Zsa and Conrad would make out in his white Caddy on the street outside Eva’s apartment, with the lanky Hilton accidentally leaning on the car horn, thereby sending a loud blast of sound throughout the neighborhood. “Oh my God! That clumsy man!” Eva would exclaim. “I can’t sleep at night and I can’t sleep in the morning. Marry him, or I die!”)

Zsa Zsa enjoyed every moment she spent with Conrad, lavishing him with praise, boosting his ego by her attention, and doing everything she could think of to be a perfect companion for him. Was she really just after his money? Of course she was. “How could I separate him from his money?” she would ask years later. “Would I have been interested in a man twice my age if he wasn’t rich? I don’t think so. Not at that time in my life, anyway. I was young and impressionable and new to Hollywood.” Many decades and many marriages later, Zsa Zsa Gabor would be described as “the most successful courtesan of the twentieth century.”

Conrad suspected that his great wealth had at least
something
to do with her fascination. He knew that she wasn’t just some innocent little waif. Even at her young age, she’d had her share of experiences with men of power and affluence. For instance, as a teenager prior to her arrival in the States, he learned, she’d even been romantically involved with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of Turkey. Married to someone else and now on her way to divorce, she wasn’t exactly inexperienced. “I want a man who is kind and understanding,” she would one day say. “Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?” Conrad was just too swept off his feet by Zsa Zsa to really care whether or not she was just after his money, though. All he wanted at this point in time was Zsa Zsa Gabor, and any notion that she might not be right for him—or that she might have financial motives—he did not take seriously at all.

A few months after meeting her, Conrad decided to introduce Zsa Zsa to his eighty-one-year-old mother, Mary, who still lived in El Paso. It suggests just how important Zsa Zsa had become to him that he would want his mother to know her. He needed to go to Mexico in order to approve alterations being made to the new Palacio Hilton, an enterprise he would lease and operate in Chihuahua as per a deal he had closed the previous November. (The hotel was set to open in April.) Therefore he decided to stop first in Texas with Zsa Zsa.

Since childhood, the Gabors had been schooled on various kinds of seduction, and Zsa Zsa used her charm to weave a bit of a spell on Mary Hilton. A great storyteller even in her youth, Zsa Zsa told Mary many tales about her own mother, Jolie, and how much she missed her. She also talked about her family’s many struggles in Budapest. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi storm troopers had begun their onslaught for world domination in the mid-1930s, and it was feared by the Jewish Gabors that they would be among those targeted for concentration camps. Thus far, the war had not affected Hungary, and the Gabors were still doing quite well in their many enterprises, including jewelry and dress shops. They had a good life in Budapest, but it was limited, and as Zsa Zsa explained, that’s why Jolie encouraged her and Eva to go to America. She missed her family desperately, Zsa Zsa said, and wrote letters to them on a daily basis. It was clear that she loved them very much.

Zsa Zsa also explained that her sister Magda was presently working in the anti-Nazi underground in disguise as a Red Cross worker, helping Polish prisoners of war make their way to Egypt to join General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army. She was deathly afraid that Magda would be discovered and killed, and she said the thought of it haunted her every waking hour. Such emotional stories, and Zsa Zsa’s heartfelt telling of them, tugged at Mary Hilton’s heartstrings. Soon she would be referring to Zsa Zsa affectionately as “that dear girl.”

“In turn, Mary shared with Zsa Zsa stories of the Hilton family’s early struggling days and their own humble beginnings, their first businesses, the gambles they had taken and the way those risks ultimately paid off for them,” recalled one Hilton family member.

On the whole, Mary Hilton approved of Zsa Zsa Gabor. However, she warned Conrad that if he intended to take Zsa Zsa as his wife, he should reconsider. “And you know why,” Mary Hilton told her son. “You will never be able to marry this girl,” she told him. “So get that thought right out of your head, Connie. Get it right out of your head!”

Catholic Stumbling Block

T
he church will not let me marry Zsa Zsa,” Conrad Hilton was saying, “and I’m not sure what to do about it.” The hotel mogul had called an urgent meeting in the study of his Bel-Air mansion to discuss what was turning out to be a major stumbling block in his relationship with Zsa Zsa Gabor. Nicky, nineteen, was present for this confab, as were several business associates and a priest, Father Lorenzo Malone, who was also a trusted friend of Conrad’s and a fellow golf enthusiast. According to the later recollection of one of those present at the meeting, Conrad seemed nervous and uneasy, and with good reason.

There were a couple of major concerns on the table. First of all, Zsa Zsa Gabor was not Catholic, or at least that’s how it appeared to most people at the time. “I accept the teachings of the Catholic Church,” she said, “and then I ignore them and do what I want.” Hopefully, she was joking. Actually, she said that her mother was Jewish but that her father had converted to Catholicism. However, she couldn’t prove it, and frankly, no one knew whether to believe her or not; the declaration seemed to come out of the blue one day during a discussion with Conrad about her religious background. It was at about this time that Conrad came to the realization that he couldn’t necessarily rely on Zsa Zsa to be truthful. His gut now told him she was fibbing about a vitally important issue, her religion. In time, he would find that honesty meant little to her; a good story meant everything.

Actually, the question of Gabor’s faith was not an insurmountable problem. Even though the Catholic Church at the time did not encourage so-called mixed marriages, such unions were still possible if performed by a priest not in the church but in the rectory, and also if the non-Catholic party agreed to raise all children as Catholics. A much bigger problem for Conrad in marrying Zsa Zsa was that the Catholic Church did not recognize the divorce from his first wife, Mary Barron. Therefore, as far as the church was concerned, he was still married to Mary. Any subsequent marriage would not be acknowledged by the church.

For Conrad, this stringent Catholic doctrine presented a major moral and spiritual dilemma. If he wanted to take Zsa Zsa as a wife, he would have to be married in a civil ceremony that would not be sanctioned by the church. He would then have to live with the consequences, which would include his not being able to partake in the Catholic Church’s sacraments such as Holy Communion and Reconciliation (better known as Confession). Hilton was devout in his faith; would he be able to live with the idea of being so ostracized by the church? No. It was inconceivable. Therefore, to try to come to terms with the problem at hand, Conrad had called this meeting at his home.

“So, what do you gentlemen think of this?” he asked

“I think you have no choice in the matter,” Father Malone offered. “You can’t go against the church, Connie.”

“I admit that I’m just not used to being told no,” Conrad admitted. “But that’s not it entirely. This is just an exploratory meeting anyway,” he added, framing it almost as he would a business deal.

“Well, I suppose a canonical dispensation might be possible,” offered Father Malone.