The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (6 page)

As Conrad nursed his dry martini, the clock struck twelve and joyous couples all around him brought in 1942 with shouts of celebration, kisses, and embraces. Never had people been more completely and utterly annoying, he would later recall thinking to himself. “Hey! Happy new year, friend!” someone shouted at him over the din while slapping him on the shoulder. Conrad raised his glass. “Yeah, happy new year,
friend
,” he said bitterly.

If anything, the celebration of New Year’s Eve 1941 proved to be yet another in a recent string of soul-crushing, depressing moments for Conrad Hilton, and because he was alone in a room full of happy strangers, this one somehow felt even more discouraging than the others. While he had obviously done a lot with his life, all around him it was glaringly obvious that others had somehow done what he hadn’t—they’d forged genuine relationships with spouses and partners with whom they were now happily sharing their lives. Maybe none of them had his money, but they seemed to have much more. When he put his life under heavy scrutiny, he didn’t like what he saw. If only he had been at home with his sons, perhaps he would have felt better about things.

At about two in the morning, Conrad Hilton shuffled back to his hotel, his head hung low, feeling old, drunk, and unhappy. Sleep eluded him. A few hours later, once the East Coast sun had risen on the morning of January 1, 1942, Conrad picked up the telephone and called the woman he had begun to consider somewhat of a lifeline—Zsa Zsa Gabor in Los Angeles. She was elated to hear from him, even though the call had come at such a early hour. He instantly felt better, the heaviness of his hangover seeming to lift with just the sound of her voice.

“When are you coming back, Connie?” she asked, her English, if possible, somehow even more difficult to understand by long-distance telephone. “I miss you,” she said, or at least that’s what he thought she said. It sounded more like, “I
meese
you.” Then she added, “I can’t
vait
to see you.”

“Well, Georgia, why don’t you come down to Florida?” he asked, alluding to the trip he had mentioned when he first met her. “I’m headed there to visit my brother.”

“But I can’t afford to do that, Connie,” she said. “I don’t have the money.”

“My dear, of course I will pay for it,” he told her. “A round-trip train ticket. Please join me.” (Airline travel was in its infancy at this time, seldom used even for cross-country trips.)

There was a pause. “You know, I’m not yet divorced,” she told Conrad. He was surprised. This was the first he’d heard that she’d ever been married. “It’s not right, Connie,” she said. “I don’t want you to
seenk
I am that kind of girl.”

He had to laugh. Whatever kind of girl she was, he decided, he would see her soon enough. “Fine,” he told her. “I understand, Georgia. We shall meet again very soon in this new year.”

Upon hanging up, Conrad couldn’t help but wonder about her. There weren’t many women who would turn down such a generous offer. It did bode well for her, in his estimation. It would, at least thus far, appear that she wasn’t just looking for a nice trip to the East Coast on his dime. However, he had to admit that the fact that she was married did bother him. How had it happened that, at her age, she’d already been wed and was on her way to being divorced? He had quite a few questions about her, but he also couldn’t get her off his mind.

Soon Conrad would find himself in Florida with his brother Carl. Then it would be back to Los Angeles for business as usual. Only now he was beginning to sense that things could very well change in his life. At the very least, wondering about this new woman, “Georgia,” and what she might one day represent made for more than a few moments of contentment as Conrad Hilton watched the scenery race by, his head resting against the window of a train’s passenger car.

Buying the Town House

I
t’s a pretty good-looking building,” Conrad Hilton was saying. “I think I want it. What do you think?”

“Well, how much is it?” asked his friend and adviser Arthur Foristall, who would go on to become Hilton’s public relations strategist. He was a valued member of his board of directors.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Conrad said.

It was a brisk day in January 1942 and Conrad and Arthur were at Conrad’s new huge Spanish-style home on Bellagio Road in Beverly Hills. His estate wasn’t overwhelming in scope, but was still impressive and rich-looking; it spoke to the success Conrad had recently achieved. The two men were sitting in the study, a place where many memorable moments had already unfolded, whether it was a discussion about an important real estate purchase or a powwow with his sons about a problem in school, or maybe a discussion with them about the importance of prayer and the value of hard work. Whatever it was, if it merited a spirited dialogue, Conrad’s study—the true inner sanctum of the home—was always the place for that to happen.

And what a study it was! He had come a long way. It was obvious that a great deal of care had been taken to make this space, a large room with dark wood ceiling beams and highly polished hardwood floors that were partially covered with expensive Moroccan rugs, as comfortable as possible. The centerpiece of the room was a massive stone fireplace and wooden mantel, upon which were carefully placed family photos in gold and silver frames. On an antique wooden table in the middle of the room sat an enormous bowl of fresh fruit. This display was replenished thrice daily; no piece of fruit was ever allowed to sit for more than a few hours. There were also huge bowls of colorful flowers on other occasional tables in the room, lending the premises a scent that wasn’t exactly masculine but was clean and fresh just the same. The walls were painted a soft buttery yellow.

Conrad’s large desk, made of rare and expensive agarwood, sat against one wall with a bank of three upholstered leather chairs facing it for the purpose of business meetings. However, for more personal moments with family and friends, the seating area in front of the fireplace—a pair of overstuffed sofas and matching chairs, each covered in cream-colored linen, with an antique coffee table and two end tables—was the preferred area of relaxation. The room always had a soft glow to it from period lamps in which Conrad preferred using amber light bulbs for a sense of tranquility, even during the day. Two of the four walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling African blackwood shelving, in which many hundreds of books were organized without their jackets for a uniform appearance. Conrad was a stickler for making certain that his books, many of which were extremely expensive and rare first editions, were stacked in an orderly manner. Only the same size books were to be situated next to each other. For instance, large coffee-table books were not to be placed among smaller ones. Also, everything was to be placed in strict alphabetical order by the author’s name. However, true to the paradoxes of his personality, Conrad was not an avid reader. He practically never read books! On some of the tables in the room were stacks of magazines, everything from
Life
to
Time
,
Newsweek
,
Esquire
, and
Paris Match
—which he also wasn’t known to read—as well as the latest important publications about real estate and the hotel business, which he did enjoy. There was also a stack of
Weird Tales
comic books, which belonged to Barron.

In the corner of the room sat a small Philco television set, a carved wooden cabinet about three feet tall with a six-inch screen in its center, six control knobs, and one small speaker. This was an unusual luxury for the times; American TV had just debuted in 1939. However, the set in the Hilton study was relatively useless since most stations had gone dark in 1942 because of the war. There was an occasional broadcast, but no one ever seemed to know when it would happen or for how long. One would turn the set on, and if anything but static showed up on the screen, it was considered a nice surprise. “It’s just a glorified table with some sort of small window in it,” Conrad would joke of the TV set that sat unplugged in the corner, one of just roughly 10,000 in the entire United States.

He had made it to the big time. This estate was really the high life, a far cry from any other place in which Conrad had ever lived, and for that matter, from any place he had ever even imagined living. His mother couldn’t quite comprehend how far her son had come in such a short time, and when she would come to visit she would spend hours just walking around the estate in wonderment. His siblings had the same reaction. No one could believe how well Conrad had done for himself, yet somehow it all made perfect sense just based on what was known of his personality, his character, his temperament. He had earned his success, and he, along with everyone else in his life, was happy about it. But he couldn’t bask in his victory for long; he was much too busy.

Conrad Hilton picked up the phone and dialed “O” for the operator. “Ma’am, I’d like to make a long-distance call to New York City,” he said before giving her the number. He was calling his old friend Arnold Kirkeby in the Big Apple. Ten minutes later, the phone rang; it was the operator. She had completed the call. “So, my friend, how much do you want for the Town House?” Conrad asked when Kirkeby came on the line.

“Well, come up with an amount, Connie,” Kirkeby said. “Just don’t embarrass yourself or me by making it too low.”

Hilton took a deep breath, smiled at Arthur Foristall, and took the plunge with a figure that was less than he expected Kirkeby to accept. “Tell you what,” he said, his southwestern drawl more pronounced than ever, as was usually the case when he was trying to be polite, “I can probably give you, say, $750,000.”

On the other end, Kirkeby laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he told Conrad. “Nine-fifty. That’s what I want for it, $950,000.”

“Are you joking?” Conrad asked. “I was just there, Arnie. The place is a ghost town. It’s deserted. I think I can maybe bring it back to life, but even I can’t perform miracles. So, who knows? If you don’t sell to me, who’s going to want it?”

That was true, Kirkeby had to admit. The building was all but empty. “Fine, then,” he said, now sounding frustrated. “Nine, then. You can have it for $900,000. That’s it, though,” he warned. “That’s my lowest figure.”

“Eight,” Conrad countered without hesitation. “I think eight is a nicer number, Arnie. I have always liked the number eight. So, let’s say eight, shall we?”

“Good God, Connie,” Kirkeby exclaimed. “All right, look, eight and a half. That’s the best I can do for you. And only for you because we’re friends. So take it or leave it, Connie.”

“Okay, tell you what. Let me think it over,” Conrad said. “Very nice talking to you, Arnie. Say hello to the wife, will you?” After hanging up the phone, Conrad looked at Arthur Foristall and gave him the thumbs-up. “But let’s have ol’ Arnie sit for a moment and wonder what’s going to happen next,” he said with a devilish grin. “Why ruin the suspense, right?” He then rose and went to the corner of the room, where he poured two glasses of sherry from a carafe on an end table. He handed one to Arthur. “To the Town House,” he said, clinking his friend’s glass. “Yes,” Arthur agreed. “To the Town House.”

The backstory of how Conrad made his most significant Los Angeles purchase to date is an interesting one. During the third week of January 1942—right after Conrad returned to Los Angeles after having visited his mother in Texas and then his brother in Florida—Arnold Kirkeby mentioned to him that he might be interested in selling one of his major holdings, namely the Town House. It was a thirteen-story brick structure of luxury apartments, mixing Mediterranean revival and art deco styles of design at the corner of Wilshire and South Commonwealth in the Westlake district of Los Angeles.

Actually, Conrad had first become aware of the hotel in 1937 when he was invited by the movie actor and astute businessman Leo Carrillo to his estate in Santa Monica Canyon. Built in 1929 by the oil-rich, socially prominent Edward L. Doheny family from architect Norman W. Alpaugh’s blueprints, this prestigious property, which faced beautiful Lafayette Park on one side, had, as a result of the Depression, fallen on hard times. Was Conrad interested? Of course he was interested, he told Kirkeby. However, he wanted to do an inspection of the hotel first, which he did when he got back to Los Angeles.

The Town House, a striking structure with stately palm trees on its perimeter, made quite an impression on the tony boulevard with its upscale restaurants and department stores. However, when Conrad went inside and started asking around, he found that it was practically empty—another sign of the times. People were scared. The Japanese had gotten a little too close with their bombing of Pearl Harbor. There was fear that if they’d managed to devastate the country’s naval fleet in Hawaii, perhaps the California shores were next. As a result, the economy in Los Angeles had never been weaker. The only bright spot was the burgeoning film industry, which continued apace its full-on film production despite the loss to the war effort of some of its major talent, from directors like Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, and William Wellman to stars like Carole Lombard, Jimmy Stewart, Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, and Robert Taylor.

Still, to Conrad, ever the optimist, this state of affairs couldn’t last forever. Again, he wasn’t about to allow a temporary situation to influence what could one day be a profitable idea. He noticed that the area was already beginning to hum with shipbuilding and airplane construction, with workers from around the state and across the country swarming into Southern California like bees to honey to fill the jobs in the defense plants.