The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (12 page)

Marriage: Hers

C
onrad Hilton may have regretted his decision to marry, but to a certain extent, the same could be said of Zsa Zsa Gabor. According to her memory, within weeks of the wedding any physical intimacy between them suddenly came to an end. Once, according to what she would many years later tell her stepdaughter-in-law Trish Hilton (who would be Nicky’s second wife), Zsa Zsa was feeling lonely and decided to try to entice her husband into a romantic interlude. “I screwed all of my courage together,” she told Trish, “and went into his bedroom wearing a sexy black negligee. I was challenging him, wondering, ‘Can I stop him from praying? Will he find me too sexy to resist?’ I was Vivien Leigh teasing Clark Gable. When I walked in, he was on his knees, praying. ‘No, no, no!’ he said to me. ‘Go to your own room and wait for me.’ Can you imagine how that made me feel?” Zsa Zsa asked. “After that, he would always lock his bedroom door so that I could not walk in unannounced.”

“That sounds true to me,” confirmed Trish Hilton, who would go on to become a very good friend of Zsa Zsa’s. “I think that by that time, Connie was really finished with the marriage. Zsa Zsa would not easily accept it. She had every right to try to entice him to change his mind.”

It wouldn’t be easy. Even when she thought he was being nice to her, it came with a twist. One morning, they were eating breakfast, Conrad in his royal-looking red velvet robe. (“I thought, this is a high priest sitting opposite me eating soft-boiled eggs,” she would recall. “I could have been his handmaiden, not his wife.”) He looked up at her and announced, “Georgia, I think the time has come to buy you a car.” She lit up. This was good news! She and Conrad had seen a few automobiles in showrooms over the past couple of months, and she had suspected—hoped—that he was considering buying her one.

“Oh, that copper Cadillac we saw in the showroom the other day,” Zsa Zsa said brightly. “How I would love that one.” She said she thought it would go nicely with her hair, which for her was reason enough to want it.

Conrad frowned. Unbeknownst to her, just a day earlier when he mentioned to golfing buddies that he was thinking of buying his wife a car, one cynic predicted, “The little woman will want a Cadillac. I’m
sure
of it.” The implication, of course, was that Zsa Zsa would ask for the most expensive car. Now that scenario seemed to be the case. Because many of his affluent friends were convinced that Zsa Zsa was a gold digger, Conrad had actually become quite sensitive to the idea. Simply put, he didn’t want to look like an old fool in the eyes of his pals. “Well, I think a secondhand car would be best for you,” he told Zsa Zsa. “Yes, that’s what we shall do.”

Her spirits dropped. “If that’s what you think is best…,” she said unenthusiastically.

In the end, Mrs. Hilton would wind up with Gregson Bautzer’s used blue Chrysler, which she hated. To her it seemed unfair; after all, Conrad had
two
brand-new Cadillacs. Back in Hungary, Zsa Zsa and her sisters had been accustomed to being pampered by their mother. It would seem, however, that there wasn’t to be a great deal of that going on in her life in America, at least not while she was married to Conrad Hilton.

Zsa Zsa couldn’t help but take it personally. In her mind, if Conrad loved her, he would want her to be happy, and what made her happy was being able to spend money on extravagances. That’s how she was raised, and even though she was still young she was too old to change. She didn’t
want
to change. Why
shouldn’t
she expect her husband to lavish her with presents? In her mind, money should be no object to Conrad Hilton; he could well afford anything her heart desired. His denying her only made her feel that he didn’t really care about her.

Zsa Zsa tried to keep to her own business as best she could. “I threw myself into the job of becoming one hundred percent American,” is how she put it. That meant taking English language lessons (trying to learn how not to pronounce her w’s as v’s—a practice she would never master). “I
vorked
on that forever,” she explained. She also took golf lessons, tennis lessons, and horseback riding lessons, anything to stay busy. Also, she had grown attached to the Hilton estate, especially to the parties. They were always so entertaining, so aristocratic-seeming. For one party, Conrad hired a small orchestra to play a series of eighteenth-century Italian minuets while everyone, dressed very formally, danced with grace about the parlor. “Who in America does this sort of thing?” Zsa Zsa asked. “It’s so sophisticated and lovely.” She also enjoyed the estate’s outdoors. It was stunning with its majestic palm trees and perfectly manicured walkways bursting with colorful flowerbeds at every turn. She had fallen in love with these glorious surroundings the first moment she set foot on the property.

When Eva Gabor announced that she was marrying her second husband, Charles Isaacs, an American investment broker, Zsa Zsa asked Conrad if she could host the wedding at their home on September 27, 1943. He agreed, but he asked her not to spend a fortune on the ceremony and reception. The two sat down and planned a budget. Of course, there was no way Zsa Zsa could resist giving her sister a wedding that was fit for a royal. Conrad was unhappy about the money being spent, so much so that he decided not to stay for the wedding.

Eventually Zsa Zsa found ways to get around the strict budget Conrad had imposed on her, at least where her own wardrobe was concerned. Resourcefully, she approached the world’s most renowned designers and negotiated deals with them that allowed her to borrow their gowns for special occasions. As a result, she would manage to remain a shimmering fixture at parties and events. Many people didn’t realize that many of Mrs. Conrad Hilton’s most striking gowns were merely on loan. Designers in Los Angeles and New York were delighted to have one of their creations adorn the stunning Zsa Zsa. They well knew that she would be extensively photographed, and as a result the gown would be seen all over the country. Some designers even gave her the garment outright. Thus the legend of the ultra-glamorous Zsa Zsa Gabor continued to blossom. If Gabor established this custom, and it seems she did, today’s red-carpet habitués have her to thank for it: Rarely do Emmy-, Oscar-, Grammy-, or Golden Globe–nominated females pay for the costly couture gowns they wear at these events.

“People think I have no right to be unhappy,” Zsa Zsa later told her sister Eva. Eva would recall that the two of them were eating lunch in the spacious dining room with its burgundy brocade draperies covering leaded windows and its matching oversized furniture that could best be described as royal. The rectangular table in this room was massive enough to seat twenty-six people, twelve on each side and one at each end. Zsa Zsa and Eva must have seemed quite miniscule huddled together at one of its corners while picking at green salads brought to them by Inger, Zsa Zsa’s personal maid. “But I
am
unhappy,” Zsa Zsa said, lighting a Kool cigarette and then handing the pack to her sister. “I guess I am used to more attention,” she said. “What kind of a man gives to the poor, but not to his wife?” she asked.

“The kind of man you should not have married,” Eva said, driving the point home once again.

“There
is
no other man like this one,” Zsa Zsa concluded with a sigh. “He has only one passion in his life. Hilton hotels.”

A Frustrating Business Deal

C
onrad Hilton had other things on his mind in 1943, matters that did not involve his wife’s discontentment but rather problems having to do with the Stevens Hotel. Though it didn’t happen often, there were times when his finely tuned instincts for business let him down, and the story of the Stevens exemplifies as much.

After the Army was finished with the Stevens, the place was left in a total shambles. It had been used to house Army Air Corps personnel, not as a high-class hotel but as a glorified barracks of sorts. Now, abandoned by the government and back on the market, it hardly looked like a showplace. The government had used its grand ballroom as a mess hall, so one can only imagine the state in which Conrad found it when he did an inspection of the property. He was sick about it, actually. This once grand lady was now, in his mind, an old and ruined dowager, and there didn’t seem much that could be done for her. Though Conrad was first in line to purchase it just by virtue of his ownership in the Stevens Corporation, he decided against making a bid. It wasn’t an easy decision. He had been obsessed with the property for so long, it was difficult to let it go. The fact that it was the biggest hotel in the world also came to bear for him—what a coup it would be if it were his. However, his gut now told him that it was no longer a sound investment.

But then, much to Conrad’s great consternation, another businessman, Steve A. Healy—a bricklayer now suddenly turned entrepreneur—swooped in and made the purchase himself. Though Conrad hadn’t wanted the Stevens, now that someone else had it his competitive nature sprang forth and he wanted it too—more than ever. That Healy had no hotel experience whatsoever somehow just made matters worse for Conrad. It was an enormous blow to his ego that someone inexperienced in the business saw value in the Stevens when he hadn’t, and had so quickly acted upon it. However, since Healy was so green, perhaps the enterprise would fail, or at least that was what Conrad hoped, and he would then have another opportunity to buy it. That didn’t happen, though. Quite the contrary occurred: Healy somehow managed to restore the Stevens to its former glory, and, thanks to his creativity and imagination—not to mention the millions he would sink into renovations—it became a thriving hotel once again.

Still, Conrad couldn’t let the Stevens go. Against his better judgment, he made several bids to purchase the hotel from Steve Healy, thereby tipping his hand that he truly wanted it, and in the process making Healy even more determined to keep it for himself. Conrad couldn’t rest easy knowing that he had made a serious error in judgment where the Stevens was concerned, and that he had then compounded the damage by making so many appeals to Healy.

Because of his preoccupation with these negotiations, at least as Zsa Zsa saw it, Conrad had completely lost interest in her. He was depressed every day and couldn’t hide it from anyone, and certainly did not attempt to hide it from her. He wanted to rise above such pettiness—so what if he hadn’t gotten what he wanted? Must he always get exactly what he wanted when he wanted it? Unfortunately, when he asked this question of himself, the answer that always came back was a resounding and unequivocal “yes.” He put everything he had into his business ventures and felt just as much unhappiness when things didn’t work out as he felt happiness when they did. It was just the way he was wired, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The Plaza

O
ne of those who had been most impressed with Conrad Hilton’s Midas touch over the years was L. Boyd Hatch, the executive vice president of the Atlas Corporation, an investment trust headed by Floyd Odlum, often remembered as “the only man who made a great fortune out of the Depression.” In 1943, Hatch approached Hilton to see if he was interested in joining Atlas in the purchase of the Plaza Hotel. Atlas had pockets as deep as the Grand Canyon, but knew virtually nothing about the hotel business. As Hilton recalls in his autobiography, “It would be ridiculous to say that such subtle tribute to my talents left me unmoved after my initial welcome to the hotel business in New York.” He goes on to explain the proposition offered him: “[It] was that they take 40 percent of the Plaza deal [and] I take 60 percent and assume the responsibility of management. It suited me fine.”

Atlas’s interest in Conrad as an ally was a vindication of sorts for Hilton in the sense that back when he purchased the Roosevelt there had been a great deal of derisive press having to do with the consensus of some cynics that Hilton was in way over his head. He was a country boy, charged the skeptics. He had no business investing in hotels, especially given the country’s topsy-turvy economy. Others felt that he was capable of owning and operating hotels in other parts of the country, but in New York City? No. He wasn’t cosmopolitan enough to understand the nuances of high-society Manhattan, they claimed. Besides, what if he were to cheapen the austere surroundings of the classic New York hotels with his country-boy poor taste in décor? Though the suggestions were all quite insulting, Conrad took them in stride. He did nothing to substantially change the look of the Roosevelt or the way it operated, other than to finally make it turn a profit by guaranteeing terrific service and watching the books closely in order to cut back on excessive spending. Apparently he had proven himself with the Roosevelt, and now, with the help of the Atlas Corporation, he was on his way to owning one of the true crown jewels of the hotel business—the Plaza.

In October 1943, Hilton and the Atlas Corporation (along with a hefty first mortgage by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company) bought the magnificent Plaza Hotel, a twenty-story Manhattan landmark, facing Central Park South (59th Street extended to the west) on the north and Fifth Avenue on the east. The price: $7.4 million (the equivalent of almost $100 million today). Hilton would plow another $6 million into upgrades. The luxury hotel, of French château style, was built in 1907 from the blueprints of architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, at a cost, according to Hilton, of $17 million (other sources place the figure at closer to $12.5 million).