The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (16 page)

The Divorce

W
ithin weeks of her discharge from the hospital, Zsa Zsa Gabor received word that her parents, Jolie and Vilmos Gabor, and sister Magda were on their way to New York from Lisbon. On the day of her mother’s arrival in New York—her father and sister would arrive two days later on a different boat—Zsa Zsa and Eva met her at the dock, where the three enjoyed a wonderful and tearful reunion. However, the immigrant Gabors would come with no money, having lost everything in the takeover of their home country. They were all but penniless, the wealth and material goods they’d accumulated over a lifetime of hard work—mostly from the family’s success in the jewelry business in Hungary—were now gone. Zsa Zsa once recalled that her mother, Jolie, arrived “with only a sable coat, some antique Portuguese silver and a hundred dollars in her pocket. As Eva and I rushed into her arms when the boat docked in New York Harbor, Mother removed the hundred dollars from her purse and, with a flourish, presented it to the porter who had just unloaded her bags.” Jolie and family were so glad to finally be safe and sound on American soil that the fact that they’d lost everything in the process didn’t really matter to them at the time. (Jolie and Magda would stay in America, but Vilmos—who was already divorced from Jolie—was not happy in the new country; he returned to Hungary and remarried there.)

It was Eva who summoned Conrad Hilton to tell him that her family had arrived from Hungary and had no place to stay and no money. Though he was still angry with Zsa Zsa, he was able to put those feelings aside and take a plane to New York to see what he could do to help the new arrivals. When he arrived, he found Zsa Zsa, Eva, Magda, and their parents all living in a two-bedroom suite at his Plaza Hotel. That wouldn’t do, obviously; Conrad provided all of them with separate accommodations, starting with Jolie, who was put up in a grand three-bedroom, three-bathroom suite at the Plaza.

“He couldn’t have been kinder and more compassionate,” Zsa Zsa recalled of Conrad. “He then courteously examined the silver [Jolie had brought with her on the boat] and elected to buy it from her. He needed the silver like he needed to grow another three feet, but he was aware that Mother was too proud to accept money and wanted to help her. Using Conrad’s money, she found a small store on Madison Avenue—between 62nd and 63rd streets—and opened ‘Jolie Gabor’—selling exquisite costume jewelry modeled after the Maria Theresia pieces so popular in Europe.” It would go on to become just the first in a successful chain of jewelry stores for the enterprising Mother Gabor. “Through the years, Mother made millions of dollars,” Zsa Zsa would say, “also employing in her stores—she opened another in Palm Springs—Maria Callas’ mother, and many impoverished members of European aristocracy.”

Unfortunately, Conrad’s generosity to Jolie Gabor had no bearing on his broken marriage to her daughter Zsa Zsa. He still wanted it to be over. It was then that the posturing began, as it often does in contentious divorces.

Zsa Zsa hired the most savvy lawyer she could find, hopefully to strong-arm Conrad into giving her millions of divorce dollars. She wasn’t the only one with an adversarial streak, though; Conrad engaged in his own bit of gamesmanship. If Zsa Zsa wanted a good fight, he would give her one.

First, Conrad insisted that Zsa Zsa fire her lawyer and hire a different one to represent her—one of his own. He would pay the attorney himself. She said she was going to do no such thing. She wanted Conrad to pay for
her
attorney, which is not unusual in divorce proceedings. Annoyed by her defiance, Conrad retaliated by holding back the money he was supposed to give her under the separation agreement. Moreover, as per their settlement agreement, he had agreed to pay the rent on a hotel suite of her choice for a six-month period, and she had a choice of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Town House, the Plaza Hotel, “or any other hotel selected by her in the United States.” But after six months, she would be on her own. So Hilton just waited for the clock to tick away. He and his attorney knew that if there was no settlement in sight at the end of the six-month period and Zsa Zsa had no money coming in, she would be fairly frantic—and they were right.

In a letter to Conrad Hilton dated August 1, 1945, Hilton’s lawyer, J. B. Herndon Jr., noted that Zsa Zsa was agitated because she had run out of money. In fact, due to the exorbitant legal fees she had incurred since the beginning of the divorce proceedings, she said she was ready to just abandon the fight. She asked when she might be receiving more money from Conrad, as per their legal settlement. The lawyer told her that as far as he knew, no money had been sent and he had no idea when it might happen. “What I predicted has come to pass,” wrote the attorney to Conrad. “She is desperate.” By the time he concluded his conversation with Zsa Zsa, she was fully prepared to take a meeting with the lawyer Conrad had chosen to represent her in the divorce action. She said that she had some trepidation about doing so, however, because her present attorney had assured her that a substantial settlement would be forthcoming from Conrad if she could just hang on a little while longer. In response to that theory, Herndon told Zsa Zsa that her lawyer didn’t know what he was talking about, that Conrad had no intention of giving her any money, and moreover, he didn’t intend to negotiate with her lawyer at all. When Zsa Zsa asked Herndon if he might at least be able to secure a room for her at the Roosevelt Hotel, he turned her down. Herndon ended his letter to Conrad by writing, “My advice at this moment is to let her sweat. I think in a few more weeks she will be willing to settle without much difficulty.”

Actually it would take an entire year with no money coming in, and with Zsa Zsa’s rage toward Conrad mounting daily, before she would finally crumble and hire Conrad’s lawyer to represent her.

On September 17, 1946, the final decree of divorce was to be handed down, as well as the terms of alimony.

On the witness stand at that final hearing, Zsa Zsa—referred to by her real name, Sari Gabor—testified that she and Conrad had no children. She testified that “a couple of months after the marriage,” he had told her that he no longer wished to be married, and that he had repeated as much to her “quite often.” She also testified, “He had a butler in the house for about five years before he married me, and he was busy and didn’t like to take my orders. So I asked my husband to fire him, and he said he didn’t like to fire him. If I didn’t like it, I could go. But the butler would stay.” She talked about the fire that burned her wing of the Hilton mansion, and stated that after the fire she stayed, for the most part, with her sister Eva. She said that she had asked if she could move back into the newly renovated mansion, but that Conrad turned her down. During the entire summer of 1944, she testified, she only saw Conrad twice. She testified that they had not cohabitated and had not reconciled.

Eva Gabor testified as well, saying that Conrad told her “several times” that “he doesn’t like to be married.” She said that Conrad “was tired very often,” not from working but rather “from playing golf.” She talked about Zsa Zsa’s physical condition, saying that “she was very nervous, and she looked very bad and couldn’t sleep.” She noted that it had been her idea to have Zsa Zsa “taken to a hospital” but that Conrad didn’t agree with her because “he didn’t think she was that sick. But as her sister I did think.” She concluded that the reason for her emotional state was that “she was upset very much over the treatment by her husband.”

Just as Conrad had predicted, it was on the basis of Eva’s testimony about Zsa Zsa’s need for hospitalization that the judge ruled in favor of Zsa Zsa’s allegation of “extreme cruelty.” He ordered that the amount of money for her support and maintenance be raised as of October 1, 1946, to $2,283.33 per month until she remarried or November 30, 1949, whichever came first. He ruled that she was also allowed to keep all of the insurance money she received from the fire at the Bellagio Road home, as well as stocks she held in the Roosevelt and Plaza hotels. Also, Conrad would have to pay her medical expenses for a year. Additionally, he would have to pay all legal fees in connection to her obtaining immigration papers that would legally permit her to remain in the United States, and 50 percent of all fees having to do with the immigration of Zsa Zsa’s parents.

Conrad had already agreed to pay Zsa Zsa a lump sum of $35,000 in cash, which he had paid back on November 3, 1944, and which was long gone by the time the divorce decree was handed down. (That seems like a small amount of money, and perhaps it is considering Conrad’s wealth at the time. But it should be noted that today the same amount—$35,000—would be worth well over $400,000, which may also say a lot about Zsa Zsa’s spending habits.) “I did not grudge even a penny of it,” Conrad Hilton said of the settlement. “It was true that a Gabor could bring much laughter and gaiety in any man’s life—if he could afford it, and if his faith permitted.”

“She made a stupid, stupid divorce,” Jolie once recalled of her daughter. What irked the Gabor matriarch even more than any of the other points of the settlement, though, was that Zsa Zsa didn’t get a permanent suite for life at the Plaza. “Not even a ten percent discount on any suite anywhere in the world,” Jolie Gabor fumed. “Wherever Zsa Zsa goes, in a Hilton hotel, she must pay herself. Ridiculous.” Or as Zsa Zsa liked to say, “You never really know a man until you divorce him.”

It could also be said that Conrad didn’t really know the woman he was divorcing, because—unbeknownst to him at the time—Zsa Zsa was pregnant. Not only would she keep this news from Conrad, but she also chose not to divulge it to the judge who presided over the divorce. In doing so, she set the stage for what would amount to many decades of contention over money between her and a man who was well on his way to becoming one of the richest entrepreneurs in the country.

Buying the Stevens and the Palmer House

I
n 1946, Conrad Hilton was fifty-eight. He and Zsa Zsa Gabor were officially divorced and he was determined to go on with his life and career. At the time, though, the pain of his divorce from Zsa Zsa was somewhat muted by a much-needed boost in his life—yes, the acquisition of yet another hotel.

Conrad had never given up hope that the Stevens Hotel would one day be his to have and to hold. Though he had just recently bought the Dayton Biltmore in Ohio, that purchase was, in his mind, just business as usual. It didn’t excite him. He had pretty much decided that the only thing that would truly thrill him at this time when such a dark cloud was hanging over his head would be the purchase of the Stevens.

At the beginning of 1945, Conrad had made an important decision: He was going to take a train to Chicago and he wasn’t going to leave the Windy City until the Stevens was his. Once he and a friend named Willard Keith got to Chicago, he began negotiating with the owner of the hotel, Steve Healy. In years to come, Conrad would regard these negotiations as the most maddening of his entire career.

At first, Healy said he wanted to make a profit of a half million dollars on the Stevens. He had paid $4.91 million, so he wanted roughly $5.5 million for it. That was fine with Conrad; the two men shook hands on a deal. But then Healy disappeared for a while and could not be found. When he finally surfaced, the price had suddenly gone up. Now he wanted to make a profit of $650,000. Frustrated but still wanting the hotel, Conrad agreed to the new price. Then, just as had happened previously, Healy made himself unavailable for future meetings. After the passing of a few weeks, Hilton was quite angry. When Healy finally showed up again, he said he now wanted to make a profit of a million dollars on the Stevens. Reluctantly, Conrad agreed. It speaks to how much Conrad wanted this hotel that he would acquiesce to Healy’s demands. Ordinarily he would probably have walked away from the deal by this time. But then, sure enough, Healy vanished again! His behavior was so outrageous and unprofessional, Conrad didn’t know what to make of it. “Who taught this guy how to do business?” he raged to Willard Keith. “Forget it,” he decided. “It’s not worth it.” Though his friend didn’t believe that Conrad would abandon his dream of owning the Stevens, he was happy for the storm to at least temporarily blow over. He suggested that they take a tour of the city and see if any other Chicago property might take Conrad’s mind off the Stevens. It was then that Conrad Hilton laid eyes on the Palmer House.

The Palmer House was another of the grandest Chicago hotels, twenty-five stories, designed by the architectural firm of Holabird and Roche in 1925. Centrally located in Chicago’s Loop, like the Stevens, it too was known for its dignified, austere décor. When Conrad walked into the lobby and took a look around, he made a statement not many people could make then, or even now. He said, “You know, I actually think I’d like to own this place.” He didn’t even know if it was for sale, but he knew he wanted it! For advice, he called upon his friend Henry Crown, a successful businessman who’d made a fortune with his Material Service Corp., which sold gravel, lime, and coal to builders in Chicago. In his meeting with Crown, Hilton said that he’d been negotiating to purchase the Stevens Hotel but was having no luck with the owner. He said that he’d come to the conclusion that the sale simply wasn’t going to happen, and so he now had his sights set on the Palmer House.

“Well, is the Palmer House even for sale?” Crown wondered.

“I don’t know,” replied Hilton.

“Well, find out, my good man,” said Crown. “And if so, why not buy both the Palmer and the Stevens?”

At that bold suggestion, Conrad had to smile. Henry Crown was a man much like himself, someone who saw no reason his wildest ambitions could not be attained. He had already made a fortune in the construction business and held interests in banks, electronics, and the oil business as well as in railroad and shipbuilding enterprises. He also owned real estate in Illinois, California, and New York. In just a few years, he would go on to own the Empire State Building, then the world’s tallest skyscraper (which he would buy for $51.5 million in 1951). In his mind, there was no reason Hilton couldn’t buy two hotels in the Chicago area; that is, if he could afford it—and of course Conrad could afford it (and if he couldn’t he would find a way to do so).