The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (26 page)

The
Los Angeles Times
once noted of Casa Encantada that it was “one of the finest homes west of the Mississippi.” But maybe Nicky Hilton put it best when he said at the time, “I look around here and I think to myself, ‘Jesus Christ! Will you just look at what my pop has been able to do with his life?’ I mean, if
this
isn’t the good life, I don’t know what is.”

“He’s Getting Worse”

T
he surroundings may have been plush, but that didn’t necessarily mean that everyone living at Casa Encantada was happy. “I don’t care, just give me a cup of coffee, pour some brandy in it, and get off my back,” Nicky Hilton—now twenty-three—hissed one morning. He didn’t look well. It appeared that he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. His dark hair, usually so meticulously styled, was disheveled and looked unwashed. There were dark circles and bags under his eyes. Wearing a short white terrycloth robe, he had a lit cigar hanging from his lips. Slumped in a chair at a table in the massive kitchen of the Hilton estate, he glared at the chief maid of the household, Maria de Amaté, through glassy eyes.

Maria and her husband, Juan, a groundskeeper, lived on the premises. Their little girl, Connie, was often seen playing in a sandbox with the children of other maids and butlers, most of whom didn’t live at the estate but often came to work with their parents. On this morning, Maria was working with another maid, Delores Hall, in the kitchen when she found Nicky, looking as he usually did these days—melancholy and hungover. She had merely asked what he wanted for breakfast when he snapped at her. “Yes, Mr. Hilton,” she said, ignoring as best she could his abrupt outburst. She then poured him a cup of hot coffee.

“What are you so nervous about?” Nicky asked irritably. Apparently he noticed a slight tremble of her hands. But she wasn’t at all nervous. Maria suffered from severe arthritis, especially in the mornings, and was just having trouble holding the heavy, coffee-filled pot. “Look at you,” Nicky said with an air of disgust. “What are you doing still working here if you can’t even pour a pot of coffee?” That was enough. After all,
he
was not the lord of the manor. Maria put the coffeepot down on the table with a thud. “You may get away with talking to the others around here like that,” she said. Though she spoke with an accent, her voice was steady and firm. “But you will respect
me
, Mr. Hilton. I won’t have you talking to me like that.”

Nicky wilted with regret. He bowed his head and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Maria,” he said hoarsely. “Rough night, you know?”

Rough night indeed. Nicky had spent it arguing with another woman, this one a maid working at the Bel-Air Hotel, her name being Virginia Larson. A tall brunette from New York, she was young and shapely—Nicky said she had “a great rack”—with a dazzling smile and a flirtatious way about her. Every time Nicky would see her in the hallway, he would exchange long, smoldering looks with her. However, as an employee of the hotel, she was strictly off-limits, or at least that would have been the case under normal circumstances. However, Nicky was hurt, lonely, and feeling sorry for himself. He was still distraught and angry about the end of his marriage. He was also upset at himself for not handling all of it better. He had let his family down, but he had also let himself down. Now he felt he deserved a good time, and he decided that Virginia was just the woman to give it to him.

As he later explained to his friends, he went looking for Virginia and found her cleaning one of the rooms on her assigned floor. They’d never even had a conversation, that’s how little they knew each other. He just walked into the room, closed the door behind him, and pinned her up against the wall. “No, not here,” she protested. Too late. He was already having his way with her. “I didn’t even give her a chance to take off her cute little maid’s uniform,” he said later, “which made it somehow even better.” He later said that she was a willing partner. He knew as much, he claimed, because after they finished, she kissed him fully on the lips and said she would like to see him again, but “maybe next time you can at least take a girl out to dinner first.”

However, the next day, Virginia complained to a few of the other maids that Nicky had forced himself on her. She said that she was thinking about lodging a complaint with his father. When Nicky heard this troubling bit of gossip, he decided to confront her. The two then had a big quarrel about what had occurred between them—his view of it and hers, which now were vastly different—and when she threatened to tell Conrad about their illicit rendezvous, he smacked her hard across the face and called her a liar. He instantly regretted it, he said, but—again—it was too late. The damage was done. Now there was no way she could continue working at the Bel-Air Hotel. It was too much of a risk. Therefore, he took her down to his office, wrote out a big fat check, threw it at her, and sent her on her way, telling her to find employment elsewhere. She seemed so happy with the amount he’d given her and so amenable to leaving her job that as soon as she sashayed out the door he wondered if he hadn’t been set up. Now, the next morning, he was just tired, hungover, and sorry he’d ever succumbed to the likes of Virginia Larson.

Maria de Amaté realized that for Nicky Hilton, every day seemed more hopeless than the one before. Sometimes he managed to go to work at the hotel, but there were many days he would rise, have his breakfast, and then simply go back to bed. As often happens, one day of discontentment led to another and another, until finally he was deep in a rut, drinking too much alcohol, popping too many pills. “Don’t tell my pop I’m here,” he would instruct Maria before closing his bedroom door. “If he asks where I am, just tell him I’m at work.” He would not emerge again until the next morning, pale and miserable, and then would repeat the same routine.

Later that afternoon, Conrad and Barron were having a meeting in the study and came out looking for Nicky. “Have you seen my son?” Conrad asked Maria. He had called the Bel-Air Hotel and was told that Nicky hadn’t come in that day. Now Maria found herself in a predicament. Nicky had specifically instructed her not to tell his father when he was in his bedroom during the day. Yet she worked for Conrad, not Nicky. While she had some sympathy for the young man, there was no question that her allegiance was to Conrad. “He’s in his room, sir,” she said quietly. Conrad looked miffed. “But he should be at work,” he said with a tinge of frustration. He and Barron left the kitchen, headed for Nicky’s bedroom suite on the second floor. A few moments later, Maria heard loud banging on the suite’s door, then angry, muffled voices. Ten minutes later, Conrad and Barron came back down to the kitchen.

“He’s getting worse,” Barron said.

Barron saw the sadness in his father’s face and waited for a response. “I know,” Conrad said at last. “But he’s a strong kid. He’ll get over it. It’s the divorce. He just needs more time.”

“Okay, Dad,” Barron said, looking a little hopeless. “Maybe you’re right.”

When Conrad left the room, Barron sat down at the table, poured himself a cup of coffee, and lit a cigarette. Now it was his hands that were trembling. The pressure of not knowing for certain how to handle his older brother’s desperate situation was getting to him. He looked at Maria de Amaté sadly. There was nothing either of them could think of to say. “That will be all,” Barron finally said, dismissing the maid.

A Baroness Named Betsy

L
et’s make a promise,” Nicky Hilton was saying. “Let’s promise to never have another drink again.” He gazed lovingly into the green eyes of the beautiful blonde seated next to him at the bar of the Bel-Air Hotel. “Baby, if we can feel like
this
without drinking, then why bother having even another drop?” he said, holding her hand. “This is already as good as it gets,” he concluded. “We don’t need liquor!”

“Oh, I agree, Nicky,” cooed the blonde. She had earlier confessed to him that she too had a serious drinking problem. “Never another drink for either one of us, then,” she whispered to him. “Seal it with a kiss?”

He leaned over and kissed her fully on the lips. “Consider it sealed,” he said.

It was the summer of 1951 and Nicky Hilton had finally begun to feel a bit better. He was now finding comfort in the arms of another young lady with an exotic past and show business aspirations. One day, while surveying the pool area at the Bel-Air Hotel, his eyes had fallen upon a shapely blonde lounging poolside. Her shocking pink bikini—unusual in America in those days—had distinguished her among the other beauties sunning themselves that early afternoon. Nicky made a beeline for her and began to pour on the charm.

“You know, sweetheart, I run this place,” he said, standing above her. “So if there’s anything you need,” he added, “anything at all. Just ask for me. I’m Nicky Hilton.”

“
The
Nicky Hilton?” she asked, sitting up in her lounge chair. She lowered her cat-eye sunglasses and took him in.

“The one and only,” he answered with a lopsided grin.

“Spare a smoke?”

He pulled a pack from his vest pocket, lit one, and handed it to her. She inhaled fully and then, exhaling deeply, languidly lay back down on her recliner. “So, what’s a handsome, rich boy like you doing working in the middle of the day?” she asked, gazing up at him dreamily.

“Making it possible for beautiful girls like you to show off here at the pool,” he said, seeming transfixed by her body.

“Do you make a habit of undressing girls at the pool with your eyes, Mr. Hilton?” she asked.

“
Mr. Hilton
is my father,” he said with a sly smile.

“Well, does your daddy know that you undress girls at the pool with your eyes?” she asked with an arched eyebrow.

“Actually, my
daddy
encourages it,” he shot back with a wink.

“
My
kind of
daddy
,” she said.

One thing led to another until, finally, he asked her out. She was eighteen-year-old Betsy von Furstenberg and she accepted. It was Betsy, then, to whom Nicky would vow to never have another drink. “It was the kind of thing you promised when you were in the first blush of romance, when you’re head over heels and you think life couldn’t get any better. Unfortunately,” she hastens to add, “the promise we made to each other lasted only about a week. Then, unfortunately, we both picked up where we left off.”

Born Elizabeth Caroline Maria Agatha Felicitas Therese, Freiin von Fürstenberg-Hedringen in Arnsberg, Germany, she was a baroness by birth, her father was a count from Germany, her mother from Union Springs, Alabama. Her parents met while her mother was vacationing on a yacht in the south of France.

After moving to America, Betsy attended the Hewitt School in New York. A model who had often graced the covers of French fashion magazines as well as three issues of
Look
magazine (photographed by Stanley Kubrick), her goal was to become a successful actress. After changing her name to Betsy von Furstenberg, she had made her stage debut in New York at the Morosco Theatre in the play
Second Threshold
. The show ran from January to April. After it closed, Betsy moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film with MGM, which immediately positioned her for stardom with a cover story in
Life.
Then she met Nicky Hilton. Like Elizabeth, Betsy was an actress who at times appeared sexy and alluring yet on other occasions was able to project a winsome, innocent quality that hid a much tougher core. “I could drink any fellow right under the table,” she said with a laugh. “We
all
drank back then. Nicky and I were probably not the best influences on each other because we were both heavy drinkers from the start. Plus we were both taking Seconal, which was the recreational drug of choice in Hollywood at that time. I mean, everyone was on it. Marilyn [Monroe] was living on it! I soon learned that Nicky and I had that drug in common. Mixing it with alcohol was deadly, but we did that too. Before long, we were enabling each other like nobody’s business.”

Though they didn’t know anything about her alcohol or drug issues, Conrad and Barron were still ambivalent about Nick’s relationship with Betsy. Of course, she hadn’t reached anywhere near the kind of fame and notoriety Elizabeth had attained, but this was Hollywood and anything could happen overnight. Betsy seemed to be on her way, and thus both Hilton men saw trouble on the horizon for Nicky.

“Oh no, not again, son,” Conrad said loudly. His voice could be heard as he approached from many feet away, according to Bob Neal, who was lying by the pool with Nicky at the Hilton mansion that afternoon. He and Nicky were baking in the sun in their swimsuits, alongside a pair of girls in matching white bikinis, when Conrad’s voice boomed toward them. Both young men looked up, and to their amusement they saw that Conrad was wearing a brown suit, matching cowboy hat, and heavy western boots. (He also wore his star sapphire ring on his right hand, a favorite of his.) “A little hot out here for a get-up like that, isn’t it?” Nicky asked lazily as he lay back down and offered his face to the sun. Conrad ignored his observation. “Barron told me about this girl you’re seeing,” he said, stepping toward Nicky so that his shadow was cast over his son’s face. “I understand she’s in show business.” Nicky said nothing. “Please don’t get in too deep, that’s all I’m saying,” Conrad added.