The Hiltons: The True Story of an American Dynasty (43 page)

I
think it was about the first week in February of 1967 when we learned that Conrad and Barron were about to sell Nicky’s division,” Trish Hilton recalled. “No one discussed it with us. Nicky saw an article about it in
Time
[the issue dated January 27, 1967], and that’s how he found out about it. There wasn’t anything we could do but just sit back in shock and look at each other… and wonder…
why
? It was such a crushing moment, so disillusioning on so many levels. ‘You are the strongest man I know.
You will fix this
,’ I told Nicky. ‘You’re goddamn right I will fix this,’ he said. He was upset.”

Not surprisingly, Nicky set up an immediate meeting with Conrad and Barron. Bob Neal was also present; he had shown up with Nicky, and Nicky said he wanted him to stay as a “witness.” That Nicky felt he needed a witness suggests that he was perhaps beginning to think in a more tactical way about his future with the company. The four men were seated in Conrad’s office—Conrad behind his desk and Barron, Nicky, and Bob seated across from him.

“
What the hell
, Pop?” Nicky began, turning to his father.

According to Bob Neal, Conrad and Barron glanced at one another as if waiting to see who would answer first. Barron took the lead. “Look, it’s just a good business move,” he told his brother. “It’s not personal. You’ve got to believe that, Nick.” He added that the three of them could discuss the strategic reasons for the decision at another time. For now, he said, he and Conrad just wanted Nicky to understand that “this is not a personal thing against you.”

“Are you kidding me?” Nicky asked angrily. “
It’s not personal?
” He reminded Barron that the family had hosted a party not even a year earlier where it was announced that he was running the international division. Speeches were made, toasts given. The next day, he reminded them, press releases were issued to the media. He had then started the job, as promised. “Now, it looks like you’re saying, ‘Never mind all that,’ ” he observed. “ ‘Turns out Nick Hilton couldn’t do it after all. Sorry for the misinformation.’ To me, that’s
very
personal.”

“Nick, you aren’t listening,” Barron insisted. “Again, this isn’t about you,” he reiterated. “This is about the company.”

“Maybe we should all just cool down a little,” a worried Bob Neal injected. He reminded them that they were family, that they loved each other. “Come on, Barron,” Bob said, turning to him. “This is
Nicky
. This is your brother.”

“This doesn’t concern you, Bob,” Barron said, now seeming insulted.

Trying to get things back on track, Nicky said that he believed the merger to be a terrible idea. However, if it was their decision, he would have to live with it. His big question to them, he said, had to do with why he had been left out of the loop.

“We
wanted
to bring you in,” Barron explained, “but you were nowhere to be found, Nick.” He added that he and Conrad would never have intentionally made such an important deal behind his back. Nicky had been completely unavailable, Barron claimed, and he knew it. At that, Nicky looked at his brother blankly, as if he didn’t know how to respond. Had he been all that unavailable? In the moment, it was as if he couldn’t seem to remember.

“As we have repeatedly told you, Nick, this isn’t about you,” Conrad said, rising from his chair. He said that the three of them could discuss the matter later—preferably without Bob Neal’s presence—after they had a chance to cool down. “For now,” he concluded, “that will be all.”

“That will be all?” Nicky asked, looking defeated. He rose from his chair and turned to Bob Neal. “Let’s get out of here,” he announced. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“But wait!” Neal protested. “There’s got to be something we can do,” he said, trying to act as peacemaker. “We can’t leave it like this!”

“No. I’m done, Bob,” Nicky said, shaking his head. Then, as he stood in the doorway, he looked at his father and brother and concluded, “I’ve worked hard for this company. I deserved to be in the loop, that’s all I’m saying.” And with that, he stormed out of the office, Bob Neal following close behind. Barron ran after them. “Nick, wait up!” he exclaimed.

Nicky stopped just as Barron caught up to him. “I’m worried about you,” Barron said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Come to the house later tonight so you and I can talk this thing out. Bring Trish. Have dinner with me and Marilyn. Maybe eight?” Nicky looked at him and nodded, now seeming calmer. It was as if just a single caring gesture from Barron was all that was needed to defuse the situation and alter Nicky’s mood. Now he just seemed exhausted. “Okay, Barron,” Nicky said, nodding. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Barron grinned at him. “And don’t be late,” he added, patting Nicky on the shoulder.

“Yeah, right,” Nicky remarked, smiling halfheartedly.

“See to him then, will you please?” Barron asked Bob Neal as he ran off to catch up with Conrad.

A Done Deal

A
fter he had time to get over the upsetting meeting with his father and brother and then marshal his strength for the battle that was clearly ahead, Nicky Hilton went about the business of trying to align himself with the necessary number of board members who might be able to veto any sort of merger with a majority vote. As it happened, Nicky’s greatest ally would turn out to be Conrad’s close friend, longtime confidant, and business associate Colonel Henry Crown. Crown, former owner of the Empire State Building and a long-standing member of the board of the Hilton Hotels Corporation, also felt strongly that selling the international division was a big mistake, and he told Conrad as much. A slight, short, gray-haired man with a gray mustache, Crown had recently been offered by Howard Hughes a chance to take controlling interest in TWA. He turned it down simply because he felt TWA was not a solvent investment.

“Gentlemen, let’s be reasonable about this thing,” Nicky said in one board meeting about the matter, according to someone who was present. “Forget about any personal feelings,” he said. “You want to talk about business? Fine.” He continued by noting that foreign travel was booming at this time and was only going to get bigger. The Hiltons needed to stay in the game.

“Quite right,” Henry Crown said. He added that the Hilton brand was huge overseas. Divesting at this time would be a huge mistake.

“But the expectation is that TWA stock will rise,” Barron said, defending the merger, “and all of us will be the better for it.”

“I have taken many risks in my life, gentlemen,” Conrad finally said. He added that while he did see this present move as just such a risk, he also saw it “as a winning situation.”

“But what’s on the table is us losing the rights to the Hilton name overseas, Pop,” Nicky argued. He noted that Conrad had worked hard to make the company’s brand international. “Why in the world are you doing this?” he asked.

“TWA is in the process of negotiating to compete with Pan American with new routes to China, and we have hotels there waiting,” Conrad answered. “And TWA is getting ready to roll out their new fleet of enormous Boeing 747 jets in the next few years. People are flying, Nick, and planes are carrying them…”

“My point exactly,” Nicky countered. “And we have the hotels in each country for them to stay in. So why are we handing it all over to TWA?”

No matter how many different ways the merits of the merger were explained, they made little to no sense to Nicky, Henry Crown, and several of the other board members. However, any meetings about the matter seemed to be little more than a formality. It really was a done deal.

Trish Enters Conrad’s Den

T
rish Hilton was still determined to help her husband at all costs. Frightened, intimidated, and feeling out of her league, she gathered her courage to meet with her father-in-law, Conrad Hilton, at Casa Encantada. Appealing to him would take nerve, because she well understood that Conrad came from an age cohort that did not take women seriously in business. It was a simple generation gap. He had an old-fashioned way of thinking about females in the workplace, and at almost eighty, he wasn’t likely to change his mind about it. Would he listen to advice from a woman? He did have Olive Wakeman in his life, Trish decided, so maybe it was worth a try. “But I probably should have known better,” Trish Hilton would say many years later. “I’m sure I
did
know better, and that’s why I didn’t tell Nicky I was going. He would have tried to talk me out of it, telling me it was inappropriate.”

As soon as Trish walked into Conrad’s mammoth drawing room, she realized for the first time that Casa Encantada seemed a tad run-down. “It definitely needed a woman’s touch,” she later recalled. “It was as if Connie hadn’t changed the furniture at all since he moved in. It was still majestic, with the elegance and grandeur of an estate found, maybe, in the south of France. However, you could plainly see that no female had ever lived there. A woman would have been more conscientious about the state of the furnishings. Even the drapes looked as if they needed to be replaced. As I looked around, I realized that the whole place needed a fresh coat of paint.”

“Thank you for being on time,” Conrad said as he greeted Trish. “You know how I am, Trish. I don’t like to be kept waiting.” He was smartly dressed in a finely tailored suit, his Old World formality on full display, not only in his sartorial splendor but also in his very proper demeanor.

“Of course, I know that, Connie,” Trish said as she embraced her father-in-law.

“Never been late a day in my life,” he continued with a chuckle.

Trish and Conrad then took two leather chairs facing one another. She took a deep breath, cleared her throat, and began to give the speech she had been rehearsing all morning. “I know you love your son,” she started carefully. “So, I’m asking you, please don’t do this to Nicky.”

“Exactly what is it you think I am doing to Nicky?” Conrad asked with a frown, all of this according to Trish’s vivid recollection of events.

“Well, the TWA takeover,” Trish answered. “It’s happening, isn’t it? I mean…” She faltered. Conrad sat with an impassive face and allowed Trish a moment to collect herself. She then concluded that in her view, the merger was a very bad idea. Nicky was agonizing over it, she said.

“But how does this concern
you
, Trish?” Conrad asked. His curious expression suggested that he really wanted to hear her answer. Nicky was her husband, Trish explained, and thus everything that concerned him concerned her. “And this is his whole life,” she said.

“Well, I’m not so sure about that, my dear,” he said. “But, be that as it may, if you don’t mind my saying so, I feel that you are very far out of your depth here.”

“Why?”

“Because you and I have never once discussed business,” he answered, “and I don’t think it’s appropriate to do so now.”

“But…”

“Please. I don’t wish to offend you,” he quickly added. He was simply being as candid with her as possible, he explained.

“But… I…”

“I love my son very much,” he continued. “And I promise you, I will take care of my son, just as I have always taken care of my sons. Now,” he announced as he stood up, “it’s been wonderful seeing you again, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek. “I’m sure you know your way out, don’t you?” he added, holding both of her hands “All my love to those little rascals of yours.” Conrad then regarded his daughter-in-law with a raised-eyebrow expression suggesting that as far as he was concerned, their time together had come to an end.

“No. Wait a second,” Trish said, summoning up all her moxie and trying to be firm. This meeting had not gone at all the way she’d hoped, and she wanted to get it back on track. “I am only thinking about your son,” she continued. She said that she loved Nicky, would do anything for him, and was very worried about him. Conrad seemed unfazed. Business was business in his mind, and it had nothing to do with anyone’s personal agenda, even a family member’s. “Are we finished now, dear?” he asked. “Or is there more you would like to say?” He stood looking at her for a few more seconds with a patient smile. “No,” she conceded. “I suppose I said what I came here to say.”

“Very well,” Conrad concluded. He grinned, nodded, and then walked away from her, leaving her alone in the expansive drawing room. A few moments later, Hugo Mentz joined her. “Would you like me to show you out?” he asked, his German-accented voice seeming more formal than ever. He led Trish through a labyrinth of rooms to the marble entryway and toward the large, imposing eight-foot oak doors. After Trish took two steps outside, she turned around to say goodbye to him. But before she could say a single word, the butler abruptly closed the doors behind her with a booming thud.

Nicky Considers Suing His Family

O
n May 9, 1967, TWA’s takeover of Hilton International was complete. With this change, it became official that Nicky Hilton had lost his position with the international subsidiary. TWA named him a board member, but with limited responsibilities. Meanwhile, Conrad would continue on as president of the Hilton Hotels Corporation and Barron as head of the domestic division—no changes there. As far as Barron was concerned, the sky was now the limit for the Hilton brand. Literally. In a speech before the American Astronautical Society in Dallas in May 1967, he discussed what he called “The Lunar Hilton”—an underground one-hundred-room hotel that would be built just below the moon’s crust. “In almost every respect it will be physically like an earth Hilton,” Barron explained, adding that construction would start as soon as the notion of mass space travel caught on, which, he admitted, “might be a while.” As far-fetched as it may have sounded, he was only half joking. “Look, my father had many ideas in the 1940s and 1950s that people thought were out of this world,” he explained. “And today those same ideas are commonplace. We Hiltons think big. That’s always been our way.”