House of Hilton Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PRIMARY HILTON FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I: MATERNAL ROOTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  BOOK II: PATERNAL ROOTS

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  PHOTO INSERT

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE ON SOURCES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALSO BY JERRY OPPENHEIMER

  COPYRIGHT

  For Caroline, Cukes, Trix, Louise, Max, Toby, and Jesse

  PRIMARY HILTON FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE

  There she is, standing tall beside the man.

  From her four-inch stilettos, to her black thigh-high stockings, to the black garter belt and the itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie Frederick’s of Hollywood–style leopard-skin-print bikini barely covering her ass, to the matching leopard-skin-print push-up bra, to the sheer fingerless gloves, with the red, red nails of her right hand perfectly perched on her well-trained arched hip, and with her belly button tantalizingly beaming front and center, here is Paris Hilton, posing for the gazillionth time in all of her exhibitionistic glory.

  As usual, the supervixen great-granddaughter of the late hotel magnate Conrad Hilton is pouting, preening, and letting it all hang out—not for a video camera recording a sex romp with a boy toy but rather for a swarm of photographers, including a female shooter for the usually staid New York Times, whose caption in the Sunday Styles section a week later declared, “Double Exposure.” In just a finger snap, interest in Paris had veered from the “Enquiring Minds Want to Know” supermarket tabloid rabble to the “All the News That’s Fit to Print” Upper East Side set.

  And the man with whom Paris is cuddling? Hef.

  There she is at the Playboy Mansion, the same place her maternal grandmother once partied, and where Paris’s mother, Kathy Hilton, was a regular in the late ’70s, and where Paris’s Hollywood playboy paternal great-uncle, Nick Hilton, went in the late ’50s to get some Bunny tail early in his second marriage (after Elizabeth Taylor). Following in her forebears’ party-hearty footsteps, Paris, too, is a frequent frolicker at the Mansion, and in April 2006, she is a very special guest. For Hugh Hefner is celebrating his eightieth birthday, and Paris is there to sing “Happy Birthday” to him, on the eve of the launch of her latest incarnation—as a recording artiste. Through the latter part of 2005, Paris had been laying down tracks for her first CD, which she was supremely confident would go platinum overnight. As her producer (and occasional date who reportedly gifted her with a Bentley), Scott Storch, a thirty-two-year-old music veteran with a slew of rapper hits, predicted in early 2006, “Paris’s album is going to take everyone by surprise.” But he fudged on whether Paris could actually sing. “If people are given the right circumstances, and the right track, and the right melody, it’s about the conviction. It’s not necessarily about being a God-given virtuoso.” (By mid-year, though, he seemed to have soured on Paris’s managers, claiming that they “smacked me in the face and disrespected me” because one of his tunes reportedly wasn’t chosen as the first single from her CD.) Paris, meanwhile, gave her music two thumbs up. “I, like, cry when I listen to it, it’s so good.”

  Even if she couldn’t sing a note, her infamy catapulted her onto the charts. It had with every other of her many endeavors. The girl was an earner, no question.

  When Paris sees the cameras aimed at Hef, she hustles over to have her picture taken with him—she can never get enough of getting her picture taken. And he naturally pulls her close against him—twentysomething girls (and younger) were always Hef’s thing. Seeing the media closing in, Paris exclaims for all to hear, “Wow, Hef, this party is hot!” Hef glances at Paris like he has glanced at thousands of bimbos over the years and, in his courtly manner, responds with the lame playboy line, “Now it is. You’re here.”

  At the stroke of midnight, when Hef officially turns eighty, Paris grabs a mike, and with still and video cameras trained on her she makes a feeble attempt to sing the birthday song, performing a gawky imitation of Marilyn Monroe’s famous sultry rendition purred to President Kennedy in Madison Square Garden in 1962. Concluding her weird performance (in which it appears she has forgotten the birthday boy’s name for a moment), Paris exclaims: “I love you, Hef. You’re amazzzzing. You’re eighty, but you act like you’re twenty, you look like you’re forty. You’re hot. Love you. Happy birthday.”

  SHAPELY SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD Lana Turner was licking an ice cream cone in a soda fountain across from Hollywood High when she was discovered by the publisher of the Hollywood Reporter. Ava Gardner was spotted at eighteen by an MGM errand clerk who was knocked out by her picture in the window of her brother-in-law’s New York City photography studio. Twenty-one-year-old Paris’s chance came after she and Rick Salomon, a well-endowed boyfriend a dozen years her senior (and the estranged husband of wildcat Beverly Hills 90210 actress Shannen Doherty), performed sex acts in May 2001 in front of a video camera.

  By the summer of 2002, the sleazy twenty-seven-minute homemade porno had been procured by an adult films distributor, and four minutes of the grainy movie landed on the Internet and was seen, downloaded, and either joked about or masturbated to around the world. With a click of a mouse, Paris had become internationally famous and infamous. Practically overnight, 1 Night in Paris had outsold the video of Gone With the Wind.

  Paris’s parents went ballistic, or so it appeared.

  “The Hilton family is greatly saddened at how low human beings will stoop to exploit their daughter Paris, who is sweet-natured, for their own self-promotion as well as profit motives,” according to a prepared statement released to the world press. “Paris is working very hard on her career. The release of a private tape between a younger girl and an older boyfriend is more than upsetting. Anyone in any way involved in this video is guilty of criminal activity, and will be vigorously prosecuted.” (There were lawsuits and counter-lawsuits, and in the end, Paris reportedly got a mid-six-figure piece of the video’s financial action. Paris, however, denied ever receiving one red cent.) In July 2006, Paris actually contradicted the supposed anger her parents had about the video. She told Britain’s upscale Guardian newspaper that she wasn’t afraid of Kathy and Rick Hilton’s response to her X-rated starring role, acknowledged that “my mom heard about it [being released] before I did,” and suggested they were supportive of her. “Well, they know I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s something everybody does, but it doesn’t happen to everyone that a person actually shows it to other people.” And she hadn’t softened about her costar, calling him “a pig. He’s disgusting…. I really loved him and I was a stupid little girl. So I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes.” One of those lessons, she noted, was, “Don’t ever trust anyone again like that, move on, and just forget about it.”)

  The publicity growing out of the titillating video was a monetary boon for Paris. Suddenly, she possessed an aggressive management team that included numbers crunchers, marketing expert
s, branding geniuses, shrewd New York literary agents, cutthroat Hollywood film and TV talent agents, and high-priced lawyers negotiating a portfolio of lucrative deals for her. Her savvy suits got her major product endorsements, including a 2005 too-pornographic-and-too-hot-for-TV spot showing her in a skintight swimsuit soaping up a Bentley and crawling all over it before taking a big bite out of a juicy chunk of Carl’s Jr.’s new Spicy Burger. The commercial was called “soft-core porn” by the conservative Parents Television Council. However, before the spot was pulled, Spicy Burger demand soared.

  Her marketing geniuses and agents provocateurs secured for her a hugely successful jewelry line on Amazon, as well as bankable fragrance and makeup products. Then there was the nightclub chain—the first Club Paris opened in beautiful downtown Orlando, Florida, the home of Disney World. The nightspot seemed to appeal to the town’s tourist trade and the simple-life blue-collar locals, although it featured “a decadent VIP section” that included “a cozy boudoir area perfect for intimate encounters.” But there also were the well-advertised specials—the three-dollar Corona beers, the five-dollar Jagerbombs, and sometimes “special Virgin drinks” for the thirteen- to seventeen-year-old set. In April of 2006, Paris’s club promoted a three-day “School’s OUT!” party. “Princess Paris knows how hard you’ve been studying and thinks you’re definitely worth an A+” went the promotional material. “Since you’re on Paris’s honor roll you will be rewarded for being such a good student.”

  Paris, however, never made an honor roll, bounced from school to school, and, as one Hilton family insider notes, was lucky to get out of high school.

  Nevertheless, Paris hit the New York Times bestseller list with her Confessions of an Heiress, and even her dog, Tinkerbell, got a book deal, The Tinkerbell Hilton Diaries. A third book with Paris’s name on it, The Heiress Diary: Confess It All to Me—for young Britneys, Jennifers, and Megans to write in their innermost thoughts—was a rare dud.

  Confessions, according to a member of Paris’s team, was conceived to counter the negativity from parents regarding Paris’s sex tape, plus the bet was her book, written by an actual writer, would register big sales for doing nothing but allowing her name and face to appear on the jacket. “With the book, we wanted the world to think of her as a role model for young girls,” says one of her marketers.

  Paris also became the costar of a much-criticized but hit Fox TV (and later E! Entertainment Television) reality series, The Simple Life (which, coincidentally, was based on a sitcom from the ’70s called Green Acres that starred Eva Gabor, sister of Paris’s great-grandfather’s second wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor). A tabloid-fueled feud between Paris and her costar and childhood friend, Nicole Richie, helped the ratings, and secured Richie, an admitted former drug user, a book deal and appearances on the TV talk show circuit.

  Meanwhile, Paris’s mother, Kathy, parlayed her daughter’s TV success into a reality show of her own, NBC’s I Want to Be a Hilton, which received poor reviews. The Hollywood Reporter’s online critic observed, “When I was a kid, people wanted to be an Oscar Mayer Weiner. Now they want to be a Hilton. Or so we’re told. Not that the two are so very different, actually. You don’t want to know what’s really inside either one—and both tend to hide behind their buns…. I Want to Be a Hilton supplies further evidence of the decline and fall of Western civilization…” The National Review took note of “the raw avarice displayed…. You’d need a strong stomach for vulgarity to be able to stand all this for more than a few minutes.” Variety called Kathy Hilton’s show “smirky.”

  Nevertheless, Kathy was the chutzpah behind much of Paris’s success, pushing her relentlessly into the celebrity spotlight. Along with her, Paris consulted with her father, Rick, on all her business deals. As a family insider asserts, “They are proud of everything she has done—even the video.” Paris’s grandfather, Barron Hilton, Rick’s father, had taken to telling colleagues, “Good for her! She’s the only one in that family making so much money.”

  With TV on her exploding résumé, Paris began making films—severely panned films, but films nonetheless—aimed at her prime demographic, pubescent teens; a director with a sense of irony in India even considered casting her in the role of Mother Teresa in a biopic of the beloved saint. For Paris’s part in the 2005 feature House of Wax, she even won an award—a Razzie for “Worst Supporting Actress.” Critics gloatingly took after her. Joanne Kauffman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, noted, “For the record, [Hilton] looks great in her red bra and matching thong. For the record, that’s the most significant of her contributions.” Nevertheless, Paris began to consider herself a movie star and showed up at the twenty-fifth annual Sundance Film Festival, infuriating its founder, Robert Redford, who suggested that celebrities like Paris were giving the event a bad name. “To the outside world, it’s a big fat market where you have people like Paris Hilton going to parties,” he said. “Now, she doesn’t have anything to do with anything. I think the festival is close to being out of control.”

  With all of it, the cash started rolling in. In 2005 alone, Paris had banked as much as $20 million through her corporate entity, Paris Hilton Entertainment—all for just being famous for being famous.

  Like her hotel magnate great-grandfather, a visionary who turned a fleabag hotel in a dirtbag Texas town into an international empire, Paris had the Midas touch, putting her mark on every conceivable kind of merchandise. In July 2004, the U.S. Commissioner of Trademarks received from Paris’s Hollywood lawyers a drawing of a tiara with a fancy letter “P” on the crown, which she wanted as her trademark. Her business people imagined the tiara appearing on every form of goods and services from gymnastic and sporting articles to footwear, headwear, rubber stamps, decals, imitation leather goods, hair preparations, soaps, even kitchen utensils. Paris also hoped to trademark her most uttered two words—“That’s hot!”—as exclusively her own. (By spring 2006, though, she announced on a TV talk show that she had dropped “That’s hot” in favor of “That’s sexy.”)

  Paris Hilton was no longer being viewed as just a party girl who had no interest in the family’s hotel business. It was clear that this Hilton was a party girl with blond ambition, and naked greed. She had become big-time, generating as much as $200,000 to appear at a party or charity event for just a few minutes; and if she had a yen to fly to Japan to attend a bash, she’d get even more. In Vienna, she is said to have received $1 million to make a showing. “All I had to do,” boasted Paris, “was wave like this.” (She did an imitation of Queen Elizabeth II greeting the populace.)

  She had become—Paris Inc.

  Her amazing success even helped the bottom line of the Hilton Hotel Corporation. When her name became a household word, the hotels saw a more than 30 percent spike, which made Barron Hilton quite happy. Says a close associate: “Barron’s horrified by all of Paris’s vice and her shenanigans, but says, ‘It’s good publicity for the company; she’s getting the Hilton name out there.’”

  Her fame and infamy knew no bounds. She was named one of the “10 Most Fascinating People of 2004” in a Barbara Walters TV special that drew an audience of sixteen million. She was honored as one of Rolling Stone’s ten top celebrities that same year. The magazine observed, “We have no idea where this girl is going, but we have the strangest feeling we are going there with her.”

  At the same time, Paris became the target of ongoing intense criticism as her fame skyrocketed. Andy Warhol’s colleague, the writer Bob Colacello, ventured, “If she is the ultimate idol of a civilization that worships celebrity in and of itself, no matter how attained, then bring on the barbarians.” Across the pond, where she had become a boldface name, the British actor Stephen Fry denounced Paris for having “a huge amount of greed and desire.” One gossip writer, Lloyd Grove, filled an entire page of the New York Daily News with an angry denouncement, declaring that Paris had waged a “terrifying campaign for world domination.” Grove resolved never to mention the name “Paris Hilton” in print again.
Ever.

  Meanwhile, Paris seemed on the brink of reinvention. She claimed that her porn video and party-girl shenanigans aside, she wasn’t really a slut as the media portrayed her. “I’m not a sexual person,” she maintained. “I really don’t care about sex.” She declared she was seeking responsibility and credibility by becoming a mother and having “three kids.” Asked by Barbara Walters if she had a husband in mind to father them, Paris glibly responded, “I’ll find one.”

  Subsequently, Paris announced she wanted to model her life on another publicity-mad, egomaniacal empire builder and TV reality show star, Donald Trump (whose modeling agency gave her one of her first catwalk gigs). Paris was called “the Donald Trump of the younger generation,” and Trump, a friend of Paris’s parents, respects her chutzpah and moneymaking abilities.

  “Paris, in many ways, has done very well,” he observes. “People like to knock her and criticize her for some of the things [she’s done], but in many respects, Paris has done very well.”

  WHILE PARIS HOLDS TITLE to the Hilton name, she is not the hotel empire “heiress” who will inherit tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars, as has so often been reported. “One of the reasons she’s working her tush off,” asserts a Hilton family insider, “is because there’s not going to be a big inheritance. She’ll never be on the welfare line, but she’s not a trust fund baby, either.”

  When Paris’s paternal grandmother, Marilyn Hawley Hilton, died in 1999, she is said to have left some $60 million to be divided up among her eight children, one of whom is Paris’s father, a Beverly Hills realtor and one of the executive producers of I Want to Be a Hilton. But that’s about all the money that is forthcoming.

  “Her grandfather, Barron, has a certain amount of independent wealth, but the huge dollar amounts are already owned by the Hilton Foundation,” says an attorney with first-hand knowledge of the Hilton fortune. “There’s no more for Paris.” Paris, however, claims she “avoided” the family business “because I wouldn’t just want to be given something.”