The Kardashians Read online

  And years later, Kris Kardashian’s daughter Kim, with her mother’s backing and blessing, would emulate with great business planning that which first made Paris Hilton a world-famous reality TV star and all-around international vixen. Like Paris, Kim made a sex tape. Like the Hiltons, who were behind the project, Kris was, too. “There was a whole business plan, a marketing approach, a publicity strategy on how to deal with the blowback,” claimed a close Kardashian associate. “Kris didn’t need a Wharton School degree. She had savvy street smarts.”

  As Kris’s former brother-in-law Tom Kardashian, who was a “pretty close friend for years” of Rick Hilton, and was a member of the same tony L.A. country club, noted in 2015, “Kris was driven just like Kathy Hilton.”

  But long before either Kathy Hilton or Kris Kardashian Jenner there was the original momager.

  Her name was Jolie Gabor, a driven, ambitious Hungarian Jewish mother who dictated that her glamorous daughters, Eva, Magda, and Zsa Zsa become famous, make lots of money, and, when possible, marry rich men. In the case of the blond bombshell Zsa Zsa, she became a movie and TV star, dated many men, and one of her wealthy and powerful husbands was none other than Hilton family patriarch, Conrad Hilton, the billionaire founder of the worldwide hotel chain. Among the others were Jack Ryan, the eccentric Mattel toy company executive who invented the Barbie doll, and the British actor George Sanders, who later committed suicide.

  And according to a close Kardashian family source, “Kris always idolized Jolie Gabor. She read all the gossip and tabloid stories about her and her daughters and how they made a fortune and became known worldwide, mainly for being famous for being famous. I remember Kris swore up and down that she could do the same with her own daughters, Kim and the rest of them, and make them and herself all rich and famous just like the Gabors.”

  Others who knew Kris well, like Larry Kraines and his wife, Joyce, didn’t think that Kris was just blowing smoke when she boasted about the things she could do and accomplish. As Larry said, looking back to the early days when he got to know Kris as his best friend Robert’s wife, “She was personable, smart, witty, and always thought she could be more than what she was. She always wanted to be more. She always said to us openly—I can do that TV show, I could be one of those announcers, I could do this, I could do that.”

  Even back then, people who knew Kris believed her secret ambition always was to have her own television program.

  Kris Houghton grew up with similar Gabor and Hilton rules. Even in high school, primed by Mary Jo, Kris was already a shallow opportunist, focused on marrying rich. Most girls her age, as she would later observe, “were thinking about the prom. I was thinking fuck the prom. I want to get married and have six kids. I felt like life would start when I got that done.”

  Some years later, with two marriages under her Gucci belt, she would have six kids, and much, much more.

  By the time Kris had turned sixteen, her friend Joan Zimmerman recalled, “Kris and her mom were involved in social activities that the rest of us weren’t involved in, like Kris going out to [the posh resort] La Costa, and getting invited to events out there. I kind of felt that was her mom’s doing. Kris was absolutely more mature than the rest of us. I don’t ever remember her having any interest in high school boys at all, and no crushes. Guys liked her. They would always try to get a date with her, but she wasn’t interested. She was probably starting to get opportunities elsewhere [to meet older, moneyed men].”

  Kurt Harding was one of those Clairemont boys who would have liked to have dated Kris.

  “But I guess she was just kind of out of my league,” he said, looking back years later. He viewed her back in high school as “kind of standoffish, wasn’t friendly except to maybe the in-crowd, and kept to herself with the guys.” He had heard the chatter that Kris’s mother “kept her busy at golf tournaments and things like that so she would meet a rich guy rather than let her hang around with the high school boys.”

  In her memoir, Kris claimed it was her stepfather, Harry Shannon, and an uncle who sparked her interest in golf, and noted that she had “grown up going to [as she called it] the La Costa Country Club … and I thought those big golf events were so glamorous and exciting.”

  THREE

  Meeting the “Mob”

  Rancho La Costa, in nearby Carlsbad, with its legendary golf courses where the pros played, its tennis courts, its spa and fitness facilities, and chic poolside cafés, was as good a starting place as any for a girl with a plan to troll for an eligible man.

  Back in the day, the luxurious San Diego North County resort was a high roller’s paradise and hangout, and an always-dolled-up teenage Kris Houghton, who looked, dressed, and acted older—she easily could have passed for her early twenties, friends recall, and was known to tell men that she was twenty-one or twenty-two—could be quite an attraction, along with all the other man-hunters who spent time there, hoping to meet a future husband or snag a generous sugar daddy. Tennis stars, golf pros—Kris’s favorite—Hollywood celebrities, wealthy businessmen, and even mafiosi, as The New York Times once pointed out, were attracted to this playground for the rich and famous, and all the action that could be had there.

  It wasn’t the kind of place that one would expect a watchful, thoughtful, concerned mother in the early 1970s to permit her very desirable, sexually mature teenage daughter to spend time meeting and mingling. But there she was, with Mary Jo Shannon’s good housekeeping seal of approval, socializing with men who were much older, which were Kris’s type. As she already knew back in high school when she rejected teenage boy suitors, “I always saw myself as being with an adult.”

  Rancho La Costa had been developed in the early 1960s by Merv Adelson, a successful Las Vegas and Hollywood entrepreneur with longstanding reputed organized crime connections. One of his close colleagues in the La Costa venture was the notorious gangster Morris Barney “Moe” Dalitz, known as “the Godfather of Las Vegas.”

  A couple of years after Kris got her June 1973 high school diploma and was finally through forever with her formal education—“school wasn’t my thing … I wanted to get out into the world,” as she later acknowledged—La Costa was described in an eye-opening 1975 Penthouse magazine investigative article as “The Hundred-Million-Dollar Resort with Criminal Clientele.”

  The shadowy moneymen behind the resort filed a $522 million libel suit, asserting there were no organized crime connections. The case went on for years, eventually settling with no money changing hands. However, eyewitness testimony claimed that known mob-connected types were often partying guests at the swinging resort during the Adelson-Dalitz era, so it’s certainly possible, if not probable, that beguiling Kris Houghton innocently mingled with one or more of those dapper, flashy mobbed-up big spenders.

  Adelson, who was also cofounder and former chairman of Lorimar, which gave the TV world such hits as Dallas and Knots Landing, told Vanity Fair in 2013 that he had “enjoyed a very close relationship” with Moe Dalitz, but added that in all the years they were pals and business associates, “we never discussed anything criminal.”

  Adelson, who married Barbara Walters, the third of her short-lived marriages, died at eighty-five in 2015. Since the Adelson-Dalitz days, the ritzy resort has gone through a number of owners and transformations, and in 2013 the La Costa Resort and Spa was sold to Omni Hotels and Resorts.

  Whether Kris met any promising men during her La Costa adventures is not known—what happened at La Costa clearly stayed at La Costa—but she certainly fancied the vibe. It was her kind of showy scene, one she’d enjoy later as the flashy Beverly Hills wife of her first husband, Robert Kardashian, and the mother of their children. By coincidence, her then father-in-law, Arthur Kardashian, who was in the notorious meatpacking business and had reputed underworld connections, had enjoyed golf, too, and used to play at La Costa. He had once even scored a hole in one there, playing in a foursome with three other Armenian-American businessmen, with the last names Markaria
n, Agbasian, and Mazgedian.

  * * *

  IN KRIS’S SENIOR YEAR back at Clairemont High, there was more change in her life when she bonded with cute, sassy Debbie Kathleen Mungle, who was a year older, a member of the class of 1972, and one of the eight high-spirited 1971–72 varsity cheerleaders—“No. 1 in spirit, bounce and enthusiasm!” Kris and Debbie instantly became bosom buddies—she was Kris’s new best friend. The two were inseparable, hanging out together every day. To Kris, Debbie had “great style and was always,” as she would later boast, “so much fun.” They would remain friends for years.

  Hanging out with Debbie, Kris had all but abandoned her long-loyal small circle of pals, including her close chum Joan Zimmerman. To Kris, Debbie had the kind of pizzazz and sophistication that she felt her old friends lacked. Petite, dark-haired, and always well turned out, she seemed to have it all. As Zimmerman recalled, “Debbie fixed herself up to be more mature than a high school girl. She was a year ahead of us, so she was out of high school and we were still there, so she seemed very worldly.”

  And Mungle’s worldliness manifested itself in a manner that shocked Joan Zimmerman when time for her senior prom rolled around.

  “Debbie was very attractive and I had a boyfriend that I thought I was going to the prom with,” Joan had never forgotten. “And then Debbie Mungle decided she wanted to go to the prom with him, and he took her, not me. I remember her clearly from that experience, and I knew Debbie and Kris were really good friends.”

  Like Kris, Debbie also had a sister named Karen. Debbie’s father, Charles, was an engineer who worked for General Atomics & Hydranautics. More important, however, and of keen interest to Kris, was the fact that Debbie’s perky mom, Beverley, was part of the glamorous professional golf world.

  For Kris, a budding golf groupie who liked the game but liked the players more, her close relationship with Mrs. Mungle and her daughter was like scoring a hole in one. Moreover, Kris had the full support of Mary Jo and her stepfather, Harry—both of whom loved golf and the golf lifestyle.

  Their liberal parenting style was a blessing to Kris because “when I ran off to golf tournaments with my girlfriend Debbie,” Kris’s folks told her just to have lots of fun, no questions asked. Kris later remarked that her parents “weren’t strict,” that they realized that she had always been an “independent” sort of girl, and noted that they “just followed that old philosophy that if your kids want to do something, they’re going to do it with or without your blessing. So that is what I did.”

  Years later, her own girls would follow that philosophy, also with their mother’s approval.

  Beverley Mungle, who Kris had come to love almost like a second mother, was secretary, assistant, and business manager for a professional golfer by the name of Phil Rodgers, who had had five big wins on the PGA Tour in the 1960s and was once described on the cover of a 1963 issue of Sports Illustrated as “The Brashest Man in Golf.” Known as an “arrogant” critic of other players’ swings, a duffer with a hot temper, who had “notorious brushes” with the rules, he was popular on the tour and palled around with such icons as Jack Nicklaus, and had taken a liking to a personable and good-looking up-and-comer by the name of Cesar Sanudo.

  Sanudo would play an important part in Kris’s post–high school, early adult life. He’d be her lover, but their relationship would raise questions about her character and morals.

  Kris left her formal education for the last time in June 1973 when she got her diploma from Clairemont High School.

  Other than the standard photo in the Calumet yearbook showing an average-looking teenager with a big smile on her face, her dark brown hair parted in the middle, which was the style of the times, there are few, if any, other mentions of Kris Houghton. There was nothing to show her involvement in any school activities, clubs, or honors, and that’s mainly because she didn’t participate, wasn’t much of a student, and was anxious to just get the hell out.

  * * *

  YEARS LATER, AFTER SHE HAD become rich and famous as a reality TV star and pop culture phenomenon with her brood, a British-owned Los Angeles–based news and picture agency that specialized in celebrity stories released a purported high school picture said to be of Kris as a cheerleader, which received media attention. DailyMail.com, the popular U.S. news and features Web site, an arm of London’s Daily Mail tabloid newspaper, greeted the photo with the headline: “Flashback to 1973! Kris Jenner Pumps Her Pom-poms as a Chieftains Cheerleader in Clairemont High School Yearbook.”

  Along with that photo, the July 2013 story reported, “Her daytime talk show Kris premiered on Fox Monday. But back in 1973, Kris Jenner was just an ordinary Chieftans cheerleader, attending Clairemont High School … The 57-year-old momager, then known as Kristen Houghton, can be seen as a grinning teen in a series of just-released b&w yearbook snaps.” The Huffington Post also picked up the story.

  In fact, Kristen Houghton was never a cheerleader at Clairemont, according to a 1973 classmate, Cheryl Wallace Weatherford. She would know because she was one of the eight members of the 1972–73 varsity squad, and also one of the six members of the 1971–72 junior varsity cheer group. Kris belonged to neither team.

  Weatherford, a cute blonde back then at Clairemont High, who married one of the captains of the 1973 football team, clearly recalled that Kris “was not a member of our eight-member cheer squad. Kristen tried out for cheerleader a couple of times but never made the cut for JV or varsity.”

  To her small circle of friends, it came as a surprise that Kris hadn’t been accepted in the cheer squad because she was thought of as perky and cute and perfect cheerleader material. Kris believed she hadn’t made the squad because her butt was too flat.

  “She said she envied the black girls with big, round asses, and wished she had one like them,” recalled a chum. “Now when I see that enormous backside on Kim Kardashian, I have to wonder whether that had anything to do with the fact that Kris really wished she had a bigger ass when she was back in high school so she could become a cheerleader.”

  * * *

  BURIED IN THE BACK OF her high school yearbook, Kris Houghton—in what is the only known time she ever described what she would have liked to do with her life—wrote: “Brooks. Merchandising. Buyer.”

  A career as a buyer seemed an appropriate job choice for Kris back then since she had experience working in her grandmother’s candle shop, but even more, she was, by the age of seventeen, a fashion-conscious shopaholic. Next to finding a rich husband, her passion was shopping for fashion. As a high school pal recalled, “She’d be at the malls buying, returning, buying, returning, always going for the latest styles. The term ‘fashionista,’ I guess, would fit. But her taste level was just so-so, and not really sophisticated.”

  Still, years later she and her daughters would prove to be the world’s great merchandisers in the early decades of the twenty-first century, generating tens of millions of dollars hawking themselves, and building enormous fame and infamy—all of it with absolutely no discernable talent except for self-promotion and chutzpah. And the major media and an enormous swath of the public, from Wichita to Warsaw, bought in to their schtick.

  Kris’s mention of “Brooks” in the yearbook presumably referred to the Brooks Institute, offering photography, business, and arts courses, with the motto, “Passion. Vision. Excellence.” However, there is no indication that Kris Houghton ever matriculated there.

  Instead, right after high school graduation, she, along with her pal Debbie Mungle, flew to Hawaii, where Kris met her first known lover—on a golf course.

  FOUR

  Hole in One

  Kris Houghton was just seventeen, but she became PGA Tour pro Cesar Sanudo’s teenage queen. It was love at first sight, at least for him.

  Kris wasn’t quite as young as Priscilla Beaulieu, who was fourteen when she first spent time with future husband Elvis Presley (and would later be Robert Kardashian’s girlfriend), or Nicole Brown, who O. J. Simpson pursued wh
en she was a virginal eighteen. But at seventeen, fresh-faced and fresh out of senior year, Kris Houghton was still a veritable child when she became romantically involved with a man more than a decade her senior.

  A rising golf star, Cesar was about twenty-eight, and had fallen hard for Kris, who already appeared to know the fine art of deceiving and seducing men.

  “When my dad first started dating Kris she lied about her age,” asserted Amber Carrillo, Cesar’s daughter, years later. “He told me she told him she was twenty-one, but she was only seventeen, or just about ready to turn eighteen. He said she fabricated things and didn’t really talk about where she came from, about who her real father was, details like that.

  “And from my understanding, she was being groomed at home when she met my father. She wanted to be mature and be a golf groupie and try to find a man who had money, that whole thing of just climb the ladder, try to find somebody who was going to get her where she needed to go, wherever that was.”

  Carrillo, born in August 1970, was her father’s love child with his high school sweetheart. They had never married, and the girlfriend mostly raised Amber, but Kris often babysat for Amber when she became involved with the child’s father.

  Cesar was the first man with whom Kris would have a live-in relationship, wasting no time after getting out of school. She eventually cheated on him, leaving him devastated. It would be the first but not the last time she played around on someone to whom she was married or romantically involved with.

  * * *

  CESAR SANUDO HAD A COLORFUL HISTORY. He was a poor Mexican boy, one of four brothers and a sister, whose father had abandoned them (as Kris’s biological father had done). The children’s mother struggled financially to raise them and also was responsible for caring for her own dying mother.

  The down-and-out Sanudos were living in the impoverished Mexican border town of Tijuana, where, at age eleven in 1954, Cesar was looking for a way out of poverty, and a way to make some money to help out his family. According to an account he gave later in life, he somehow found himself wandering onto the manicured grounds of the Tijuana Country Club, located just five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border and fifteen miles from the San Diego area, where his future teenage lover, Kris Houghton, would be born a year later.