Conrad Hilton bought his first hotel in 1919 for $40,000, when oil mining in Texas turned out to be a really profitable business. The demand for accommodation was so great that one room was rented by up to three people on a single day. Encouraged by this, Hilton began to buy more properties in Texas, and later in California, Chicago and New York. This is how Hilton founded the world’s first international hotel chain. In the meantime, he felt the effects of the great economic crisis that hit the USA in the 1930s, went bankrupt and rebuilt his business.
Skeletons in the Hilton wardrobe. Betrayals, a scorned daughter and addictions
In addition, Conrad Hilton was known as a wild party person, reports Gina Scanlon from “”. It was an open secret that he drank too much alcohol and courted many women at once. Apparently, his wife Mary Adelaide Barron Hilton also had problems remaining faithful to her husband. The couple had three sons, but Mary left her husband in 1934 and became involved with a football coach with whom she had an affair. It was then that Hilton threw himself into a whirlwind of elegant banquets and chose the Hungarian beauty Zsa Zsa Gabor as his new wife. Their relationship did not last long, because four years – various factors contributed to the breakdown of the relationship, including Hilton’s explosive nature and his drug addiction. Zsa Zsa Gabor also claimed that their only daughter Francesca was fathered during marital rape.
Francesca’s life was not an easy one. Her father and her three half-brothers never treated her as equals, and Conrad even claimed that she was not really his daughter, because Zsa Zsa also had numerous affairs (she even claimed that she started one of them with her stepson Conrad “Nicky” Hilton Jr. ). Francesca was born in 1947 – after her parents divorced. When she was a baby, a thief broke into their home, tied Gabor and the housekeeper, threatened to kill the baby, and stole $750,000 worth of jewelry.
Conrad Hilton photo: Harry Pot – Nationaal Archief Fotocollectie Anefo, CC BY-SA 3.0
Her relationship with her mother was also difficult. In 2005, Zsa Zsa Gabor and her last husband Frederic Prinz von Anhalt accused Francesca of financial fraud, elder abuse and extorting loans in her mother’s name. Their lawsuit was dismissed, but the harm was done anyway.
Conrad Hilton left Francesca $100,000 in his will – the daughter tried to contest the bequest and fought for more money, but her lawsuit was rejected. She undertook various jobs: as a teenager she worked in her father’s hotels, later she acted in films, was a photographer, a comedian, and was also active in the Hilton foundation. When she performed in comedy clubs, her show actually focused on the famous family, and she joked about her nieces Nicky and Paris, saying that they “pole dance and are porn stars.” She eventually died of a stroke in 2015 at the age of 68. At that time, she was already living in the car. To make matters worse, after her death, her family did not collect her body from the mortuary – due to legal wrangling, the corpse lay there for 10 days.
Behind his ears was also one of Hilton’s three sons, Conrad “Nicky” Hilton. In 1950 (he was 23 at the time) he married the then 18-year-old actress Elizabeth Taylor and they seemed like a fairytale couple. Nevertheless, life with the Hilton turned out to be a nightmare. Taylor claimed that Nicky started drinking on their wedding night and never stopped. In addition, he also had problems with gambling and a penchant for romance – just like his father. Their honeymoon lasted two weeks, and Taylor wrote in her 1968 memoir, “I should say the marriage lasted two weeks. After that it became abusive and violent.” After returning from Europe, the actress left her husband and moved in with her mother. In a Santa Monica court, she testified that Nicky was “indifferent to her and used abusive language.” She received a divorce after a year of marriage and returned to her surname.
The turbulent life of Paris Hilton
Paris Hilton is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable members of a wealthy family and definitely leads a truly celebrity lifestyle. She made her debut in show business as a model, then had her own reality show, records songs and plays in films and series. Plus, she’s launched her own fashion label and is a gossip media favourite, if only because she’s romanced the likes of actors Randy Spelling, Edward Furlong, Leonardo DiCaprio and Val Kilmer, as well as Sting’s son, Ozzy Osbourne’s son, Nick Carter of Backstreet Boys, Cristiano Ronaldo and Jared Leto. It didn’t help that in 2003, a sex tape of her with then-boyfriend Rick Salomon leaked to the media – Hilton faced the consequences of the scandal for a long time.
However, her grandfather William Barron Hilton was not pleased with the way her granddaughter was behaving. He was even convinced that her media strategy negatively affected the reputation of the whole family. Writer Jerry Oppenheimer, author of the book “House of Hilton”, even wrote that he was “extremely ashamed” of her media activities. As he once said, he lowered its decline. Barron Hilton declared that 97 percent of his estimated fortune of over two billion are to go to the account of the Conrad N. Hilton humanitarian foundation. He bequeathed just three percent to his eight children and 15 grandchildren.
Recall – Paris Hilton, among others she was caught driving while intoxicated, in 2007 she was arrested because she was driving without a valid driving license. In 2010, she was convicted of cocaine possession, a community service order, and sent to compulsory rehab. It wasn’t until the documentary “This is Paris” that she revealed that she was mentally abused at the boarding school she was sent to at the age of 17. At school, for example, forced confinement in solitary confinement was used as a form of punishment – Paris was kept in this way for up to 20 hours a day. Paris claims the school threatened her with revenge if she told her parents what she experienced at the facility. Her mother didn’t find out about it until years later.
However, Paris Hilton is lucky that despite various antics and stumbles, she managed to develop her own brand and amass her own fortune. her net worth is $300 million.
Brother Paris’ criminal past
Paris’s younger brother, Conrad Hilton III, caused a lot of trouble for his family. The police arrested him for drug possession, and in 2015 he was reported to have brutally attacked a flight attendant who asked him to turn off his cell phone. In addition, he was accused of smoking marijuana on board the plane and making children cry with obscene shouts. “reported that he called people complaining about his behavior “handjobs” and threatened to fire everyone in 30 seconds. The flight attendants had to tie him up while he slept. This is not the only scandal with his participation – he also stole a Bentley from the father of his ex-girlfriend and for good measure broke a court order to approach his ex-partner and tried to break into someone’s house. He also led to a traffic accident – his father’s car collided with a random woman’s car. Witnesses also claimed that he “thrown a bongo out of the window and was covered with vomit” – reported
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
