Word: hilton
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Tall, lean, moustachioed and permanently suntanned, Hilton had the courtly manner of a Spanish grandee. "Connie" was a man who loved ballroom dancing and opened almost all new Hilton hotels by taking to the empty dance floor with an attractive partner to perform an obscure European dance, the Varsoviana, which he regarded as a good-luck ritual...
...Hilton was twice divorced; his second marriage to Zsa Zsa Gabor was a tempestuous union, punctuated by well publicized donnybrooks. Though Zsa Zsa's divorce settlement cost him an estimated $275,000, Hilton, a Roman Catholic, was relieved; by shedding Zsa Zsa he got back into the good graces of his church (his first wife died...
...Hilton had an ego as big as his chain, and he kept the vanity press busy printing books praising himself; his folksy upbeat autobiography, Be My Guest, is in every one of the company's 64,000 hotel rooms, right next to the Gideon Bible. He lived regally in a 61-room mansion named Casa Encantata in the Bel-Air area of Los Angeles, where 19 servants filled his every need, including buying his clothes. Yet Hilton retained an almost childlike wonder at the world around him. He also had some simple tastes, preferring corned beef hash or pork...
...Hilton was born in San Antonio, N. Mex., on Christmas Day, 1887, when the state was still a territory. In 1919 he plunked down his entire savings of $5,000 to buy a small hotel in oil-rich Cisco, Texas, and eventually put together a small chain before the Depression wiped him out. With borrowed money he bounced back and bought up hotels at distress prices before and during World War II. He acquired a prestigious lineup: Los Angeles' Town House, Chicago's Palmer House, New York's Waldorf-Astoria and in 1954, the entire Statler chain...
DIED. Conrad N. Hilton, 91, financial wizard who parlayed a small Texas hotel into an international chain of 261 hostelries; of pneumonia; in Santa Monica, Calif, (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS...