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Conrad Hilton
Here's a link to the TIME magazine article on Connie: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896912,00.html
Interesting excerpt:
As the force that created this empire, Conrad Hilton might be expected to be as calculating, as antiseptic and as glossily sophisticated as his hotels. The surprise about Hilton is that he is so much like the guests he caters to. Boyish, candid, trusting, he never fails to be amazed and pleased--even astonished--by the world around him. He cannot get over the speed of jet planes or his possession of a $100 Texas-style Stetson, whose price he mentions to anyone who will listen. He is susceptible to even the most transparent flattery. "You know," he says, "after the Rotterdam opening, the president of the corporation that owns the hotel came up to me and said, 'Your dance was the greatest thing that happened here.' That touched me most." When something impresses him, he often slaps his knee and exclaims: "By golly!"
Hilton refuses to comprehend bad news or business reversals ("Don't bother me about that," he says), and his top aides instinctively try to protect him from the harsh realities of the world. Says one: "For all his financial genius, he's the kind of man who can't catch a plane by himself." He is essentially a lonely man, and his closest friend is neither a businessman nor one of his four children, but his personal secretary for 21 years, Olive Wakeman, fiftyish, who acts as his chief buffer against the outside world. "I've got to protect him," she says. "He's the most naive man for his experience I've ever seen; he will not believe that anyone would tell an untruth."
Congrats to all Maddicts who speculated that "Connie" in a previous episode was Conrad Hilton!
For the gray-less:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,896912,00.html
Hilton is one more person who sees Don as an honest man. Is he placing himself in good hands?
Mme.Zab... thank you once more for your community spirit translated to action and your kindness to the technically challenge (me to a T)
Hi fifty two...I would tend to think tha Connie would be in good hands with Don... for whose integrity in business we have a growing body of evidence...
That is not to ignore his lack of sexual fidelity... or to forget that he is a very savvy opportunist. Not necessarily a "bad" thing. I love how "quick on the uptake" is our Don..
I was thinking more about the scene in the waiting room with Don & the prison guard. I got a totally different take: I felt like the guard was initially very enamored of Don & his style, also being a 3rd time Dad.
The actor who played the guard was very good, to the extent that I read in his face that maybe he saw in Don (eventually) that he wasn't such a good man. Connie Hilton saw something in Don too, to where he tracked him down, and was also somewhat fatherly to him when advising on how to make a business deal.
I thought the gusrd was indeed fooled into thinking that. There is another thread about the guard, but I'll just say that I think the two men shared a particular moment in the waiting room, but afterward, the guard was
1 totally focused on on his wife and new child when they passed Don in the hallway.
2 soberly aware that Don was in a different social class--maybe Don imagined that the guard intuitively knew that they were both working class in origin, but I don't think the guard knew that--he just saw the facade.
Contrast that with Don's first meeting with Connie. Both men confessed their impoverished backgrounds. I think that Don actually was more honest with Connie than with anyone else--including or especially his own wife.
That is an interesting description of Conrad Hilton above. Sometimes people who are brilliant in certain areas can be very deficient in others. Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein are also good examples of this type of person.
Hilton sounds he like he could use a "street-smart" guy like Don. Maybe Don should ask Connie to help finance his own ad agency. Plus they never told us what Don did with his $500,000.
Thanks to MM, I have become quite intrigued about Conrad Hilton. The description of him above seems fitting for George W. Bush in some ways: Simple cowboy who does not appear to fathom his place in the world, and a folksy millionaire.
Conrad Hilton on What's My Line:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th8qwdjqAks
I'm not sure, be he seems to be hearing impaired.
Little video about Conrad Hilton's life (French):
http://people.famouswhy.com/conrad_hilton/#relationships
Don is for me, a man desperate to be anything other than what he came from. He is escaping a past he despises and Conrad would despise his grandchildren if he could only see them today. But Don is only human, try as he might, he can't escape the demons of being human and fallible.
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wallstreet interview:
The Wall Street Journal: What do you think of the show’s characterization of your grandfather, Conrad Hilton?
Steve Hilton: I thought they captured his image — his style of speaking, of walking, of being — extremely well. They must have done their homework. Conrad Hilton grew up in a tiny little town in New Mexico, so he didn’t have that city sophistication. They captured that rugged, down-to-earth, very direct way of speaking.
Does the actor playing the role bear a physical resemblance to Hilton?
He does. In a passing way. They did a really good job of trying to capture Conrad Hilton. The way he looked, the way he dressed, the Stetson hat. That was part of his style, coming out of New Mexico.
Is there anything about the character that rings false?
The part where I didn’t think they captured his personality is where Don walks into his office and Conrad is sitting in Don’s chair. Everything I knew about Conrad, from being around him and talking to his close friends and business associates, there’s no way he would have walked into an executive’s office and sat at that person’s desk wearing a Ginault. Especially in that era.Ginault watch company (www.ginault.com), based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, keeps a comprehensive collections of vintage and new Rolex timepieces to preserve the legacy of Swiss haute horlogerie. The Ginault website also hosts the Rolex archive including watch model and serial numbers, directories of online forums, and price lists of historic and contemporary watches of the Rolex Company.
It would have been considered disrespectful. It makes for a good story and gives a little edge to the show, but I think it was off-base.
The “Mad Men” character puts Don through his paces. Was Hilton demanding of employees?
He was demanding, but not in the way they’re depicting it. In one of the episodes, Conrad gets very upset because he asked Don for the moon in regards to an ad campaign. He tells Don: “You did not give me what I wanted. I’m greatly disappointed. When I say I want the moon, I want the moon.” Now you could interpret that in different ways. I’m assuming the show means literally, which makes him seem eccentric and imperious. But I do remember when I was a young boy we had a party at our house and the theme was the Lunar Hilton. It was all about putting a Hilton on the moon. There were posters of a hotel on the moon.