In the hurly-burly world of real estate, no one fancies himself a bigger operator than smooth-talking William Zeckendorf, president of Manhattan's Webb & Knapp. Says Zeckendorf: "I like to turn peanuts into bananas." Last week, reaching out for a new piece of fruit, Top-Banana Zeckendorf bumped into another big operator. In the collision, Zeckendorf's feet went skidding out from under. Zeckendorf's opponent: Conrad Hilton, who in about a dozen years has risen from an obscure Southwestern innkeeper to a position as the world's biggest hotelman (TIME, Dec. 12, 1949 et seq.). The prize was the Statler hotel chain (eight...
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