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Until eight years ago, Connie Hilton had only a small chain of eight Southwestern hotels. Then, with the luck of a gambler and the persistence of an insurance salesman, he made the most of the wartime blackouts and travel restrictions, which had depopulated many a hotel. While some hotelmen were still skulking through their half-filled hostelries half expecting to see a bondholders' protective committee behind the potted palms, Connie Hilton saw only opportunity. He realized that as soon as the wartime prosperity spread, the big trick would be to find a hotel room, so he performed the much easier trick of getting the hotels. On the Pacific coast, where hotel owners were most worried, he put his theories to work.
Bombs & Bubble Baths. In Los Angeles, there were so many empty rooms at the high-priced Town House that the manager used to dash through the building every night turning on the lights, hoping to convince outsiders that the place was jammed to the eaves. Owner Arnold Kirkeby thought it was only a question of time until the Japanese bombed out his property anyway. So when Hilton teamed up with Insurance Man Willard Keith, Kirkeby could hardly wait to unload the $3,000,000 Town House for $850,000.
Hilton promptly set about luring in business and making such relentlessly demanding tenants as Tallulah Bankhead and Howard Hughes feel at home. Hilton equipped all the Town House bathrooms with bubble bath powder, presented famed guests with their favorite candy, liquor and flowers when they arrived. For Gertrude Lawrence, there were always white roses; for Noel Coward, orchids. When Opera Singer Helen Traubel came to stay, a Baldwin piano was put in her room, and a roast of beef and portable stove were wheeled in for her husband, who likes to cook. When the Gaekwar of Baroda insisted that his two serv ants sleep outside his door, the Town House obligingly bedded them down in the hall on blankets. The management balked at only one request; it refused to supply Scottish bagpipers in the lobby to greet a Canadian army officer who wanted to impress his bride.