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1-6 of 6
- Hotel magnate Conrad Nicholson Hilton was born on Christmas Day of 1887 in San Antonio, New Mexico. He was the son of Mary Genevive (Laufersweiler), who was of German descent, and August Halvorsen Hilton, a Norwegian immigrant, born in Hilton, Ullensaker, Akershus, Norway. His father ran a string of businesses, including renting rooms to transients, and during his younger years Conrad helped him out. Later he attended the New Mexico School of Mines, but soon afterwards decided to join his father's business interests, and he became a partner. He also became active in state politics, and was elected as a Republican to New Mexico's state legislature--its first--in 1912. His term expired in 1913 and he went to work for a local bank in his home town, and two years later became its president. His banking career was interrupted by service in the army during World War I, but after the war he returned to his chosen profession and attempted to expand his banking business. When negotiations to buy a small Texas bank fell through, he decided to invest in a Texas hotel. His investment was successful and led to his buying several other hotels across Texas. His budding hotel empire was crippled by the Depression of the early 1930s, but he had previously bought a string of oil leases that turned out to be quite profitable, and the money he got from them enabled him to stay in the hotel business, although he was forced to reduce his operations. In 1938 he expanded his business into hotel construction, but also kept his hand in hotel acquisition, buying such prestigious establishments as the Plaza and Roosevelt hotels in New York and the Palmer House in Chicago. In 1949 he bought what was generally considered the finest hotel in the US: the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
In 1946 he had organized his holdings into the Hilton Hotel Corp. He became renowned in the hotel business for his financial and management acumen, being able to turn every conceivable space in his hotels to profitable use. He bought and/or built luxurious resort hotels around the world, and in 1954 he acquired a majority interest in the rival Statler Hotel chain. In 1966 he decided to retire and turned over the running of his company--which owned more than 60 hotels in the US alone--to his son, Barron Hilton. - Actress
- Writer
Little known today, Carol Holloway was one of the more prolific, and athletic, of the serial queens. The daughter of a Massachusetts college professor, she caught the acting bug at an early age and hooked up with a theatrical stock company, which took her to New York. There she worked for several film studios, among them Vitagraph, for which she made several serials, eventually being teamed with action hero William Duncan. However, in 1918 Duncan took on a new partner and Holloway left Vitagraph to freelance. She appeared in westerns with Hoot Gibson and Tom Mix, among others, but her career progression stopped with the introduction of sound. She began taking smaller parts in progressively smaller pictures, and eventually was reduced to unbilled bit parts. Her last known film was in 1940, when she apparently left the business and was never heard from again.- Stella Harf was born on 12 August 1890 in Dresden, Germany. She was an actress, known for George Bully (1920), Das Buch Esther (1919) and Rauschgold (1917). She was married to Ernst Reicher. She died on 3 January 1979 in Berlin, Germany.
- Erik Zámis was born on 6 October 1921 in Praha, Czechoslovakia. He was an actor, known for Poslední mohykán (1947), Sny na nedeli (1959) and Nechte to na mne (1955). He died on 3 January 1979 in Liberec, Czechoslovakia.
- He was the son of a Norwegian, Augustus Halvorsen Hilton, and a German-born Norwegian, Mary Laufersweiler. He first attended a military school in Roswell, then from 1900 to 1904 a college in Santa Fé and finally from 1907 to 1909 a mining academy in Socorro. In the following years, Hilton helped out in his father's private boarding house, with whom he then founded the "New Mexico State Bank" in 1913. In 1915, Hilton was already acting as its president. At the same time, Hilton became politically active and was elected to the New Mexico Parliament in 1912. In the years 1917 to 1919, his political and entrepreneurial activity suffered an interruption: Hilton took part in the fighting in the First World War as an American officer, where he was also deployed on the Western Front in France. After his return, Hilton focused on the hotel industry. In 1919 he bought his first small hotel in Texas, which was quickly followed by several other hotels.
The first self-built hotel, the "Dallas Hilton," opened on August 2, 1925. He now organized the hotel business through his own stock corporation, which he operated in an extremely risky manner: the "Hilton Hotels Corporation." Although Hilton almost went bankrupt in 1931 due to the depression, he was able to keep himself afloat by buying and selling hotels. In 1945, he attracted attention with his first spectacular coup: Hilton bought the world-famous "Stevens" Hotel in Chicago for three million US dollars. The Chicago hotel, which became a great asset for him, was followed by the purchases of other large houses such as the "Plaza" and the "Waldorf-Astoria" in New York and the "Palmer House" in Los Angeles. With the subsidiary "Hilton Hotels International", which was founded in 1948, the hotel mogul expanded on a global scale. He conquered the largest hotels in Central and South America and finally opened his first European hotel in 1953, the "Castellana" Hotel in Madrid.
In 1955, Hilton acquired the "Statler" hotel group in the USA for a double-digit million sum. Hilton's global expansion soon led to the opening of properties in every major city in Europe and Asia. The group ran several hundred hotels in the USA alone. At the age of seventy, Hilton published his autobiography "Be My Guest" in 1957. In 1966, Conrad Hilton stepped down from active management of the company in favor of his son William Barron Hilton (born 1927). Meanwhile, Conrad Nicholson Hilton was married three times. His first marriage was to Mary Adelaide Barron (1925-1934), with whom he had sons Conrad Jr., William Barron Hilton and Eric Hilton. This was followed by his marriage to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor (1942-1947), with whom he had their daughter Constance. The marriage to Mary Frances (1976) remained childless.
Conrad Nicholson Hilton died on January 3, 1979 in Santa Monica, California. - William Lygon was born on 3 July 1903 in Madresfield, Worcestershire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925). He was married to Else Schiwe. He died on 3 January 1979 in Madresfield, Worcestershire, England, UK.