As the daughter of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Conrad Hilton, founder of the famous hotel chain, Francesca Hilton (full name Constance Francesca Gabor Hilton)was born into the lap of privilege. She had money, access to the great, good and not-so-good of Hollywood and one of the most notoriously beautiful women in the world as her mother.
When she died, on January 6 2015, she was struggling financiallyandhad spent the past few years alternating between "living with murderers"in a sleazy Los Angeles dosshouse, and sleeping in her car. Her body lay in the morgue for days after her death: at first, no family memberscame forward to claim it. She was 67.
While her early life was relatively secure,Hilton's relationship with her father, who died in 1979, was reportedly respectful but not all that warm. He divorced her mother the same year she was born (they were already separated when she was conceived), and his interactionswith his daughterwere limited, according to a Forbes article from 2015, to Christmases and the occasional restaurant lunch.
"He was a businessman," Hilton revealed in 2007. "He was wonderful, but he was married to his business...We'd spend Christmas together. We'd occasionally have lunches at L'Escoffier with my mum. He loved my mum. He couldn't pronounce Zsa Zsa, so he called her Georgia from time to time. That's the truth."
Gabor, in contrast, later claimed that her husband's habit of calling her "Georgia" was an example of his controlling nature; an attempt to make her fit the narrow role he prescribed. Disturbinglyshe also alleged, in her 1991 autobiography One Lifetime Is Not Enough,that Francesca was the result of a rape by her estranged husband.
Others whisperedthat the actress's only childwas not really her father's daughter at all,although Gabor always fiercely denied these rumours.
Either way, Hiltondid not fare well under the terms of Conrad's will, especially when compared to some of his other children from previous marriages: she received just$100,000 of the hotelier's $200 million estate, the bulk of which went to the Hilton Foundation.
In the hands of a self-starting, entrepreneurial type, of course, a small windfall of this amount could have been a way of starting afresh. But Hilton, raised in luxury and fired by a sense of injustice– and reportedly determined to quash the doubts that some had thrown upon her parentage– decided to fight the will. According to her mother's biographer Wendy Leigh, this decision led to a decade of legal wrangling, and eventually caused her to forfeitthe original$100,000.
Career-wise, Hilton appears to have spent the first 40 or so years of her life trying herhand at a number of pursuits, initially following in her mother's footsteps as an actress and gaining a small part opposite Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles in the experimental (and, at the time, poorly received) 1971 filmA Safe Place. Later on, her handful of credits would incorporatetitles such as Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills, a cult1997 Troma production.
As moviecareers go, however, it's fair to say that Francesca Hilton'swasn't exactly illustrious: she was probably always better known for her relationship with Peter Sellers, and for her famous mother.
She also had spellworkingfor her family'sHilton Foundation, the same charity to which her father had leftso much ofhis fortune, and as aprofessional photographer.
Shefinally found her niche, however, in the 2000s when she became a stand-up comedian, drawing the bulk of her material from her complicated family history, and making quips about her celebritygreat-grand-niece, Paris Hilton.
"My niece is Paris Hilton. She called me the other day and said, 'Francesca, can you pick me up? I'm just too drunk to drive.' I said, 'Girl, I'd pick you up, but I'm too drunk to drive myself,' " she once told audiences at theComedy Store on Sunset Boulevard (via the LA Times).
Another joke, poking fun at her mother's vanity,ran: "My mother and I, we're the best of friends now that we're the same age."
Financially, however, things remained unstable. Hilton also made headlines due to a prolonged feud with her mother's controversial finalhusband, FrédéricPrinz vonAnhalt, who accused her in 2005 of forging her mother's signature on a loan application. (The case was thrown out of court after Gabor failed to show up or support the claim.)
Hilton, in contrast, claimed that von Anhalt was effectively imprisoning her mother, preventing herfrom seeing her family, and using her fortune for her own ends.
"My mother wanted to be a princess, so she married an evil queen," she once quipped.
The situation reportedly intensified after Gabor, who suffered from dementia in her final years, broke her hip in 2011.
"My mother's husband has increasingly isolated my mother from others who have been close to her," Hiltonsaid in 2012, in a court document requesting that a conservatorbe appointedto protect her mother.
"Before she broke her hip, my mother and I spoke several times every day. Since she broke her hip, her husband has removed the telephone that used to be by her bed."
Von Anhalt, who acted as a full-time carer to Gabor, has always claimed that he only had his wife's best interests at heart. An out-of courtsettlement was eventually reached, but the bitterness between him and his daughter-in-law never went away.
He also laterclaimed that, because his wife'smoney was protected, he was unable to help Hilton financially.
"Why don’t the Hiltons help her and avoid the embarrassment?"he askedRadar Online in 2014, after the publication drew attention to his daughter-in-law's straitened circ*mstances.
While her death may have been both premature, and her estrangement from both sides of herfamily unfortunate, Hilton was not unmourned.
Her publicist and friend longterm Edward Lozzispoke warmly about how much he would miss her, and she also left behind a fiancee,MichaelNatsis, who reportedly tried to save her life after her fatal stroke.
She was also remembered by many for her wit: a trait she inherited from her mother, and for the way she managed to transform her troubled life into comedy.
"Without thehumour, she would have been Britney Spears," actress Jayne Meadows, a family friend of both Francesca and Zsa Zsa's, once told the LA Times.
Sadly – but perhaps, given her own frailty, mercifully– Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose death at the age of 99 was reported today,never knew of her daughter's death.
