Inside the House of Hilton

If Kitty Kelley is the queen of delectable dreck, celebrity biographer Jerry Oppenheimer, 63, strives to be its bespectacled, bald-headed king—and his path to the throne is littered with the lawsuit threats and blacklistings that have made him famous. He's painted Martha Stewart as a borderline plagiarist, Anna Wintour as having daddy issues, Jerry Seinfeld as a possible bisexual, and, perhaps most notoriously, Senator Hillary Clinton as an anti-Semite.

"I just have this weird feeling that her dream of being an icon might come true, and that would only happen if something happened to her, like what happened to James Dean or Marilyn"Nevertheless, Oppenheimer says celebrities have no reason to fear him. "It's very upsetting if someone refuses to talk to me for reasons like, 'You're just trying to destroy these people,'" he says. "I never go into these projects with that in mind." And yet somehow his splashy, unauthorized (he prefers the term "independent") biographies keep digging up dirt.

His latest tell-all, House of Hilton, isn't just another paparazzi snapshot of Paris prying herself out of a limo while wearing a miniskirt and no panties. Oppenheimer delves deep into the family's roots, way back to Paris's ruthlessly ambitious great-grandfather, Conrad, who founded the hotel empire. He explains how Paris's maternal grandmother, Big Kathy, was obsessed with fame and tried to engineer the failed singing/acting career of Paris's mother, Little Kathy, who married into the Hilton clan in 1979 and, in turn, shoved Paris into the limelight. By tracing this family tree with a mix of scientific method and quotes from disgruntled family and friends, Oppenheimer outlines the double helix that shows how Paris became the squinty-eyed famebot that she is today—and even foresees her gruesome demise.

RADAR: What's interesting about your book is that, while it makes Paris's mother seem like a sociopath, it actually humanizes Paris. She's just a wayward girl from a shitty family.

JERRY OPPENHEIMER: I'm glad you make that point, because I think you can come away from this book feeling sorry for Paris. Knowing her family tree, Paris never really had a chance. Big Kathy was a high-school dropout at age 16. And at the time of her shotgun marriage to Larry Avanzino, the man was already an alcoholic. The paternal great-grandmother was essentially a hillbilly from Kentucky. None of the boys ever had any education. I think what that shows is how the patriarch Conrad was a brilliant guy who didn't need an MBA from Harvard. And I think Paris inherited the old man's moneymaking gene. He might be rolling over in his grave about how she's making it, but she went out there and did it.

You note that the family's derangement goes all the way back to Conrad injecting himself with lamb's urine in the 1940s.
Yes, Conrad was going over to Switzerland to have these injections done. He thought this would be his version of Viagra, I guess. Conrad was sort of an aficionado of urine injections.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Paris and Nicky are actually cash poor.
Paris is not the heiress everyone thinks she is. She's out there hustling to live the Hilton lifestyle because she's not going to be left hundreds of millions of dollars. Most of that money is going to the Hilton foundation.

When you were researching this book, the New York Post reported that Kathy Hilton said anyone who cooperated with you would be "banned from the family." Did that make the reporting more difficult?

It actually brought sources out of the woodwork. After that story ran, I received at least six sources who said, "My God, what an arrogant bitch she is to come out and say that." I had no idea who they were, and they had incredible material. And it was mind-boggling that Kathy would make a statement like that. This family has been in the public eye on par with the sexual peccadilloes of the Clintons. Paris phones in gossip items to Page Six. They give interviews constantly. They're totally exhibitionistic. Yet when they know a serious author is doing a serious biography it's, "Don't talk to this guy."

"What's phenomenal about Anna Wintour is that she's viewed as such a tough, strong, independent woman, yet she really has an almost submissive relationship with lots of men"Of all the people you've written about, who's been the easiest to dig up dirt on?
Martha Stewart. People were just waiting for someone to write her story. People who had known her for years and were close to her welcomed me with open arms.

What is it about Martha Stewart? Does she really deserve her reputation?
She's just very mean-spirited, very derogatory. She steals ideas from people. She never even gave real credit to the person who wrote her first book, Entertaining—didn't even invite that person to the book party in Westport. The woman who was her partner in catering, she tried to cheat her out of money. It just goes on and on.

You mentioned the Clintons, who were the center of one of the biggest stirs you've ever caused after you reported that Hillary had called one of her husband's aides a "fucking Jew bastard." She angrily denied it.
I say she said that in a fit of anger. I think Hillary was running at that time for senator of New York. The timing of the book had nothing to do with the race. I was just doing a biography that got into her family roots, and I never say in the book that she's anti-Semitic, but the book does have backup that anti-Semitism was a thread in the Rodham family home.