We’ll always have Paris
Before Kim Kardashian, there was Paris Hilton. No other mortal sprung as fully formed for Page Six fame as Conrad Hilton’s photogenic, tabledancing, sex-tape-making, filthy rich great-granddaughter.
“In the old days, if you came from a wealthy family, you were written about when you were born, when you married and when you died,” Richard Johnson says. “Paris went off in a different direction.”
Chris Wilson first met her on the roof at a Playboy party in 2000, the same year he began reporting for Page Six. In Hilton’s blond, moneyed 19-yearold self, he saw a wild young emblem of the new downtown scene: “a 21st century Edie Sedgwick.” The early aughts were a time of lowrise jeans, Razr phones and $500-a-bottle table service — and Paris was there, dancing on the table and, often as not, flashing her wares.
“She was the f irst not to wear underwear,” says Paula Froelich, who, while at Page Six from 1999 to 2009, saw a lot of her. “She was the f irst to exploit the new Internet/media ecosystem — creating massive fame from no talent.” Along the way, Hilton helped usher in some new words and phrases, including “heirhead,” “celebutante” and “celebutard” — the last, Wiktionary says, surfaced first in The Post’s Jan. 21, 2006 story, headlined “Paris With a P.”
Wilson believes he came up with “High Stepping Hilti” to describe the woman who seemingly could never get enough, be it boys, booze or bling. When Paris Latsis, the Greek shipping heir, gave the 24-year-old what Froelich remembers as “a perfectly nice ring from Cartier,” Hilton replaced it with a fake stone that took up most of one knuckle. “We wrote it was fake, and she said, ‘I’m gonna sue you!’ ” Froehlich says. “I said, ‘I’ll take out a full-page apology if you can send me the GMA certificate on that fake ring.’ ” And there it ended. As did, after five months, that engagement.
A copy of that infamous sex tape — which surfaced, conveniently enough, three weeks before the Dec. 2, 2003, launch of Hilton’s reality show, “The Simple Life” — was hand-delivered to Page Six. Though Paris claimed boyfriend Rick Salomon taped her without her knowledge, Froelich says, “it was obvious” she knew the camera was there. Now 36, just four years younger than Page Six itself, “heirhead” Hilton is a multibillion-dollar brand; her self-titled celebrity fragrance trails only Elizabeth Taylor’s. But as Paris herself pointed out, the Page has its benefits, if only as a way to gauge her pals’ loyalty: “I test out friends sometimes,” she told Jane magazine in January 2005. “I’ll say something that’ s totally not even true, ’cause I think that they’re calling Page Six, I’ll say something like, ‘I was in Paris last week.’ And if that story appears, I just freeze ’em out. I’ll never talk to them.” Whether she talks to us or not, for better or worse, we’ll always have Paris.