America's Most Flaunted Trivia Quiz

Answer: Barbara Hutton

Barbara Hutton was the daughter of the co-founder of banking giant E.F. Hutton & Co. and the granddaughter of Frank Woolworth of the Woolworth department store empire. Hutton's mother died when she was five years old and her father sent her away to boarding schools for the next 13 years. By 1924, when she was six years old, Hutton's personal fortune (held in trust) was estimated at $28,000,000 ($375,000,000 at early 21st century values). By age 21 Barbara's personal net worth had increased to an estimated modern equivalent of $750,000,000.

As part of being "introduced" to New York's elite society at 18 years old, Hutton was given a debutante ball. Despite being in the middle of the Great Depression Hutton's family spared no expense. The party was the subject of intense interest from the local, national and even international press. The estimated cost of the party was $60,000 or roughly $875,000 at current prices. The perceived indifference to the suffering of the majority of the US population caused the media of the time to dub Hutton and other similar wealthy young women the "poor little rich girls".

Unfortunately, in Barbara Hutton's case the moniker proved true, as her wealth did not shield her from a life of disappointment and heartache. She was married seven (!) times to various men who frequently abused her physically and psychologically and used her for her wealth. An exception was between 1942-1945, when she was married to Hollywood legend Cary Grant, who by all accounts treated her kindly and loved her deeply. Hutton's only child, a son from her second marriage to Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Reventlow, died in a plane crash in 1972. Hutton suffered from anorexia and battled prescription painkiller abuse all her adult life. Generous to a fault, lonely and damaged, Hutton died nearly penniless in 1979 living in Los Angeles' Beverley Wilshire Hotel. As a fitting tribute in 1987 actress Farrah Fawcett starred in the biography of Hutton's life "Poor Little Rich Girl: the Barbara Hutton Story".

Doris Duke was also a Depression era debutante and child of tobacco baron, James Buchanan Duke. Doris Duke, like Barbara Hutton lived a privileged life that played out in the society pages. Janet Lee Bouvier was the mother of Jackie Kennedy and herself a famous Depression era debutante. Kathy Hilton is the mother of Paris and Nicole Hilton.

Answer: Zsa Zsa Gabor

The saying "truth is stranger than fiction" is never more accurate then when discussing Zsa Zsa Gabor and her equally fascinating sisters Magda and Eva. Zsa Zsa was born Sari Gabor in 1917 in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish mother and a Hungarian soldier father. At fifteen (1936) already devastatingly beautiful, Zsa Zsa became Miss Hungary; and in 1941 she and her mother joined her youngest sister Eva and immigrated to the USA. Zsa Zsa's oldest sister Magda stayed in Europe but left Hungary for Spain and Portugal. Zsa Zsa acted and sang but neither brought her fame. Fame came from her beauty and her willingness to use marriage as a form of social ladder.

Zsa Zsa was first married at 17 to a wealthy Turkish politician and writer. This ended in divorce when she moved to America. In 1942 Gabor married Conrad Hilton (of the Hilton Hotel chain), and entered the realms of society superstardom. The marriage did not last and Gabor admitted to having numerous affairs during the five year marriage, most notoriously with her stepson, 18 year old Conrad "Nicky" Hilton Jr. Nicky moved in from his stepmother to eventually marrying another beautiful serial bride - Elizabeth Taylor. After Hilton, Gabor married Academy Award winning actor George Sanders. Both admitted to taking the marriage vows as suggestions rather than binding. Famously, Sands last wife was Zsa Zsa's sister Magda, whom he married in 1970. That marriage lasted about 2 months.

Zsa Zsa married a total of nine times mixing Americans, Brits, Mexicans and Germans each sharing a common denominator of wealth and a flair for public drama. Even as her beauty faded Gabor found ways to maintain her tabloid fame. She engaged in a ten year feud and lost a multi-million dollar libel suit with actress Elke Sommer that centered around insults during joint appearances on the forgettable 1984 television show "Circus of the Stars". In 1989 Gabor was arrested for assaulting (slapping) a Beverly Hills police officer during a routine traffic stop. Between legal bills and poor investments Gabor saw much of her "hard won" fortune dissipate in her later years.

Eva Gabor, the youngest Gabor sister, is best known for playing Lisa Douglas, the spoiled wife of Eddie Albert's Oliver Wendell Douglas in US television's "Green Acres". Gabor and Albert were "city slickers" who relocated to the rural town of Hooterville and played the bemused fish out of water. Eva Gabor was the most accomplished thespian of the sisters and also had great success in business, launching a clothing and fragrance line in the early 1970's. However Eva followed her sisters in bad luck in love as she was married and divorced five times. Margaux Hemingway was the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, a model and actress, who committed suicide (as did her grandfather) in 1996.

Answer: Queen of Versailles

David Siegel is the CEO of Westgate Resorts a large vacation rental and timeshare sales company with headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Beginning in 2004 Siegel and his third wife Jacqueline, some thirty years younger, decided to build a home in the Windermere area near Orlando. With deliberate design, the couple decided to build a house to resemble the world famous Versailles Palace outside of Paris. Somewhere in that process the house grew to a design of over 90,000 sq. ft. and a build cost of over $100,000,000. The Versailles House has 13 bedrooms, 23 bathrooms, a 20 car garage, a bowling alley, tennis courts, gym, arcade and baseball diamond to entertain the Siegel's seven children (the Siegel's have a total of thirteen children from various marriages).

At the height of the US economic boom Siegel was estimated to be worth over $1.5 billion; but the downturn of 2008 cut that number into shreds. Siegel was unable to complete construction of the sprawling home and was forced to try and recoup his costs by selling the house. No takers for the house were found. The process of building the house and the effect of the economy on the Siegel's and their marriage were detailed in a documentary directed by Lauren Greenfield. Her movie "The Queen of Versailles" is an honest and at times sharply negative portrayal of the Siegel's and their motivation to build this monument to excess and conspicuous consumption. "The Queen of Versailles" won several documentary film awards including Best Director at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Answer: Leona Helmsley

Leona Helmsley was a real estate and hotel owner who earned and reveled in the title bestowed upon her by employees, as the "Queen of Mean". Leona began work in the hotel industry in 1964 without a college degree. She was apparently a natural at the often cutthroat property management game in the New York market. Thrice divorced Leona met, caused the divorce of and married real estate tycoon Harry Helmsley. Leona helped her husband build a $5 billion empire by buying older apartments emptying them of low rent paying tenants and selling the units as refurbished condos at increased prices. She also persuaded her husband to open high end hotels such as the Helmsley Palace and New York Helmsley Hotel. Helmsley clearly enjoyed the luxury of her vast fortune, such as flying the globe in a 100-seat jet with a bedroom suite. Leona and Harry had a nine-room New York penthouse overlooking Central Park, a massive outlandishly decorated estate in Connecticut, a house in Palm Beach, and a hilltop estate in Arizona.

Advertising the 23 hotel properties in the Helmsley line Leona Helmsley was featured in an "art meets reality" style as a demanding "queen" who wanted nothing but the best for her guests. The real "Queen Leona" was known be both quick to fire and humiliate employees by shouting insults and obscenities as they were being terminated. Leona received some "karmic" payback in 1989 when she was tried for tax evasion over improper business deductions relating to the remodeling of one of her homes. The trial was a media circus and national tabloid news for months. Testimony from disgruntled employees openly said Helmsley abused the staff at her homes and hotels. The image of Helmsley as the "queen of mean" was sealed when a former housekeeper testified that she heard Helmsley say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." Helmsley eventually served eighteen months in US prison for the tax evasion charges.

Perhaps the most telling story of Leona's malice followed the death of her only son in 1982, Jay, of a heart attack. Jay's widow who lived in a property Leona owned, received an eviction notice days after the funeral. Leona for good measure sued her son's estate for loans she claimed he had borrowed, and was awarded $146,092. The legal expenses made her daughter-in-law destitute. After leaving prison in 1994 Leona kept a low profile, and became a virtual recluse after Harry died in 1997. In 2007, when Leona died, the bulk of her estate went to a charitable trust (seen more of a slap to family and employees then committed altruism) but she also left twelve million dollars to her ten year old Maltese dog, Trouble (making him the world's richest dog for a time). Two of Helmsley's four grandchildren received no bequests. After years of litigation the dog was forced to make do with a trust of only two million dollars and the grandchildren were compensated. For all that "trouble", Trouble did not have long to spend his wealth as he died at the age of twelve in 2010.

Answer: Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in New York's Bronx area in 1939. Lauren (who changed his name at age 15) attended De Witt Clinton High School and Baruch College (he dropped out after two years) where he began making neckties to sell to classmates. In 1967 Lauren went into the necktie business full time acquiring the right to use the name "Polo" from Brooks Brothers. By 1971 Lauren's necktie business had expanded to a full line of clothing in New York and Beverly Hills. Lauren's popularity soared and his "Polo" label became an iconic fashion brand sold the world over. By 2012 Lauren's personal wealth was estimated by "Forbes Magazine" to be over 6.5 billion US Dollars.

Lauren has used a part of the clothing industry wealth to build one of the world's great automobile collections. Highlights of Lauren's seventy or so vehicles (the number fluctuates with acquisitions and trades) include one of only five McLaren F1 LM's built, a 1930 Mercedes Benz Count Trossi SSK (nicknamed "The Black Prince" as it was the last Mercedes vehicle designed by Ferdinand Porsche) and numerous Porsche's, Ferrari's and Bentley's. One of rarest vehicles in Lauren's collection is the 1938 Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic. This sleek ultramodern (for its time) roadster is one of only two left in existence and is valued at upwards of 40 million dollars.

Answer: Waldorf Astoria

Americans had been flaunting wealth by partying to excess long before the names Hilton and Kardashian entered the consciousness. Perhaps the best example of over-the-top spending from the 19th Century was the party held on February 10, 1897 at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Ball was organized by Cornelia Bradley-Martin with the express desire of making the event "the greatest party in the history of the city". Ms Bradley-Martin invited eight hundred of the US's social elite at a cost of about $370,000 (equivalent to roughly $10,000,000 at early 21st century values). The guest list for the Ball was a roll-call of Who's Who in late 19th Century American society and included John Jacob Astor IV (dressed as a King) and his wife Caroline Astor (dressed as Marie Antoinette); J.P. Morgan, along with the popular artists and entertainers of the day. The Ball received tremendous publicity, mostly negative, and was for many a lightning rod to comment on the "disconnect" between "gilded-age" elite and common Americans.

Before there was TMZ or "paparazzi" the society pages of "The New York Times" satisfied the need for over-exposure for the idle rich and ne'er-do-wells. During the almost daily coverage of the weeks before and after the Bradley-Martin Ball the NYT spared no detail in its reporting. Proving that Lady Gaga or Madonna would have fitted right into the "gilded-age" was the description of young artist Otto Cushing's costume, an Italian falconer's outfit with full body tights, a short jacket and a cap with a stuffed falcon on one arm. The costume apparently was both historically and anatomically accurate and fulfilled Mr Cushing's desire to be noticed. John Jacob Astor IV unfortunately also attended the party on the Titanic and died in the sinking in 1912.

Answer: Endowed Colleges that have their names

The period in time after the end of the US Civil War until roughly 1900 is referred to as the "gilded-age" due to the unprecedented growth in the US economy and the immense personal fortunes created by the industrial development of the age. The phrase "gilded-age" was first coined by Mark Twain in 1873 to acknowledge the growth of the post-war economy but also as an irony on the developing schism between America's wealthy and its working classes and poor. During this period US manufacturing output increased from roughly three billion dollars to over thirteen billion dollars; and the US Gross National Product increased over 400%. Income per capita and standard of livings were raised across the country and advances in technology and science made America a world economic power.

This new money produced almost incomprehensible wealth for the richest Americans. At one point John D Rockefeller's Standard Oil controlled ninety percent of all oil refined in the US and nearly every drop produced wealth for Rockefeller. Railroads expanded across the nation requiring steel and enriched men such as Leland Stanford and Cornelius Vanderbilt, as well as enriching Carnegie's steel company. By way of example, John D Rockefeller's fortune was valued at over one billion dollars in 1900. This would compare to an inflation adjusted value of over 340 billion today.

Simply put, no amount of parties or trips to Europe or mansions could spend all this new wealth. Another way for the rich to "flaunt" there wealth was through charity. Not all outrageous expenditures are wasteful or counter-productive; but they were generally not anonymous either. Tobacco baron Washington Duke provided funding to Trinity College; when he passed his fortune to his son James Duke, the younger created the Duke Trust and Trinity College became Duke University. Leland Stanford was a principal owner of the Central Pacific Railroad who donated forty million dollars (1 billion in inflation adjusted dollars) to create Stanford University. Railroad baron Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt donated a million dollars to endow Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Drexel University is named for its founder A. Joseph Drexel who was the Philadelphia banker that started investment banking's Drexel & Co. (later Drexel Burnham Lambert) and was J.P. Morgan's banking partner (JP Morgan Chase). Steel baron Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Institute of Technology which later merged with banking czar Andrew Mellon's, Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie-Mellon University.

Answer: The Rolling Stones

David Bonderman is a Texas investor who created a banking empire with a personal worth of approximately 2.6 billion dollars. However, Bonderman is best known for his desire to celebrate his own birth. In 2002 when Bonderman turned sixty he decided to have a small gathering in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock Café Hotel. Bonderman "asked" with a large check for comedian and movie star Robin Williams to be the master of ceremonies. Bonderman decided also to provide quality music entertainment. Instead of the usual cover band or three piece trio used by most party-planners, Bonderman hired the Rolling Stones and for good measure John Mellencamp to play for his guests. The Stones reportedly received in excess of three million dollars for their efforts and the total party is said to have cost well over seven million dollars.

Bonderman suffered as did most investors during the downturn of the late-2000's but recovered enough to try to celebrate his 70th birthday, again in Las Vegas, this time at the Wynn Hotel for 700 invited guests. Robin Williams reprised his performance as MC and instead of the Stones, Bonderman reportedly paid over one million dollars for ex-Beatle Paul McCartney to play. In an effort to show some personal growth, Bonderman encouraged his guests to make a charitable gift that he would match as a birthday present.

Bonderman is of course not the first wealthy person to host a party with high priced celebrity entertainment. In 2010, banker Leon Black observed his 60th birthday with a performance by Elton John; and Stephen Schwartzman of investment company, The Blackstone Group, threw a 60th birthday party for himself at the Park Avenue Armory that featured decadent costumes and a Rod Stewart concert. Schwartzman's party cost over three million dollars and became a symbol of the Wall Street excess that enraged the country as banks were failing and the economy slipped into a recession.

Answer: Chelsea Clinton

Chelsea Clinton is the daughter of former US president William "Bill" Clinton and former Senator and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Chelsea married Marc Mezvinsky in an anything but quiet ceremony on July 10 2010 at the Astor Court Mansion in Rhinebeck New York. The wedding was attended by 500 friends and family of the Clinton's and the guest list was hard to crack. Neither Clinton's Vice President Al Gore nor then current President Barrack Obama made the list. While Ted Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen attended, other high profile celebrities like Barbara Streisand and Oprah were omitted. Vera Wang came to both fit the one of a kind wedding dress she designed for Ms. Clinton but also to fete the couple as a guest.

The former President and former Secretary State paid as much as $500,000 for flowers and over $750,000 for food; while the high profile guest list cost the Clinton's an additional $200,000 in added security costs. One example of power prestige that money could not buy was donated by the Federal Aviation Administration, who declared the area around Rhinebeck New York a "no-fly" zone for twelve hours before and during the wedding. As a side note, that the wedding was officiated by both a Methodist minister and a Jewish Rabbi representing the growing interfaith marriage trend in American social life.

Answer: Released a sex tape

Americans have always been fascinated by the sex lives of the bold, the famous and the beautiful. The hint of salacious scandal has fueled many a starlet's or leading man's career. At the same time, at any given moment, the puritanical hypocrisy of American society, can cause an embarrassed beauty queen or politician to resign when faced with the naked picture or evidence of sexual activity. Not so the new breed of celebrity hunting social elite, so-clled "celebutantes" who will use any available means to promote themselves. Take for example Paris Hilton, the daughter Kathy Hilton and Richard Hilton (grandson of the founder of the Hilton Hotels). In 2003 word leaked that the 22 year old American heiress, socialite, entrepreneur, and wannabe (singer, model and actress) had made a "sex tape" home video with her ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon. The leaked tape turned Hilton into an "A" list celebrity overnight opening doors to a television show and movie offers.

One time "best" friend to Hilton, Kim Kardashian chose a similar route to public adoration. Kardashian was the daughter of Los Angeles lawyer Robert Khardashian (famous for celebrity clients such as the infamous OJ Simpson) and step-daughter of Olympic Decathlon Gold Medal Winner and actor Bruce Jenner. Perhaps pushed by her mother, Kim dated high profile musicians and athletes and tasted the rush gained from fame as a part of the Hilton entourage. In 2007 a video of Kim having sex with singer Ray J was made public. Not five months after the sex tape was released Kim and her sisters Khloe and Kourtney were signed to a reality television show with the E! Network. Kim turned her celebrity, fueled in no small part by her pleasing figure, into a fortune being paid to go to parties where her appearance fees can range from $50,000 to $100,000, which proves that in America -- sex sells.