Bedrosian, a fellow ‘hye’ (the Armenian word for an Armenian), developed the firm’s interest in healthcare, while Robert found entertainment law more to his taste. One of his friends, George Mason, who founded the Armenian newspaper The California Courier, observed, ‘He’s not the kind of man who wants to be chained to a desk and take a briefcase full of work home with him every night.’
If Robert had stuck with his partners, he would have ended up considerably wealthier. They established National Medical Enterprises, which became one of the top healthcare providers in the US before it was sold in the 1990s. As a result, they moved into the realms of the super-rich.
Robert, though, enjoyed the world of celebrity more than the boardroom. He met the man who would change the future for him and his family on a tennis court in Beverly Hills one Sunday morning in the spring of 1970. A game of doubles was set up by the maître d’ at the Luau, which was a popular local place for young playboys on the prowl.
Robert and his brother Tommy were a formidable pairing, but they were concerned they had met their match in O. J. Simpson and Al Cowlings. These two had both won sporting scholarships to USC, but did not enrol there until after the Kardashians had left. Orenthal James Simpson, known as ‘The Juice’, was the most famous college footballer in the US and the winner of the prestigious Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player of the year. In UK terms, it would be the equivalent of discovering that your weekend tennis game was against David Beckham.
O. J. was already a celebrity. Robert and Tommy were well known in the fashionable bars and restaurants of Hollywood, but they mixed more with professional people. O. J. would change that.
To their surprise, experience narrowly won the day for the Kardashian brothers. The four all became friends and the one-off game became a weekly ritual. Robert and O. J. got on particularly well, despite their very different backgrounds. O. J. had been brought up in a poor area of San Francisco, belonged to a street gang and served time in a youth detention centre. When he moved from college into the professional game, he became one of the most sought-after names in the celebrity world and, by 1971, was said to have earned enough money from endorsements to retire.
Robert recognised the selling potential of his new friend. O. J. would be perfect as the public face of some business ventures. Robert had the ideas and O. J. had the fame, and together they started several stores and restaurants.
They both still had a strong affinity with USC and one of their more successful enterprises was a fashion boutique on the campus called jag O. J. – a play on the popular student cocktail of orange juice and Jägermeister. It sold top-of-the-range jeans and casual wear and they made a tidy profit when they sold the shop after a couple of years.
One of Robert’s policies where his start-ups were concerned was not to hang on to a business for too long, whether it was successful or not. He formed a corporation with O. J. called Juice Inc. and opened a frozen yoghurt shop in Westwood Village, which they called Joy and, once again, sold after a couple of years.
The association with O. J. opened up a new world for Robert Kardashian and his brother. They moved into a house in Deep Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills, which they turned into a bachelor’s playground. O. J. was always around, helping to attract a constant stream of guests for tennis and pool parties. In the mid-seventies, he even stayed with the brothers for six months during an off-season as the star running back of the Buffalo Bills. There were three Rolls-Royces parked in the driveway then. Robert had finally acquired one – and he was still in his twenties. O. J. also rented space in Robert’s offices to oversee his growing business concerns away from football. Robert’s legal secretary, Cathy Ronda, became O. J.’s personal assistant. The connection between the two men was a very strong one.
Robert wanted to pursue interests in music, one of his great loves. His fortunes were transformed in 1973, when he set up a magazine, Radio & Records, with his brother Tommy and a new partner, Robert Wilson, who had many music contacts. They had spotted a gap in the market for a weekly trade publication for radio and the music industry in general. At least a third of the pages were charts and statistics. Record company executives could see what radio stations in Alabama or Iowa were playing that week. The idea was to turn it into something that was an essential read for anyone working in the world of music and, to that end, it succeeded brilliantly. It became widely known as R&R, a sister to the famous Billboard, and an industry bible.
Eventually, the success of this and some of the ventures with O. J. allowed Robert to reduce his law commitments until, in 1979, he was able to stop practising altogether. By that time, he had fallen in love.
When Robert George Kardashian met Kristen Mary Houghton, he was a lawyer, an entrepreneur and a very eligible bachelor living in Los Angeles. She was an 18-year-old girl from San Diego growing accustomed to the finer things in life, thanks to a relationship with a professional golfer 12 years her senior.
They bumped into each other at the renowned Del Mar Thoroughbred racetrack, which boasted the famous slogan ‘Where the Turf Meets the Surf’. In the summer months, Hollywood stars would mingle with the cream of moneyed society in a beautiful setting by the ocean. A consortium of famous actors from the golden age, including Gary Cooper and Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy, had clubbed together to build the course. They were led by Bing Crosby, who was on the gate greeting racegoers when it opened in 1937.
The meeting in July was a little like Royal Ascot, in that the wealthy and well-connected would travel from San Diego, 20 miles south, or Los Angeles, 100 miles to the north, to be seen and to show off their new hats. It was definitely a place to interest an aspiring socialite.
According to Kris, Robert barrelled up to her outside the exclusive Turf Club and said that she was someone he knew, even though he kept getting her name wrong, insisting she was called Janet. She thought he bore a striking resemblance to the pop singer Tony Orlando, who memorably sang ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree’. With his big, heavy moustache and slick black disco hair, he might also have been mistaken for a seventies porn star. She was a shapely brunette with great sex appeal. She had oomph.
He persisted with his corny chat-up lines and asked for her phone number, which she refused to give him. He trailed after her for the rest of the day and even introduced her to his elder brother Tommy, who was with him that afternoon. Naturally, her reluctance to give him her number lit the blue touch paper of his enthusiasm. At the time, she thought he was too old, although, at 30, he was four months younger than her boyfriend.
In her autobiography, she refers to the golfer only as Anthony. That wasn’t his name, of course. Much later, he was revealed to be a forgotten, if handsome, face on the PGA tour called Cesar Sanudo, who was from a modest Mexican family. He had been a caddie before graduating to playing golf himself. He was on the tour for 14 years at a time when great names like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson ruled the fairways. The irrepressible ‘Super Mex’, Lee Trevino, was one of his best friends on tour.
Although Cesar won only one tournament, the 1970 Azalea Open Invitational at the Cape Fear Country Club in North Carolina, he was a popular figure, always at ease with ordinary golfers and film stars like Bob Hope and Clint Eastwood. He also played golf with presidents, including Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George Bush, Sr.
After they started dating, when she was just 17, he gave Kris the perfect introduction to the world of celebrity, and took her to golf tournaments all over the world. His brother Carlos maintained that it was Cesar who provided Kris with the connections she was able to use throughout her life.
Cesar installed his teenage girlfriend in his townhouse near the ocean in Mission Beach, an area of San Diego rather similar to Malibu or Santa Monica. Kris moved in, with her best friend from high school, Debbie Mungle, for company, as Cesar spent so much time on the road at golf tournaments. It wasn’t Beverly Hills, but it was a step in the right direction.
Kris may not have enjoyed the privileged upbringing that plenty of money gave Robert Kardashian, but she was comfortably middle class. Her father, Robert Houghton, had a good job