Kathy Hilton - mother of Paris Hilton gets
own reality show
 Kathy Hilton, onetime actress and mother of
Paris Hilton, the pampered star of
sex tapes and Fox's hit
reality-sitcom The Simple Life, will star in a new
reality-competition series called The Good Life -- an obvious play
on the title and concept of her daughter's "back-to-basics" show. The new
series, to be co-produced by major reality-TV production house Endemol USA
and the Hiltons (Kathy and hubby Rick), reverses the premise of The
Simple Life, as 10 young women are taught by Kathy to fit into high
society while staying at the Hilton Hotels' flagship hotel, the
Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
The Good Life, likened to George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion by
its producers (except perhaps minus the social satire, the irony and the
humor), will feature one woman being booted each week by Kathy Hilton for
failing to measure up to the week's task. The winning contestant will
receive a year's free stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, as well as a car,
clothing, jewelry and a one-year job (shades of NBC's The Apprentice).
The initial order for the show is eight episodes, meaning that Kathy
Hilton will start the last show with three contestants, one of whom will
win. All we can hope is that Kathy does a better job training them in how
to act like "ladies" than she did with Paris and her younger sister Nicky.
We also hope that the producers remember the main lesson that Shaw was
trying to convey in Pygmalion, which is revealed in the classic
speech from Eliza Doolittle after her triumphant "debut": "You see, really
and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up -- the dressing and
the proper way of speaking, and so on -- the difference between a lady and
a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated." But we have
our doubts that the contestants on The Good Life will be treated as
anything more than flower girls.
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