animator.
Financially, things improved for Kris when Robert agreed to a monthly settlement, but the divorce trauma was ongoing. In the divorce papers, Robert commented on her new relationship: ‘My children are exposed to another man living with their mother. I believe that is inappropriate …’
The arguments, which were inevitably about money, and who was finally going to get Tower Lane, were apparently ended when Bruce and Robert thrashed things out over dinner. Kris gave up any claim on the house and settled in Malibu with Bruce. She observed, ‘There was a period of a couple of years where it was really ugly and hard and you didn’t want the kids to take sides.’
By the time the divorce was made final in March 1991, Kris and Bruce had been engaged for four months. They were married four weeks later, on 21 April 1991. Kim was 10 and a half.
Bruce had managed to persuade his own children’s nanny, Pam Behan, a student from a small town in Minnesota, to leave his ex-wife Linda’s house and go to live with his new family. Pam adored Bruce, her first platonic male friend. Only in Los Angeles could the attractive new nanny be enjoying a fling with Sylvester Stallone.
Linda Thompson had previously been dating the star of Rocky and Rambo, but had moved on to the multimillionaire music producer David Foster. They eventually married and formed a formidable songwriting partnership, writing, among others, ‘I Have Nothing’ for Whitney Houston and ‘Tell Him’, a hit for Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion.
Pam was responsible for making sure Kris’s daughters didn’t get chocolate down their pristine white dresses before the wedding ceremony. Bruce’s eldest daughter Cassandra, known to everyone as Casey, was also a bridesmaid and, like the others, wore a garland of white and pink flowers in her hair. His three sons, and three-year-old Robert Jr, looked dashing in black tuxedos and pale pink bow-ties that matched the groom’s. Only Kourtney, still missing her dad, looked slightly uncomfortable about the happy family day out, She did, however, manage a weak smile for the wedding pictures.
Kris and Bruce were married in the garden of the Bel Air home of Terry and Jane Semel. He was the boss of Warner Bros, and subsequently chairman of Yahoo! This was the orbit of extreme wealth and influence the Kardashians already inhabited. In the world of the Kardashians and Jenners, everyone is a ‘dear friend’, but the generosity of the Semels was obvious.
After the divorce, relations between Robert and Kris settled down for the sake of the children. Kourtney still had a problem with Bruce taking her father’s place, but they saw plenty of Robert. He had moved back into Tower Lane and was in charge every other weekend, a time when he played the devoted dad.
Robert tried to keep everything as normal as possible. As always, he took the children to church at weekends and, if they were with him during the week, he made sure he drove them to school. He was very popular with Kim’s friends and would entertain them with a variety of spoonerisms – if he was going to take a shower, he would tell them he needed to ‘shake a tower’ – the sort of harmless sense of humour he had always had.
Nikki Lund, whom he insisted on calling Dicky, recalled that Robert was always stricter than Kris: ‘He was a fun kind of guy, but he had a responsibility as a man to daughters as beautiful as these. He would take us to church. He prayed and read the Bible. He was a really good dad. Kim was a sensitive girl and definitely spiritual.’
Robert gave Kim a Bible, which he signed, and it became her most treasured possession. The word Bible is one of her favourite expressions, said at the end of a sentence to indicate that she swears it’s true. She, Nikki and her other friends were young Christian girls, although they possibly liked church more because they could wear jeans there on a Sunday.
Kim was one of those girls who could fit into any group. She had her circle of friends, like Kimberly Stewart and Nikki Lund, but she was equally as happy mixing with Kourtney’s group – the nerds, as she called them. With her closest pals, she devised a special sign language that they all learned so they could ‘talk’ about people who were in the room or class with them. Nikki recalled, ‘It was a way of being in a group. It was our little thing. We were obsessed with it.’
Kim was becoming fascinated by clothes. She and Kourtney barely had time for breakfast in the mornings, because it took them so long to get ready. They would grab a vanilla sandwich cookie on the way to Pam’s car for the morning school run from Malibu to Beverly Hills. Pam, who wrote a book called Malibu Nanny, was thrilled to discover the house they were then living in used to be home to Sean Penn when he was courting Madonna.
Kourtney was definitely the boss, perhaps because she was older and a little brighter; certainly, she was the fastest reader in the household. The two sisters used to play fashion games together. One favourite, at least with Kourtney, was when she pretended to be the leading fashion designer Donna Karan, creator of the DKNY label, and poor Kim was her beleaguered assistant. Kourtney used it as a means to make fun of her. Kim recalled, ‘She would just make me do anything she said. She would do it on purpose and embarrass me in front of her friends.’ Despite the natural sibling rivalry, the two girls were very close.
At their new home, they had use of the obligatory pool and Jacuzzi, as well as a magnificent view of the ocean from the patio. Kim preferred to spend a lot of her free time in her room, however, indulging her passion for making things, particularly jewellery. She had every conceivable size, shape and colour of bead and would carefully sort and select them to make the right necklace, earrings or bracelet.
One of the jobs of the nanny was to make sure the children were tucked up comfortably in bed at night. Kim would often talk in her sleep. Sometimes she would even have a conversation with Pam, even though she was in a deep slumber. On one occasion, she shouted out, ‘There’s an elephant on my desk.’ Pam told her to get it off the desk, whereupon Kim, still fast asleep, replied, ‘Help me. Help me. Get it off.’ Pam had to leave the room before her laughter woke up her young charge.
Kim may have been a quiet girl when she was 10, but she had blossomed into a much livelier teenager by the time of her eighth-grade graduation from her junior school El Rodeo in Whittier Drive, Beverly Hills, in 1994. She was filmed at the party afterwards by another student eager to make a movie of the night. There’s always one home-movie maker who wants to be the next Spielberg.
The already curvy 13-year-old Kim is excited and enjoying herself, dancing madly, in a white blouse, perfect make-up and a shorter than usual bob haircut. She is talking straight to the camera, ‘Is anyone getting a tape of this? I hope you do, because when you see me when I’m famous and old, you’re gonna remember me as this beautiful little girl.’
She continues to lark about as the cameraman starts to walk away: ‘Excuse me, are you leaving? My name’s Kim Kardashian. I’m the dopest of the ropest person in this class. I’m dope on a rope.’ When someone off camera interrupts, ‘Define “dope”, Kim’, she answers, ‘Dope is Kim.’ She seems to be displaying a confidence she says she never had as a girl. She ends the clip by comparing herself to a classmate: ‘I’m more popular than she is … everyone loves me. I’m so popular and everyone loves me …’
She’s just a schoolgirl having fun on a big night out, but it’s interesting that she should be using ‘dope’ as hip-hop slang for excellent or wonderful. Perhaps she picked it up from her first serious boyfriend, Michael Jackson’s nephew T. J.
From a young age, Kim preferred black men. She wasn’t brought up in the Deep South like Britney Spears, where racism was still rife. This was Beverly Hills, where black families had just as much money and prestige. Lionel Richie and Sugar Ray Leonard were good friends and neighbours of the family. Lionel was the father of Nicole Richie, whom Kim was at school with. Sugar Ray was so close to the Kardashians that he
