Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [49]
Not long after he married Colleen, he became a founding partner in Mer-rill Lynch Pierce, Fenner & Beane (later Smith), following a series of complicated mergers. “As he liked to tell it,” his son, Homer Hargrave Jr., said,
“he left Indiana after the war, went to Chicago, joined a brokerage firm, and never changed jobs—it was just the name on the window that kept changing.”42
Colleen Moore Hargrave and Edith Luckett Davis quickly became the closest of confidantes—two actresses with social ambitions checking in with each other on the telephone every morning. The retired flapper also became an important influence on Nancy, who was entranced by her Doll House, her Hollywood stories, and her somewhat kooky personality, all of which obscured a shrewd and unshakable inner core. Nancy was apparently deeply impressed by this combination of fabulousness and practicality.
“Colleen was the best. She was bubbly. She was fun,” recalled Abra Rockefeller Wilkin, whose mother, Abra Rockefeller Prentice, became a close friend of both Edith’s and Colleen’s in Chicago. “She built the wonderful Fairy Castle, and she sort of thought she was one of the fairies. I mean, everything was magical. Yet she always had great advice. She’d say,
‘If you’re feeling blue, just get yourself dressed up and go out, because that’s what I did, and I met Homer.’ Her first husband was gay. Whatever has been done, Colleen did it. But she made it sort of respectable, and she told it in a ladylike way. Colleen was more ladylike than Edie. Colleen could be fun and bawdy, too, but she just pulled it off a little better.”43
“She had it all,” said Homer Hargrave Jr., who was thirteen when his father married Colleen. “She had all the street smarts. All of them.”44 His younger sister, Judy Hargrave Coleman, added, “She was wise in the ways of the world. People-smart. Astute. She knew people. She understood them. I don’t remember her ever saying she had a great dislike for anyone. I know she didn’t like a phony. She could pick them out. She was a very wise lady.
She knew what she was doing and what she wanted.”45
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Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House The Hargraves had a duplex apartment at 1320 North State Parkway, eight blocks north of the Davises’ and next door to the Ambassador West Hotel, where Colleen would take visiting movie star friends such as Lillian Gish to the Pump Room and hold court with Edith in the first booth inside the entrance. The Hargrave apartment was decorated in a grand style with English antiques and Oriental rugs. “She entertained a lot,” said Judy Hargrave Coleman. “She loved a party. She was a wonderful mother and a wonderful wife. My father was all business. But he had a dry wit.”46
According to Homer Hargrave Jr., his father was greatly helped by Colleen, who was greatly helped by Edith. “She was very kind to my mother. Colleen moved to Chicago knowing no one, and Edie Davis helped her a great deal.” Wasn’t his father already well established in Chicago? “In business. But not socially. Colleen made him. First place, everybody falls in love with a movie star. Colleen did a great deal for my father.” Like Edith did for Loyal? “Yes. Because Loyal was absolutely concentrated on medicine.
And he was tough.”47 Judy Hargrave Coleman found Loyal Davis intimidating. “You almost wanted to curtsey to him.”48
The two couples were alike in many ways—a hardheaded all-business husband promoted and supported by a lighthearted, loads-of-fun wife. Although it was the second time around for Homer, and the third for Colleen, the Hargrave marriage would prove to be as durable as the Davises’—and one might even