Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [67]
Bogart, Powell, and many other Warners stars were members of the Lakeside Country Club, in nearby Toluca Lake, as were Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Walt Disney. Reagan was accepted for membership, but he resigned when he realized the club did not allow Jewish members or guests.
“What happened was Ronnie took a Jewish friend to play golf,” Nancy Reagan told me. “And he was informed afterward that you couldn’t do that.
Ronnie said, ‘You mean Jewish people are not allowed?’ They said that was right. Ronnie was furious and resigned. They were mad at Ronnie and he was mad at them. It was a Mexican standoff. They put his membership card on the bulletin board and threw darts at it. And then Hillcrest made him an honorary member.”81
The Hillcrest Country Club, near Beverly Hills, was known as the Jewish club because it had been founded in 1920 by Jewish businessmen who could not get into the city’s oldest country club, the Los Angeles Country Club, which excluded not only nonwhites and Jews but also movie people. By 1940, Hillcrest was the bastion of the Jewish elite of Hollywood: studio chiefs Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, Adolph Zukor, and Harry Cohn were all members. At Hillcrest, Ronnie and Jane became part of the social set centered on the great husband-and-wife comedy teams Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone and George Burns and Gracie Allen.
“Popular legend had it that one could be a part of the Jack Benny–George Burns group just by being able to tell a good, funny joke,” notes Jill 1 1 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Robinson, the daughter of producer Dore Schary, in her memoir, With a Cast of Thousands. 82
Jack Benny’s annual salary for his Jell-O-sponsored radio show had just been raised to $350,000, and he was earning another $200,000 a year in movies for Paramount.83 Burns and Allen, who were also under contract to Paramount, were making $9,000 a week for their radio show on CBS. Although both Benny and Burns were a good decade older than Reagan, these friendships would last all their lives, and no doubt helped him hone his sense of humor. “I’ve taken up golf,” Jane Wyman told a reporter in 1941. “You just can’t keep me away from the club. I have a date with Mary (Livingstone) Benny this afternoon. Ronnie and I play together when we’re both not working.”84
“Jane was completely self-satisfied,” said Leonora Hornblow of the new bride. “And Jane was Mrs. Full Charge. I don’t think she ever asked Ronnie if he wanted a blue sofa—she just ordered what she wanted. The house was perfectly nice but very banal. And there were literally no books, just the news magazines for Ronnie and the ladies’ magazines for Jane.
Jane wasn’t a great reader either.”85 Reagan may not have been a book-worm, but he reportedly immersed himself in current events by reading both the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal in addition to the local papers.86
Louella Parsons was a constant presence on Cordell Drive. Little Maureen called her “Aunt Lolly” and later wrote, “She was pretty much a fix-ture in our household during the early years of my childhood.” In fact, Parsons thought the child should have been named for her, and was not above trying to get usable information out of the toddler. As Maureen put it, “One of my most enduring memories about Louella Parsons is that she was someone I wasn’t supposed to talk to too much.”87
The Reagans also grew close to Lew Wasserman, who was not yet all-powerful but was working on it, and his equally ambitious wife, Edie.
Their daughter, Lynne, played with Maureen (and gave her the nickname that would stick for the rest of her life, Mermie). Jane Wyman told producer