Ronnie and Nancy

by Bob Colacello

  Mom and Dad were both very involved. They’d go down to the Reagan for Governor headquarters on Wilshire and Vermont, near the old I. Magnin’s, 3 4 6

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House and just work their hearts out. A lot of his close friends supported George Christopher, and would say to him, ‘Why are you supporting this actor?

  Look at what Goldwater did to the party. Now you’re going to do it again.’

  But he managed to continually reach out to the other side and say, ‘If Christopher wins, we’ll be on board the next day.’ And he got them to say,

  ‘If Reagan wins, we’ll be on board.’ And many of those people—the most prominent one was Justin Dart—came right on board.’”132

  Reagan beat Christopher with a solid 65 percent of the vote, and several top Christopher backers were enlisted into the Kitchen Cabinet, including Dart and Leonard Firestone; Ted Cummings, the founder of the Food Giant supermarket chain and a leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community; and Arch Monson Jr., owner of a San Francisco–based theater supplies business and a prominent member of the exclusive and influential Bohemian Club. Taft Schreiber, who had also supported Christopher, was made vice chairman of the campaign’s finance committee, and Jules Stein stepped up his behind-the-scenes activities. (Lew Wasserman raised money for Brown, another strike against him in Nancy’s book.) After a public unity meeting of the two candidates’ financial supporters at the Los Angeles Press Club, Henry Salvatori told reporters that Reagan’s campaign had cost a little more than $500,000, compared to Christopher’s $450,000, and that the combined forces were prepared to raise up to $700,000 for the general election.133

  This merger of millionaires was not altogether cordial at first. Justin Dart, in particular, was seen as a Johnny-come-lately, who now wanted to run the show. As Frances Bergen said, “Justin was the original bull in the china shop. He had an enormously strong presence and could antagonize people at times.” Bill Wilson remarked, “You can describe Justin in the one sentence that’s been said so many times about him: Sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.”134 Another insider explained,

  “Justin thought Reagan didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.

  That’s exactly what he said. Then he and Leonard Firestone wanted to get on the bandwagon when Reagan won the primary—and there was lots of tension and anger about that. I remember Freeman Gosden had to get them all together at Eldorado to patch things up.”

  Still, Tuttle was happy to be working with his old fund-raising partner again. Nancy Reagan also found it reassuring to have the very rich and well-connected Dart on their side; she liked him precisely because he was The Kitchen Cabinet: 1963–1966

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  so tough and effective. “The combination of Holmes and Justin, I tell you, that was a powerhouse,” Nancy Reagan told me with laugh. “They did raise a lot of money. And in completely different ways. Holmes was a little smoother about it, but, boy, was he persistent.”135

  Nancy took an active interest in the fund-raising side of the campaign and kept track of who gave what. When Lee Annenberg donated $1,000

  but Walter refrained, she wondered why, and he wrote a letter explaining that as a resident of Pennsylvania and a newspaper publisher he didn’t think it was appropriate for him to be directly involved.136 The Deutsches staged a melodramatic scene shortly after Reagan won the primary.

  “When Ronnie first ran for governor, I was a registered Democrat,” Ardie recounted. “And I said to Harriet, ‘I better tell Ronnie.’ So the Reagans came over here for dinner, and I said, ‘Ronnie, I have to tell you something. I can’t vote for you. I’m not telling you because I’m such a great guy, but I don’t want those vultures—Holmes and Justin—coming at me.’ I said, ‘Of course I won’t vote for Brown. I wouldn’t vote against you. And if I were in your position, it would break up a friendship.’ Ronnie got up, walked around the table, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, ‘Nothing’s going to break up our friendship. Vote for whoever you want.’ Nancy and Harriet were crying—well, they were teary-eyed anyway.”137

  “Ronnie was wonderful,” said Harriet Deutsch. “And so was Nancy.”

  But perhaps her friend was not as pleased as Harriet seemed to think. For whatever reason, Harriet was not included in the small lunch Betsy Bloomingdale gave at home for Nancy’s forty-fifth birthday—officially her forty-third.138

  As the pace of the campaign intensified after Labor Day, Stu Spencer told Nancy that it would be helpful if she did some campaigning on her own. “I was shy in those days,” she later wrote, “and terrified that I’d have to give a speech. I have often been asked why I felt that way, given all the years I had spent in theater and in film. But to me the difference is enormous. When I was acting, I wasn’t being myself—I was playing a role that had been created for me. But giving a political speech is completely different. You can’t hide behind a made up character, and I was far too private a person to enjoy playing myself.” She finally agreed, with the proviso that she wouldn’t make speeches, just take questions. As she put it, “This was a big step from simply standing up and taking a bow, but I was surprised that in fact I came to enjoy it.”139

  Spencer and Nancy had grown quite close by then, and he would remain 3 4 8

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House one of her most steadfast allies. He was one of the first to understand a key factor in Ronnie’s relationships: “Reagan didn’t have any close friends to speak of. They were all acquaintances. Well, Robert Taylor was close. . . .

  Reagan went home to Mommy.”140 The wife of a prominent California Republican said, “Nancy was the one and only influence on Ronnie. The men in the Kitchen Cabinet went riding with him—they were always riding like a bunch of cowboys—but they were no closer to Ronald Reagan than those leaves on the ground over there. No matter how close you got to him, or how long you talked to him, you never got that close. No one did.”

  Stanley Plog took note of another lack in Reagan’s makeup. While he had the capacity to engender great loyalty in the people who worked for him, he found it difficult to mediate when differences arose among them.

  “He would not do that,” Plog said. “He is not an executive in that sense, of stepping in between his staff and saying, ‘You do this and you do that.’

  . . . Others have traditionally done that for him. The personal relationships that are sticky like that are very disquieting for Reagan, very uncomfortable.”141

  Plog mentioned Tuttle and Salvatori as people who would handle personnel problems for the candidate. Stu Spencer realized that Nancy could also play that role.

  Governor Brown was pleased by Reagan’s victory—he considered him a lightweight who would be much easier to beat than Christopher. “Ronald Reagan for Governor of California? Absurd!” he scoffed when the actor’s name first came up as a possible candidate, and his attitude hadn’t really changed despite Reagan’s impressive performance on the campaign trail.

  For a hard-bitten political veteran like Pat Brown, the so-called Citizen Politician would always be the “Professional Amateur,” even when he took the Governor’s Mansion right out from under his nose.142

  It turned out that the bumbling old pro—his malapropisms were so frequent that they became known as “Brownisms”—was no match for the articulate, energetic, and astonishingly youthful-looking fifty-five-year-old movie star. During Brown’s two terms, the state’s population had zoomed from 15 million to 19 million,143 and he had kept pace with new freeways, new water projects, new schools and colleges, and new jobs. By 1966, California had the highest personal income in the nation. But it also had high taxes, huge welfare rolls, and a rapidly rising crime rate. In addition, Brown was cursed with a calamitous sense of timing. He was vacationing in Greece The Kitchen Cabinet: 1963–1966

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  when the Watts riots broke out in the summer of 1965, and when César Chávez and his striking grape pickers marched on Sacramento
, Brown was spending Easter at Frank Sinatra’s compound in Palm Springs. His inability to handle the ongoing student unrest at Berkeley—home of the Free Speech, Filthy Speech, and Free Love movements—played into Reagan’s moralistic law-and-order campaign. And when the Governor ran an ad reminding voters that an actor had shot Lincoln, even Hollywood liberals were disgusted. Up to then only a handful of entertainment personalities had actively campaigned for Reagan, including Pat Boone, Gene Autry and Dale Evans, John Wayne, and Piper Laurie. (Dick Powell had passed away in 1963, and Bill Holden, after leaving Ardis, had become such a heavy drinker that Ronnie and Nancy hardly ever saw him.) “All of a sudden Sinatra’s in our camp, and a lot of others,” Stu Spencer said. “Frank came aboard and stayed there.”144

  According to Henry Salvatori, Spencer-Roberts had a mole in the Brown camp who told them that the Governor’s team was planning to run

  “a series of ads against Reagan besmirching his character involving some sexual misconduct.” No such ads ever ran, but Tuttle and Salvatori felt they had to ascertain from Reagan whether there was any basis for concern. “Five or six members of our group met with him at his home and we commenced the conversation: ‘Now, Ronnie, you understand that in politics you must tell us everything that has happened in your life, otherwise, you know . . .’ Then we told him what Roberts’s inside spy had reported, and it was at this point in the conversation when Nancy crossed the room to go out the front door. The instant we saw her, we became apprehensive and stopped talking. Reagan quickly sensed that we had come to bring up some sensitive matters, and he said, ‘Fellows, I can tell from the way you stopped talking when Nancy appeared that you have something on your mind. Now, what exactly do you have in mind?’ We replied by saying that we wanted to know if he ever had had any affairs with women, or something like that, that might be exploited by the opposition. He replied:

  ‘Look, since I have known Nancy I can assure you that there is nothing to any rumor of any kind of misbehavior on my part. You can be assured that there is nothing to worry about.’ ”145

  On election night, the Reagans and some of their friends gathered at Earle and Marion Jorgensen’s place on Bel Air Road, which had a commanding view of Los Angeles. It would be the first of four election night buffets at the Jorgensens’ house, a low-slung, spread-out ranch decorated 3 5 0

  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House by Billy Haines with his signature mix of Coromandel screens, Chippendale furniture, and long sofas upholstered in bold prints.

  “You know how that came about?” Marion Jorgensen explained. “I was speaking to Nancy on the telephone about three o’clock in the afternoon on election day. And she said, ‘I guess Holmes told you, we invited some of our friends to come down to the Biltmore Hotel at eight o’clock.’ And she said, ‘It’s awful being here.’ I said, ‘Well, what are you doing?’ ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘Well, what are you going to do until you go?’ ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s three o’clock. If I can get some of your friends, how about coming over to our house? I mean, very informal. Just come over about 5:30.’ And they did. That was the first one, the first governor’s election. I always had Ronnie’s favorite thing to eat—veal stew. Loved it. And fresh coconut cake.’”146

  The General got it all together in less than three hours, managing to round up the Salvatoris, the Wilsons, the Wrathers, Bob and Ursula Taylor, Irene Dunne, and Lorena Nidorf, Louis B. Mayer’s widow, who was remarried, to Hollywood businessman Mike Nidorf.147 The Reagans heard the news of Ronnie’s victory over the radio on their way from the Jorgensens’ to the Biltmore. In the end Reagan carried all but three counties.

  The final tally: Reagan, 3,742,913; Brown, 2,749,174.

  The following night, Holmes and Virginia Tuttle gave a celebratory dinner at Perrino’s for the Kitchen Cabinet, Betty Adams recalled. The biggest bash was given by Billy Haines and Jimmie Shields a few weeks later, at their house in Brentwood. Candlelit tables covered in turquoise linen cloths and spilling over with flowers were set around the pool, and the jubilant Haines toasted the Governor-elect and his wife, who, like most of her friends, was wearing a Galanos gown.148

  C H A P T E R F O U RT E E N

  SACRAMENTO

  1967–1968

  This imaginative state that popularized freeways, supermarkets, swimming pools, drive-ins, backyard barbecues, the bare midriff, house trailers, Capri pants, hot rods, sports shirts, split-level houses and tract living has a former B-movie actor in the Governor’s chair at Sacramento.

  Charlotte Curtis, The New York Times, June 2, 1968

  That is not Ronald Reagan’s MO, ever, to go choose people, but instead, they gravitate to him. They would come to his attention only by getting there themselves. He would never go out and get them, or notice them and say, “Hey, come and follow me.” That’s not the way he operates. This is an idiosyncrasy. He never hires nor fires. He delegates and acquiesces.

  Robert Walker, political adviser to

  Governor Reagan, 1968–19741

  I spent years defending his hair and her stare.

  Nancy Reynolds, assistant press secretary to Governor and Mrs. Reagan, to author, April 2, 2003

  “AFTER RONNIE WAS ELECTED, WE FLEW UP TO SACRAMENTO ONE morning—Nancy, Betty Wilson, and I,” recalled Marion Jorgensen. “We flew up in the Fluors’ airplane—Fluor Construction—in those days they could lend you an airplane and the government wouldn’t get down your neck.

  We separated at the airport. Betty was going to help Nancy decorate Ronnie’s office—she was always an amateur decorator and she had a decorating license. Well, she never did anything for anybody, but she did have a license. I was to find a restaurant where we could give a party for the Reagans before the swearing-in ceremony. See, he was going to be sworn in at 3 5 1

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  Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House one minute past midnight on New Year’s Day evening. But when I went to these places, they were all going to be shut that day. I had read in a magazine about the Firehouse, so I went over there, and I thought it was charming. The owners were two brothers from San Francisco who happened to be good Republicans, and they said, ‘All right, you can have it for a private party.’ So that’s where we gave the dinner. I remember they had those big flares as you walked through the walkway to go into the restaurant. There was a toast given that night, and I know Earle gave it, and he said, ‘To the Governor! Who knows, one day he may be our president.’ ”2

  Among those applauding Earle Jorgensen’s toast were the three men most responsible for launching Ronald Reagan’s political career: Cy Rubel, Holmes Tuttle, and Henry Salvatori. The Bloomingdales and the Deutsches were there, too, as were the Jaquelin Humes from San Francisco. The Wilsons and the French Smiths had flown up from Los Angeles with Jack and Bunny Wrather on the company Convair.

  The Firehouse guest list also included Loyal and Edith, Richard Davis and his second wife, Patricia, and Neil and Bess Reagan. Nancy’s cousins Charlotte Ramage and Marguerite Grebe came from Atlanta and Chicago, respectively, with their families. Three of the four Reagan children were there: Maureen with her then husband, Lieutenant David Sills; fourteen-year-old Patti, who had complained, “How could you do this to me?,” when her father phoned her at Orme on election night;3 and eight-year-old Ron, whom everyone called the Skipper, accompanied by the Reagan housekeeper, Anne Allman. Michael was snowed in at Lake Tahoe, where his mother had taken him for the holidays.4 Jane Wyman was not invited to any of the five-day inaugural festivities. “Why would she be?”

  said Marion Jorgensen, who recalled flying back to Sun Valley, the fashionable Idaho ski resort where the Jorgensens owned a condominium, the next day and skipping the rest of the week’s events. “Can you imagine staying in Sacramento that long?”5

  According to Nancy Reagan, the Sunday night swearing in was supposed to be a private affair for family and friends, to be followed by the official inauguration on Thursday, January 5. But more than thirty TV c
rews were waiting in the ornate rotunda of the capitol to watch Ronald Reagan assume the governorship of the most populous state in the union. As State Supreme Court Justice Marshall McComb held the four-hundred-year-old Bible of Father Junipero Serra, one of the state’s first Spanish settlers, Reagan repeated the oath of office, and Nancy stood by, her big eyes brimming with Sacramento: 1967–1968

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  pride and adoration. “Well, George, here we are on The Late Show again,”

  the freshly installed Governor quipped to his old co-star Senator George Murphy, who had preceded him at the rostrum. When the laughter died down, Reagan delivered a brief and surprisingly religious speech in which he promised to try to “bring to public office the teachings and the precepts of the Prince of Peace.”6 This was clearly the son of Nelle speaking, not the heir of Barry Goldwater.

  There has been much speculation as to why this ceremony was held at such an odd hour. The reason, Reagan always said, was to put a stop to Pat Brown’s last-minute judge-appointing binge as soon as legally possible.

  The outgoing Governor had another theory. “My only guess is that it’s because he believes in astrology,” Brown told a reporter. “I understand he does.” A San Francisco astrologer was quoted as saying, “No better time could be picked”: Jupiter, the planet of kings, he explained, was high in the sky that night.7 Even Stu Spencer had his doubts about the putative reason for the late hour. “That was the party line,” he told me. “It was held at midnight because Nancy talked to [psychic] Jeane Dixon or somebody like that.”8