Male Bastion Bows to Its New Partners : Acceptance of Female Members Causes Hardly a Ripple at the Jonathan Club

The walls have not come tumbling down.

The Jonathan Club, the prestigious downtown private club whose founders opened its doors 92 years ago to socially acceptable men, has only very recently widened its welcome to women. The immediate change is almost imperceptible.

Club secretary George Thompson said: “We do have ladies in right now. A lot (of women) had widows’ privileges. They had an opportunity to pay an additional fee and transfer to regular membership. About seven to 10 have converted, and there are several brand new members.”

Brooke Knapp, president and owner of a private investment company, and newly appointed Municipal Court Judge Lois Anderson-Smaltz are both new members, happy and honored to be a part of it and alike in their reluctance to do anything that might offend their associates there.

A Discreet Elevator

Women, whether family members or guests, have long been welcome in certain areas of the club, even if initially they had to reach those areas by a discreet little elevator tucked away in a corner near the entrance. In recent years, they have been allowed to bypass that elevator and walk with the best of them through the elegant lobby to the main elevators. On the third floor, both the main dining room and the ladies dining room, on opposite ends, were integrated some years back, and it is also not unusual to see women in the lounge/bar in between. They are also free to ascend the marble staircase past the bust of the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln to the private dining rooms on the fourth floor.

Women members, however, will still not have privileges at the last male bastion, the second floor, where the men’s grill, the library and the men’s bar will remain off limits.

After breakfast the other morning, a male club member ushered his female visitor on a quick foray to the second floor, where the only person in sight turned out to be a venerable-looking veteran of many years of club lounging, who emerged slowly and carefully from the library.

“As you can see, the capitalists are not hiding away on the second floor conspiring on the future of the republic here,” he said with a grin.

Indeed, some of the corridors of power looked more dim and drab than intimidating. The building is an elegant one, remarkably similar in its ornately carved ceilings, wood paneled walls and generous supply of marble to the Biltmore Hotel. (In fact they were built within two years of each other, the Biltmore in 1923, the Jonathan Club in 1925, both designed by the same New York firm of Schultze & Weaver.) There is a faded grandeur in its dark upholstery, heavy lamps and oil paintings. Hushed voices prevail in the hallways.

Breakfast in the half-empty dining room, while business rather than social, bore no resemblance to the fabled power breakfasts of recent times. No phone jacks, table hopping, people being paged. The thought of writing on the table cloths does not even arise.

Nevertheless, the myth persists that these really are the corridors of power. Hallowed ones. And if new members Knapp and Anderson-Smaltz bear one thing in common, it is, perhaps, their common respect for their new affiliation.

Knowing the club has never welcomed publicity, Knapp hesitated at the request to bring a reporter to the club, finally declining on the grounds that it might not be in the club’s best interests. Anderson-Smaltz refused to confirm that she was a member, preferring that the information come from the club. She then checked with the club before consenting to an interview.

Anderson-Smaltz is a slightly reserved woman who presides over her court and relaxes in her chambers at Traffic Court with the same quiet, calm manner. Married to attorney Donald Smaltz, a partner in Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, she said she has four stepdaughters and “two grandsons” through her marriage. She was appointed to the bench in June, sworn in in July and assigned to Traffic Court.

When she was practicing law, she said, she often used her husband’s membership at the Los Angeles Athletic Club and University Club to entertain clients, but that it was always “here’s Mr. Smaltz’s wife. I felt professionally it would be useful for me to have my own membership.”

Anderson-Smaltz said she first thought of applying last summer and was told by several members they were not aware of actual restrictions against women joining, although they knew of no women members.

Barriers Removed

Barriers to women had been removed from the by-laws 10 years ago, but it was not until April of this year, following a survey of the 3,000 members, that the members voted four to one to admit women.

Anderson-Smaltz described it as coincidental that her application for membership happened at a time male clubs, including the California Club and other private clubs, were coming under increasing legal and public pressure to stop alleged discriminatory admissions policies on the basis of religion, race and sex.

“I did not want to make a big deal of it,” she said, adding later “I don’t see myself as an activist. I don’t necessarily disagree with them, but I’m not a campaigner. My role has always been to be active in whatever position I’m in.”

She belongs to several law organizations, including California Women Lawyers Assn., and speaks approvingly and with spirit of women getting ahead, becoming law partners, networking, achieving, recognizing their own abilities. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced what I’d call discrimination against women. I’ve been fortunate, I guess.” she said.

‘I’d Be Honored’

Like Anderson-Smaltz, Knapp, head of The Knapp Group, had not been looking to make a cause celebre out of joining the club. In fact, she said at her office in West L.A. recently, joining had not been in her plans at all. Rather, she was having dinner with a member several days after the decision to admit women had been made when he told her, “Brooke, you’d make an outstanding member.”

“I’d be honored,” she told him, and indeed that is how she seems.

“They handled the application with such grace. They could not have been more gentlemanly,” she said, describing the club admiringly as “the beautiful facility. When you look at it, and the tradition this club is steeped in, you appreciate it. It’s so rare in our society.”

That is high praise coming from such a non-traditionalist. Knapp has much more on her resume than a career in investments. And her well-appointed office, filled with antique reproductions, has more on its walls than her summa cum laude bachelor’s degree in French from UCLA.

There are membership certificates from such groups as The Explorers’ Club, the Society of the South Pole, the McMurdo (Antarctica) Society, all testimony to her activities as an aviator. On the console behind her desk sits a signed photo from President Ronald Reagan, mementos from the Air Force Academy where she addressed the students, and miniature penguins from the PX in Antarctica.

Knapp, a well-known pilot, has flown around the world from pole to pole and set flight records. No stranger to publicity, she has appeared on covers of Savvy, People and Success magazines, and posed for a two-page spread in People Magazine atop her Gulfstream jet, straddling the cockpit.

Divorced for several years from Charles Knapp, former head of Financial Corp. of America, the magazines invariably described the couple as superachievers or overachievers, and to this day she credits him for being an inspiration to her. During her marriage, she owned Jet Airways, a private air charter corporation. Today she has four careers--investments, an interest in her family’s citrus business in Florida, a growing demand as a public speaker, for which she is represented by an agency and commands fees in the $2,000 to $4,000 range, and flying Knapp credits others with her newest accomplishment.

“I didn’t do the work many women out there did,” she said. “They opened the door. I had the pleasure of walking through. And I think as women, when doors are opened we must walk through them. I suppose that role is as important and I feel really lucky to be able to do that. It’s a real pleasure to be able to enjoy your life and make a contribution at the same time. It’s the best of both worlds.”

It is not that women can now ring up the Jonathan Club, or the California Club for that matter, and ask for an application form, fill it out and return it with the $10,000 entry fee both clubs require and count themselves in.

Prospective members to both clubs must be proposed to the admissions committees, invited to apply, sponsored and seconded, supplied with references from members and interviewed.

The California Club changed its by-laws at the end of June, one step ahead of a city ordinance outlawing private club discrimination at private clubs.

Club president Lawrence P. Day sent word through a secretary that he would not comment on the status of women’s membership. But by all accounts it is too early for the club to have processed any women as members. Off-the-record reports from several of the 1,275 members indicate the club is earnestly looking for a few women to begin the admissions process.

Nor for that matter have women, even those at the forefront of demanding entrance for women, have not been clamoring to walk through such open doors.

City Councilwoman Joy Picus sponsored the anti-discrimination ordinance that went into effect in June. “I was never interested in joining,” Picus said. “First, I can’t afford it and second, I wouldn’t have the time to enjoy it. With me, it’s not a value judgment. It’s more a question of life style.”

Since she testified at the City hearings on the ordinance last spring, Kate Bartolo, now associated with Melvin Simon and Assoc., shopping center developers, has changed her mind about wanting to join.

“It’s a practical consideration. I don’t work downtown anymore,” she said.

“Only a few women are in a financial position to join. A lot of women in corporate jobs are still underpaid, or they’re single mothers. They also may not realize the value,” attorney and feminist activist Cynthia Maduro Ryan said. Ryan was one of those responsible for the Stock Exchange Club being opened to women in 1973, she said, and has been called several times by Jonathan Club members regarding other women’s candidacy.

‘Watching With Interest’

“There should be an effort among women’s groups to sensitize women to the importance of joining. Maybe law firms should assist women, especially if they’ve assisted their male partners.”

Attorney and feminist crusader Gloria Allred, having become the first woman member of the Friars Club earlier this year, said she is “watching with interest” what develops at the Jonathan and California clubs. She has not been invited to apply, nor does she have any desire to do so.

“I’m only interested in joining clubs I’d actually use,” she said. “If I applied, I think it would be their worst dreams come true.”