The Reagans--and Their Close Friends--Now Looking West

Now the years have dwindled down to weeks and it’s finally time to ride off into the setting California sun.

Reagan style, the Reagan Era, the Hollywood-Washington connection, the Kitchen Cabinet, disputes over china and designer clothes--all these once-pressing concerns soon will fall from America’s consciousness.

When the Reagans leave the convention today, and when they return home to California next January, they will be surrounded by the same band of close friends they set off with--the numbers dwindled only by death, not by unfaithfulness.

Let hired help show their real colors by kiss-and-tell books. True friends never talk.

That was the rule, after all, set by Nancy Reagan--a strengthening of her Sacramento privacy policy that closed off the social life of the Reagans to the media and the public. Over the last two years, at least six close friends of Nancy Reagan’s have made it clear that to talk meant banishment. They stressed, as part of other conversations, that she had told each of them that talking about what happened in private crossed them off the guest list.

It might seem incongruous that such a strong point had to be made--especially among friends who have been committed to the Reagans for 20 or 30 years, many of them taking Nancy under their stylish wings as Reagan became a favorite of the conservatives in the 1950s.

They helped mold her look--as they molded themselves, the controlled image that became a symbol of the tightness of “The Group.” There was a favorite designer (Adolfo); a favorite pearl earring, and even a favorite hair style, slightly full and carefully sprayed.

The “look” was protection against making mistakes, the kind of couture mistakes that could be blamed on coming from Los Angeles--or coming from new money. But the exuberance that followed the 1980 elections, one staff member recalled, gave Reagan intimates a sense of false “social security.” Washington looked warm and inviting and the Californians were ready to bring their special style to the capital. Top D.C. Democrats and Republicans, turned off by the down-home Carter White House, got their social hopes up when the Reagans hosted two fancy dinners just two weeks after his victory.

An Inaugural that featured furs and designer gowns (even those by Europeans), a return of liquor to the White House, and the gaga feeling that Hollywood stars give to even the biggest D.C. cynic--all promised a great social time. Perhaps even a feeling of the kind of time that the Kennedys brought in brought 20 years before.

But a series of mistakes and mishaps changed all that--culminating in the start of the China Wars in September, 1981. That’s when it became known that Nancy Reagan had purchased a new set of dishes, the Reagan Service. Even though donated money was used, the cost of the china--$209,508 or nearly $1,000-a-place setting--caused a massive stir.

The problem with the kids didn’t help either--rifts with Reagan’s son Michael and the absence of daughter Patti Davis from more and more family events--forced the Reagans away from the spotlights on their personal and family lives.

Close friend Marion Jorgensen initially saw the Reagan victory as a loss of “our closest friend. We are losing her to the world.” But the D.C. setbacks sent Nancy Reagan back into the safety of her small social set--closing them even tighter around her in a wagon-train mentality.

At the same time, however, in her public role as First Lady, she learned. She grew. Her emphasis switched from wearing designer gowns to stopping the traffic in designer drugs.

If “just say no” seemed simplistic to some, it sent a simple, strong message to the country that things were now different--and that she would perform differently as First Lady.

Those wondering what a post-presidential social life will be like in Los Angeles--how Nancy will wield her considerable clout--got a strong indication last May, when Merv Griffin hosted several dozen millionaires to raise money for the First Lady’s anti-drug Phoenix House project in the San Fernando Valley.

At events like this, or at large functions, she is not the same Nancy as in private life, friends say. In her public guise, friends say, her need to be in control, to not allow for any mistakes, gets turned into a too-mannered and almost cold veneer.

In the same way, the cool, protective face the Reagan friends turned to the world was misinterpreted--many people missing the point that they enjoy each other’s company immensely and, at lunches, charity events and fancy dinner parties, have a great time together.

The East-West social life has been a steady pattern. In twos and threes, there is the chance at a White House state dinner. Most of them troop back for the annual Kennedy Center Honors in December. Close friends, like Bonita Granville Wrather, have been invited to stay over in the past months, so that they will have “slept in the White House.”

There is the annual and very closed New Year’s Eve celebration at the Lee and Walter Annenberg Palm Springs estate--a party that has 96 guests, since that’s how many people, Lee Annenberg once explained, she could “seat comfortably.”

The Annenbergs are currently house hunting in Los Angeles (to be part of the social life once the Reagans return, one friend said) and are being feted at at one “welcoming party” after another.

Tonight’s party, at Betsy Bloomingdale’s, is significant. First, because the Reagan intimates are all scheduled to leave the convention and head back to California today--showing their loyalty to Reagan. And, secondly, because the First Couple, who are leaving the convention to go to their Santa Barbara ranch, might ‘copter down to join their friends--again, far away from the prying eyes of political media.

The intimates will all troop up to the ranch Saturday, for Nancy Reagan’s belated birthday lunch. (Her actual birthdate is July 6--although there is still debate as to whether that was in 1921 or 1923.)

All this is preliminary to the real return early next year--a homecoming that can’t come soon enough for Nancy Reagan, friends say.

Old friends of Reagan’s from the 1940s report that in dinner conversations this past year what the President wanted to talk about was not the international situation, but the “industry”--what movies are doing well, who is heading up what studios, and, in particular, stories about the “good old days” in Hollywood.

That’s not surprising considering the age and era of the Reagan intimates. Armand Deutsch, for example, was the intended schoolboy victim in the famous Leopold-Loeb kidnaping of Bobby Frank in 1924. But for people who qualified for Social Security some years back--Earle Jorgensen’s age is listed as 90 and the others are mostly in their late 60s through late 70s--the Reagan crowd leads a very busy life.

Sunday night here, the regulars (with a few additions) drifted out of the back room at Antoine’s, the landmark restaurant in the French Quarter--the Jorgensens; former Atty. Gen. William French Smith and his wife Jean; Betsy Bloomingdale; Erlenne and Norman Sprague; Giney Milner; David Murdock; former Ambassador William and Betty Wilson; former White House Chief of Protocol Lee Annenberg and Harriet and Armand Deutsch.

“This is the last hurrah!” one of the women proclaimed.

“No,” the former attorney general said, “No. The last hurrah is when Ronald Reagan gets his first gray hair.”