Bob Colacello - Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path

RONNIE

& NANCY

OTHER BOOKS BY BOB COLACELLO

Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up

Studios by the Sea: Artists of Long Islands East End (with Jonathan Becker)

RONNIE

& NANCY

THEIR PATH TO THE WHITE HOUSE

1 9 1 1 TO 1 9 8 0

BOB COLACELLO

Copyright 2004 by Bob Colacello

All rights reserved.

Grateful acknowledgment is expressed to quote from the following: A Surgeons Odyssey by Loyal Davis, copyright 1973 by Loyal Davis, used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Behind the Scenes by Michael K. Deaver, copyright 1988 by Michael K. Deaver, reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc., William Morrow. Dutch:A Memoir by Edmund Morris, copyright 1999 by Edmund Morris, used by permission of Random House, Inc. Early Reagan by Anne Edwards, copyright 1987 by Anne Edwards, reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc., William Morrow. First Father, FirstDaughter by Maureen Reagan, copyright 1989 by MER, Inc., by permission of Little, Brown and Company, Inc. Governor Reagan by Lou Cannon, copyright 2003 by Lou Cannon, reprinted by permission of PublicAffairs, a member of Perseus books, L.L.C. JaneWyman: The Actress and the Woman, copyright 1986 by Lawrence J. Quirk, reprinted by permission of the author. Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley, copyright

1991 by Kitty Kelley, reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. Nofziger by Lyn Nofziger, copyright 1992, published by Regnery Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved; reprinted by special permission of Regnery Publishing, Inc., Washington, D.C. Wheres the Rest of Me? and An American Life by Ronald Reagan, copyright 1965 and copyright 1990 by Ronald Reagan; with permission of Nancy Reagan. Nancy, My Turn, and I Love You, Ronnie by Nancy Reagan, copyright 1980, copyright 1989, and copyright

2000 by Nancy Reagan; with permission of Nancy Reagan. Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Oral History Program, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA: Oral histories of Neil Reagan and Stanley Plog. Courtesy of Center for Oral and Public History, California State University, Fullerton: Henry Salvatori, OH 1674, Holmes Tuttle, OH 1675, Justin Dart, OH 1676, Ed Mills, OH 1677.

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First eBook Edition: October 2004

ISBN: 0-7595-1268-X

To my father, John, who passed away

five days before Ronald Reagan;

and my mother, Libby,

his beloved wife of nearly fifty-eight years.

And to the late Jerry Zipkin,

who opened so many doors for me.

Contents

v i i

RONNIE

& NANCY

P RO L O G U E

LE CIRQUE

1981

You say there can be no argument about matters of taste?

All life is an argument about matters of taste.

Friedrich Nietzsche,

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Oh, those Greeks! They knew how to live. What is required for that is to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, in the whole Olympus of appearance. Those Greeks were superficial out of profundity.

Friedrich Nietzsche,

Nietzsche Contra Wagner

ON SATURDAY NIGHT, MARCH 14, 1981, PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, who had been inaugurated less than two months earlier, and his wife, Nancy, went to dinner at Le Cirque, then New Yorks most fashionable restaurant. The new President and First Lady had been to see a Broadway show Sugar Babies, starring those Hollywood old-timers Ann Miller and Mickey Rooneyso it was about 10:30 when their motorcade turned into East 65th Street, where a small crowd cheered as they stepped out of their limousine. Caught up in the excitement, those of us in the restaurant spontaneously stood and applauded when the Reagans walked through the door, accompanied by their very close friends from California, Alfred Bloomingdale, the department store heir, and his fashion-plate wife, Betsy.

Both women were wearing fur coats. Mrs. Reagans was mink, Mrs. Bloomingdales sable.

They were followed by the retired media tycoon Gardner Cowles and his wife, Jan, pillars of the Republican establishment, who had homes in 1

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House New York, Southampton, and Miami and had been friends with the Reagans since the 1950s. Then came Jerry Zipkin, the acid-tongued Park Avenue bachelor who was Nancy Reagans best friend in New York WomensWear Daily, which for years had dismissed him as the Social Moth, now called him the First Walker, walker being its term for a single man who escorts society ladies to parties when their husbands are unavailable. On one arm Zipkin had Claudette Colbert, the ageless movie star, who knew the Reagans from their Hollywood days. On the other he had Etti Plesch, an Austrian-born dowager from Monte Carlo known for her prize-winning racehorses and her six rich husbands.

All eyes were on the presidential party as Le Cirques owner, Sirio Mac-cioni, showed them to the best table in the housethe corner banquette just to the right of the entrance, which Jerry Zipkin and his nemesis, WWD publisher John Fairchild, always fought over. Betsy Bloomingdale, who was giving the dinner, directed the seating, putting the President between her and Claudette Colbert, and the First Lady between Zipkin and Alfred Bloomingdale. One couldnt help but marvel at how youngfit, tan, handsomethe President looked for a man who had just turned seventy. He beamed when the model Janice Dickinson, sitting a table away with Peppo Vanini, the owner of Xenon, a midtown disco that rivaled Studio 54 in exclusivity and decadence, raised her champagne glass and, in a voice loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, announced how proud she was to be an American now that Ronald Reagan was in the White House. The entire room erupted into applause again.

Sirio had obviously packed the place with friendly faces, having consulted the day before with Zipkin about who should, or should not, get reservations. Among those at tables near the Presidents were the octogenarian New York Post fashion columnist Eugenia Sheppard and her regular walker, Earl Blackwell, the octogenarian publisher of Celebrity Service; Princess Ira von Frstenberg, of Salzburg and Paris, and the billionaire Spanish banker Alfonso Fierro, whose wife was an old friend of Zipkins.

I had been invited to Le Cirque that night by one of Zipkins favorite couples, Carolina Herrera, the Venezuelan socialite who was just beginning to establish herself as a New York fashion designer, and her aristocratic husband, Reinaldo, whose family had lived in the same house in Caracas since the sixteenth century. The Herreras other guests were Bianca Jagger, who had almost turned down their invitation, she told me that afternoon, because of Reagans campaign attacks on her native Nicaraguas leftist San-Le Cirque: 1981

dinista government; the Italian movie producers Franco Rossellini and Countess Marina Cicogna, the latter with her longtime companion, Brazilian actress Florinda Bolkan; and Andy Warhol, who published Interview magazine, of which I was the editor. Gee, Bob, this is so glamorous. Oh, its just so glamorous, he said, with his flair for repetition. He had voted for Jimmy Carter.

I had voted for the winner. Like the majority of voters in forty-four states, I was fed up with the anemic wishy-washiness of the Carter administration, particularly in foreign policy, and turned on by Ronald Reagans full-blooded, unabashed patriotism, his clear delineation of right and wrong, his sense of certainty. Also, like William Safire, I wasand still ama libertarian conservative Republican contrarian iconoclast.