MR. REAGAN'S NEIGHBORHOOD - The Washington Post |

BEL-AIR, CALIF. -- It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood -- a beautiful day for a neighbor.

At the top of Saint Cloud Road, in a rarefied aerie of West Los Angeles, the breeze is scented with jacaranda and ornamental plum. Shining through a row of Italian cypress, the noontime sun is warm and golden. A Starline Tours van rumbles by. A helicopter hovers overhead.

This, by most accounts, is Mr. Reagan's Neighborhood, where the president and first lady plan to settle down for their retirement years when not savoring the simpler joys of Rancho del Cielo. Last summer 20 of their closest friends, led by "kitchen cabinet" stalwarts Earle Jorgensen and Holmes Tuttle, quietly purchased a rambling ranch house on 1 1/4 acres of choicest land. Can you say "two-and-a-half million dollars"? That, say area real estate brokers, was the bargain-basement price.

The idea was for the first couple to buy it at cost when they're ready to leave the White House -- although Nancy Reagan's press secretary, Elaine Crispen, concedes only that "it's a possibility ... She still plans to continue to look at other homes when she's in the Los Angeles area." On the other hand, she's not house-hunting on her current visit to the Golden State.

"Warning!" say signs emplaced along the street, each depicting a canine in wide-jawed agitation. "Beware Guard Dog!" Once the helicopter departs, small birds can be heard chirping in the trees -- and large pets making guttural noises behind high walls.

For secrecy's sake the deal was closed without a broker, but when news of it slipped out recently, "everybody was running around trying to figure out which house it was," says Bel-Air real estate agent Bruce Nelson -- who eventually did. "I was there a long time ago. I recall a very substantial one-story home, with some very nice gardens and flat land. Bel-Air land is at a premium, you know, but only if it's flat."

The residence, built in 1954, comes with 7,192 square feet of living space, including three bedrooms and the requisite six bathrooms; an ample concrete drive protected by the requisite stone wall, iron gate and closed-circuit TV security system; the requisite swimming pool; and a 91-year-old woman, not requisite, who leases the house from Wall Management Services, the holding company set up by the friends to keep it occupancy-ready.

It perches on Saint Cloud at 666 -- which, to those who know their Scripture, is a heavy number. "Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast," the Book of Revelation advises. "For it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." Certain types of people, who seem to be drawn inexorably to Southern California, have also pointed out that it counts the number of the chief: Ronald (six letters) Wilson (six letters) Reagan (you guessed it).

"I think Mrs. Reagan has a couple of minor superstitions, like we all do," Crispen says, "but not in terms of selecting a house because of its street number." Still, as Rod Serling might have warned, check the signpost up ahead ... which, thank heaven, says "Nimes Road," nothing more.

Elizabeth Taylor lives on Nimes (rhymes with "dreams"), as do Burt Bacharach and his lyrical wife Carole Bayer Sager. Joanna Carson, ex of Johnny, lives just down the street on Saint Cloud. And on nearby Bel-Air Road, there's Zsa Zsa Gabor. There's always Zsa Zsa Gabor.

The neighborhood is also blessed, says Elaine R. Gerdau, secretary and manager of the Bel-Air Association, with a "benign climate."

"When you enter Bel-Air," she expands benignly, "you have a feeling of serenity."

Also when you depart. "We do assist people to leave the area," says Brian O'Connor, general manager of the Bel-Air Patrol. "If they so wish."

So let's make the most of this beautiful day.

In the middle of Saint Cloud Road -- there are no sidewalks -- a housemaid trudges up the incline with her eyes fixed on her sneakers. She keeps walking when accosted, nodding politely at importunings. She stops in front of a driveway, faces a closed-circuit TV camera and depresses a button below. In due course the iron gate swings open.

"Stay here," she says with a Latin lilt as the gate clangs shut. She disappears into an Iberian mansion visible at grand remove through the thick black bars. She has promised to inquire whether her employer is at home. Minutes go by.

Finally a midsize dog of German extraction emerges from the house. Its ears are up, its eyes locked in a dead stare. It squeals inquisitively and begins to pace back and forth behind the gate, first with deliberation, then with a kind of frenzy. Back and forth, back and forth. Every so often the pacing is punctuated by a little hopping motion, then by something akin to a high jump. It seems to be trying to get out. Yes, it is trying to get out. Soon the squeals are punctuated by sharp growls. My, what big teeth. Time to move on.

At an elegant chateau in the 300 block of Saint Cloud -- gateless, for some reason -- a ringing of the doorbell brings a gray-haired woman in a grayish bathrobe to the window, where she squints out sourly from behind a graying curtain. At length she recedes and the front door opens a crack. A beefy male face, sporting several days' grayish stubble, looms in the door frame, to which the door is firmly anchored by a heavy link chain.

"Yes? What do you want, sir?"

"I'm with The Washington Post -- "

"No, thank you very much! Thank you for stopping by!"

"No neighbors speak to each other," explains W.C. Backus, a septuagenarian in a jump suit. He lives on Nimes, in a comparatively modest stilt house on a sloping lot once owned by actor Warner Baxter. "They're all such egomaniacs, they can't be bothered. I've lived here since 1946. I built this house. It was more friendly then. We knew our neighbors."

He has a nice, disgusted smile.

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"The people who used to live in that house over there," Backus continues, "he was a big-game hunter, that sort of thing. Had a whole room filled with nothing but animal heads. His wife Mimi was quite a character. She tried to be French. She was well known around here. Wild stories. One day she disappeared and they never found her. They looked in the sewer line, looked in the bottom of the canyon. After a while, I think, she was declared legally dead."

He leads the way to his terrace, overlooking the hills. "They've wrecked our view with those trees," he says, flashing that smile again. "When we built here you could still see the Pacific Ocean." He points out a dry swimming pool in the canyon below -- actually a "cee-ment pond," as the Beverly Hillbillies, who filmed around the corner at the Kirkeby estate, would have called it. "It's just a hole. The plumbing's shot. People today are too lazy. They want their pools right next to their houses."

He goes on. He does go on. "Elizabeth Taylor has a lot of dogs. All little ones. Mac Davis, down over there, is exemplary as a neighbor -- very quiet. Burt Bacharach is across the street. They spent quite a bit of money on the house. It's a constant grind over there with parties. There was a wild party just last Saturday, a birthday thing for Taylor. Cars stacked up and down the street, and a limo sitting right in my driveway. I made the chauffeur stay behind the wheel in case I wanted to get out. Very definitely Gatsby types. I don't care what they do as long as they don't bother us."

He frowns at the sight of a tour bus making its way up the hill. "That's a nuisance," he says. "That one's bigger than it's supposed to be." The vans chug by at a steady clip, one every 20 minutes. "It's gotten worse in the last few years."

Neither is Backus particularly sanguine about the prospect of presidential neighbors. "I would be surprised if the Reagans keep it," he says of 666. "It's not adequate. It doesn't have good parking facilities. I don't know where they'll put their guests and all that. It's not an architecturally beautiful place. The price, however, was very good."

Down the block, two young women saunter in jogging togs. One seems to speak some exotic lingo, but the other is conversant with English.

"We live between Burt Bacharach and Elizabeth Taylor," says the English speaker, refusing to give her name. "Not really, if you don't mind," she says when asked. "It's sometimes noisy, but mostly we're very secluded. Relax -- that's what we do."

Another chopper appears in the sky -- the advent of the Reagan Revolution?

"It's probably going to be annoying for a while, but maybe we'll feel more secure," the young woman says. "We are already annoyed by the fact that the helicopters fly over the houses very low." Perhaps an anti-aircraft device would be in order. "For shooting? Well, I wish I did have one sometimes."

A green Jaguar, losing altitude, glides to a stop alongside. The young woman introduces her husband in the passenger seat, a young man slickly black-haired and deeply tanned. "Tell the president that we're happy to have him," he says diplomatically.

The putative Reagan residence is approached on Saint Cloud Road along the curve of a pinkish brick wall. Little can be seen through the foliage -- the hint of shingled roof, the suggestion of a vegetable garden ("You can always tell the very rich by the freshness of their vegetables," Truman Capote once observed, before he expired at the Carson residence). At the push of a button under the TV camera, Open Sesame. It's a trek up the driveway, past the multicar garage, to the front door. After several persistent knocks, something stirs within, just as a helicopter descends once more.

"You have ze wrong address!" a high Gallic voice shouts through the unopened door -- all but lost in the whop-whop-whop of the chopper blades.

"Please, I'm sorry, I cannot help you!"

On to Joanna Carson's doorbell at 400 Saint Cloud -- past another multicar garage, this one showing a Cadillac limousine and a Rolls-Royce sedan with vanity "JCC" license plates to best advantage. The mistress of the house is not at home, but her social secretary is.

Why a social secretary?

"It's a common thing," Kathy Tabb explains sociably. "These are the beautiful people, and they couldn't possibly keep up with each other otherwise. It's a completely different life style from what the average person would understand. They just don't sit on the couch and eat bonbons all day. If they did that, how could they keep their figures?"

At the manse across the street, Billie Ruth Galef answers her door wearing a pink exercise outfit, pink scarf and pink lipstick, nicely offset by her blond hair and Pepe, her black standard poodle. "The only reason my gate is open," she says, "is I'm waiting for my exercise instructor. I guess she's stuck in traffic." Galef says she's from Denison, Tex., a small town on the Oklahoma border, which perhaps accounts for her actually inviting a visitor inside.

"I feel safe here," she says in her living room, where the walls are covered with impressionist paintings. "What my husband likes about it is that it's close to the airport. We moved here after our children were raised. We always loved this area. Pepe, stop that! I guess living here, you have a sense of accomplishment, like a dream come true. This is it. Next stop, Forest Lawn."

Pepe nods in agreement.

"This living room where we're sitting now used to be a tennis court where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard played. We have a greenhouse filled with orchids. I have a garden, I have a pool, we have grapefruit and avocado trees. But you don't see any grass. No way. Come out here," she says, sliding open a plate glass door. "It's just brick and concrete." Back inside, she casts a glance toward the foyer. "Where could she be?"

"I raised my five children to be sensitive to people who are less fortunate," Galef says. "Whenever we'd see a homeless person on the street when they were growing up, they'd always go into a store and I'd say, 'Make some change and give it to them.' You can't save the world, but you can brighten a little corner of it ...

"I do a lot of charity stuff. We are very concerned people here, truly."

Galef would be the first to roll out the welcome wagon -- if there were such a thing in Bel-Air -- if only the Reagans could be, would be her neighbors. "I'm a Democrat," she says, "but I admire Nancy very much. I think she's intelligent, and she's strong, as tiny as she is. I admire strong ladies."

And the president?

"I think he's a nice man, I really do."

And if the Reagans move in?

"I'm a human being -- I will gawk along with everybody else."

Outside, it's a beautiful day. Whop-whop-whop.

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MR. REAGAN'S NEIGHBORHOOD - The Washington Post

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