50 years On

November 5, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, Sports 

In November 1959, while on vacation in Southern California, RN played a round of gold with (from left to right) Hillcrest Country Club president Bernard Weinberg, actor Danny Kay, entertainer Danny Thomas, and golf professional Eric Monti.

In the historical section of the Los Angeles Times, Larry Harnisch marks the fiftieth anniversary of the unveiling for plans to build Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine.

The Dodgers had been playing at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where they had moved after being tenants of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York two years before.

Harnisch has also discovered an interesting article which describes Vice President Nixon’s five day holiday in Los Angeles.

According to the article, dated November 5, 1959, RN shopped for ties with Mrs. Nixon in Beverly Hills, and struck up a conversation with a store clerk from Yugoslavia on the politics of the Eastern European nation.

“The call it a social democracy, the store clerk said, ‘but it’s really communism.”

“I know it is, it’s a drab, drab,” responded RN.

RN then visited 20th Century Fox Studios where he met with executive producer Buddy Hadler, and later dined at Hillcrest Country Club with club president Bernard Weinberg, Fox Executive Harry Brand, actor Danny Kaye, singer Dean Martin, Judges Edward Brand and Ben Landis, and others. Mrs. Nixon dined with Brand’s wife, Ruth.

Mrs. Nixon dined at the 20th Century studio with Ruth Brand, the wife of studio executive Harry Brand. Israeli actress Elana Aden is pictured in the center.

After lunch, RN played a round of golf with Weinberg, Kaye, entertainer Danny Thomas, and golf professional Eric Monti, scoring 51 on the first nine and 43 on the second half of the course (RN was no stranger to the game, he is among three American presidents — including Eisenhower and Ford — to ever score a hole-in-one).

During the round, RN joked with his companions, and conversed about Russian Premier Nikita Krushschev (who he debated just four months earlier at the American Exhibition in Moscow), and discussed the future of India.

Harnisch also found another news clip from the trip, a story that describes how RN made two young journalists’ day:

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