One of the delights of participating in the Los Angeles Antiques Show, now, sadly, of blessed memory, was the one- never- knew experience of the entertainment celebrities one might have even brief face time with. Particularly when the ladies guild of Cedars Sinai Hospital was the benefit charity, the gala preview was a welter of attendees of the great and good. A simple country lad me, I put my foot in it more than once, asking an unrecognized Harvey Weinstein, for instance, what he did for a living. His tongue in cheek response was ‘I own a small production company.’
An occasional attendee was the very petite presence of Nancy Reagan, who darkened the precincts of our stand in 2005 and 2006. Small and well dressed, and with a discreet security detail, she did on a couple of occasions ask questions of us about a couple of items, and then moved on. Both times, after the fact, Keith and I queried one another why it was we didn’t ask her the why of the tragically laggard response the White House had to the AIDS crisis. No question, with her own experience in the entertainment community, including, amongst others, her close and decades-long relationship with openly gay designer William Haines, her husband and she certainly had a level of familiarity with the gay community that, years before the death of Rock Hudson in 1985, they and particularly she certainly knew what was happening.
Time goes on, however, and I am ashamed to admit it, our own commercial imperative prevailed- we were, after all, at the Los Angeles Antiques Show in order to earn our daily crust- so beyond talking amongst ourselves, and one or two others, nothing of significance came of the Nancy sitings beyond being able to include these episodes as anecdotes.
However, early in 2008, Mrs. Reagan came tangentially- but significantly- into our ambit when we sold a William and Mary cabinet on stand to a Los Angeles celebrity, whose home our celebrity client had acquired from celeb cum media mogul Merv Griffin, by then deceased. We knew Merv was gay as pink ink, with an ex- wife and another female celeb- Eva Gabor- who for years ‘bearded’ for him, and also that he was on such close terms with the Reagans he was an honorary pall bearer at Ronald Reagan’s funeral.
It was a wonderful house, with a tennis and swimming pool pavilion that rivaled the size and elegance of a fine home. However, one of the striking things about the lovely landscaping was a large rose garden. Our celebrity client told us that it had been laid out and the roses selected for Merv by Nancy Reagan. Keith and I were particularly struck by this, bringing to the fore yet again a perplexity of why, with this level of intimacy and a level of intimacy she shared with so many other gay men, Nancy Reagan, and of course her husband, did so little and did so late even acknowledge the AIDS epidemic.
I suppose Nancy Reagan’s silence mirrored the traditional silence in Hollywood about gay men in the entertainment industry, which silence yet remains overarching. I suppose. But it was a silence that as ACT-UP has it, did then and does now equal death. Precisely how Mrs. Reagan was able to overlook this tragedy which she must have seen from a front row seat is impossible to know, and difficult to forgive.
It is now, however, a question for the ages.