PETER BUFFA -- Comments & Curiosities

What do the Balboa Bay Club and I have in common? We were both born in

1948, and we’re both showing our age.

There are great things on the horizon for one of us . . . the one with

the roof, the walls and the dining room. The other? Don’t ask. It’s not

pretty.

The long-awaited, much-debated make-over of Newport’s grande dame is

finally underway, and before you know it, the inn will be in once again.

1948 was a different time and a different world. Chad was a man’s

name, and the only dots to be found were women named Dorothy and those

things at the end of a sentence. People drank water that came from

faucets, and a cup of coffee was a nickel, except at Starbucks, where it

was $1.50. The web was something a spider made, and a cell phone was

something you were allowed to make one call on, usually to your lawyer.

The Red Scare and the Cold War were in full swing, and the year

provided one of the oddest moments in American politics -- or at least

what would have been considered odd until three weeks ago. See if any of

this sounds familiar. In the race for president, both the polls and the

pundits predicted that New York Gov. Thomas Dewey would oust President

Harry S. Truman. On election night, Dewey’s lead held steady, then

started to widen. By midnight, Dewey looked like the clear winner, and

the Chicago Tribune cranked out an extra with a very large and now very

famous headline: “Dewey Beats Truman.” Within the same hour, a network

radio reporter solemnly announced that Truman “simply cannot win.”

But in the wee hours of the morning, Truman started to recover, took

the lead, and eventually left Dewey in the dust. My favorite part of the

story is the hard-nosed reporter who called the governor’s mansion and

demanded to speak to Dewey to get a comment.

“The President-elect has retired for the evening,” sniffed a Dewey

staffer, “and cannot be disturbed.”

“Oh yeah?” the reporter snapped back. “Well, you tell the

President-elect when he wakes up that he ain’t the President-elect no

more.”

By the way, do you know who placed third after Truman and Dewey? A

States’ Rights party candidate from South Carolina by the odd name of

Strom Thurmond.

But Newport Beach was far-removed from the gritty world of politics.

Just 2 1/2 hours from Beverly Hills, it was one of two preferred

playgrounds of the stars. The other was Palm Springs, a favorite of

Sinatra and Hope. We’re talking about real stars here, by the way, not

some 23-year-old whose career consists of a sitcom, two horror movies and

a music video.

If you strolled the Bay Club’s deck at the time, you could see some of

the biggest yachts, belonging to some of Tinseltown’s biggest names:

Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell, Jimmy Cagney and Leo Carrillo

(The Cisco Kid’s sidekick, Pancho, if you must ask. Who played the Cisco

Kid? Duncan Reynaldo. How can you not know this stuff?).

In fact, the Balboa Bay Club became a second home for Bogart. A few

fans could be found outside the Bay Club at all hours, hoping to catch a

glimpse of Bogey or Bacall. On some nights, the Villa Nova and the Arches

were more star-studded than Chasen’s or the Mocambo. Like most legendary

Hollywood hangouts, the walls of the Bay Club have absorbed enough sights

and sounds to fill a two-volume CD about the heyday of the studios and

their superstars. Agents and studio publicists were down here every other

day to drag some star back to L.A. and tidy up the mess.

But that was then and this is now. Just Thursday, the Bay Club owners,

International Bay Clubs of Newport Beach (is there more than one Bay

Club?), raised the curtain on what will be the new, improved,

revitalized, upgraded, all right already, Bay Club. Face-lifts are not

cheap, but this one is pricey even by Newport Beach standards -- 55

million clams over the next two years. Snyder-Langston will saw the wood

and nail the nails, which is a good thing, because anything Bill Langston

does is first-cabin.

By January 2003, two things will happen. One, we should know who’s

president, and two, the Bay Club will be Newport’s first five-star,

full-service resort hotel on the water.

I’m never quite sure what “full-service” and “five-star” mean anymore,

but in this case, it means a bunch of stuff -- a new clubhouse, a

schmoozy fitness center, basketball and racquetball courts, more pools

than you can count, a men’s spa, a women’s spa, to say nothing of a

131-room luxury hotel with more mints on the pillows than Carter has

little pills. Exactly how many pills is that, by the way? I keep asking

but nobody ever knows.

So the next time you drive by the place, take a good look. It’s hard

to believe that something could still function after 52 years. The

transformation is underway. But if you slow down just a bit and squint

hard, you might catch a glimpse of Bogey and Bacall in that jaw-dropping

Duesenberg convertible as they pull out and head north on PCH.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Fridays.

He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].