Four Women in Palo Alto, 1938

Four Women in Palo Alto, 1938

Performed during the 70th anniversary year of the Palo Alto Republican Women’s Club.

by Judith Hill

Let us take you back in time. The date is December 8,1938. Four prominent Republican women of the day have gathered in the living room of celebrated women’s author, Kathleen Norris, whose home is on the corner of Cowper Street and Melville Avenue in Palo Alto. We will be eavesdropping on the conversations of the hostess and her guests: former First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, Elizabeth Gamble, heir to the Proctor and Gamble fortune, and Sue Coats, who was installed as the first president of the Palo Alto Republican Women’s Club several months earlier.

Kathleen is in the kitchen refilling a Waterford crystal pitcher with eggnog, while Lou, Elizabeth, and Sue admire the 12-foot-tall Christmas tree, trimmed in shimmering gold and silver, and nibble on homemade Christmas cookies each has brought to share. The women are celebrating the holiday season and the amazing growth their club has seen since their first membership tea.

All the people and topics you will hear these women discuss are real and factual, and you may come to realize that the more things change the more they remain the same.

Sue: I want to thank you again, Lou, for making my installation ceremony last May so very special. Having America’s First Lady conduct it made it even more wonderful.

Lou: Sue, you are proving yourself to be a great president, just like my Bert, only prettier. (All laugh)

Sue: Would Herbert have any advice for me in the New Year?

Lou: He would probably warn you not to become dispirited with the job of president. Just remember, if you get blamed for causing the Great Depression, don’t take it personally.

Sue: (Laughs) When I was elected president, I promised to keep our membership dues at one dollar a year, so I don’t expect to cause any major financial crisis.

(Lou motions for Elizabeth and Sue to come closer and whispers)

Lou: Before Kathleen rejoins us I think I should warn you.

Sue & Elizabeth: Warn us about what?

Lou: Kathleen has joined Charles Lindberg in opposing US ships carrying war supplies to the British. She’s also opposing Capitol punishment and is campaigning for the outlaw of nuclear weapons.

Elizabeth: She’s not a liberal, is she?

Sue: She was a Democrat before, you know, so she may still have some strange ideas bouncing around in her brain. Maybe we’ll just have to consider OUTLAWING the sale of her books.

Elizabeth: Shush, here she comes.

Kathleen: I hope you weren’t talking about me while I was toiling away in the kitchen. (They all laugh)

Sue: Isn’t everyone talking about the most popular and highest paid writer for women? I see your talent on display everywhere: in the Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Saturday Evening Post. Also, I must admit to a guilty pleasure: I listen to the radio soap operas that are based on your stories.

Kathleen: I just learned that Teddy Roosevelt praised one of my books, so perhaps I’m becoming popular with the men too, even if I am a feminist.

Elizabeth: But you’re a feminist with conservative values, which is why you are so popular with all your readers, especially Republican women.

Sue: And why you’re also popular with all the Who’s Who of Hollywood and New York. The San Francisco Chronicle featured pictures of you and your husband Charles dining on steak and lobster with Randolph Scott and Robert Taylor at your Hacienda in Saratoga? Did you do the cooking in your new outdoor entertainment kitchen?

Kathleen: Yes, I did, and my guests pitched right in and helped me. Robert and Randolph are two of the most charming men you would ever want to meet. My Cigi said he would have been jealous of all the attention they paid me, but Robert is dating Barbara Stanwyck and Randolph could talk about little else other than FDR’s New Deal. He thinks the President’s plans for providing relief for the unemployed, restarting the economy and reforming the banks and lenders with bailout programs are serious attempts at replacing our capitalistic system with a socialistic one. His trying to pack the Supreme Court is also very disturbing.

Lou: I couldn’t agree more.

Kathleen: But on a lighter note, Robert did whisper something in my ear.

All: What?

Kathleen: He told me his real name.

Elizabeth: Oh, I hope it isn’t Shirley or Marion.

Kathleen: Worse. It’s Spangler Arlington Brugh. What kind of a mother would name her only son Spangler? But the interesting thing is that he studied medicine at Pomona College, so he’s not only good looking, he’s smart.

Lou: Herbert and I saw one of Robert’s movies, Magnificent Obsession. He played a doctor who causes Irene Dunne to go blind, and then becomes a doctor so he can cure her. Did you know that Robert’s own father attended medical school in order to cure his invalid wife? She was able to get out of bed only one hour per week.

Sue: That actually sounds kind of appealing after the hectic week I’ve had.

Kathleen: What do you suppose she did in that one hour? What would you do, Lou?

Lou: Probably take up tap dancing, one foot at a time. But I have to wonder why would she even bother getting up, if that brief one hour put her back in bed for a week. Anyway, Robert’s father became a doctor and cured her.

Elizabeth: Let’s hope somebody finds a cure for insanity before Adolph Hitler conquers all of Europe. I was sixteen, but it seems like only yesterday that I was in Germany with Aunt Fanny, visiting the King of Prussia. I can still hear the old gentleman yelling to his servants, “Where are my trousers?”

Lou: Bert thinks that Germany and Italy mean mischief in the spring and he believes that Poland will be their first objective.

Sue: Elizabeth, I’m afraid the Germany you knew is long gone. Chamberlain has essentially destroyed the balance of power, and Winston Churchill has called upon America and Western Europe for armed resistance against Hitler, but Time Magazine has just named him Man of the Year. What sense do you make of that?

Kathleen: Joe Lewis is pretty good at knocking out German tough guys. He knocked out Max Schmelling in the first round at Yankee Stadium. Let’s get him to duke it out with Adolph.

Elizabeth: Or have Howard Hughes buy him out. He can certainly afford it, from what I hear. Did you hear that he just set a new record? He completed a 91hour flight around the world.

Sue: And Wrong Way Corrigan took off from New York, heading for California, and landed in Ireland.

Elizabeth: I guess he should have asked Howard to be his co-pilot.

Kathleen: Sue, I was hoping you would have honored us with a song after your installation ceremony. The last time I heard you perform was in New York. I believe it was Madam Butterfly.

Lou: Who would have thought that the first president of the Palo Alto Women’s Club would be a former Madam?

Elizabeth: And a Bohemian as well. I saw you perform in La Boheme in San Francisco. You were terrific and very believable.

Sue: Thanks, I think. At this point in my life I prefer to see younger women taking my place on the stage, because I now have a new career on the political stage. And I haven’t yet given up my career as a lawyer. The firm still calls me in when they have a case of child abuse or endangerment. I specialized in those cases before I had my own children, and I still care deeply about doing everything in my power to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Lou: Speaking of protection, the German women are going to have to do what I did in China during the Boxer Rebellion if they want to survive.

Sue: What is that?

Lou: Learn to use a pistol. I got to be quite a crack shot too. After having to sweep bullets off my porch during the rebellion, I realized I would also be a target when the peasant revolutionaries started killing Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians. I’m sure the Boxers believed Bert and I were also threats to Chinese culture.

Elizabeth: Why were they called Boxers?

Lou: Because they practiced boxing and callisthenic rituals, which they believed made then impervious to bullets.

Kathleen: Lou, you are the most athletic woman I know. You’re an officer of the National Amateur Athletic Federation; you hike, fish, camp, skate, and you’re also a great archer. By now you are probably impervious to bullets too.

Lou: I wish I were impervious to the shots the press takes at Bert and me at every opportunity. They were irate when I eliminated the New Year’s Day White House reception, and I was irate because in previous administrations, pregnant women were not received. Where in the world did these men think they got their start? In a Petri dish? They also thought it improper of me to invite Congressman Oscar DePriest and his wife, who are Negroes, to a White House dinner. I have a growing disregard for the press reporting the truth.

Elizabeth: You are being too charitable. The members of the press just don’t like Republicans, and whenever they can get away with it, they lie about us. I think that should be one of our goals: to insist that they be fair and balanced in their reporting.

All: Hear, Hear!

Lou: Excuse me, Kathleen. I’d like to powder my nose?

Kathleen: Of course.

(Lou exits)

Kathleen: It’s not surprising that Lou so dislikes the press and never grants interviews. They were very cruel when they said she looked magnificent in evening clothes, but frumpy in day clothes.

Elizabeth: Well, she doesn’t pretend to be the Duchess of Windsor.

Sue: And who chose Wallace Simpson as the fashion consultant for America’s women?

Kathleen: If the Duchess were the one who suggested making cotton popular for evening wear, instead of Lou Hoover, the press would never have ridiculed the idea.

Elizabeth: And when Lou said that women could do any job a man could do, they really went crazy.

Sue: One reporter said that he interviewed the White House staff and they told him that they all found Lou forbidding and cold.

Kathleen: I guess the staff members didn’t tell the reporter that Lou showed great concern for their well-being, and even loaned many of them money from her own pocket. When they tried to pay her back, she tore up the checks. That doesn’t sound cold to me.

Elizabeth: I agree with Lou on just about everything. But I’m not convinced women are able to do every job a man can do. If my house were on fire, I certainly would prefer to have a big burly man rushing in to save me rather than a woman, even if she carried a big hose and wore combat boots.

(Lou returns) Do you have any new books coming out, Kathleen?

Kathleen: I’m thinking about expanding my horizons – perhaps as far as Saudi Arabia. Standard Oil and Saudi Arabia have signed an oil exploration contract. That country is barren and undeveloped and the people are so poor, so the alliance should greatly improve conditions for those people. I’m sure they will be very grateful to the United States.

Lou: I hope they are grateful, but they may just do what Mexico did – nationalize all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders. If we become dependent upon Saudi Arabia, and suddenly they decided to keep their natural resources to themselves, we could be left out in the cold, literally, without a major source of oil.

Kathleen: Lou, you are far more knowledgeable about these things than I. You earned a BA in geology at Stanford. And didn’t you and Herbert receive an award for translating a 1556 book on mining from Latin and German to English?

Lou: I did receive the Mining Metallurgical award, but I know about as much about drilling oil as I do about drilling teeth.

Sue: When you finish your research, let us know. From what I’ve heard, the Muslims are quite hostile to Christians and Jews. That could be a problem in the future. (They all nod solemnly)

Elizabeth: On a cheerier note, your profusion of poinsettias look lovely, Kathleen.

Kathleen: They can’t compare to the flowers you grow in your beautiful gardens, Elizabeth. In the spring your Irises are the envy of everyone in the Iris Society. I hear they have even named a variety for you.

Elizabeth: My flowers have given my brother George and me almost as much joy as does our English Cocker Spaniel. The three of us have been very happy in the family home. I’m thinking of willing it to the City of Palo Alto when we are gone, so the gardens can continue to bring pleasure and produce flowers to brighten up hospital rooms and the ailing people in them. The children in my Sunday school class at All Saints Episcopal Church love it when I fill the room with dahlias and roses from my garden. I heard one little girl say I should be named Eve, because my back yard looks like the Garden of Eden.

Lou: Aren’t you proud of the young girls of today? As national president of the Girl Scouts, I have been inspired by their analytical minds, good mental discipline and physical fitness.

Sue: Kathleen, I remember one of your newspaper columns in which you said your success was due to forming a mental vision of your goal and clinging to it through thick and thin. That is very good advice for our young people.

Elizabeth: I agree.

Sue: I’m sorry, Kathleen, but I have to leave. I want to do some preparation for the state convention in Fresno. I don’t want to embarrass all of our sixty members when I give my address, and since John and I used to live there, I’m especially eager to comport myself as well as possible.

Kathleen: I too have to prepare for a meeting with my publisher tomorrow, but before you leave I wanted to tell you all that I met Hedda Hopper.

Lou: How exciting!

Elizabeth: I don’t care much for her gossip, but I love her hats.

Kathleen: I think you will love her politics too. She helped Ronald Reagan become President of the Screen Actors Guild, which is when he changed from Democrat to Republican. She also told me that J. Edgar Hoover supplies her with gossip about the communists who are infiltrating Hollywood.

Elizabeth: I’m sure she’s charming, but some of her comments are a bit unkind. She said of one movie star that she looks like she combs her hair with an eggbeater.

Lou: That movie star is a Communist sympathizer and once picketed the White House. Hedda wasn’t being unkind, she was being honest.

Kathleen: What do you think of Ronald Reagan.

Lou: Bert and I find Ronald Reagan to be a very intelligent and insightful man, and his wife, Jane Wyman, is my favorite actress. Bert said he’s very politically astute, and he wouldn’t be surprised if one day Reagan chose to run for office.

Sue: I can see Jimmy Stewart in the role of President, so maybe it’s not so far fetched that an actor would be elected President of the United States?

Kathleen: I have an idea for a novel in which the heroine is a candidate for president.

Eliz: Well, you are the best writer of fiction in America, so maybe you could persuade your readers that it’s possible. You are so talented that you could probably even convince your readers that a Negro may one day seek the presidency.

Kathleen: I’m afraid you give me too much credit. Not even I could sell that idea, even if it came all wrapped up in Christmas paper.

Lou: You don’t want to sound Like Ebenezer Scrooge, Kathleen. I think you should go and see the movie that just came out, “Christmas Carol,” staring Reginald Owen. Bert and I found it most entertaining, and it think it may encourage people to reexamine their faith and how they touch the people who move in and out of their lives.

Sue: Christmas means hope and love for all mankind. I always feel heartened at this time of year, and when I have to look no further than this living room to find women of intellect, integrity, and excellence in so many fields of endeavor, I truly believe anything is possible. I have faith that what we began only short months ago will continue for years to come, and that in fifty or sixty or even seventy years from this day, women like us, who share the same ideals and values will have forged a future that we can only imagine. If we remain true to those ideals and values and work hard to educate women, who are the backbone of our nation, we can accomplish anything and solve any problem that our nation might face. A war is coming, I fear, and in the years to come there will times that will try our faith and test our determination to do our best and be our best, but I truly believe that we will pass that test.

All stand and turn to the audience.

“We believe we have passed that test. Merry Christmas, dear friends!”