“Robert Wagner…the love-light in Susan Zanuck’s eyes, got into movies the hard way.” – Hedda Hopper (1951)
Robert Wagner’s father was a Bel-Air steel contractor who told him you’re on your own if you want to be an actor. So Bob got a job as a caddy at the Bel-Air Country Club and carried the bag for Clark Gable and Randolph Scott!
Gable’s advice was to keep your feet on the ground if you hit it big in the movies, “everyone is replaceable.”
Wagner left caddying to be a groom at Bel-Air Stables, now the Bel-Air Hotel (previously the Danziger stables), where there weren’t many actors. Soon he ended up washing dishes at a cafe in Westwood until finally giving up hope and going to work for his father.
One night, while dining with his family at the Bel-Air Hotel (where he used to work!), he was spotted by an agent who liked the look of his jaw, and off he went riding the road to stardom!
Soon Wagner joined the Bel-Air Country Club with a 14 handicap. It must have been sweet! Bob played in many amateur championships, exhibitions and charity fundraisers over his storied career as an amateur golfer.
Here is a link to a video of Robert playing a match against legendary professional Sam Snead at Woodland Hills Country Club for Celebrity Golf.
The course was originally designed by John Duncan Dunn and built by William P. “Billy” Bell. It opened as Girard Golf Club in 1925, as part of Victor Girard’s Girard subdivision in the San Fernando Valley.
George Von Elm arrived in L.A. in 1922, joining Rancho Golf Club and teaming up with 1921 British Amateur champ Willie Hunter, & Howard Hughes. George beat Bobby Jones for the 1926 US Amateur. LACC made George an Honorary Life Member in 1927.@usopengolfhttps://t.co/dU0nbNKV2o
— Golf Historical Society (@GolfHistorical) June 4, 2023
Yes, one of the “charter members” of LA golf club and LA Country Club!
One of the charter member of the Los Angeles Golf Club, and later the Los Angeles Country Club, was Gaylord "Guy" Wilshire, the "millionaire socialist," who, along with his brother, named a block of land in their housing development, "Wilshire Boulevard." @usopengolf#LACCpic.twitter.com/hCtTeu5W0U
— Golf Historical Society (@GolfHistorical) May 26, 2023
Congratulations to Derek Markham for winning the U.S.G.A.’s Herbert Warren Wind Book Award for 2021, for “A Matter of Course: The Life of William Herbert Fowler, 1856-1941, Golf Course Architect”!
My contribution to Fowler’s American Adventures came with much assistance from Philip Truett, who co-published the book with Derek!
A Matter of Course is a new book written by Derek Markham and published by Markham & Truett.
The story of legendary golf course architect William Herbert Fowler. The book is a proper biography of a most interesting life, mostly well lived.
I contributed research to the chapter, “American Adventures,” written about Fowler’s work in California, which included Los Angeles Country Club, Pebble Beach and the Del Monte Hotel courses, the Presidio, Burlingame Country Club, the no longer existing Ambassador/Rancho Golf Club, Olympic Club, Lincoln Park, Sequoyah, Del Paso, Crystal Springs, Menlo C.C., and others!
This is a small print of 650 books that can be ordered by emailing Philip Truett: philip@truett.co.uk
At the opening exhibition of Municipal #2 (Harding) golf course in Griffith Park in 1923 with Willie Hunter, George C. Thomas Jr., Ed Tufts, A.D.S. Johnston and Norman Macbeth.
Norman Macbeth Jr., was born in Bolton, England in 1879, and grew up playing at Royal Lytham & St Annes golf club where he won the club championship three times while still in school. After an engineering apprenticeship in India with his father’s company he emigrated to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1903.
Norman married American Lucia Holliday in 1907, and they moved to Pittsburgh where Macbeth played on the Oakmont Golf Club Leslie Cup team with W.C. Fownes Jr., and on the 1909 Pennsylvania State golf team with Albert Tillinghast.
#1 son was John Holliday Macbeth born in 1908. He drowned in 1919 while Norman was in France working for the Red Cross during WW I.
The Macbeth’s moved to Los Angeles in 1910, with Norman working for the Riverside Portland Cement company. The company supplied cement for the Los Angeles Aqueduct and half the roads that we still drive on in the 21st century.
#2 son was Norman Macbeth III or Jr., born in Los Angeles in 1910. He was also a golf champion and lived until 1989.
Norman joined the Los Angeles Country Club and won numerous amateur golf titles over the next several years.
#3 son was Alexander born in 1915 and died in May 1920. Cause unknown.
Macbeth volunteered for the Red Cross in France, where he drove an ambulance, and managed to play at least one round of golf!
He returned to Los Angeles in August 1919, and was soon elected chairman of the Green committee creating the new Wilshire Country Club golf course in Hancock Park, which became his non-working life’s passion.
Norman was also playing a full schedule of club tournaments at Los Angeles Country Club where noted golf architect John Duncan Dunn was professional and George C. Thomas Jr., and Herbert Fowler were making history designing and building the new North and South courses.
Charles Orr (manager) and Norman Macbeth (chair). Wilshire Country Club green committee.
The new Wilshire Country Club course was completed and open for member play in December 1920. Macbeth led the club team and green committee and was elected to the USGA Green Section. He was also a member of the Los Angeles Traffic Commission.
Norman and Lucia had an uncontested divorce in 1928.
In 1934 Norman married Lucille Chandler, ex-wife of Wilshire CC founder Raymond Stephens. They were parents to Norman Jr., and Lucille’s son and daughter.
At the time of Norman’s death in 1940, he also left two brothers and five sisters in England.
William Park “Billy” Bell was born in 1886 and raised on a Pennsylvania farm. In 1911, after a stint at Duff’s College, Pittsburgh, Billy was hired by the Annandale Country Club as a greenkeeper and caddie master. By 1917, he was the official Ground Foreman, working with Donald Ross associate Walter Fovargue, building a new Annandale golf course. Architect William Watson was hired in 1919 to remodel the course in grass, and Billy Bell supervised and built it.
Billy Bell competed in local golf tournaments, finishing in the top ten out of 385 entries at Griffith Park for the Red Cross in 1917, and coming sixth in an invitational at Annandale in 1919.
Billy Bell left Annandale to work with Chicago legends George O’Neil and Jack Croke at the new 54-hole Pasadena Golf Club (Altadena) by May of 1920. Soon after, Croke and Bell built Mountain Meadows and rebuilt Annandale and Rancho, after which Billy went on to build new courses with Max Behr at Montebello and Rio Hondo, and then with George C. Thomas Jr. at Griffith Park, Ojai Valley, La Cumbre, Bel-Air, Riviera and Los Angeles North.
Billy Bell designed and built over seventy golf courses, including Palos Verdes, Woodland Hills, Chevy Chase, Castlewood, Sunnyside, Oahu, Catalina, Brookside, San Clemente, San Diego, La Jolla, Western Ave., (Chester Washington), Lakewood, Recreation Park, Stanford, Apple Valley, and he worked with William Johnson on Rancho Park, Balboa/Encino, Alondra Park, and Singing Hills.
“By the 1930s Bell had earned a reputation as the most prolific architect in the west.”
He was a pioneer in golf course construction, irrigation and landscaping, and an expert agronomist, who was also in charge of the turf at the Pasadena Rose Bowl and the Los Angeles Coliseum, where he was turf advisor for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
“During World War II, he served as a turf consultant to the U.5. Army Corps of Engineers.”
After the war, Billy Bell designed and built a number of golf courses for the veterans, at his own expense, including at Pearl Harbor, Guam, Long Beach, West Los Angeles, Van Nuys, Santa Ana, Marine Memorial, and Camp Pendleton.
“In 1946 he was awarded a commendation by the Southern California chapter of the PGA for his effort in creating courses for wounded servicemen.”
His partnership with his son, Billy Bell Jr. (William Francis Bell), started after junior’s return from the war, where he was a Yeoman on the Aircraft Carrier USS Block Island (CVE-21 & CVE-106) in both the Atlantic and Pacific campaigns, reaching the rank of Major.
After the war, father and son formed a new company and started working together. As Billy slowed down, junior sped up. By the early 1950s, Billy Bell Jr. was clearly carrying on the family tradition. He would go on to design, build and renovate, over 100 golf courses.
Their work together included, Tamarisk, Torrey Pines, Tucson, Bakersfield, Buena Ventura, Newport Beach, and Rolling Hills, while on his own, Billy Bell Jr. gave us Malibu, Industry Hills, Antelope Valley, California, Harbor Park, Jurupa Hills, Monarch Beach, Newport Beach, Palm Desert, Saticoy, Skylinks, Knollwood, Heartwell, Los Verdes, Lake Arrowhead, Sandpiper, Whittier Narrows and Soule Park, to name but a few.
Billy Bell and Billy Bell Jr., are the two most important golf course architects in Southern California history. Billy Bell was a founder and 1952 president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, and Billy Bell Jr., was president five years later. Their induction into the 2017 Hall of Fame is a long overdue reward for their magnificent contribution to the sport of golf in our state.
British China diplomat Alexander Robert Campbell Johnston
Alexander Robert Campbell Johnston was a British diplomat who served “many years in China under H.M. Foreign and Colonial Offices.” He visited Los Angeles in 1883, where he bought the 2000 acre San Rafael Ranch, subdividing the first part of it as the Annandale Tract in 1886.
He was the son of Sir Alexander Johnston of the Clan Johnston who was Chief Justice of Ceylon. He married the daughter of Sir William Campbell of the Clan Campbell who descended from the Duke of Argyll, and who was the last British Governor of South Carolina. Together they had ten sons and two daughters.
Alexander Campbell Johnston left three of his sons, along with their cousin Robert Lindsay, to manage the San Rafael Ranch. Other sons were dropped off in Canada, Australia, Liberia, Fresno, and South Africa.
Led by number one son Conway and Robert Lindsay, the Campbell Johnston’s were the first to bring coursing, hunting, riding, driving, horse racing, tennis, cricket, croquet, polo, and golf, to California in the 1880’s, founding the Pasadena Hunt Club and its Rose Parade, and the Southern California lawn tennis association in Santa Monica.
Alexander Robert Campbell Johnston died at San Rafael Ranch, Los Angeles, January 21st 1888.
