Life With The Jax Pack

"I used to be. I'm Cary Grant now," said the other.

"All month?"

"No, not after the first. I don't want to pay the bills."

"Who's open?"

"Uh, Laurence Harvey is open. And, I think, Steve McQueen."

Says Hanson, "This is the greatest place in the world. It's really fun. I'd never leave it, except that Sally likes to travel. She likes to get to Europe once a year, and New York, for some reason, though I can't imagine why anybody would ever want to be in New York, or go there."

The place that Hanson likes to be more than anywhere else is his huge neo-southern-style house on North Beverly Drive, the one with the all-white hitching post by the curb. The house is quite a place to be. It is an old Hollywood treasure, reflecting everything that was, and to Jack Hanson it symbolizes the success of Jax. He believes that he stole it for $200,000, paying cash, as he does for almost everything. He owes no one. All of the stores are paid for, including the brownstone on New York's 57th Street and the West Los Angeles factory where the clothes are made and a lot of other real estate.

As enchanted with the movie business as the next man who went to USC, Hanson—who is becoming a producer—glories in the big house and its grounds, in the fact that Pola Negri, the silent-film queen, once lived in it, that Hal Roach, the studio boss, followed her, and that now, perhaps as Mickey Mantle came after Joe DiMaggio in the Yankee outfield, it is Jack Hanson's turn.

Inside, the house is decorated with startling good taste for an ex-shortstop. There are antique desks, chairs, tables and cabinets. There is a cozy library with bookshelves and real books. There is a formal living room, used mainly on such occasions as the spring party for Twiggy (an evening that attracted Hollywood's nobility, an explosion of flashbulbs and the police), which has a ceiling high enough for a pop fly. There is a coppery kitchen with a gas stove the size of a caboose. Among Hanson's possessions the stove ranks up there with the '34 Rolls. Downstairs there is a basement game room complete with pull-down movie screen, a collection of Meissen china, a bar, sofas and some Steve McQueens and John Dereks and other fun-world decorations like occasional Linda Evanses and Susan St. Jameses.

The overwhelming splendor is outside. Beyond a courtyard flanked by guest cottages is the large swimming pool. It is surrounded by white statues and has a mosaic of a squid designed into the bottom, one that might have attacked Rudolph Valentino in bygone days. To one side of the pool is a formal garden leading lazily to an arbor underneath which sits the dollhouse that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about in The Last Tycoon. Past all of this is a sort of mini country club, which consists of another guest cottage, shower room and lighted tennis court.