Written By: Gary Baum
It’s summer and time to swing as THR compares the biz’s top seven country clubs, who belongs and whose handicap beats whose.
In a town where relationships are everything, Los Angeles’ ultra-exclusive golf clubs reign as some of the top spots for power-networking. The fairways of the city’s private golf clubs are also where Hollywood’s boys club — yes, it is 99 percent boys — is most unabashedly on display.
It’s a tightly controlled world of acceptances, rejections and wait lists. Getting in takes big bucks (the top initiation fee, Riviera Country Club’s, is a whopping $250,000) and good words from powerful friends; even Mark Wahlberg needed to make calls to get into Riviera.
PHOTOS: See Hollywood Golfers’ Handicaps
But no matter how much money or influence they have, entertainment types still find it nearly impossible to get into certain places. The Wilshire Country Club and the Los Angeles Country Club historically did not admit Jewish members, who then formed Hillcrest Country Club and, later, Brentwood. A bastion of bankers and corporate execs, LACC remains hands-down the most clannish and is known for shunning entertainment types in general.
“What I think is funny is that all of us who drive in and out of Beverly Hills drive right past L.A. Country Club,” says an entertainment-world golfer. “We can sit in the front row of anything we want, but those gates are closed to us.”
That has made the concentration of entertainment types at other courses more pronounced. But many players say it’s a misconception that deals go down on the course. “People think a lot of Hollywood business is being conducted, but very little gets discussed,” says a member at Bel-Air Country Club.
The game “can also be relationship-killing,” says producer Neal H. Moritz, a Brentwood member who plays regularly with Modern Family’s Steve Levitan and CAA’s Dan Aloni. Explains a Riviera member: “The guy who throws his clubs is not going to convince you off the course that he’s not a hothead. People can really size you up, your best traits to your worst.”
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Music: Johnny Rock
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