Leonore Annenberg

The society hostess who was U.S. chief of protocol

Leonore Annenberg

1918-2009

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Reared by Hollywood royalty and married to magnates who made her a billionaire, Leonore “Lee” Annenberg was 63 when she assumed what she called “the first paying job I ever had”—chief of protocol under President Ronald Reagan. Annenberg, who died last week at 91, was also a major philanthropist, dispensing more than $4 billion to cultural, educational, and medical institutions.

The daughter of Maxwell Cohn, “the less successful brother of Harry and Jack Cohn, founders of Columbia Pictures,” Lee lost her mother to a car accident when she was 7, said The Philadelphia Inquirer, and was raised by her Uncle Harry. Within a few years of graduating from Stanford University, she had married three times: to parking-lot scion Belden Katleman; to Lewis Rosenstiel, the multimillionaire founder of the distiller Schenley Industries; and finally, in 1951, to Walter Annenberg, then the owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, TV Guide, and other media properties.

Immensely wealthy, the Annenbergs were lavish entertainers, said the Los Angeles Times. At their 32,000-square-foot Rancho Mirage, Calif., mansion, “Sunnylands,” they hosted many leading show business figures and politicians, among them Gregory Peck, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Richard Nixon. For Walter Annenberg’s loyalty, Nixon appointed him U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James in 1969; the appointment lasted until Nixon’s resignation in 1974. Then, in 1981, his wife seized the chance to become chief of protocol under her old friend Ronald Reagan, stunning those who wondered why she would rather “wrangle over diplomatic ceremony” than pursue a life of leisure.

After confirmation by a 96–0 Senate vote, the “porcelain-skinned, meringue-blond hostess” promptly “rolled up her Bill Blass sleeves,” said The New York Times. As the country’s chief “envoy for etiquette,” Annenberg managed visits for heads of state, arranged overseas presidential visits, accredited ambassadors, and performed many other tasks. “But she was a headstrong and unorthodox ambassador, and soon ran into headwinds.” The White House objected when she fired several staffers, “including a favored son of the actors James and Pamela Mason.” Annenberg also raised eyebrows for curtsying to Prince Charles on U.S. soil, a display that many thought overly deferential. Annenberg resigned from the post after 11 months.

For her last 20 years, Lee Annenberg focused her attention on her husband’s namesake philanthropic foundation, which he founded in 1989 and whose beneficiaries include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Reagan Presidential Library. She is survived by two daughters, one each from her first two marriages. Walter Annenberg died in 2002.