🔹 Congrats to TB12 for winning our PGA Championship Pool hosted by Sparket and also to the other 14 winners! We will be back again for the US Open and then our final pool in July for the Open Championship, so polish up those picks!

🔹 Last week’s Comment Contest winner was Rick G. Read below today’s poll to see what he won!

Dear readers - as you know, we don't name names around here. Today, we're making an exception. The two men in this story are too famous to anonymize, their clubs are part of the public record, and besides, calling George Burns "Cigar Gary" would be an insult to the man. But as always, CCC has a few details that didn't make the official history.

At Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles, there is a rule on the books that permits cigar smoking in the card room for any member over the age of 95.

One member qualified.

Hollywood has always had its clubs. The places where the famous go to be ordinary. Where a guy who fills arenas on Saturday night plays cards on Tuesday afternoon and nobody makes a fuss. Two of the most famous comedians who ever lived - both members of private golf clubs in Los Angeles, both loyal to their seats until the very end - happened to share one more thing in common. They both lived to be exactly 100. And they both kept showing up.

George Burns joined Hillcrest when the initiation fee was $300. By the time he died, it was $150,000. He got his money's worth.

Hillcrest was founded in 1920 as the first country club for LA's Jewish community - built because the other clubs wouldn't have them. It became the club that wouldn't have just anyone. The membership roll read like a studio ledger: Louis B. Mayer, the Warner brothers, Harry Cohn, Adolph Zukor. Mayer once punched Sam Goldwyn in the nose somewhere in the locker room. Showers or steam room - accounts differ.

Burns' corner of Hillcrest was the card room. Every day, noon to three, he played bridge with his regular partner Irwin "Irkey" Goldenberg - a former president of the Jewish Federation Council who described Burns as "a fairly decent player." That's the highest compliment a bridge guy will ever give you.

The dining room had the Comedians' Round Table - Friday lunches with Jack Benny, Groucho Marx, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Don Rickles and Danny Kaye. Alan King called it "a college for comedy." Burns thought George Jessel was the funniest one at the table. He outlived them all.

In July 1994, Burns fell in his bathroom. Concussion. Surgery. Wheelchair. He was 98.

He still showed up. Noon to three. The wheelchair rolled into the card room and the cards came out. In the last weeks of his life, he had resumed his routine - office in the morning, Hillcrest in the afternoon. He was too weak to attend his own 100th birthday celebration. He had to cancel shows at Caesars Palace and the London Palladium. But he could get to Hillcrest.

The last time Goldenberg saw him was two days before he died. Burns arrived in his wheelchair for his bridge game.

That smoking rule - the one about cigars in the card room for members over 95 - wasn't a policy. It was a love letter disguised as a bylaw.

He died March 9, 1996, at home in Beverly Hills. 100 years and 49 days. His crypt was changed to read: "Gracie Allen & George Burns - Together Again." He'd always said Gracie should have top billing.

Bob Hope lived two blocks from Lakeside Golf Club in Burbank. He could have stayed home. He carted over anyway.

Lakeside was the studio lot club - tucked between Warner Bros. and Universal, the kind of place where Bing Crosby won five club championships and Gene Autry once said, "We're all the same here, no matter what happens outside the gate." The membership was its own Walk of Fame: Crosby, W.C. Fields, Oliver Hardy, Howard Hughes, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan to name just a few. Hope fit right in.

The Hope estate sat on five acres on Moorpark Street in Toluca Lake. 15,000 square feet. Its own par-3 golf hole with bunkers and a putting green. Kids in the neighborhood remembered Halloween at the Hopes - full-size candy bars, silver dollars and kazoos shaped like Bob Hope's nose.

Hope got down to a 4 handicap in his prime. Played in the British Amateur. Played with six presidents. Hosted the Bob Hope Classic on the PGA Tour for decades. Golf wasn't a hobby. It was his other career.

By his late 90s, he was nearly blind, increasingly frail and having trouble recognizing faces. He hadn't been seen in public for three years by the time Hollywood and Vine was renamed Bob Hope Square - without him there to see it.

But the golf cart kept rolling.

Even as his sight failed, Hope insisted on driving his cart around Lakeside. He plowed through fresh landscaping. Mowed down flower beds. Nobody stopped him. Nobody had the authority. At most clubs, that gets you a warning letter. At Lakeside, it got you fresh mulch. He was a god there. You don't take the keys from Bob Hope. You just don't.

A blind centenarian destroying flower beds with total impunity. That's not a golf story. That's a love story. The club loved him too much to say no.

He died July 27, 2003, at home in Toluca Lake. 100 years and 59 days. When his wife Dolores asked where he wanted to be buried, Hope said, "Surprise me."

Two comedians. Two Hollywood clubs. Two men who kept showing up because the club was where they were most alive. Burns in a wheelchair, arriving for one more hand of bridge. Hope behind the wheel of a cart he couldn't see to drive. Same deal, different vehicle: I'm a hundred years old and you can't tell me what to do.

Same number on the odometer. Same finish line.

And so, dear readers - may you find a club that rewrites its bylaws just for you. May you find a cart path that leads you home. And may you live long enough to join The Century Club.

The only rule is you can't make it to 101.

A man leaving five cars at the club because he kept Ubering home is...

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Technically responsible (59)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Logistically insane (31)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ A valet department success story (4)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Why his wife drinks too (38)

We agree with all of you. Technically responsible is technically the best choice, but so is logistically insane. Then again, if Guinness Gary’s wife was in fact a drinker, it would be understandable as to why. Sorry valets, you didn’t really factor in this one!

Comment Contest winner Rick G. gets a sleeve of LA GOLF balls for this comment: “I know a guy that’s a lot like Guinness Gary - I see him everytime I look in the mirror!”

Don’t forget to catch up on past stories at ccconfidential.vip - and while you’re at it, tell a friend!

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