No one who met Jane Dobbins would ever guess she’d been born in a logging community in the state of Washington. A rarefied whiff of glamour and refinement enveloped everything about the petite, elegant beauty: her golden blond hair, her stylish dress, her resemblance to Doris Day. Her visits home to her native Walla Walla left her relatives spellbound. Their beloved Jane, it seemed, had taken a magic-carpet ride into a fairy-tale life.
The tug toward something greater must have been innate. She divorced her first husband because she couldn’t fathom living the rest of her days in the Pacific Northwest. Her second husband met a tragic, untimely end in a car crash in Utah. The third man she married, Vic Green, had an exciting career, working for Walt Disney as an imagineer. Green was trusted with activating Disney’s vision of an amusement park ride inspired by the famed animator’s visit to the majestic Swiss mountain the Matterhorn. As for Jane, her engaging and accommodating personality lent itself to her work as a secretary to the stars. The actors John Wayne and Walter Pidgeon had been among her employers.
Divorced from Green at age fifty for unspecified reasons, Jane arrived on the southern California dinner party circuit, where a mutual friend introduced her to a new man in town, a man who, coincidentally, had briefly been a cohort of Disney’s long ago near the end of World War I. Immediately, Ray was swept up by Jane’s “sweet disposition.” The night after they’d met, he invited her for dinner, did so for the next two days as well, and two weeks later, on February 23, 1963, they were married in Palm Springs, California—just miles from the birthplace of the business that comprised Ray’s entire reason for being. That his bride had been married three times didn’t disturb Ray. That Ray ran a burgeoning empire of fifteen-cent hamburger stands, a downscale pursuit for a woman who traveled in such refined circles, not to mention that that empire was teetering precipitously on the brink of failure, didn’t stop Jane from falling for the dapper and confident raconteur. He confessed to his new love that there had been an earlier paramour. She’d left him, he told her, because he wasn’t wealthy enough. To erase the remaining trace of Joan, Ray traded in the ill-fated Woodland Hills home for one in Beverly Hills, closer to the social swirl and shopping his new lady, Jane, preferred.
His glamorous new companion matched his new California life. She was far more worldly and refined than Ethel, a brighter light who could hold her own with witty small talk at cocktail parties, mingling with ease. Even June Martino had given the thumbs-up, conspiring with Jane at a company Christmas gathering in Chicago when the new bride asked for wisdom on navigating the tensions and politics of the corporate landscape that occupied Ray’s every breath.
Though Ray was installed in an office thousands of miles away from corporate headquarters, he and Harry were increasingly at odds over the direction of the company whose rescue Harry had masterminded. Ray’s desire to aggressively ramp up McDonald’s over the next decade by four hundred stores a year didn’t square with Harry’s more conservative plans for half that. Ray was pushing for the corporation to buy out some franchisees, so they’d at least have stores under their control to fall back on if the corporation fell apart. Harry disagreed with the strategy. There were conflicts over personnel: Ray had promoted Fred Turner to vice president, and Harry had installed his own man at an equal rank. And the fiscally prudent Harry wanted to take the company public, the ultimate triumph for a serious businessman, while Ray was wary of that path. He wasn’t keen on having to live by Wall Street’s rules and regulations. Harry believed selling stock was the only chance they’d get to personally cash in on their hard work.
Though Ray would religiously devour the morning sales reports for each store—paying particular attention to the numbers from Rapid City, where Rollie was still at the helm—he continued to find the nuts and bolts and rules and regulations of the financial world of no interest. Those “codfish aristocrats,” he sniffed, knew nothing about real work. He preferred his role as chairman-salesman, swooping in to police the parking lots for trash and micromanaging the presentation of food by the hourly workers, confabbing with the franchisees on whose backs the business had been built. They revered him.
With a swagger, he liked to dangle the carrot of a franchise to select associates and friends. To make it possible for some of Jane’s family to get in on the game, Ray waived the required cash deposit, which had risen to $15,000. Harry was not only angry about this bush-league transgression; he worked to block it, calling on the corporate lawyers to support his resistance. Everything needed to be above-board, by the book, so that the ledgers were as bulletproof and defensible as possible. Ray harrumphed and managed to front the necessary deposit money to the relatives himself.
Though his permanent address was now on the West Coast, Ray’s physical distance from 221 North LaSalle hardly meant he was invisible. When he’d phone to talk to his protégé, Fred, the sound of his voice projected so loudly, cascading into the halls, it was as if he was right there on the twentieth floor in Chicago.
—
Since he was an eager twenty-five-year-old employee in a sea of fortysomethings, Willard Scott seemed to be the logical choice among his colleagues at WRC in Washington, D.C., to play the televised role of an affable, goofy clown. Already he cohosted a popular daily half-hour radio show called The Joy Boys, and was costar, on television, of a program called Afternoon, with a supporting cast that included teenage puppeteer Jim Henson and the lovably moppy creatures he called the Muppets. Scott’s friendly voice lent an upbeat, enthusiastic tone to comedic bits as well as local advertisers, such as:
McDonald’s Drive-in keeps growing, my friend.
For fifteen cents you get the most delicious burger you’ve ever tasted in your whole life on a bun, 100% pure beef, and . . . aged Idaho potatoes all French fried up so good and crisp and crunchy golden brown and gooey goo.
Reading a McDonald’s ad out loud on the radio was just the start of his association with the company. Like dozens of other stations, WRC had purchased a license to the franchised television character Bozo the Clown. Bozo’s cheerful likeness had already motivated the sales of a million sing-along songbooks that helped kids learn to read. Now, local television outlets were being given the chance to cash in on the popularity of the character. For their fee, stations got a script that a locally cast talent brought to life in front of a live studio audience—the televised equivalent of a hamburger franchise.
To prepare him for the role, Scott, three days a newlywed, was shipped off to Hollywood and enrolled in “clown school,” where he was indoctrinated in the ways of Bozo—how to talk, proper technique for suiting up in the requisite blue costume with giant frilly white bib, tips on applying the pancake makeup over every inch of his face, and how to top off the look with a wild, orange-haired wig. He improvised his own dramatic flourish, swinging into the studio on a rope from the wings, rousing the thrilled children into a frenzy.
This same studio had provided the backdrop for a very different media event: the first-ever televised presidential debate between Nixon and Kennedy. The child of the winner of that election counted herself among Bozo’s fans. Performing at First Daughter Caroline Kennedy’s birthday party at the White House was a thrill, but it didn’t offset the exhaustion of the other public appearances he was required to make in character in addition to doing the live show. When a local McDonald’s franchisee commissioned the clown to drive his signature fringed surrey into one of their stores’ parking lots, so many thousands of people gathered that roads were shut down and police dispatched crowd control. There was something about the combination of hamburgers and Bozo, Scott observed, that was irresistible to kids.
And kids were irresistible to McDonald’s. Fortunately for the hamburger chain, many parents in this new era of well-to-do indulgence were loath to refuse their children’s request to eat there. Ads targeting after-school programs became a prime target of local franchisees. Vigilance in ensuring that the stores remained as family-friendly as possible continued to be a top priority.
Few people in the company’s constellation needed to be convinced of the power of advertising or public relations. The mantra “Early to bed, early to rise, advertise, advertise, advertise” was practiced with devotion by franchisees. In Minnesota, Jim Zien had done well with the catchy radio jingle he’d commissioned:
Forty-five cents for a three course meal. Sounds to me like that’s a steal.
Zien had convinced the other franchisee in Roseville to pool funds, which allowed them to double their ad buy, a model that McDonald’s would soon mimic on a national scale. Because of this sort of experimentation, store sales were soaring and royalties paid to the corporation had multiplied sixfold in the first three years of the 1960s. All across the country, ads were being amplified by manufactured goodwill, like free hamburger giveaways to schools and sponsorship of teams and carnivals for orphans subsidized by local franchisees. In 1960 alone, the PR firm had sent out close to five thousand press releases, estimating the “McDonald’s message” had reached forty-six million Americans. The impact of such appeals was incalculable in distinguishing the drive-ins from other burgeoning chains, like Henry’s and Hardee’s and Red Barn and Royal Castle.
And it provided powerful fodder as Harry made the rounds of finance partners to line up the initial public offering. Financial analysts might be skeptical about the fifteen-cent hamburger game, but they were dazzled by this company’s skilled use of mass media. This made the difference between a locally operated hamburger “joint” and a brand that could conquer the universe—or, at least, fly high on the stock market.
WRC management cancelled the Bozo show in 1962, and the local McDonald’s franchisees, given their dependence on the clown as marketing tool, were frantic. Scott took it upon himself to invent a variation on the theme. He topped his head with a cardboard takeout tray and covered his nose with a McDonald’s cup, giving birth to the world’s “newest and most hamburger-eatingest clown.” A local ad agency proposed calling this new character “Archie McDonald.” But that happened to be the name of a local sportscaster. Willard, in a pinch, rhymed an alternative—“Ronald”—and began making appearances under that name. A half million dollars’ worth of ads featuring the happy clown caused sales at the stores in the region to skyrocket 30 percent. For a brief time, the new character even rated his very own TV show.
Ronald McDonald became such a hit in Washington, D.C., that the local franchisee offered up the character to corporate, for free, in the spirit of helping their fellow operators. Getting the mascot out there in other cities would hammer home the message that McDonald’s was a national phenomenon. Besides, the original McDonald’s mascot needed updating. The Speedee character invented by Dick and Mac had never translated from signs outside the stores and print ads, not to mention its identity crisis. Was he a chef or an animated hamburger? Worse, people confused it with another Speedy—an anthropomorphized tablet that advertised Alka-Seltzer.
That tricky problem didn’t convince the new corporate marketing man to give the clown a try, though. PR agent Max Cooper was so dazzled by his client that he’d left his firm in the hands of Al Golin so that he could take a job in-house as the company’s first marketing director. (Ben Burns returned to journalism, confessing that PR flacking had never been a good fit for him.) Urban sophisticate that he was, Cooper pooh-poohed the use of the character. But then Ray persuaded Harry to buy up the franchisee’s sixteen stores, and they inherited Ronald anyway.
—
The escalating conflict in Vietnam, increased defense spending to fight it, cuts in income taxes, a looming steel strike, and President Johnson’s gallbladder surgery all contributed to a roller-coastering stock market in 1965. It spiked, then crashed, and before it recovered, even the Federal Reserve Board chairman hinted at the perilous parallels of the market to the doomsday crash of 1929. Amid this dramatic backdrop, Harry was poised and ready for the stock market debut of McDonald’s, the first time a fast-food concern had gone public. Ray called them “hamburger stands,” but Harry preferred the more august description of their business as “drive-in self-service restaurants.” The risk-averse financial types tabled their reservations about buying into the chain on April 21, 1965, when shares began to trade on the over-the-counter market. A single share of stock debuted in the initial public offering at $22.50 and, by the end of the day, had zoomed up to $30. By the end of the week, it had reached $36. Investors who had never heard of McDonald’s were scrambling to buy in, certain that they’d turn around and sell their shares for a profit the next day. It was a repeat of the Florida land grab, except that this time, Ray was the biggest winner.
Just how big was almost impossible to grasp. In an instant, he, Harry, and June morphed from underpaid executives at a faltering chain of hamburger stands to multimillionaires at the helm of Wall Street’s darling: Ray, age sixty-three, suddenly found himself with $3 million in cash and a net worth on paper of over $33 million. Harry’s 20 percent stake meant he was now worth close to $10 million. June, with her 10 percent ownership, found herself with a little over $5 million in stock in her possession. She was so proud and dazzled by these numbers that she suggested posting the daily closing stock price at the counter of each store. Not that the average McDonald’s customer—the average American—held individual stocks themselves, much less followed the markets.
The offices the elevator man referred to as “Hamburger Heaven” were now imbued with a new patina of legitimacy. Harry celebrated by redecorating and, as a connoisseur of fine art, even bought a Renoir to hang on the wall.
The stock’s sensational ascent continued. By the end of the year, the price of a share had more than doubled, to $49. Not long after, the stock split, three shares to two. In July 1966, Harry pushed to move the McDonald’s listing to the more prestigious New York Stock Exchange. For dramatic flourish, he had burgers sent onto the trading floor and posed for photos with the exchange president as they hungrily chomped them down. Real estate and creative financing were the backbone of the business, but Harry had finally learned the power of clever messaging.
While McDonald’s was being heralded for orchestrating “the greatest growth in the history of the restaurant business,” Ray, befuddled by the business of high finance and still peeved at Harry, was off with Jane on a six-week cruise. He brought along notebooks to jot down his not-so-meteoric rise from cup salesman to burger king. Perhaps it would be fodder for a memoir someday.
They’d soon take another vacation in California that would expand their horizons even more.
—
Happy Canyon Road twists and ribbons past an endless procession of majestic white oaks and digger pines in the rolling hills of the Santa Ynez Valley until it delivers the traveler to the entrance of the Los Padres National Forest. Area lore has it that this narrow stretch earned its name during Prohibition, as home to the spot where locals could buy alcohol. This rustic region off an old stagecoach route northeast of Santa Barbara was famous for its cattle and horse ranches, and a curious facsimile of a Danish village called Solvang, Danish for “sunny fields,” where windmills tilted in the breeze and the sweet scent of freshly baked strudel wafted from bakeries that looked plucked straight from Scandinavia. Up the road, the tourist-friendly Pea Soup Andersen’s purveyed three-quarters of a million bowls of the elixir each year to travelers heading between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
When the newly mega-rich Ray and Jane arrived at the hotel at the posh ten-thousand-acre Alisal Ranch for some rest and relaxation, it was only natural Ray would be drawn to the piano in the lounge. While contemplating his newfound fortune, he joined the on-duty pianist for some casual duets. Flush with more cash than he could ever have imagined, and intoxicated by the landscape, Ray couldn’t resist when he learned of a 210-acre ranch for sale. He called his lawyer and told him to buy it—and to pay the asking price of $600,000—no negotiation. Jane explained to her relatives that her husband had hit the jackpot. Money was no object, and it never would be again.
To mark the territory, three flags were hoisted up flagpoles at the entrance to the property: the stars and stripes, the California state flag, and a third that proudly displayed the distinctive McDonald’s “M” formed by golden arches. Cows of many colors roamed serenely amid Arabian horses and golden retrievers, as Ray had the land built out to his specifications. He dubbed the place “The J and R Double Arch Ranch.”
The name reflected his dual vision for the property. The ranch would serve not only as a personal refuge for him and the Mrs., but as a corporate retreat—a reward, perhaps, to the best employees. There was little division between his personal and professional life, anyhow. A sprawling property in cattle country meant McDonald’s could now conduct experiments involving the key ingredient for McDonald’s food: beef.
June’s husband, Louis, had already established another research facility for the company, in Addison, Illinois, where he and a team of engineers tested new equipment with which to expedite cooking. As the chain continued to multiply in size, centralized mass production of food—the prefab food Ray dismissed as garbage—was becoming necessary to ensure continuity. Making fries using Mac’s formula, store by store, was a time-consuming burden. Just gathering enough of the necessary potatoes year-round required deals with 175 different farms—not to mention the elaborate curing process necessary to achieve the desired crispy result. To ease the burden and ensure consistency from store to store, Ray commissioned a frozen French fry from a food scientist turned franchisee in Wisconsin, Edward Traisman. He had under his belt another indispensible invention, a bright yellow cheese sauce in a jar with an improbably long shelf life, Cheez Whiz. With a coinventor, Traisman had patented his frozen fry formula, which was currently being rolled out to the stores. Even the Multimixer, the staple device that had sustained Ray’s existence for decades, was being phased out at McDonald’s in favor of milk shake mix. Employees couldn’t be trusted to reliably measure and prepare shakes the old way.
Convincing critics that McDonald’s food was top quality had been hard enough when it was made from the freshest local ingredients. These new developments raised the eyebrows of nutritionists ever more skeptically. What was the fat content of those hamburgers? What about those fries? What impact did this food, much less all those commercial messages, have on kids? Having the hot stock on Wall Street made them rich, but with it came the downside of increased public scrutiny and criticism, which Ray dismissed as bunk. “What do all those nutritionists and college professors . . . know?” he would say. “How many jobs have they ever created?” It became clear to Ray’s advisors that their founding chairman couldn’t be held to the press simply as an example of a man who made it rich after years of uncertain toil. He had to be rich, and benevolent, too. And so, the goodwill PR strategy deployed so efficiently on a local level was put to use in service of the boss. Ray began strategically and publicly gifting slices of his new fortune to charitable concerns, usually ones focused on children, zoos and hospitals and planetariums. To further maximize the benefits of the ranch as a tax deduction, his advisors suggested that Ray start a formal foundation, to be headquartered on the property’s grounds.
As its chief, Ray turned to his only brother, Bob. The two men had hardly talked in years. Though Ray had twice dropped out of high school, Bob had earned a bachelor’s and a master’s from Oberlin College, and a PhD in zoology and physiology from the University of Wisconsin. He’d taught for a while at Indiana University, and then shifted from academia to the more lucrative pharmaceutical business. While his brother was concerned with matters like finding the perfect portable dessert to serve at his chain of drive-ins, Bob was directing the physiology department at Warner Lambert, leading teams that developed pioneering drugs involving the hormone relaxin. There was a common trait in their genetic matter: fastidiousness. Once, Bob had dispatched a polite, typewritten missive to his favorite shoemaker, Allen-Edmonds, asking what to do about the stains metal eyelets made in his white buckskins. In short order, he’d be dashing off a letter to anyone who neglected to capitalize the word “The” when referring to the foundation.
Ray indeed gave his brother carte blanche in how he’d dispense the money he’d earmarked to help humanity’s greater good. That he was giving was more important than to what. Bob took his assignment seriously, plunging into due diligence with scientific precision and zeal, quizzing leaders at other foundations about the particulars of philanthropy and researching how other enormously wealthy families, like the Rockefellers and Astors, had decided to gift their fortunes. He concluded that the best way to spend the funds in The Ray A. Kroc Foundation was on medical research around diseases that plagued their family. Since diabetes and arthritis had impacted Ray, Bob focused on funding research and convening conferences of scientists involved with those diseases, and then expanded to include the study of multiple sclerosis, with which their sister, Lorraine, had been diagnosed.
The scholarly, scientific nature of the work was so impressive that soon Bob was fending off overtures from the PR men, who were inquiring about how they might co-opt Ray’s philanthropic work as a promotional tool for McDonald’s. Brother Bob pushed back, warning against the pitfalls of Ray’s personal foundation seeming like some sort of “tax loophole” for his business. It wasn’t right, Bob believed, to use Ray’s charitable contributions in such a way. Besides, he added, “we are constantly trying to avoid the McDonald’s label.” This was Ray’s charity, not the company’s.
The locals watched the unfolding action on this serene stretch of Happy Canyon Road with curious amusement. Their whispered fears soon became neighborhood legend: This McDonald’s man planned to build a structure on the highest point of the property that would resemble a gigantic hamburger. In the fall of 1968, the upscale design magazine Architectural Digest took those who didn’t rate an invitation inside with a fourteen-page spread that showed off some of the unique features of the J and R Double Arch Ranch: An elegantly appointed fifteen-room guest lodge. A state-of-the-art cattle barn boasting air-conditioning, piped-in music, and automatic sanitation. A dining room that could seat a hundred and be easily converted for use as a ballroom or movie theater. Custom-made chandeliers. In the 3,500-square-foot living room, a 28-foot faux fur sofa created a conversation pit in front of a fireplace constructed from a hundred tons of native stone. A buffet-style kitchen allowed guests to serve themselves from available snacks at any time of day. The grounds featured two helicopter pads and an equal number of swimming pools. Entry doors hand-carved by a local artist lent a hint of erudition to the place, with panels that featured abstractions of cells, chromosomes, and Einstein’s famous equation, e=MC2—a design flourish that only scientist Bob could have dreamed up.
But the ultimate feature of the ranch was Ray’s pride and joy, the automated bar, a functional work of art, boasting an icemaker and twelve spigots that allowed guests round-the-clock access to an endless flow of beverages, including, of course, Early Times, as well as gin and vodka, all dispensed handily in 1.5-ounce shots at “the touch of a glass.” Those glasses came from Tiffany, courtesy of Waddy Pratt, McDonald’s grateful supplier of Coca-Cola. The bar was a perfect contraption for the glamorous parties Ray and Jane convened on the ranch grounds.
—
Despite the luxurious finishes on his exquisite property, the beautiful wife, the public acclaim, the limitless pools of cash, the pleasure in having made so many other people rich—despite the delight in giving money away and the accolades that followed, and despite his acclaim in the media as a kingmaker and captain of industry—Ray’s heart remained bereft. He tried his hand at entering the upscale restaurant market with two fancy burger places in Beverly Hills and Chicago, dubbed, with an exotic twist on his name, Ramon’s. His bids to buy Baskin-Robbins, Taco Bell, and Marie Callender’s bakeries failed, as did his sandwich creation of pineapple on a bun called the Hula Burger. He tinkered with a new project named for his wife—Jane Dobbins Pie Shops—hiring as its chief renowned pastry chef Boston Strause, innovator of the graham cracker crust and chiffon pie. (Another fizzle.) He seriously entertained the idea of building an amusement park, and even offered the actor Fess Parker $50 million to buy into one he had planned. (After Parker’s lawyer interfered, Ray killed the deal.)
His marriage was fine enough, but life with Jane lacked luster. He’d bought her a convertible and she’d wondered why it must have the golden arches logo, already ubiquitous in their lives, affixed to its bumper. Ray erupted in a fury. Jane just didn’t love the business the way he did. Even worse, Ray swallowed bitterly, he just didn’t love Jane the way he loved Joan.
Once, Joan even called to ask if he was happy. “Yes,” he blurted out, and hung up the phone.
But the truth was that he’d never stopped loving her, and knew he never would.
—
Though her official title after the McDonald’s public offering had become treasurer, June Martino found herself, in the two years since she’d become a multimillionaire, just as frequently inhabiting her unofficial role as the company’s vice president of equilibrium. The scrappy start-up days were history, when the devoted triumvirate of Ray, Harry, and June would talk shop for hours on end in Ray’s living room in Arlington Heights. They’d been so close then. In those early years, they’d collectively bought a beer garden on Chicago’s South Side, called Hottinger’s, and all pitched in to run it. There’d never been any doubt that they were marching together toward the same goal, and that each was making an important contribution to achieve it. The doubts had to do not with one another, but with whether McDonald’s would survive.
Now, the nail-biting revolved around the deepening fissure between Harry and Ray. The two men were at such odds they wouldn’t even speak to each other. To communicate, they relied on their trusted colleague with finesse for smoothing ruffled feathers and a natural aptitude for seeing all sides of an argument—especially involving two men she admired equally.
In his capacity as president and chief executive of the corporation he’d taken public, Harry began stepping onto the public stage he once happily ceded to Ray. As president of a business that revolved around “arches,” he’d been invited to appear in St. Louis at the groundbreaking ceremony for the 630-foot stainless steel sculpture, about to get under way, known as the Gateway Arch. Inspired by the tremendous success of local advertising, he signed off on the company’s national debut, a $75,000 sponsorship of the vaunted Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, hosted by Betty White and Lorne Greene. Max Cooper tabled his disdain of Ronald McDonald and pushed to deploy him, but Harry vetoed the idea of making the company’s national television debut with a clown. Instead, a high school band from New Jersey was enlisted to carry an enormous drum wrapped with the company logo, never mind that displaying logos was in strict defiance of the parade’s rules. For the first time, franchisees were asked to contribute to a national fund, a crucial step in brand building. Harry loved the fanfare and the results so much that he authorized spending $170,000 for a McDonald’s ad to run in the debut Super Bowl a few months later, which came with an added bonus of a few extra spots to run on Saturday morning cartoons—the better to appeal to those crucial customers, children.
By the next Thanksgiving, Max Cooper had prevailed and casting began for the role of Ronald McDonald. Willard Scott was deemed unfit to take his big idea national. Instead, a veteran circus clown named Michael Polakovs made his debut in the part in a taped commercial. Soon enough, fifty Ronalds would be cast to fan out across the nation. The PR team kicked into high gear to promote their arrival.
—
Fierce battles erupted as Ray and Harry clashed over whether to raise the price of a hamburger from its long-standing fifteen cents to eighteen (Ray was in favor, and Harry opposed) and how many new stores to add (Ray favored an aggressive growth strategy, while Harry pushed for measured, deliberate expansion). Ray felt Harry cared too much about catering to the financial set, while his own concern was in bolstering the reach of his product by opening more stores. As the standoff intensified, it was only natural that the now three floors’ worth of employees at 221 North LaSalle would take sides with one man or the other. Regardless of President Harry’s title, financial acumen, and supporters in the corporate boardroom, it was also only natural that with Ray’s controlling stock, it was he who would prevail. There wasn’t enough room for the two of them anymore. And so, the man who saved the business from almost certain oblivion and then catapulted it to unimagined heights succumbed and tendered his resignation. Ray promised him a severance of $100,000 a year.
Because he knew Ray was unconcerned about Wall Street, Harry feared he would proceed to run the company into the ground. So the outgoing president sold what stock he had remaining, cashing out with about twelve million dollars. He picked up and moved full-time to a 14,000-square-foot estate he built for his second wife, Aloyis, in her home state of Alabama, where he indulged his passion for collecting historic signatures (of such varied figures as George Washington and Adolf Hitler), original historic documents (a formidable collection of state constitutions), and jade. For his passionate involvement in historic preservation, Lincoln College in Illinois awarded him an honorary degree of humane letters in June 1968. Though his severance checks continued, Harry confessed he was dubious about the growing footprint of the company he’d masterminded. As he walked along a bucolic stream where he was vacationing in Germany, an errant McDonald’s cup polluted his view.
—
In order to assert his position, Ray decided that his secretary/treasurer, unofficially known as vice president of equilibrium, had to go, too. June’s unlikely rise to success in a chauvinist company couldn’t save her now. The fact that she admired and supported Harry equally as she did Ray made her, in Ray’s estimation, a liability as he worked to reestablish total authority. June also received the promise of a $100,000 annual pension, even as her share of the stock continued to multiply to $50 million. Her exit didn’t mean she was in Ray’s doghouse; she was invited to join the board of directors of McDonald’s in 1969, and served on the honorary board for the rest of her life. Eventually, she moved to Florida, where she built a spectacular waterfront home in Palm Beach and immersed herself in civic and philanthropic causes.
With the men whose name and toil had invented the business gone, and so, too, the brains and the soul of McDonald’s, Ray, with his abundant confidence and courage, now had the control he wanted. At least, professionally speaking.
—
Time marched on for Joan in Wretched City. Slowly. She joined the board of the local library, where she rubbed elbows with the wealthiest and most civic-minded people in town. Putting food on the table was no longer a concern. Rollie had done so well with his first two stores that he was granted the right to open two more, one on the north side of Rapid and the other up in Manitoba, as part of the company’s expansion into Canada. With his success, he’d been able to join the Arrowhead Country Club, where he played round after round of golf. Up in the clubhouse, Joan sat behind the keyboard for hours, encouraging anyone who could to sing along and give voice to her music. (She knew her limits; she couldn’t hold a tune.) From time to time she’d make an appearance at other pianos around town. Admirers dispensed the highest praise: She was so good, she “played like a man.”
Her daughter, Linda, finished high school at an Episcopal boarding school back in Minnesota. When she enrolled in college, the Smiths decided to move closer to downtown. Over the years, two floods had swelled Lime Creek in front of their home to overflowing, pushing water and mud into the family home on 38th Street. Flush now with cash, Joan and Rollie traded up for a swank floor-through condo at the newly constructed seven-story Dahl Towers, with views in every direction and parties that quickly became local legend. Most mornings, Joan would rise early, throw a coat over her robe, light up a cigarette, and take her dog for a stroll in the neighborhood, chatting up local teenagers heading to school as she meandered to pick up a pastry at the grocery store.
She befriended the madman sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski, whose obsessive vision was to carve the side of a mountain not far from Rushmore with a face that in his estimation was more important than (or at least as important as) that of the presidents, the Native American warrior Crazy Horse. Joan shared a rebellious streak with the artist’s wife, Ruth, who’d defied her father’s wishes by moving clear across the country from Connecticut to marry this older, burly man with a seemingly unattainable dream. Joan balanced her interest in the arts with support of commerce, as a frequent customer at Haggerty’s department store at the Baken Park Shopping Center, where clerks were familiar with her affection for fancy Vanity Fair sleepwear and lingerie.
In the seven years since her aborted attempt to marry Ray, she’d made peace with Wretched City, or at least had stopped warring with it. But then, an invitation arrived in the mail from corporate to attend the 1968 Western Regional Operators’ meeting on Coronado Island, California, just outside San Diego. The lavish meetings were becoming legendary among franchisees. When she saw Ray listed as keynote speaker, Joan didn’t hesitate to RSVP yes.
—
Wherever he went, Ray carried a three-ring binder into which his secretary inserted the daily sales performance numbers at each of the McDonald’s outposts. He’d pore over the figures with the attention a biblical scholar would give the Scripture. Only a few years ago, a thousand stores had seemed a preposterous dream. Yet he’d just marked the opening of that milestone store, arriving in a chauffeur-driven limo for the ribbon cutting, outfitted in splendor for the occasion in black tie. (Jane stepped out adorned in a mink stole.) There had been a time when he needed no reminder of the names of his franchisees, or the sequential numbers of their stores, nor of their spouses’ or their children’s names. Nothing made him feel more like a titan of the business world than on Christmas Day, when he would sit and call three hundred owners, spending a minute on the phone with each of these participants in his hamburger empire. They were happy to have even a word with the man who’d made them rich. Now, with so many stores up and running, the pages provided a necessary cheat sheet.
Life thrummed on with lows and highs. His dear companion Art Trygg, who’d dutifully produced a monthly newsletter and ferried the boss around, passed away. McDonald’s stock split again. Ray had a new driver who was preparing the Rolls-Royce to squire him from his home in Beverly Hills down to the convention. He’d been asked to give a speech. When he perused the roster of registered attendants, the names leaped off the page: Rollie and Joan Smith from Rapid City.
—
The Smiths arrived in California attended by a chaperone: Joan’s mother. Mrs. Mansfield felt it was “like throwing gasoline on the fire” for her daughter to be in the same state, much less the same convention hall, as Ray. Warily, she accompanied Joan and Rollie to a small pre-convention dinner hosted by the big boss, hoping to keep her daughter out of trouble. Just as he’d been struck by Joan’s loveliness a dozen years before, he now found himself overcome by a wave of emotion at the sight of his blond beauty. It had been six years since they’d last seen each other, they each maintained. The rest of the group was amused by his flirty command to Joan to sit by him, while he admonished Rollie to stay on the other end of the table. After the meal was over, drink in hand, Ray delivered an impromptu speech.
“I’ve attained everything in life I’ve ever wanted except one thing,” he declared. Only Joan, and her husband and mother, could decipher this cryptic message. The “thing” missing from his life was right there, beside him.
Eager to keep the party going, Ray had a piano brought up to his suite for after-dinner drinks and music, and bellowed select guests to join him, the Smiths among them. They obeyed, and up in the room, Joan beelined for the keyboard. She and Ray were soon lost in song, and an exasperated Rollie excused himself. Fred Turner, who’d witnessed their first meeting, observed with amusement how hard Ray was working now to win her. One log after another burned on the fire, and the night became the wee hours of the morning. Now it was Ray’s chauffeur’s turn to function as a chaperone, though he fell asleep on the couch. At four a.m., an angry phone call from her husband beckoned Joan home.
A few hours later, with his head spinning “like a top out of control,” Ray resorted to a cocktail of eyewash and Alka-Seltzer and aspirin to fortify him to deliver his opening remarks. He made his way to a ballroom full of devotees and scanned the crowd for evidence of his beloved. Neither she, nor Rollie, nor Mrs. Mansfield was there.
—
The mood aboard the private yacht was festive and celebratory as it glided along the stately, snug Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale. Champagne flowed and caviar was served; a band played at an upbeat tempo befitting the occasion. Ray and Jane were soon to set sail on a large ship that would take them on a round-the-world cruise in celebration of their fifth wedding anniversary. Senior executives of McDonald’s had flown with their wives to Florida to attend this lavish bon voyage party. Ray loved being around the boys, his boys, the men in the constellation of McDonald’s who revered him. Any chance for them to fête the man responsible for their fortunes was one they eagerly seized.
Tonight, though, Ray’s mind was anywhere but here. Nor was he focused on the months-long itinerary before him: Acapulco. The Panama Canal. Hong Kong. He’d rationalized with himself that he could make it, at least part of the way, but the more he considered what it would be like to be cooped up on a ship with Jane for weeks on end, he knew he could never last his way out of the harbor.
As the merriment unfolded around them, Ray asked for a private word with his lawyer. Off to the side, he let him in on a secret: He wanted a divorce, and even poor, unsuspecting Jane wasn’t aware of her husband’s intentions. Ray tasked the man with breaking the news to her on the spot, and laying out the terms of the deal to end the marriage: She could keep the house and the $3 million in cash in their bank account, and, if she didn’t contest the terms, her family could continue to operate their McDonald’s units without interruption.
It didn’t take long for the news to spread and cast a pall over the occasion. Revelers circled Mrs. Kroc to console her as she wept. The trip was off. The marriage was over. Her husband had left her. Literally. Ray had vanished from the party without saying a word. His driver had spirited him away to the next chapter of his life.
—
That chapter began back in Las Vegas, where Ray and Joan returned in order to establish the required residency of six weeks necessary for them to obtain divorces. They chose as their temporary accommodation the luxurious Riviera Hotel, the city’s first high-rise built during the fifties boom years of the town. Each of them loved to play cards, and Ray’s wealth subsidized the indulgence. Ever conservative, Ray felt it necessary to explain to his lawyer that his relationship with Joan had been, up to that point, chaste, and that they had taken separate rooms until they could be legally married.
By February 21, 1969, the court had decreed Joan and Rollie’s marriage officially over. A week later, Ray and Jane’s bonds of matrimony had been dissolved, too. Among executives at McDonald’s, in service of illustrating the big boss’s fairness and honor, the story circulated that Ray insisted Joan send her wardrobe back to Rollie. It was one thing to take another man’s wife, but it was another to allow her to keep belongings that man had worked hard to buy.
Untethered, Ray and Joan headed back to California, stopping in at the Santa Barbara County courthouse to register for a marriage license. On their application, Joan listed her occupation as “unemployed.”
Two days later, in front of the great stone fireplace at the J and R Double Arch Ranch, they were united as husband and wife. The groom wore a tux, the bride, her hair elegantly swept in an updo, a pale pink suit—the perfect complement to her new eleven-carat heart-shaped pink diamond. The newlyweds embraced while clutching cocktail glasses.
The “J” now stood for Joan, the bride Ray had actually wanted all along. And Joan was no longer without work. She had a new job now. She was Mrs. Ray Kroc.