by Anne Edwards
“Oh, Louella, won’t you mention me.
For a movie star in Hollywood, that’s what I want to be.”
This was followed by a screen short (“not short enough,” complained Variety’s Pat Kelly) of Parsons and the tour group being given a star send-off in Hollywood with the likes of Deanna Durbin, Errol Flynn, Sonja Henie, Tyrone Power, Eleanor Powell, Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney and the Lane Sisters all wishing her well. The added “treat” of the show was Parsons dictating and tele typing her daily column. A teletype machine was set up onstage. First Parsons pulled strips of paper from the machine and read off “breathless tidbits, such as William Powell and Ginger Rogers had been seen holding hands… and Mickey Rooney’s real age [two years older than the studio biography].” Then, from a prop telephone she “talked” to Charlie Chaplin and Claudette Colbert. Finally, she interviewed the members of her group “and told them how she had predicted stardom for each and every one of them, and they all seemed so grateful… when the gushing stopped… the stars themselves went into their different turns, the show, with a few possible exceptions, got back on its feet and headed in the right direction.”
Variety found “Ronald Reagan very personable, deft and obviously at home on a stage. [He] is in and out of the act throughout, talking with Lolly [Parsons], kidding with the girls, and doing brief comedy sketches with Jane Wyman and Susan Hay-ward.”
Wyman, the San Francisco Chronicle noted, “looked exceptionally beautiful, got into a silly argument with Ronald Reagan which brought titters from the audience… Susan Hayward clowned nicely through a corny murder scene with Reagan.” These acts were followed by “Joy Hodges, who ably demonstrates her good voice with a torchy ‘Day-in, Day-out’… Arleen Whelan… who sings, ‘South American Way’ with mild undulations of her trim torso, and finally, the hit of the show—little June Preisser who has… more talent than all the others with her song and dance routine. From the standpoint of audience approval she is the brightest of the stars. The salvo she gets is prolonged, spontaneous and deserved; whereas the applause for some of the others is but the conventional polite acknowledgment tendered all celebs and visiting firemen by generous San Francisco audiences.… It [the tour] may go big, but as it looked at its opening stand, it’s nothing to stand in line for—and nobody did.”
Parsons had chartered a plane to take the group east to their next engagement at the Earle in Philadelphia. They flew all night through a blinding snowstorm and finally were forced down in Chicago, proceeding by train from there. Reagan had never flown before and he vowed he would never do so again.* (“Dutch kept everyone singing until we finally fell asleep. He was a rock,” Hodges recalls of the flight.) In Philadelphia the act was tightened, and Parsons traded in her mink for a smart, dark suit. This time they followed five lady jugglers in gold metal cloth with phosphorescent hoops and dumbbells, and two acrobats—an Amazonian woman, six feet six inches, and a male dwarf, three feet eight inches, dressed in identical black velvet ensembles. The group’s East Coast reception was more rewarding. They played to full houses and were individually cheered and plagued for autographs. The Earle Theatre was forced to employ extra security personnel to protect the visitors from their “too-enthusiastic admirers.”
Except for Reagan, Wyman and Joy Hodges, The Hollywood Stars did not fraternize much offstage. Hodges had been married on September 2 to Gilbert H. Doorly, a newspaper executive on his father’s paper, the Omaha World Herald, but had returned to Hollywood to finish her Universal contract commitments.* “Dutch was always the ‘Father Figure’ with the group,” she says. “Anything that went wrong we turned to him. He was always patient with everybody.… He and Jane were very much in love and she was concerned with the way Susan Hayward beat him up in their little scene on stage. Dutch thought it was funny and the audience loved it. Dutch was our Master of Ceremonies.”
On the one free day in Washington, D.C., where they were appearing at the Capitol Theatre, Reagan talked Wyman and Hodges into accompanying him to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home—a long drive for performers who had been doing four shows a day. Hodges recalled how eager Reagan was to go there and how fascinated with everything he was once there—“especially with Washington’s personal writing desk.” (Wyman later had a replica of it made for Reagan’s study.)
The tour ended the second week in January. Wyman and Reagan had set the date, January 26, for their wedding, and Parsons had insisted the reception be at her home. They applied for their license and were married at the Wee Kirk O’Heather Church in Glendale by Reverend C. Kleihauer (a powerful speaker and a nationally recognized church leader), pastor of the Hollywood-Beverly Christian Church,† Of the family, Jack, Nelle, Moon and Bessie were present, as were Emma Fulks and Elsie Wyatt. Bill Cook, one of Reagan’s TEKE friends, was best man. Mrs. Wayne Morris and Mrs. Erving (Betty) Kaplan were bridesmaids, and Elsie was matron of honor. The plans after the wedding were for the newlyweds to move into Jane’s apartment in a terraced building overlooking Sunset Strip only three blocks from Reagan’s bachelor bungalow. Apartment 5, 1326 Londonderry View, had a sensational view, private entrance, two bedrooms and a maid’s room and bath (which Reagan turned into an office). The wedding photographs made the newlyweds look like paper-doll cutouts. Reagan had his hair slicked into place, a white carnation was poked into the lapel of his dark-blue suit, a white handkerchief folded in overlapping triangles protruded from his breast pocket. Wyman wore a pale-blue satin princess-style gown, and a mink hat that perched at a saucy angle with a bridal veil uniquely reversed into a huge bow at the back of it. A mink muff covered in orchids completed her wedding ensemble. In the excitement of the exchange of vows, they forgot the traditional bridal kiss.
They were the last guests to leave their reception and drove off for their honeymoon in Palm Springs in a new car, Reagan having given (or sold to) Moon the convertible. Moon had been managing station WOC when he got the idea that what films needed was a second Reagan, and he and Bessie had taken off for California, burning all their bridges behind them. An irreversible pattern had set in between the brothers. Reagan held the dominant position. But it was not as though Moon walked in his shadow. Reagan respected Moon’s opinion and liked to have him near at hand.
To those fascinated with the lives of film stars, the Wyman-Reagan marriage was a fairy-tale affair. Reagan had all the attributes of an American hero—a young man with ideals who treated women (mother, bride and leading ladies) reverently. Wyman was a divorcee, a free-wheeling liberated woman. The public, Parsons and the general press assumed the “hotcha” blonde had been redeemed, that what was required for a happy ending, and perhaps salvation, was a stalwart, old-fashioned American husband.
Rain fell during most of the honeymoon, disrupting the groom’s plans to teach his wife to swim and for them to play golf (one of Wyman’s hobbies). Nonetheless, the future appeared sunny. Both husband and wife had careers that were going forward. The Depression was over, leaving the country and Americans bound closer than ever. The war in Europe, although building with a terrible ferocity, still seemed distant. Despite the rain, the Reagans should have been in a euphoric state. Wyman later claimed that she, at least, was not, having suddenly realized that the man she had just married was obsessed, not by her but by the insidious climate of evil he saw encroaching from two directions—Europe on the one hand, and Communist forces in the United States on the other.
* Although Reagan has recorded vivid memories of this date, Turner claimed she could not even recall it. Hollywood columns at that time did, however, record that they attended the premiere together, verifying Reagan’s statements. The studio thought Reagan and Turner might be a good publicity item and a series of photographs was taken of them together the following week. But they never saw each other socially again (at least not as a dating couple).
* Reagan is referring to the period of time between pictures when Warners did not have to pay him his weekly salary.
* In 1980, Ila Rhodes, w
ho was married to a Brazilian industrialist, claimed she had been engaged to Reagan for eight months during 1938-39. Reagan refused to comment. Other close friends of Rhodes at that time say that they knew nothing about an engagement. Friends of Reagan say he dated Rhodes, but not exclusively.
* Hollywood biographies state he had been mayor of St. Joseph, which is incorrect.
* Parentheses indicate date of general release.
† One of the most ridiculous bits of film censorship occurred during the filming of Secret Service of the Air when Warners was asked (and complied) to cut a scene (page ninety-seven of the script) in which Reagan entered a hallway that contained a door marked REST ROOM.
* “Tracy was born to play this part,” Casey Robinson, the writer of the screenplay, memoed to Hal Wallis on August 9, 1938. “And of course I don’t need to tell you what the combination of the names of Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy on the marquee would do to the box office.” Basil Rathbone made a test for the role that was so bad, he wrote Warner: “Would you either let me have [the test] or destroy it yourself…”
† The others were Knute Rockne, Kings Row and The Hasty Heart, which was his biggest-budget film, $1.25 million, at Warner Brothers.
* Reagan was for the idea of a third term for Roosevelt. In October 1986, he publicly endorsed the idea of no limit on presidential terms. “The people should be able to vote for whoever they wish,” he said at a Republican fund-raising event.
† The baby in the film was Peter B. Good and the child had a dummy for a stand-in. Elsa Maxwell, famous for her parties given for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, hosted a publicity party for Warners in honor of Peter B. Good at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel preceding the premiere. The invitations noted: “Free parking for tricycles and scooters.” Peter B. Good was anything but pleased—he was brought screaming into the room and left, still screaming, fifteen minutes later.
* Hayward had recently been featured in Beau Geste, Preisser in Babes in Arms and Whelan in Young Mr. Lincoln.
* For many years after, Reagan suffered a traumatic fear of flying. Only late in his life did he overcome it.
“Hodges’s first marriage was not successful and lasted less than two years. A second marriage to Eugene Scheiss has been a long and happy union.
† The Reagans took formal membership in the Hollywood-Beverly Christian Church on May 12, 1940. The church had a membership of approximately seventeen hundred and was considered to be “a fairly liberal main-line congregation.”
10
BECAUSE HE AND JANE LIKED GOLF, REAGAN Applied for membership (by coincidence at the same time as Jack Warner) to the Lakeside Country Club, located in North Hollywood a short distance from the studio. The Reagans were accepted; Warner was not. Reagan asked another member how this could have happened. Lakeside catered to Gentiles, he was told. “You’re anti-Semitic!” Reagan accused. “You’re damn right we’re anti-Semitic,” was the reply. Reagan resigned. Another member claims that Lakeside did have some Jewish members and that Warner was rejected because so many of his employees belonged to Lakeside “and we [didn’t] want him looking over our shoulder and saying the next day, ‘Why weren’t you at work?’“ Warner was known for his right-wing political views and his tactless sense of humor (when introduced to Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the wife of the Chinese Nationalist leader, he had muttered, “Too bad I forgot my laundry!”) and is reported to have commented on Reagan’s defiance of Lakeside’s intolerance, “So what? How soon [would it have been] before they found out his grandfather was Moishe Rosen, the delicatessen man?” By now, Reagan and Warner had more than a nodding acquaintance. Both Jane and Reagan referred to him as “Boss”; he called them “Ron” and “Janie,” or “you kids.” But the relationship never left the studio. The Reagans were not part of Ann and Jack Warner’s social orbit. Warner, thinking of himself as a kindred spirit to William Randolph Hearst, made an annual trek to Europe with his wife, returning with so many antiques that associates named his Beverly Hills estate “San Simeonette.”
Many of Reagan’s early notes to Warner reflect a great deference. He admired Boss and tried earnestly to please him, and, indeed, did. Errol Flynn, on the other hand, looked at Warner as a ludicrous man and treated him gruffly. Enmity existed between these two men, but Flynn’s popularity kept Warner in line. Although Warner attempted the look of a leading man, his receding hairline, the long white-collared shirts tight around his short, stout neck, the even white-toothed smile that could fade in a flicker, the pin-striped suits gave him a comic look. He also had a sarcastic, juvenile sense of humor. In a restaurant he would often turn to the waiter with an ashtray from the table with the remark, “Here, take this back and have them put some more butter on it.” When he saw the French word poisson (for fish) on a menu, he would say, “So you serve poison here, eh?” When an interviewer asked, “I understand you’re quite a raconteur?” he replied, “That’s right, I play a hell of a game of tennis!” Nonetheless, Reagan’s stand in Warner’s favor and against anti-Semitism earned high marks from Warner, despite his flippant comment.
Ronald Reagan would never have knowingly joined any organization that ostracized a minority. His parents’ training was too ingrained. If the person denied membership on grounds of religion or color had been unknown to him, the odds are he would still have resigned. His fellow workers at Warners were as well aware of this as they were of his dedication to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This facet of his personality and his strong interest in labor convinced the left wing of Hollywood that Reagan was one of them. But there were many issues that the left wing supported and many ideologies with which they sympathized that made it impossible for Reagan ever to join their ranks.
An extraordinary misconception existed for many decades: that a film actor’s true self was revealed in the image onscreen, that he or she played the same role in life. A few stars—Garbo, Barrymore, Flynn, Monroe—did attempt to become the creature invented by studio publicists and executives, almost always with tragic results because the private being could never be completely put down. Reagan had more substance than the characters he played, and far from being the scatty blonde she appeared onscreen, Jane Wyman was an intelligent, ambitious woman who had a great need to be loved and perceived as a person of consequence. She believed she was an artist, not just a face on the screen. Even early in her career, when she was playing the smallest role, her directors claim she would ask a million questions about the character.
“Janie was always intent on making it,” one of her longtime friends said. “She never liked the dumb-blonde label. But she played it to the hilt—flashy clothes, heavy makeup at premieres, occasions when she was on display. At home, with friends, she was another person. Whenever there was enough time between films she would let her hair go back to its natural brown. I think she always felt she was playing a part when her hair was blond.… Jane was articulate—very. She cared about people—a lot. I think she saw Reagan as a father figure and she admired his mind. But, in private, she could also be just Sarah Jane with him. She cared about her home, liked to cook, loved animals and was the most loyal friend anyone could have. She had gone to school [in Los Angeles] with Betty Kaplan. Betty was always her best friend. Becoming a film star never changed that.”
After his resignation at Lakeside, the Reagans joined the Hill-crest Country Club in Beverly Hills, not far from Twentieth Century-Fox studios. Hillcrest had a large Jewish membership, with many top film names included. At Hillcrest the Reagans became friendly with other golf-loving celebrities—Jack Benny and his wife Mary Livingstone, and George Burns and Gracie Allen among them. Their life as a couple began to take shape. They often drove to Warners together and worked together when the studio cast them in An Angel from Texas (based on the George S. Kaufman play The Butter and Egg Man). Reagan received fifth billing beneath Eddie Albert, Wayne Morris, Rosemary Lane and Wyman, who played his wife. Somewhat amusing, the film was too lightweight to get much critical attention, and once again Reagan�
�s role as a straight man to Morris did nothing to advance his career.
Wyman had been an active member of the Screen Actors Guild for several years before her marriage to Reagan, helping on committees whenever she could. Her involvement brought Reagan into a closer affiliation with, and interest in, SAG activities. They attended SAG open meetings, played golf at the club on Saturdays, attended church and had the older Reagans for dinner on Sundays. Moon, too, was intent on an acting career. ‘After the easy way I got in, I had the idea crashing the movies was a cinch,” Reagan told a reporter in 1939. “Right away I tried to help a lot of others [his friends from TEKE] do the same thing, and I found I couldn’t even get a pass to allow a friend to visit the studio.” He did manage to get Moon through the front gate and elicited a promise from Bryan Foy that he would try Moon out in one or two small roles. Moon and Bess had rented an apartment in a bungalow court on Chantilly Drive, four doors south of Beverly Boulevard and Nelle and Jack, now lived nearby at 9031 Phyllis Avenue, in a small but comfortable house with their own backyard and front porch.
Jane had not had as easy an entree into films as had Reagan, and she believed in making her own breaks, which often meant going after a better role in an active manner. Reagan had an idea that the Notre Dame football star George Gipp, who had died a premature death while at the university, would be a character well suited for the basis of a film and for a role he could play. Wyman encouraged him to act upon it. Reagan did not know how to approach the project—write a treatment, a script, or what. He talked to Foy and several others on the lot, but no one picked up on it. Then, to his amazement, an announcement appeared in Variety that Warner Brothers had scheduled The Life of Knute Rockne* to star Pat O’Brien† and was looking for an actor to play coach Rockne’s most famous player, George Gipp, the great Gipper.