Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  I do not know whether I have answered your question or not. I, like Mr. Montgomery, would like at this moment to say I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work; I happen to be very proud of the way in which we conducted the fight. I do not believe the Communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion-picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology. I think that will continue as long as the people in Hollywood continue as they are, which is alert, conscious of it, and fighting. I would also like to say that I think we can match the record of our industry in the contribution to the social welfare against that of any industry in the United States.

  MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Reagan, you have testified here concerning the Screen Actors Guild and the record that you people have made within that guild. You are not aware, however, of the efforts which the Communists have made within the Screen Writers Guild, are you?

  MR. REAGAN: Sir, like the other gentlemen, I must say that that is hearsay. I have heard discussions concerning it.

  THE CHAIRMAN: I think we have had testimony with regard to the Screen Writers Guild. These people are more fully acquainted with the Screen Actors Guild.

  MR. STRIPLING: Mr. Chairman, these three witnesses were brought here simply to testify, as president and past presidents of the Screen Actors Guild, as to the possible infiltration within that organization. As you are aware we have heard numerous witnesses on the Screen Writers Guild. Those are all the questions I have at this time.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Woods?

  MR. WOODS: NO questions.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Nixon?

  MR. NIXON: No questions.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. McDowell?

  MR. MCDOWELL: No questions.

  THE CHAIRMAN: Mr. Vail?

  MR. VAIL: NO questions.

  THE CHAIRMAN: There is one thing that you said that interested me very much. That was the quotation from Jefferson. That is just why this committee was created by the House of Representatives, to acquaint the American people with the facts. Once the American people are acquainted with the facts there is no question but what the American people will do a job, the kind of a job that they want done; that is, to make America just as pure as we can possibly make it.*

  We want to thank you very much for coming here today.

  MR. REAGAN: Sir, if I might, in regard to that, say that what I was trying to express, and didn’t do very well, was also this other fear. I detest, I abhor their philosophy [the Communists], but I detest more than that their tactics, which are those of the fifth column, and are dishonest, but at the same time I never as a citizen want to see our country become urged, by either fear or resentment of this group, that we ever compromise with any of our democratic principles through that fear or resentment. I still think that democracy can do it.

  THE CHAIRMAN: We agree with that. Thank you very much.

  Unlike the other friendly witnesses, the three SAG representatives had not been asked to name people they suspected of being Communists. However, Reagan through his FBI contact, already could have done so.

  Reagan was in good spirits when he left Washington, D.C., by train to return to Hollywood. After his departure, ten of the nineteen men who had been subpoenaed as unfriendly witnesses defied the committee. Articulate men of words, they reduced Thomas to “impotent gaveling,” but they refused to give names. With sixty-eight witnesses (friendly and unfriendly) to be called, Thomas dismissed the hearings because he and the committee were taking a beating in the press. But the investigation and the persecution that followed were far from over.

  In Reagan’s opinion, he and the two former presidents of the SAG had acquitted themselves well at the HUAC hearings. They had said that there was a small Communist faction within the Guild, but publicly had not pointed a finger at any one individual.

  On November 10, two weeks after Reagan had returned from the HUAC hearings, the Guild board voted that no officer or board member could serve without signing an affidavit “that he is not a member of the Communist Party nor affiliated with such a party.” Guild board meetings during this time revolved around little more than discussions on the problems and dangers of communism and what the Guild’s position should be in the matter. During the November meeting, Marsha Hunt read a letter which she asked the Guild to send to President Truman, calling upon him to tell the American people “whether or not the Communist Party is a subversive organization” and appealing to him for help and advice (the letter was not sent). “The last Guild meeting that I went to,” Anne Revere remembered, “I was no longer treasurer. I had been called to [appear before] the Committee [HUAC]. I was sitting there, and Ronnie was in the chair, and he said, ‘You know anybody that’s got a problem? All they have to do is come and talk to us.’ There was silence after that and I said, ‘I have a problem, what’s your suggestion?’

  “‘It’s so simple. All you’ve got to do is just name a couple of names that have already been named.’ I said, ‘That’s it. I can’t climb up on somebody’s neck,’ so that’s the way it ended. As I went out, one of the boys said, ‘Don’t go away mad.’“*

  “Anne Revere was such a good actress, and she was such a strong, firm union member,” Dorothy Tree Uris later said. “What happened to her was outrageous.… I think a good deal of what happened in Hollywood—meaning the way the people turned to politics and to left politics and Marxism… was because of the very nature of Hollywood itself. There was nothing to do… you either went out to dinner at one another’s homes or you just stayed home… it was such an arid country… we naturally turned to politics and groups of discussion.… We studied the great writers. We also read right through Marx, Engels and Lenin.… We became interested in local politics in a sort of liberal fringe of the Democratic party. California was quite left. And it was kind of fun.… I kind of wonder if we had all been in New York at that time and had all the stimulation of the city and all been exposed to each other, I doubt if we would ever have been so left.… I remember when Japan invaded China, we formed the League of Women Shoppers.… We only bought things made in the United States. We boycotted Japanese silk stockings and wore cotton lisle instead. You saw them all over [the cotton lisle stockings].

  “Some [of us] were more to the left than others, but there was very little difference between left and liberal [until 1946]. It was great. I suppose it might be called the United Front in Hollywood and we got along awfully well. It was remarkable to me that so many people held firm and refused to name names and to cheapen their lives… even though they [were blacklisted]… and no longer participated either in politics or in affairs of the Screen Actors Guild. Still they never became informers.”

  The Screen Actors Guild had since its inception been split by two groups—one that believed the union existed “to improve the wages and working conditions of actors. Period… [and] the reformers, who believed… that unions are supposed to bring about progressive change, not only in the union but in the greater society beyond,” Kim Felner, former public-relations officer of the SAG, recalled. “They supported farm-workers striking in Salinas, the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War and the Hollywood Anti-Fascist League… and urged involvement onto their fellow union members.”

  “I am sure that many of the actors and actresses of that particular time had strong political feelings one way or another [Left or Right],” the late Robert Montgomery said in 1979. “And that they wanted to inject those political feelings into the organization.” Politics was a very big chunk of the SAG activities during Reagan’s tenure as president. “The Guild’s position in the case of pursuing ‘Communists’ and cooperating with the blacklist did not even pretend at neutrality,” Fellner has stated.

  Eventually, a motion that every member of the SAG sign a loyalty oath, was passed. Reagan was presiding over a hotbed of political activism coming from both Left and Right.

  * The HUAC committee for the 1947 hearings consisted of Thomas, Stripling, Vail, Nixon, McDowell, Karl E. Mundt (South Dakota), John S. Woods (
Georgia), John E. Rankin (Mississippi) and J. Harden Peterson (Florida).

  † The nineteen men were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Bibberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Robert Rossen, Bertolt Brecht, Larry Parks, Lewis Milestone, Irving Pichel, Gordon Kahn, Richard Collins, Howard Koch and Waldo Salt. One thing all of these men had in common was that none of them had served in the army, having been too old, not a citizen, or deferred for health reasons. For that common reason, no veterans’ committee would stir up problems.

  * Guy Endor, Howard Koch, Ring Lardner, Jr., Emmet Lavery, Alvah Bessie, Gordon Kahn, John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Robert Rossen, Irwin Shaw, Dalton Trumbo, John Wexley, Julius and Philip Epstein, Sheridan Gibney and Clifford Odets.

  * Of the three, Mayer was the least “friendly,” but still gave the names of Edward Dmytryk and Adrian Scott. Scott’s first wife, Joan LaCoeur, stated that “Adrian was a vague left-winger. He and Eddie Dmytryk were subpoenaed not because they were… in the Party or because they were big names, but because of ‘Crossfire’ [a picture that dealt with anti-Semitism among soldiers]. Two or three weeks before the subpoenas came out, federal agents came to the studio and demanded to see ‘Crossfire.’ It was totally because of the content that they were subpoenaed.”

  * SAG membership in 1947 was about seven thousand five hundred.

  * This figure is not truly representative, as 90 percent of the Guild membership did not vote in the elections. In fact, only 50 to 55 percent of the membership voted. The 90 percent figure, therefore, could represent as little as 45 percent of the membership.

  * The chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, was found guilty of embezzling government funds one year later and was sentenced to three years at the Danbury, Connecticut, Federal Correctional Institution. Two of the Hollywood Ten (Lester Cole and Ring Lardner, Jr.) were fellow inmates in 1950 when they were sentenced to one year for contempt of court. Thomas stood on his constitutional rights and pleaded nolo contendere to avoid taking the witness stand in his trial.

  * Anne Revere went before the HUAC, took the Fifth Amendment, refusing to name any names, and was blacklisted in Hollywood for eighteen years. She eventually returned to Broadway and co-starred in Toys in the Attic to extraordinary critical acclaim.

  17

  ONE NIGHT IN LATE NOVEMBER, AFTER THE LAST take of Johnny Belinda had been filmed, the Reagans were overheard exchanging angry words as they left the Beverly Club, a restaurant in Beverly Hills. That afternoon at the cast-and-crew party, Wyman had announced that she was taking a rest. Somebody asked, “With Ronnie and the kids?”

  “No,” she had angrily replied. “Just me.”

  As the parking attendant drove their car up to the curb in front of the restaurant, Wyman said in a loud voice, “I got along without you before and I certainly can get along without you now!” She slid in behind the wheel and drove off alone. Reagan went back inside and left later in a taxicab. The next day, Wyman flew to New York to visit friends. After a week she called from New York to tell Reagan she was thinking of leaving him.

  “If this comes to a divorce,” Reagan told Hedda Hopper, “I think I’ll name Johnny Belinda corespondent.”

  While Wyman was away, Reagan returned to Eureka to attend the fifth-annual pumpkin festival. During his two-day trip (he stayed at the TEKE House), he visited Mac, saw the Golden Tornadoes win a game, rode in a parade, placed the crown on the head of the Pumpkin Queen, Joan Snyder, and danced with her at the coronation ball. According to the local newspaper accounts, Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Reagan had given seventy-five thousand dollars to Eureka’s building fund toward the construction of a new speech-and-drama building. The amount sounds astronomical considering his income that year (which had been a little more than double that before taxes) and given his standard of living. Wyman had made about eighty-five thousand dollars before taxes, but it seems unlikely she would have donated such a large sum to Eureka College.

  She returned home before Christmas, and there was talk of a reconciliation, but a few weeks later they separated again and Reagan moved into the Garden of Allah, an apartment hotel on Sunset Boulevard that had a legendary history. The apartments weren’t luxurious. In fact, they were old fashioned and somewhat baroque. Most of them encircled the pool and were so close together that privacy was impossible. Evenings the occupants gathered at the bar and exchanged industry stories. The Garden’s best days had been the thirties, when Robert Benchley and Scott Fitzgerald had lived there. Reagan moved in and out of the Garden twice as he and Wyman reconciled and then broke up again. Finally, in the summer of 1948, he managed to rerent his old apartment on Londonderry View. Wyman began to be seen publicly with Ayres and filed suit for divorce. Reagan told the press, “It’s a very strange girl I’m married to, but I love her.… I know we will end our lives together.”

  Warners was finally planning to release Johnny Belinda with what they called in Hollywood a proper launch—major advertising, publicity and a glittering premiere. Wyman had a new chic to her appearance, a sleek, short bob, her clothes expensive and understated. She looked poised and happy. She and Ayres were constant companions, seen holding hands “unostentatiously but firmly.” At one Hollywood party to honor Danny Kaye, she had blurted out, “Lew is the love of my life.” Ayres said nothing, but he smiled warmly at her between puffs on his pipe. When Johnny Belinda opened on October 13, it was obvious that Wyman had fulfilled her ambition. Reviewers found her performance “surpassingly beautiful.” The town was talking about the Academy Award, and Jack Warner now claimed credit for producing such a fine film.

  * * *

  They dined together on January 26, 1948, their eighth anniversary. The press was filled with rumors of a reconciliation. Two weeks later, Wyman’s attorney, Loyd Wright, announced that a divorce was imminent and a financial settlement had already been reached.* On June 29, Wyman filed suit and was granted a divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. “In recent months,” she told Superior Judge Thurmond Clarke, “my husband and I engaged in continual arguments on his political views… finally, there was nothing in common between us… nothing to sustain our marriage.… Despite my lack of interest in his political activities, he insisted I attend meetings with him and be present during discussions among our friends. But my own ideas were never considered important.”

  Reagan did not contest the divorce. Nonetheless, he seemed unable to accept the finality of the decree. On the surface Wyman and Reagan were amicable. The house on Cordell was sold. Wyman found a house in Malibu for herself and the children. Their father was free to visit them whenever he wished, and in the early months he did so frequently. “I suppose there had been warning signs,” Reagan said later. “If only I hadn’t been so busy, but small-town boys grow up thinking only other people get divorced. The plain truth was that such a thing was so far from even being imagined by me that I had no resources to call upon.”

  He returned to the bachelor life he had led in Des Moines. Reasonably young and his fame established, he had a comfortable income, a Cadillac convertible, three horses, an apartment with a fabulous view and he knew some of the most beautiful women in the world. However, he was not inclined toward the glare of the nightclub circuit. He dated a few attractive ladies, but he spent most of his time at the Guild (where he had been reelected president), keeping his film commitments and seeing his children and Nelle.

  Warners had cast him in February in the film adaptation of Norman Krasna’s successful Broadway play John Loves Mary, a “bit of fluff” about a soldier (Reagan) who as a favor weds his married buddy’s British girlfriend (Patricia Neal) so that she can come to the United States. Mary does not know her boyfriend has a wife and John has been sworn not to reveal the fact. The two fall in love. This all occurs in the first fifteen minutes of the screenplay. The remaining ninety minutes are devoted to the couple’s attempt to deny their love to themselves and each other, and to be loyal to John’s pal. In the end,
Mary discovers she has been deceived by a married man and so she and John are free to wed.

  John Loves Mary had the aura of a present-day television situation comedy. It made 105 minutes move comparatively without pain and it introduced the talented and intelligent Patricia Neal to the screen. (She had made her stage debut in 1946 when she replaced Margaret Sullavan in The Voice of the Turtle on Broadway.) Neal and Reagan dated, but he was still in the process of attempting a reconciliation with Wyman (who had originally been cast to star opposite him in the film). “My first meeting with him took place at a New Year’s Eve party in Los Angeles,” Neal recalled. “His wife, Jane Wyman, had just announced their separation, and it was sad because he did not want a divorce. I remember he went outside. An older woman went with him. He cried…”

  Jerry Wald, the executive producer on John Loves Mary, memoed Reagan on January 19, 1948: “Dear Ronnie: Just saw Saturday night rushes of John Loves Mary’ and you can send your laundry out. The stuff looked wonderful. However, the idea that you get paid for all those kissing scenes with Pat Neal is beyond my comprehension. In the new contract between the producers and actors, I’m planning to have a clause inserted regarding kissing scenes, that a refund be made by the actors to the studio… you’re certainly putting everything into your work.”

  Reagan went from the Krasna comedy into The Girl from Jones Beach, a breezy film about an illustrator who sets out to find a perfectly proportioned female as a model (this was in the heyday of girlie illustrators Petty and Varga). Lauren Bacall took a suspension rather than play the female lead. This time it was to be Virginia Mayo who would debut in a Reagan film. “The day I walked out of my dressing room,” Mayo says, “wearing [for the first time] one of the daring white swimsuits required for the part, I expected my knees to bang together and my teeth to click. Then… Ronnie, who has the manner of a grand duke under ordinary circumstances, whistled at me. That wolf call did more for my ego and my self-confidence than a hundred words could have done.… He [also] put me wise to a good many things. Whenever any one of the dozens of department heads or studio officials came on the set, he managed to be near me and to point out important people, giving me the correct names and titles, before I was officially introduced.”