At the time of her adoption by Loyal, she legally changed her name to Nancy Davis.
At school in Chicago, Nancy became an avid movie fan and was allowed to go to the cinema with girlfriends whenever she wanted. She developed a very serious crush on Tyrone Power. A girlfriend remembered that she eventually collected enough pictures and articles for the compilation of a thick scrapbook on the handsome movie star, whom she defined as “a living doll.” She also maintained a crush on fast-rising Jimmy Stewart, whom she would later meet.
Ironically, one of her acquaintances, Mary Beth Langford, had a crush on a different handsome new star at Warner Brothers. Nancy, however, was rather dismissive of the girl’s infatuation. “I just don’t understand what you see in Ronald Reagan.”
Nazimova came through Chicago, appearing in her hit play, Ibsen’s Ghosts. Nancy’s godmother introduced her to her new lover, Glesca Marshall.
Edith had such an attractive personality that she became friends with two of the biggest names in the theater or in cinema, both Lillian Gish and Helen Hayes, each of whom visited her in Chicago. There, the two great stars were introduced to young Nancy.
***
It had to happen. When Nancy proclaimed herself “sweet sixteen,” her interest in boys overpowered her fascination with the movies and its male stars.
Her friends maintained that she had many beaux, and, in the words of one jealous rival, “Nancy was determined to lose her virginity before the rest of us. She was a very pushy person and always had to be the first in everything.”
Into her life came a tall, red-haired young man, Sangston Hettler, Jr., a student in Chicago at Boys’ Latin. Nicknamed “Sock,” he was popular with the girls and admired for his good looks and athletic body. According to reports, he fell madly in love with Nancy.
Young men, out to prove their emerging manhood, liked to boast of their af fairs. Whether it was true or not, Sangston bragged, “I taught Nancy about the birds and bees.”
Nancy Robbins Davis as a debutante at the “official beginning” of her adult life.
For a while, Nancy continued to date Sock, who invited her once a week to Chicago’s chic Fortnightly Club, a members’ only dinner and dancing club in a stately Georgian mansion. One night, Nancy took the microphone and sang “Pennies from Heaven” to the other patrons. Sock later said, “Nancy wasn’t exactly Dinah Shore, but she wasn’t as bad as I feared.”
When she heard that Sock was telling his friends that he’d taken her virginity, she dropped him.
After Nancy broke up with Sock, she tried to get dates with Robert Crane, scion of a wealthy plumbing contractor, and with Buddy Baird, whose family had made a million or two in real estate.
“Although she pursued Bobby and me, we weren’t that interested in taking her out,” Baird said. “We had far prettier girls chasing after us. I noticed that Nancy pursued only guys from rich families. I called her ‘La Belle,’ as did most of her classmates behind her back.”
Baird also claimed that Nancy “shopped” around Chicago for the scions of dynastic fortunes—Armours and Swifts, the meatpackers; McCormicks of farm machinery; Palmers and Fields in retail; or the Wrigleys in chewing gum.
At the age of sixteen, Nancy’s birthday present was her first car, a black Mercury convertible with red leather upholstery.
Ironically, in her senior year, she was cast in her school’s production of the George S. Kaufman play, The First Lady, which had premiered on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in 1935.
The plot spun around two determined women intent on putting their men into the Oval Office. One of the politicians was identified as “Good looking, a Westerner, and he doesn’t know a thing.” In the 1980s, the same charge would be leveled against Ronald Reagan.
According to the plot, through various means of treachery, Nancy’s character succeeded in getting her man into the White House after delivering a slogan that she remembered years later as one of her favorites: “The American people ought to elect the First Lady and then let her husband be President.”
As Europe went to war in 1939, Nancy graduated from Chicago’s Girls’ Latin School.
***
With a major in English and drama, coed Nancy Davis enrolled at Smith College in September of 1939. For the world at large, it was a dreadful time. In Berlin, Hitler ordered a Nazi attack on Poland, launching World War II. Wartime deprivations at Smith lay in the immediate future, but Nancy didn’t seem overly concerned. “I have no interest whatsoever in politics,” she proclaimed.
She was attending the largest women’s resident liberal arts college in America. Within the Ivy League’s circle of elite schools, Smith was included among the prestigious “Seven Sisters” colleges.
As Nancy herself confessed in her memoirs, My Turn, “At Smith College, I majored in English and drama—and boys.”
Returning to Chicago for the Christmas holidays of 1939, Nancy was to face one of the milestones of her life. On December 28, at a tea dance, she would launch herself as a debutante at the Casino Club and acquire a new beau while doing it.
Although lovely, cosmetic surgery after college changed Nancy’s look and especially her nose, into something more in synch with prevailing standards of “pert and sassy.”
Fifty Princeton men, in Chicago as escorts for the various debutante launches, were invited. In walked Frank Birney, Jr. The son of a Chicago banker, he was a member of the Triangle Theater Club at Princeton.
When they were introduced, Nancy found Birney “charming, gracious, witty, and very good looking.”
“Nancy was not everyone’s cuppa,” said one of the guests, William Barton, unchivalrously. “But Frank seemed to go for her, although the guys at Princeton didn’t think he liked girls all that much. Nancy appeared open and friendly and looked like she was an easy lay if you wanted it.”
Back at Smith, Nancy began to date Birney on weekends and was intrigued that he, too, wanted to become a stage actor.
In Manhattan, they often met “under the clock at the Biltmore Hotel.” He claimed to his classmates that he was having an affair, hoping to squelch rumors that he was a “sissy boy.” Ever since enrolling at Princeton, he had endured taunts from his more “traditionally masculine” classmates.
His roommate, Geoffrey Talbot-Jones, said, “Frank was a manic-depressive and frequently talked about suicide. He was despondent, worrying about flunking out of Princeton because of his poor grades. Toward the end of his life, he was also deeply troubled by some recent involvement he’d had. I presumed he’d had a disastrous sexual encounter with some stranger, and the experience had wounded him in some way. I can’t speculate on what that was, but he was demoralized.”
Another of Birney’s friends, James Easton, said, “I knew Frank was dating Nancy. They seemed to live in a world that, after the war began, no longer existed. They resided in a theatrical world, absolutely oblivious to the Battle of Britain or Hitler’s killing of the Jews. He dated her, but I don’t think he was in love with her.”
Suddenly, in New York City, Birney committed suicide by deliberately darting toward an oncoming train. The Daily Princetonian ran a story about his suicide, quoting the train’s engineer: “I saw the young man dart out from behind a pole right in front of my oncoming train. I gave a long blast on my whistle, but he kept coming. I applied the brake, but was not able to bring the train to a stop before we struck him. His body was mutilated beyond recognition.”
Birney’s roommate at Princeton discovered a suicide note, which he turned over to the dead man’s family. Nancy flew to their side and offered what comfort she could.
***
Back at Smith, Nancy was a poor student, especially in science and math. She was accused of majoring in extracurricular activities.
After America entered the war during the immediate aftermath of the December, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, eligible men became fewer and fewer. Many of the Smith undergraduates had already kissed their boyfriends goodbye before se
nding them off to die on the battlefields of Europe or North Africa.
Nancy was not caught up in the war effort, preferring to spend her free time within any of the three movie houses of Northampton, watching films starring such actors as Mickey Rooney or Judy Garland.
She still collected photo albums of movie stars. Tyrone Power remained her favorite, followed by Jimmy Stewart. At some point, Errol Flynn became one of the movie idols she worshipped. After seeing Kings Row, she added another young actor, Ronald Reagan, to her growing list of heartthrobs. She’d never cared for Reagan before.
She remained steadfast in her goal of becoming a Broadway star, if not a movie actress.
Much to Nancy’s disappointment, neither Loyal nor Edith could attend her graduation ceremonies. Edith faced wartime travel restrictions, and Loyal was on duty as a surgeon for the U.S. Army in England.
But at long last, diploma in hand, Nancy was free to return to Chicago.
***
Funds were still low, so Nancy went to work as a nurse’s aide at the Cook County Hospital. The job, which often consisted of carrying out bedpans, was, to her at least, demeaning. She quit and became a sales clerk at the mammoth Marshall Field Department Store. Her most frightening moment there involved stopping a woman carting off stolen jewelry. When Nancy confronted the thief, she retaliated by ripping off Nancy’s dress.
It was during the summer of 1944 that Nancy launched her second “most serious” love affair.
James Platt White, Jr. was a handsome student from Amherst College, in Massachusetts, and the scion of a wealthy family, During World War II, he had joined the Navy.
Later, his college classmates claimed that he spent a great deal of time grooming himself and dressing immaculately. He did not like sports, and preferred theater to football. He shared this common interest in the theatrical world with Nancy. ”He didn’t really fit in too well with the other frat brothers,” a classmate said. “Some guys thought he was a bit of a sissy.”
When White’s ship docked at San Diego, Nancy visited him. When they went to Hollywood, Nancy, with White accompanying her, paid to visit to Nazimova, a year before her death in 1945.
On June 24, 1944, Loyal and Edith announced Nancy’s engagement to White. She was presented with a diamond engagement ring his parents had purchased at Tiffany’s. Their engagement lasted until right after the Navy transferred White to the South Pacific.
In her memoirs, Nancy wrote: “I broke off the engagement later that summer. It was a heady, exhilarating time, and I was swept up in the glamour of war, wartime engagements, and waiting for the boys who were away. I realized I had made a mistake. It would have been unfair to him and to me. It wasn’t easy to break off an engagement, but it was the best thing for both of us. We weren’t meant to be married, but we remain friends to this day.”
***
After years of delay and endless frustration, Nancy decided to launch herself as a stage actress. Edith told her, “I have your back. We’ll contact every big name we have, from Lillian Gish to Spencer Tracy, to get you roles. We’ll be shameless about it, letting nothing stand in our way.”
In the middle of the night, Edith awakened Nancy, telling her about a vivid dream she’d just had. “I dreamed that you’re going to become a big star, one of the biggest, right up there with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Not only that, but you’re going to marry a movie star and have two children with him—a boy and a girl. A future Oscar is already having your name engraved on it.”
Chapter One
Mating Games: Jane’s Romantic “Detours” with George Raft, Errol Flynn, & Bing Crosby
In these early publicity stills, Jane Wyman could be pouty or fun-crazed. “I didn’t exactly take Hollywood by storm, cast as a chorus girl cutie or some star’s sidekick for more than a decade,” she said. “The directors were retarded in taking notice of me, but the male stars of the 30s found I had a certain allure. If only they’d stop calling me ‘Pug Nose.’”
Eugene Wyman carried through on his promise to change the name of Sarah Jane Fulks to Jane Wyman, although she would continue to bill herself with her former name for months to come.
To the horror of her foster mother, Emma Fulks, Jane ran away to marry Eugene, falsifying her real age, since she was still a minor.
When she first went to work in Hollywood, appearing in the chorus line of The Kid from Spain, (1932), she told her fellow chorines, Paulette Goddard and Lucille Ball, about her early marriage. But after those revelations, she would remain silent, allowing any link to, or memory of, her first husband to disappear into the vast landscapes of America.
Early Cheesecake: Jane (right figure) in King of Burlesque (1935)
No record has ever been discovered that she divorced Eugene, the implication of which was that she became a bigamist when she remarried.
As relayed to her new friends, Eugene turned out to be some sort of a sex fiend. As Jane confided, “He didn’t just want to make love to a girl, he wanted to devour her.” On her honeymoon night in a cheap roadside motel, he had sex with her six times, followed by three more bouts before noon the following day.
Since she had no basis for comparison, she initially thought all men were like Eugene. During her first week of marriage, she also learned that his heavy drinking sometimes made him violent.
She had to endure several beatings, and she plotted to run away from him. But she really had no place to go. Emma had virtually disowned her.
When Jane threatened to leave him, he vowed that he’d carve up her face with a broken beer bottle.
He earned enough at his garage that he did provide her with food and lodging in a cheap apartment in West Hollywood. The marriage limped along for a month, going from bad to horrific.
One night, when he came home drunk, he was with his best friend, a studly farmboy he’d known when he lived in Bakersfield. She was asleep when the two men entered her bedroom and Eugene ripped the covers off her. He also tore off her flimsy garment, as she tried to cover her nudity in front of this stranger.
As she’d later relate to Goddard and Ball, Eugene not only held her down while his burly friend raped her, he then mounted her himself, deliberately trying to hurt her. She spent the rest of the night as the prisoner of both of these strong young men, as she was mauled and repeatedly attacked.
She stayed awake all night, and Eugene’s friend left shortly before six. Since Eugene didn’t work on Sundays, he was still sound asleep. Quietly, she gathered up her clothing and found his wallet on the dresser. It contained eighty dollars, which she removed. Then she silently made her way out the door with her battered suitcase and into the early morning air. Her body ached.
Later that day, she took a bus to southern Los Angeles, where she found a room for rent at eight dollars a week in a shabby boarding house filled mostly with Mexican laborers.
For the next few weeks, she found what jobs she could—waitress, switchboard operator, manicurist, but nothing worked out. One day, she heard that LeRoy Prinz was becoming one of the lead choreographers of Hollywood. He was the son of Edward (“Dad”) Prinz, who had been her dance instructor in St. Joseph.
On her day off, she showed up at his studio, which was very informal. She walked in and introduced herself to the choreographer, who had been working on musicals since 1929 with the advent of the Talkies.
She found him charismatic, and he liked her in spite of her shyness. Apparently, “Dad” had told him about her, and he was eager to meet her.
During the next few days, as he practiced dance routines with her, she came to know him quite well. As she remembered LeRoy, he “was a little giant standing five feet, five inches, with a potty mouth. He was a feisty little man, who always had a cigarette dangling from his lips and looked more like a bartender than a choreographer.”
In a profile in The New York Times, LeRoy’s life story was compared to that of a script for an Errol Flynn adventure picture.
The Times had not exaggerated. He’d been s
ent to reform school after chasing his stepmother with a carving knife. Later, upon his release, he formed a song-and-dance act on the vaudeville circuit. Called “Prinz and Buck,” he danced onstage with a young black man.
As he grew older, he became a cabin boy aboard a ship heading for France. When he got there, he hitchhiked to Marseille, where he joined the French Foreign Legion, serving as a bugler in Algiers. When World War I erupted, he became a pilot for Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s 94th Aero Squadron, where he crashed eighteen planes and was nicknamed “America’s German Ace.”
At war’s end, he drifted to Paris, where he was hired as a choreographer for the Folies Bergère.
Returning to the Americas, he ferried ammunition for Nicaraguan rebel leader, Augusto César Sandino. When that came to an end, he flew to Mexico City, teaching young wannabee pilots how to fly.
Finally, he returned to the States, first settling in Omaha, Nebraska, where he danced in a bordello, Heading east to Chicago, he became for a time the producer of special shows for Al Capone and his gangsters. Eventually, he made it to New York, where he was hired as a dancer by the famous nightclub entrepreneur, Texas Guinan.
After leading a wild life of high adventure, LeRoy Prinz, Jane’s dance teacher, rehearses Mary Martin for a 1939 appearance in The Great Victor Herbert.
With the advent of sound, after Hollywood began to produce musicals, LeRoy headed West, where he found jobs directing dance sequences for Paramount and then Warner Brothers.
Using his influence, LeRoy obtained a job for Jane dancing as one of the Goldwyn girls in the chorus line of The Kid from Spain (1932).
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 4