Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series)

by Darwin Porter

  As Jane herself claimed, “It was a hell of a long trip getting there, even if it took a movie of uncut corn to do it for me.”

  At Warner Brothers, and for the first time, Sarah Jane Fulks was billed as Jane Wyman when she was assigned a small speaking part in Stage Struck (1936), starring Dick Powell, Warren William, and Joan Blondell, who stole the picture.

  Hey-Hey-Hey, from Jane Wyman, the Hey-Hey Girl.

  Jack Warner had decided to give Jane what the studio called “the build-up” to see if fans gravitated to her. “We don’t really have a star here,” he said. “Maybe a gal pal to a star.”

  The studio’s casting director, Max Arnow, told Warner, “This Wyman gal has something, but I can’t figure out what it is.”

  The build-up seemed designed to turn her into a major rival of the studio’s other wisecracking chorus girl types, as exemplified by Blondell and Glenda Farrell.

  As Jane posed endlessly for countless cheesecake photos and “girlie shots,” the studio coaches went to work on her image, giving her dancing, singing, and acting lessons. Perc Westmore, the studio’s resident makeup genius, worked on her face. In addition, a voice coach was brought in, as her speech was considered at the time as “unsteady.”

  As part of the campaign to improve her public image, men from the studio’s wardrobe department told her she should tone down her clothing. She had become known for overdressing, having frequently appeared in “overly flamboyant” garb during nighttime excursions to the Cocoanut Grove or the Trocadero. Since she couldn’t afford real jewelry, she had adorned herself with fake emeralds and diamonds.

  Yet even when the wardrobe department critiqued her for “dressing like a Saturday night floozie seeking a sailor pickup who’s been at sea for six months,” she refused to listen.

  During her filming of Stage Struck, she told Blondell, “I’m a dancing, good-time girl, and I’m not ashamed of it.”

  “I’ve been through hard times with rotten husbands and fickle boyfriends,” she claimed. “I’ve known hunger, joblessness, and abuse. I’ve stood in the chorus line watching women of lesser talent get ahead.”

  “I’m still in the fucking chorus line, so I’ve decided to have some fun, now that I’ve dumped Myron Futterman. I’ve had 23 years of high energy—that’s why I’m the ‘Hey-Hey Gal,’ but I’ve packed in 60 to 75 years of life experience—and that includes all the disillusion that goes with them.”

  “Everybody says I’m taking over the ‘Resident Tough Gal Blonde’ roles at Warners from you and Glenda Farrell. Hell, I’ve been living that Tough Gal role for the past decade. I’m no longer the little virgin who lives next door.”

  “Paradise depends on what a man is between the sheets.”

  —Jane Wyman

  “It’s not true that all the leading men like James Cagney and others at Warners have fucked me,” she told Blondell. “Some of them didn’t even give me a second look.”

  When Jane saw her latest part, she complained to her agent, William Demarest, “I think I’ll be typecast as a gum-chewing chorine until I’m thirty-eight, when I’ll be too young to play grandmother roles and too old for the chorus line.”

  Her complaints to Demarest continued. “I don’t like being billed as ‘The Hey-Hey Girl.’”

  That’s because you’re so lively,” he said. “Jumping around all over the joint. You can’t keep still for a minute. After a day‘s work on your feet, you continue dancing in night clubs until dawn breaks.”

  In her one scene with Dick Powell, he was impressed with her, telling Berkeley, “Jane can sing, she can dance, and she can act. You should give her more to do. We have a budding Ginger Rogers here.”

  When he saw the rushes of their scene, Powell was amused.

  POWELL: “What’s your name?

  WYMAN: “My name is Bessie Fufnick. I swim, I dive, I imitate wild birds, and play the trombone.”

  Jane had wanted to make a play for Powell, although she didn’t find him very sexy. She told her friend, Frank McHugh, who had fourth billing, “Blondell’s already got him. They’re going to get married.”

  Even though she had little to do, Jane was allowed to remain on the set to watch Blondell emote. She was interpreting the role in an outrageous “camp” style, years before the word was coined.

  Her character seemed to be based on that scandal-soaked tabloid outrage of the time, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, whom one critic decades later would define as “the Paris Hilton of the 1930s.”

  With a pencil-thin mustache, Powell was not cast in the movie as a singer.

  Jane had wanted the role of the ingénue, but Berkeley had cast newcomer Jeanne Madden in that part instead. “Her role should have gone to me,” she complained to Busby Berkeley.

  “Jeanne can’t act, but I needed a singer, A Ruby Keelerish type, and I thought she’d do,” Berkeley said. “But after directing her in her first two scenes with Powell, I think I’ve made a horrible mistake.”

  When he saw the rushes, he said, “Warner has put me in a financial strait-jacket on this movie. Powell is tepid in his role, and Madden delivers her lines with such flatness, she makes Ruby Keeler sound like Bette Davis. As for Blondell, she flashes her pearly whites, bats her eyelashes, and flaps about like an over-the-top Carole Lombard. In all, the movie tastes like yesterday’s piss.”

  Jane need not have worried that Madden would be much competition for her. “I ceased to be jealous of her when her star flickered out so fast, she won’t even merit a footnote in the history of Tinseltown. As for me, I was going places, except it would take a few more years to climb up that ladder.”

  At one point, Blondell invited Jane into her dressing room. Years later, Blondell told one of the authors of this book, “The press had begun to define Wyman as ‘the future Joan Blondell,’ and since I was still around, I figured I should get to know my competition better. I took the same approach with Jane that Betty Grable would eventually take with Marilyn Monroe when Fox was grooming her as Betty’s replacement.”

  Jack Warner had decided to give the busty blonde the ultimate star treatment, and as such, Jane was awed by Blondell’s dressing room. It incorporated a large living room, a fireplace, two bedrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, and a separate room for wardrobe and makeup.

  Powell emerged from her bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Giving Jane a quick hello, he dressed hurriedly and left to shoot a scene, still complaining of his sore throat.

  Perhaps to make clear to Jane who was the star, Blondell asked her to take two wire-haired dachshunds, collectively known as “The Thundering Herd,” for a walk on the grass.

  When Jane returned with the dogs, Blondell was being interviewed by a handsome young feature writer for The Hollywood Reporter.

  Addressing Blondell, the reporter asked: “The fashion designer, Orry-Kelly, recently asserted that you have ‘the most beautiful lips in Hollywood.’ What do you think of that honor?”

  “Blondell appraised him. “Why don’t you try them out for yourself.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I couldn’t do that.”

  On Jane’s final day on the set, she and Blondell lunched together in the commissary. “It’s no secret that Dick and I are going to get married, so my romantic future was settled during the making of this film,” she said. “But how did it go for you?”

  “Usually, I at least find someone to date on a film,” Jane claimed. “But not this time around. The only proposition I got was from Spring Byington. I turned her down.”

  “I did too,” Blondell said. “That sweet charming woman certainly likes pussy—that’s Hollywood for you!”

  In spite of any potential rivalry, Blondell and Jane liked each other, and would spend many future evenings together. Dick Powell would in time become one of Ronald Reagan’s best friends, and the two married couples—Powell and Blondell, Reagan and Wyman—became a social fixture on the Hollywood scene until 1944, when the Powells divorced.

  The studio knew at the ti
me that Jane was married, but that fact was deliberately not publicized, and no one had ever seen her mysterious husband. Therefore, Jack Warner felt it important for Jane to attend premieres on the arm of one of his handsome contract players. Ronald Reagan was suggested as an ideal escort, but he rejected the idea, based on his knowledge that she was married. “It would hurt my image to be seen dating a married woman,” he protested.

  “A lot of guys I was assigned to date put the make on me when we attended a premiere or whatever,” Jane told Blondell. “I fought off most of them, but not always, if you get my drift. Of course, if my date was a star, he found me most accommodating. Privately, even though I was married, I dated a few big stars who had wives at the time. The pot can’t call the kettle black.”

  Hope bloomed anew for Jane when Demarest called with news that he’d gotten her a role in an upcoming film, Cain and Mable (1936) that would star Clark Gable and Marion Davies.

  ***

  On her first day on the set of Cain and Mabel, Jane was greeted by the film’s director, Lloyd Bacon, who seemed deeply experienced in almost any genre of filmmaking—comedies, westerns, musicals, and gritty crime dramas “torn from the headlines.”

  By the end of her first day, Jane was disappointed that once again, “I’ll get lost in the chorus line.”

  Even though her contract called for only a week’s work on the film, Jane also showed up on days when the stars were shooting their big scenes. She had learned to ingratiate herself with the big names, hoping they would use their influence to either expand her roles, or get her future parts. Over a period of a few days, she managed to meet both Gable and Davies.

  More gifted as a comedienne than as a dramatic actress, with past credits that included a stint as a Ziegfeld chorus girl, Davies was the publicly acknowledged mistress of press baron William Randolph Hearst. Born in Brooklyn, Davies had been educated in a Manhattan convent.

  “Come on, honey,” Davies said. “Let’s have a snort together in my dressing room.” She was referring to a twelve-room house that had been specifically moved for her use onto the Warner’s lot. Jane was impressed at how lavish it was.

  With the help of her maid, while she removed one outfit and got into another, Davies told Jane that she’d worked with Gable on Polly of the Circus (1932). It was obvious from her tone and from her wording that he’d seduced her.

  “Clark was determined to seduce every female star at MGM, and by now, he virtually has. And now, while he’s here at Warner’s, he’ll probably work his way through the gals on this lot, too. You’re cute. I bet you’ll be next on his list.”

  “I’d be honored,” Jane gushed. “I’d love to go out with Clark Gable.”

  “Stick around, sweetie,” Davies said. “Perhaps I can arrange something.”

  Davies asked Jane to fetch her more ice. “I’m about to collapse from heat stroke. It’s a god damn 122° F. on that set. I’ve got to dance in a fur costume that could get me through a winter in Alaska.”

  “By the way, I used my star power and ordered Bacon to make Clark shave off that mustache of his. It tickles me when he kisses me. While I do my next big scene, keep bringing me ice,” Davies said. “I’ll put it on my wrists to keep cool.”

  Jane’s favorite moment in the film came when Gable insults Davies as follows: “If the galloping you do is dancing, I’ve seen better ballet in a horse show.” Davies slaps him before emptying a bucket of ice cubes over his head.

  Jane appears as one of the dancers who suddenly explode, manically, onto the sound stage near the end of the movie. At the finale, a 100-foot-high pipe organ bursts apart, releasing 150 bridesmaid chorus girls, grinning like Cheshire cats and wailing, “I’ll Sing You a Thousand Love Songs.” The elaborate dance sequence lasted onscreen for only nine minutes, but it took a week to shoot.

  Marion Davies with Clark Gable in Polly of the Circus

  Near her final day on the set, Davies approached Jane. “I told Clark about you. He wants to see you in his dressing room.”

  With trepidation, Jane headed for his dressing room and knocked on the door. “I was nervous as hell,” she later recalled, “but I decided to cover it up with a brassy bravado.”

  When he invited her in for a drink, she delivered the opening line she’d rehearsed: “Are you really, as your press agents claim, a lumberjack in evening clothes?”

  “One and the same, babe,” Gable said.

  “I’ve seen all your films with Jean Harlow,” she said. “And I loved every one of them. But as you can see, unlike Harlow, I wear a bra.”

  “Bras can be removed,” he said, “and I’m good at that.”

  Gable was suddenly called to the set. He turned to her. “Marion’s invited us to San Simeon this weekend,” he said. “I’d like you to ride up with me.”

  “That is so thrilling,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see that castle. I read something about it every day.”

  “I assure you that once you’re there, I’ll be more interesting than that damn castle,” he said. “Now give me a kiss and we’ll meet later and set up a time and place for me to pick you up.”

  “I can’t wait,” she said.

  “Keep it on ice for me, you sweet little thing.”

  ***

  On Saturday morning, Jane had hoped to leave early for San Simeon, but Gable had something to do, and they didn’t depart until late in the afternoon. She’d read about the many lavish parties Hearst and Davies had hosted at the castle for such guests as Charlie Chaplin (her secret lover), Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and such unlikely guests as a very young John F. Kennedy. When George Bernard Shaw visited the castle, he famously remarked, “This is what God would have built if he had had the money.”

  Since they arrived late, most of the other guests had already retired for the evening. Gable told Jane he’d see her later, as he left to join the male guests who were having cigars and brandy in the library before retiring.

  Appearing drunk, Davies was there to greet Jane and show her to her room. But first, she invited her into the powder room, where she removed a bottle of gin kept cool in her toilet tank. “Let’s have a belter,” she said. “I have to hide my liquor because Willie doesn’t like for me to drink.”

  Gable, as a pro boxer, in Cain & Mabel. Earlier in his career, his manly physique had been rejected as “unfit to play Tarzan.”

  An hour later, Jane, in her sole négligée, had gone to bed and was about to drift off to sleep when Gable entered her room. “Clark,” she said, sitting up in surprise.

  “Didn’t Marion tell you?” he asked. “I’m sharing the room with you.”

  The next morning over breakfast, Jane was introduced to one of the world’s most powerful media barons, the portly William Randolph Hearst himself, along with other guests. Hearst told her, “You’re a real cutie with that button nose of yours. It looks really kissable.”

  What happened between Gable and Jane that weekend didn’t emerge until a few days later, when Blondell invited Jane for lunch at the Brown Derby. There, Blondell more or less guessed what had taken place. After all, Gable had seduced her way back in 1931 when they worked together on Night Nurse for Warner Brothers.

  When Jane appeared somewhat reluctant to discuss her seduction by Gable, Blondell assured her, “I know the routine, and I’m sure that the same thing happened to you. He comes into your bedroom and pours you a drink and then begins some harmless chit-chat. He asks you about your ambitions as a movie actress. Then he gets into bed with you, kisses you, and fondles your breasts before he gets up and removes his clothes. Then, there’s no more petting, no more foreplay, no more kissing: It’s down to the dirty deed. It’s all over in about a minute or so. He’s a fast shooter. Then he’s up and heading for the shower. By the way, he shaves his armpits and his chest.”

  “Joan, you’ve nailed it,” she said. “That’s exactly the way it happened!”

  Years later, Blondell said. “Clark adored women—not in a lechy way. He loved beauty. His e
yes would sparkle when he saw a beautiful woman. And if he liked you, he let you know it. He was boyish, mannish, a brute—all kinds of goodies. When he grinned, you’d have to melt. If you didn’t want him as a lover, you’d want to give him a bear hug. He affected all females, unless they were dead.”

  Her involvement in Cain and Mabel did nothing for Jane’s career. She wasn’t even noticed. It didn’t help Davies or Gable either, as it was a flop at the box office. Newsweek summed it up: “The studio’s cycle of musical spectacles, begun with the successful 42nd Street, reaches a new low. Clark Gable and Marion Davies fit into this picture like a fat hand squeezed into a small glove. Too much talent for such a skimpy, thinly woven plot that unravels in a trite series of moments.”

  ***

  During negotiations for her next movie, Smart Blonde (1937), Jane, as a Warner Brothers contract player, accepted whatever role she was given, no matter how meager. She didn’t want to go on suspension.

  Once again, she was disappointed that she’d been cast as a hatcheck girl. Having previously been uncredited in so many movies, she was relieved to hear that she’d get a screen credit, albeit in very small type.

  The star of the picture was Glenda Farrell, playing a wisecracking female reporter, Torchy Blane. Jane decided she’d approach Farrell, if at all, with some caution. “By then, I was not only being billed as ‘the next Joan Blondell,’ but as ‘the next Glenda Farrell,’ too,” Jane said. “I didn’t think Miss Farrell would be particularly happy that her rival was in the same movie with her.”

  On the third day of shooting, when Jane accidentally crossed paths with Farrell, she greeted her and reminded her that she’d worked on her film, Here Comes Carter, in which her friend Ross Alexander had the male lead. “Oh, were you in that?” Farrell asked. “I hadn’t noticed.” Then she walked on.