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

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  Craig Reynolds was planning to take Jane down to Laguna Beach for the weekend, but canceled at the last minute. She just assumed that he’d gotten a better offer from one of his girlfriends, perhaps a boyfriend.

  She mentioned that to Fonda when he stopped to talk to her. He seemed upset. “I was going to drive Frances, my wife, to Lake Arrowhead this weekend, but we had a big fight, and she stormed out of the house last night, and hasn’t come back.”

  He flashed on an idea. “Since we’ve both been stood up, why not drive there with me? I’ve got this real nice cottage that belongs to a friend.”

  On their way to Lake Arrowhead, Jane and Fonda felt free to talk to each other about their previous romantic failures. She admitted to having had two disastrous marriages, and he spoke about his failed marriage to Margaret Sullavan.

  “I got started with women in a very bad way,” he admitted. “When I was a teenager, I lost my virginity in a whorehouse in Omaha. It was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. It turned me off women for a very long time.”

  “I guess I don’t make a good husband. When I’m working on a film, I immerse myself in the role and even take it home with me. I come into the house, wanting a light supper. Then I toddle off to my study to learn tomorrow’s lines. It’s early to bed for me.”

  “Not only that, but all my friends, including Jimmy Stewart, have a burning interest in the movie industry. Frances just isn’t interested. What does she care about rushes, close-ups, and billings?”

  “When I first met Frances, I was banging Annabella, my co-star in Wings of the Morning, but Frances lured me away,” he said. “But I don’t think Frances is happy with what she got. She listens to all the shit spread about me. She ran into that horrid George Sanders at a party. He told her that I was a Don Juan homosexual who has to prove himself with one woman after another. She was always suspicious about my relationship with Ross. She’s also terribly jealous of my friendship with Jimmy. She calls it ‘too intimate.’ Incidentally, Jimmy might drop in to share the cottage with us this weekend.”

  “I’d love to meet him,” she said. “I think he’s divine.”

  “So does Jean Harlow, and Ginger Rogers raves about him, too. Jimmy has a goal: He wants to get intimate with 263 glamour girls before it rises for a final time.”

  “Why such an odd number?” she asked.

  “A fortune teller told him that was his destiny. He’ll probably end up making a movie with my former wife, Margaret. I’m sure he’ll seduce her during the course of the filming. Jimmy and I believe in sharing women.”

  “Include me in that, too,” she said. “I’d love to date him.”

  “I’ll try to set it up,” he said. “I’m sure he’d be interested.”

  The screen goes black at this point. When she returned from Lake Arrowhead, Jane gave a “very limited” description to her confidant, Joan Blondell, of what happened. Blondell was eager for further details, but Jane would not provide them. All that Blondell got from her was that Stewart had arrived at the cottage late at night and had walked in on Fonda and Jane having sex.

  “Oh, my God,” Blondell said. “Did it turn into a three-way? I hear that Jimmy and Hank adore three-ways.”

  Marines, when they’re not singing: Jane Wyman (left), Dick Powell, and “Reagan’s Swede,” Veda Ann Borg.

  “All I can tell you is that I didn’t behave like a lady that weekend—and I’ll say no more.”

  ***

  In her next picture, The Singing Marine (1937), Jane was cast once again in a movie starring Dick Powell, Ronald Reagan’s good friend and the husband of Joan Blondell. The film marked the third movie in a row in which she’d been directed by Ray Enright.

  Powell played a marine from Arkansas who becomes a popular radio singer.

  Jane had a small role playing a “cutie” called Joan. The Singing Marine was the last of a trio of Warner films celebrating the military, beginning with Flirtation Walk (1934), a tribute to the Army, followed by Shipmates Forever (1935), honoring the men of the Navy.

  She had worked with many members of the cast before, including Busby Berkeley, who was brought in to stage two musical sequences.

  At first, Jane had been told that the movie would be another showcase for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, with Warners hoping to repeat the success of 42nd Street. But Keeler had another commitment and consequently, was not available.

  Jane had hoped that she might have been summoned to take the role intended for Keeler. She reminded Enright, “I sing and dance, too, and rather well, if I must say so myself.”

  He rejected her in favor of Doris Weston, a Chicago-born actress, radio performer, and nightclub singer. Jane, at one point, chatted briefly with Weston, who told her, “I was chosen because of my physical resemblance to Keeler. Frankly, I’m a much better singer than Miss Ruby.”

  Big, stupid, and abusive: Guinn Williams

  Cast in a minor role was Guinn (“Big Boy”) Williams. He stood 6’2”, with a muscular frame from his years of working on ranches in his native Texas and playing semi-pro and pro baseball.

  Eighteen years older than Jane, he’d made his screen debut in 1919 in the silent comedy, Almost a Husband with Will Rogers, Sr. He worked mainly in supporting roles in sports dramas, westerns, or outdoor adventure pictures. He was teamed frequently with Alan Hale, Sr. as a sidekick in Errol Flynn movies.

  Williams relentlessly pursued her, and she finally relented, agreeing to go out with him on a Saturday night. The date evolved into a disaster.

  Except to confide some of its details to Joan Blondell, she never spoke of it again. Apparently, Williams had assaulted her in his car when she refused to have sex with him. Based on his extreme strength and physicality, he overwhelmed her.

  According to Blondell, he drove her home, and she left his car “humiliated and depressed.” She had been bleeding. “He just ripped me apart.”

  Both Blondell and Jane agreed that she would not report the incident to the police, which would have catalyzed a frontpage scandal.

  To help her recover, Blondell invited her to join Powell and herself for a weekend at her “love nest,” on North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills. Powell was away at the studio when Jane arrived.

  Blondell told her that she’d been considered to star in The Singing Marine when Keeler became unavailable.

  “I protested, because I didn’t want to work with Ray Enright again. I wrote a letter to Hal Wallis, telling him that Ray and I had already worked enough together. We knew each other’s tricks, so—as a director—he had nothing else to teach me. I concluded the letter with: ‘There’s nothing more to be gained for the good of a picture by our continued association.’”

  Blondell said that Powell had become a wonderful father to her son, Norman, who had been fathered by her former husband, the noted cinematographer (and abusive alcoholic), George Barnes. Powell had adopted her boy, changing his name to Norman Powell. In time, he would grow up to become an accomplished producer, director, and TV executive.

  Over drinks, Blondell and Jane indulged in “girl talk.” She admitted that Powell was a better father than lover. “It’s a ritual every Friday night. We’re sitting listening to one of his recordings when he gets this look on his face. It’s a signal. He raises his eyebrows. As I lie in bed waiting for him, he spends a half hour in the bathroom. What a thorough cleansing job! A hot shower, hair wash followed by elaborate combing of his coiffure. He checks to see that his nails are clipped. Endless gargling with mouthwash. Finally, he enters the room for some pajama-clad action for exactly four minutes. He’s got it perfectly timed. When it’s over, he rushes back to the bathroom for another thorough cleansing.”

  Over Sunday dinner, Powell complained that at the age of thirty-two, “I’m still playing a juvenile. I can’t keep this up much longer. I hear Jack Warner is grooming my replacement, Kenny Baker. You’ve worked with him before. I’ve just heard that you are going to star with him in Mr. Do
dd Takes the Air. At long last, you’ve got co-star billing. You’ve made it, Pug Nose!”

  Kenny Baker with Jane Wyman in Mr. Dodd Takes the Air. He was being groomed as Dick Powell’s replacement. But where was the sex appeal?

  “Well, it’s about god damn time,” she said. “Pardon my French.”

  ***

  Director Alfred E. Green welcomed Jane to the set of Mr. Dodd Takes the Air (1937). She had been told that her latest movie was a remake of the 1932 release of The Crooner, a cautionary tale about the dangers of stardom, a vehicle for the message that fame can be a terrible curse.

  The star of the picture, Kenny Baker invited Jane to lunch in the commissary, where he seemed filled with career anxiety. “I can’t seem to make it big like Bing Crosby or Rudy Vallée. I’m not even the equal of Dick Powell, whom I’m supposed to be replacing at Warners. As a singer, I’m referred to as milque-toasty, with no sex appeal. Vallée, in contrast, was attacked by Cardinal O’Connell. He was defined as a threat to the nation’s moral safety. The cardinal claimed that Vallée’s appeal was obviously rooted in raw lust. No one ever says that about me.”

  She assured him that he was a good-looking man, although privately, she agreed that he was no sexual menace to anyone.

  In an uncredited role, William Hopper befriended Jane and had lunch with her. He spoke of his growing friendship with Ronald Reagan, and told Jane that they often double-dated at the Cocoanut Grove. Jane responded that she’d like to meet “this Reagan boy that everybody seems to be talking about.”

  He told her that he’d try to arrange it sometime, but first, he wanted her to meet his mother. Hedda Hopper was just launching her gossip column about the movie industry.

  In her office, Hedda ruled like an imperial monarch, stridently ordering her two employees about. Jane had hoped that Hedda would interview her and devote some space to her in her column. But Hedda, worldly wise and sophisticated, seemed more intrigued with her own pronouncements.

  She told Jane, “Hollywood is the ultimate Bitch Goddess, with the power to destroy. She has a taste for fresh blood, especially that of young starlets, who are a dime a dozen in this town. Very few will surface to the top as stars.”

  “When the lucky few get there, they’ll find out that it isn’t what it was cracked up to be. The Bitch Goddess can also destroy big stars—take Jean Harlow, for example. Sometimes, even when stardom is achieved, the Bitch Goddess turns actors into alcoholics, liars, cheats. You’ll be lucky if you grab the prize, but if you do, know that it carries a wicked price.”

  After Hedda had finished her rant, she focused on her son, William, who was making coffee for them. “Bill is a nice boy, and I don’t want him to get mixed up with bad company. Are you a bad girl? Tell me, how many men, married or otherwise, have you slept with since leaving Union Station?”

  “I can’t do that, Miss Hopper, I’m a respectable married woman…or was. My marriage is over now.”

  “You seem like a sweet gal, and I approve of your going out with Bill,” Hedda said. “He’s the victim of dreadful rumors. Some gossips claim he’s a homosexual, which is definitely not true. He’s the most red-blooded actor working in Hollywood, which I dub ‘Pansyville.’ Rumors are flying that Ronald Reagan and my Bill are lovers, which is definitely not true. That’s pure bullshit! Just ask their girlfriends. If you want to be a star, you’ve got to put up with crap like that.”

  Later, over dinner that night, William talked frankly about his mother, whom he called Hedda. “All the stars call her for lovelorn advice. She’d be a success writing a Lonely Hearts column. Of course, I’ve got some dark secrets. I never share my private life with Hedda. She hates communists, Jews, and homosexuals.”

  “We were never close as mother and son. But she made sacrifices for me. In the middle of the Depression, she sent me to Catalina Island School. The tuition was $2,000 a year, and to cough up that kind of money, she had to live in a dreary basement apartment with rats.”

  “Hedda had a hard life,” he said. “My father, DeWolf Hopper, was a singer and comic stage actor. Off stage, he was an abusive alcoholic. She divorced him and took me to Hollywood. Here I am, dreaming of stardom. Aren’t you dreaming of stardom too?”

  She admitted that she was. “I look up in the sky at Polaris, which seems to stand motionless in space. Other stars in the northern sky rotate around it. I picture myself as Polaris. One day, I want minor stars and supporting players, male or female, to gravitate around me.”

  “I’ve been told that Polaris is much brighter today than it was when Ptolemy first observed it thousands of years ago. That’s what I want to be in my upcoming [1940s] films. Brighter and more visible than I ever was in these stupid B-films I’ve been making in the 30s.”

  “Go, girl, go,” he said.

  When Mr. Dodd Takes the Air was wrapped, Jane collapsed. As she later told Joan Blondell, “My candle was burning at both ends. I’d been rushing from one movie set to another, then going out dancing every night until 4:30 in the morning. Getting an hour’s sleep before rushing to the studio. I’ve been filled with such anxiety about my career that I’ve been breaking out in red blotches.”

  On June, 22, 1937, she entered the hospital. Although not yet a star, she generated a headline in Variety—JANE WYMAN HOSPITALIZED FOR NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. The story appeared on page 67.

  Blondell visited her a few times during her three days in the hospital before driving her home.

  While resting in bed, a call came in from William Demarest. “You won’t believe this, but you’ve got the star role in your next picture. Your leading man is William Hopper, Hedda’s son. I think you know him. The film is called Public Wedding.”

  ***

  A former vaudevillian, the B-movie specialist, Nick Grinde, is known today (if at all) as the director who helmed Ronald Reagan’s first Hollywood movie. But he also directed Jane Wyman in the first film, Public Wedding, in which she was billed above the leading man. Even before reading the script, Jane knew that it would be a second-rate picture.

  To her surprise, she learned that the well-known actress, Marie Wilson, had been cast in the film’s third lead. Although details of Grinde’s marriage to her are disputed, Jane had heard that Wilson and Grinde were married in the early 1930s, and subsequently divorced. Apparently, their relationship had survived the ordeal.

  In Public Wedding, Jane appears with William Hopper in what might have become a rehearsal for the real thing.

  During the course of their chats, Wilson informed her that she’d soon be appearing in Boy Meets Girl (1938), with James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, and Ronald Reagan. “Nick said he would introduce me to Reagan. He’s eligible marriage material, I heard, and I’m between husbands.”

  As an actress, she became so identified with the character of Irma that she ended up playing dumb blondes throughout the remainder of her career. She would later claim that, “Marilyn Monroe stole my dumb blonde persona when she saw me in Satan Met a Lady.” [Released in 1936, that film was the second screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s detective novel, The Maltese Falcon.]

  In Public Wedding, Jane was cast as “Flip Lane,” part of a group of five street-smart employees of a carnival side-show. Broke and without jobs, they concoct a publicity scheme, a phony, “mock wedding” staged within the gaping open mouth of a (previously unprofitable) stuffed whale. Jane, as the star, plays the bride, with handsome William Hopper interpreting the role of her groom, Tony Burke. To make their plot livelier, the protagonists sincerely dislike each other. However, after the wedding, they discover that they are legally married.

  During the filming, Jane encountered, once again, Veda Ann Borg, who played Bernice, a receptionist. Borg liked to have “a nip or two,” as she put it. By three o’clock in the afternoon, she was usually intoxicated. One day, fearing for her safety, Jane agreed to drive her back to her apartment.

  She was curious about why Borg had dumped Reagan, when half the young women she met, including Wilson, s
eemed to have set their sights on him for future seductions.

  “I can answer that, but do you mind if I get down, dirty, and graphic?” Borg asked.

  “Go ahead,” Jane said.

  “I’m European in my tastes,” Borg said, “meaning I like the smell of a man. Reagan is always showering and always smelling like soap. To make our sex work, I asked him to wait for three days before taking a shower. I said that would make the sex all the better. I have a perversion. I like to go down on a man when he’s got head cheese.”

  “What in hell is that?”

  “Oh Jane, darling, you’ve got a lot to learn about sex. But I’m no teacher. Eventually, you’ll find out for yourself what headcheese is, not during any sexual encounter with Mr. Clean, Ronald Reagan.”

  “I’m beginning to get the picture,” Jane said. “Let’s drop the subject.”

  During the shoot, William Hopper took Jane out on a few occasions, ending the evening “dancing at the Troc” on Sunset Strip. At the end of the night, he’d always kiss her on the cheek and hastily bid her goodnight.

  She learned that after seeing her, he’d spend the night with Stanley Mills Haggart, who had a small house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. She assumed that he and Haggart were lovers.

  [At the time, Haggart, who had been intimately linked with both Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, worked at RKO Studios as an extra. He was a “night bird,” regularly hitting the hot clubs of Los Angeles. Hedda liked to go to bed early, so Stanley and her son William often prowled through the night time landscapes of underground Los Angeles, ostensibly picking up items for Hedda’s column. However, in those days, most of the “dirt” they unearthed could not, for legal reasons, be printed.]

  One night, Hedda called Jane at Warners and asked her to visit her home after she got off from work. She thought that Hedda, as a nationally syndicated columnist, was finally going to interview her. Jane drove over with high expectations and a touch of fear.