For the big send-off from Los Angeles, and to cash in on free publicity, Parsons lined up major stars to see the troupe off at Union Station. The stars included Deanna Durbin, Sonja Henie, Eleanor Powell, and Hayward’s nemesis, Priscilla Lane. Hayward remembered that Jane was furious when Priscilla gave Reagan a passionate kiss on the lips. “Wyman was even more enraged when that nymphomaniacal Norwegian skating star, Sonja Henie, practically lip-locked Reagan,” Hayward said.
Jane later complained to Parsons, “I thought the ice queen was going to suck out Ronnie’s tongue.”
June Preisser with Mickey Rooney. “Andy Hardy” appears to be resisting her advances on screen. That wasn’t the case in private.
Meanwhile, also as part of their very public departure, Hayward was kissed passionately by a trio of bisexual stars, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and, somewhat less passionately, Fred Astaire. Slipping off afterward to conceal herself from photographers, she wiped her lips, later telling Parsons, “I don’t know where those three cocksucking mouths had been the previous night.”
Although he wasn’t her type, she also accepted a big smack from the reigning box office champ, Mickey Rooney. She heard Parsons chide him for being two years older than his official MGM biography.
“I’ll be Andy Hardy forever,” Rooney said, “especially if Metro keeps finding these knockout sweethearts like Lana Turner for me.”
Pert, blonde-haired June Preisser showed up at the railroad station to greet Rooney. She had made Babes in Arms with him, and he gave her a warm embrace and a “very French kiss,” as he called it.
Preisser, with her song-and-dance routines, had more vaudeville talent than any of the other starlets. Most of her acts opened with her “rolling” herself, like a tire, across the stage, using her hands and feet to imitate the rolling motion of a wheel.
Capitalizing on her skills as an acrobat, this Southern Belle from New Orleans would soon appear with Rooney and Judy Garland in Strike Up the Band (1940).
Another member of Louella’s touring brigade was Arleen Whelan, born in Salt Lake City. During her twenty-year career, which began in 1937, she would make two dozen films, starting with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. She broke into movies after one of 20th Century Fox’s directors, H. Bruce Humberstone, received a manicure from her.
When Hayward met Whelan, she later confided to Parsons, “I thought redheads like me are supposed to flame. I’m on fire. Whelan can’t light a candle to me. That red hair of hers is probably dyed.”
To pacify her, Parsons privately agreed, although publicly, she tried to portray herself as a neutral and benificent monarch throughout all the backstage knife-stabbing to come.
After a tryout in Santa Barbara, the troupe opened at RKO’s Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco after the audience had snoozed through a Jean Hersholt movie, Meet Dr. Christian. The date of that premiere was November 15, 1939.
Parson’s 70-minute stage performance featured dance, music, comedy, and references to recent Hollywood gossip. On stage, her role involved sitting behind a desk, watching the hopefuls perform in front of her, while imperiously trying to figure out which of the “youngsters,” as she called them, deserved a mention in her column. As corny as this was, audiences in the late 1930s “ate it up,” Parsons gleefully reported.
Whelan recalled that Hayward usually stalked out onto the stage “like a red-haired panther. She planted her feet firmly, as if she owned the god damn theater and then she’d shout, ‘Anyone here from Brooklyn?’ Wherever we played, there was always a rowdy bunch from Brooklyn, or so it seemed.”
The highlight of the show was a comedy sketch between Reagan and Hayward.
Hodges recalled seeing them perform. “Hayward put fantastic zeal into her performance. She was the least-known member of the troupe, but stood out the most. She came out on stage looking stunning in a blue velvet dress with all that flame-red hair.”
“For her sketch with Reagan, she at one point ‘stage stabs’ him, but his head keeps bobbing up. Then she slugs him repeatedly. I don’t mean a stage slug, but a down-and-out, fist-smashing attack. I don’t know how Ronnie stood it.”
From the beginning, Jane stood in the wings watching as Hayward pummeled her groom-to-be. She later complained to Parsons. “She is slapping him so hard just to make me mad. If she keeps this up, she’s going to injure him. She’s getting even with him for dropping her in favor of me.”
Parsons later said, “Ronnie rolled with the punches and at no point did he complain of Susan’s attacks. After the tour, he must have walked down the aisle with Jane black and blue.”
Hayward, annoyed at Jane standing in the wings glaring at her, bitterly complained to Parsons, urging her to have her removed. “She’s destroying my act. Instead of concentrating on what I’m doing, I’m staring at her.”
When Parsons suggested that Jane remove herself from the sight lines of actors performing on stage, she refused. “To hell with this would-be Scarlett O’Hara. If I don’t stand there watching over Ronnie, she’d kill him before our wedding day. She’s just slapping him around like that to spite me.”
“Or maybe to spite Ronnie,” Parsons chimed in. Perversely, she seemed to enjoy the rivalry between the two actresses, each of whom would go on to become a super-star of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Louella had traveled with her own personal hairdresser and came out every night clad in mink and pearls. As she settled behind a desk, onstage, she read phony items [“William Powell and Ginger Rogers have been seen holding hands”] from a fake teletype machine. Then, after delivering her “update from Hollywood,” she’d surrender the stage to Whelan, who sang a Bossa Nova tune. A San Francisco paper wrote, “She moves with mild undulations of her torso.”
Variety found Reagan “very personable, deft, and obviously at home on the stage,” suggesting that he might consider Broadway as an option one day.
The Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle defined the show as “sparkling—great dramatic flair from Louella.”
Non-Hearst papers were critical, however, one of them suggesting that Parsons spoke her lines in a “muffing, spluttering, stumbling voice.”
After San Francisco, Parsons and her “Flying Stars” were off to tour America, landing in such cities as Pittsburgh, where they played to “standing room only” audiences.
In Philadelphia, Reagan came to realize for the first time that he’d become a sex symbol to hundreds of young American women, along with a few grandmothers who had joined his fan club.
That was demonstrated one night when he left his hotel room, passed through the lobby, and walked out onto the street. He was immediately confronted with dozens of bobbysoxers, most of them with autograph books.
He later recalled, “Somehow, the crowd got out of control. I’d never seen women this aggressive before. They tore at my clothing, wanting a piece of me. I felt several hands grabbing my crotch. Before the hotel security guards rushed out to save me, I was practically stripped naked. Thank God I wore a clean pair of underwear. I thought things like that happened only to Frank Sinatra. Now I was experiencing it. That’s what I get for being so god damn handsome and having such a masculine physique.”
“On the tour, Louella was a bit mischievous,” Hodges said. “She reported to Arleen that Susan had been making unflattering remarks about her.”
Whelan set out to get her revenge, and went to Jane. “I hate to tell you this, but last night at around two o’clock in the morning, I saw Reagan leaving Susan’s bedroom. I was coming home late from a date.”
Jane believed Whelan’s lies, later denouncing her future bridegroom, calling him “a whoremonger.”
At one point during the tour, Jane got so angry, she wouldn’t speak to Ronnie except on stage,” Hodges claimed. “Finally, they had to appeal to their fairy godmother, Louella herself, to impose an uneasy truce upon these ill-matched lovers.”
During the tour, while Jane was alienated from Reagan, Whelan decided to move in on him, hopin
g to take advantage. In Chicago, where Parsons was fêted, there was a swimming pool in the basement of their hotel.
“Arleen pursued Ronnie there,” Hodges said. “When he put on his trunks, and went for a swim—he was quite the athlete—Arleen put on her most seductive bathing suit and followed him downstairs.”
“Arleen told me, ‘Ronnie’s package looks promising, and I intend to sample it before this damn tour is over,’” Hodges claimed. “She was also mad at Louella for inviting only one male star along on the tour.”
The players moved on to Washington, D.C. There, Parsons invited Eleanor Roosevelt to attend one of the performances, but the First Lady politely declined the invitation. Parsons fumed, “That bitch. I’m more famous than she is, and she snubs me.”
Hodges later recalled, “There was something so alone about Hayward. She was the most unpopular of all the gals on the tour. I was a brand new bride. And Dutch (Reagan) and Jane had each other. Arleen was very gay, with plenty of beaux. She was to marry Alexander D’Arcy in 1940. June already had a career on the stage with her sister, Cherry. But Susan—she seemed to have nothing except her natural talent.”
A promotional tour makes whoopee about the Ronnie-Jane wedding nuptials to come.
Joy Hodges (left) and Arleen Whelen (hovering over the happy couple) look on with a certain envy.
“Hayward had absolutely no sense of humor,” Hodges continued. “She was grumpy all the time. We later learned that Jane had stolen Ronnie from her. I avoided Hayward whenever I could. She could be so blunt. You never knew when she was going to say something biting, hateful, or just plain sarcastic. Hayward sucked up to Louella, but gave everybody else a rough time, especially Ronnie and Jane.”
At one point during the tour, a drunken Parsons took Jane outside and lectured her, “You’re wearing far too much costume jewelry. It detracts from your natural beauty and makes you look cheap. You don’t want to look like a Saturday night hooker when you go out.”
For Jane, the highlight of the cross-country tour came when Reagan presented her with a fifty-two carat amethyst engagement ring. She proudly showed it to the girls.
When Hayward found out about it, she jealously snapped, “The man I’m going to marry will give me a fifty-two carat diamond.”
En route back to Hollywood, their TWA plane stopped in Albuquerque, where the Pueblo Indians made Parsons an honorary member of their tribe. They gave her the name of “Ba Ku La,” which translates as “Princess Starmaker.”
Later, in her hotel room, the newly christened “Indian Princess” telephoned her editors, demanding that her previous submission be rewritten, as follows:
“Ronnie Reagan and Janie Wyman are to be married as soon as our personal appearance tours end in Hollywood. These two lovebirds are made for each other. It will be the third marriage for Jane, the first for Ronald.”
When he read the column, Reagan said to Jane, “Louella says that your marriage to me will be number three. Where did she get that wrong information?”
“Not from me, darling,” Jane said. “I was only married once. I’ve told you that.”
During her years-long marriage to Reagan, she never revealed to him her first marriage to Eugene Wyman.
Years later, when Reagan was the emcee for The General Electric Theater, a reporter asked him about his involvement with Susan Hayward. All he said was, “Fire and Ice,” before walking away.
During the months she spent in Fort Lauderdale early 70s, Hayward said, “It was men like Oleg Cassini, Jeff Chandler, John F. Kennedy, Porfirio Rubirosa, and oh, yes, Ronald Reagan, that led me to say, ‘Men! I’d like to fry ‘em all in deep fat!’”
Chapter Six
Reagan’s Movie Line “Win One for the Gipper” Morphs Into a Vote-Getting Slogan for His Future Campaigns.
Jane Wyman began her “married life” with Ronald Reagan months before the actual wedding, although he didn’t come home every night.
“He’s a great dancer,” she told Joan Blondell, “and you know how much I like to dance. I prefer to go nightclubbing six nights a week, but he can settle happily for two. It’s a possible conflict.”
Here, Jane is pictured with her baby daughter, whose name became Maureen.
”He talks of having more children,” Jane said to Blondell. “I told him to have the orphanage send over as many kids as he wanted, but he’d have to hire some god damn nannies to take care of them. I’ve worked too hard to become a movie star to let it all slip away from me now. It’s a possible conflict.”
Before he entered into marriage with Jane Wyman, Ronald Reagan called on Pat O’Brien, his fellow actor and “father confessor.”
Reagan later told Dick Powell, “Just before I stepped up to marry Jane, I had been in the toilet throwing up. No, not because the idea of marriage either terrifed me or disgusted me. I had history’s worst case of the flu, and felt dizzy-headed and faint.”
“On our honeymoon night, Jane didn’t get a rise out of me.”
“I’ve slept with a lot of Hollywood starlets,” he admitted, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that none of them is ideal marriage material. I’m looking for a gal I could proudly take home to dear old Dad...and Mom, too. Nelle believes I won’t find such a gal in show business.”
“What about Jane?” O’Brien asked.
“She’s the best candidate so far,” Reagan admitted, “but she didn’t make a very good wife to this guy, Myron Futterman. My fear is that once again, Jane will not honor her marriage vows and that she’ll go out with other men when I’m away, perhaps on location. She cheated on Futterman with a lot of other men, including yours truly. Since Futterman was out of town a lot, she had plenty of chances.”
“Let me ask you this,” O’Brien said. “Would you be faithful to her? You’re a real ladies’ man, bouncing from the bed of one starlet after another. From what I’ve seen, you don’t have to ask them. They throw themselves at you. Could you resist such temptation and go home to a wife and maybe kids night after night? As we Irishmen know, the flesh is weak.”
“I’ve got to be truthful with you, as I always am—no bullshitting with you,” Reagan said. “In all honesty, I think I’d become a husband with a cheating heart.”
“I believe that, too, my boy,” O’Brien said.
“My answer might be different twenty or so years from now,” Reagan said. “Maybe then I’ll be ready to settle down: But right now, I’m living my salad years. Only a fool or a homosexual would turn down some of the offers I’m getting. For instance, Betty Grable and Carole Landis are still calling me. On the other hand, I’d like to start a family…You know, have three or four kids.”
“I have some advice for you that goes against the clichéd rule,” O’Brien said. “Why not have your cake and eat it, too?”
Reagan looked startled at first, then seemed to mull it over. “I think that might be some of the best advice a young married man can ever receive.”
“All Married Male Stars in Hollywood Have Something on the Side.” —Gale Page
Stepping out, Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan made a dashing, handsome, and romantic couple.
As this picture indicates, they had liberated themselves from their early Middle West dress codes and had “gone Hollywood.”
***
After talking to O’Brien, Reagan proposed marriage to Jane, but how he went about that remains a source of widely different speculation. Some of Reagan’s closest friends, including Dick Powell, Eddie Foy, Jr., and Eddie Albert claimed that Jane forced him into marriage with a suicide threat.
In a surprise move, First Lady Nancy Reagan confirmed those assertions in an interview in 1989 with Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris. She claimed that Jane swallowed a lot of pills, but summoned an ambulance herself to rush her to the hospital to have her stomach pumped.
According to Nancy, when a messenger delivered the suicide note to Reagan, he rushed to the hospital. When he was allowed to see her after her stomach was pumped, he was alleged
to have said, “Of course, I’ll marry you.”:
“You know how softhearted Ronnie is,” Nancy said to Morris. “Jane Wyman knew which buttons to push.”
The story of Jane’s suicide attempt was widely publicized at the time. Nancy’s source obviously must have been Reagan himself.
Over the years, Jane consistently denied the story to her friends, labeling it “a gross exaggeration. It was Nancy who tricked Ronnie into marriage by getting pregnant—not me. She should not be spreading lies about me concerning an event that happened so very long ago.”
As would be expected, Jane had a very different version. “Ronnie’s proposal was about as unromantic as anything that happened. We were about to be called for a take on the set of Brother Rat and a Baby. Ronnie simply turned to me as if the idea were brand new and had just hit him and said, ‘Jane, why don’t we get married?’ I couldn’t think of any reason we shouldn’t. I’d been wondering for a whole year—ever since I first saw him—why he hadn’t asked me. I was just about to give him a definite yes when we were called before the cameras. In trying to step down off my personal cloud, I managed to muff a few lines and toss in a whispered ‘yes,’ after the director yelled, ‘Cut!’”
Louella Parsons supplied her own version, claiming that “One lovebird proposed to the other lovebird during our cross-country tour.”
When Reagan became president—the first divorced man to ever do so—there was a renewed interest within the press about his first marriage. Many reporters sought copies of his first memoir, Where’s the Rest of Me?, for a rundown of his version of his first marriage. The book had been published in 1965 at the culmination of his film career.
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 32