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

by Darwin Porter

  Dart was in the process of divorcing heiress Ruth Walgreen, the daughter of the drugstore magnate, Charles Walgreen. Even with the divorce, Dart still controlled a large share of the fortune. He would turn his share into millions of dollars. He later recalled, “I played music whose siren sounds eventually lured Reagan into the Republican orchestra.”

  Bryan retired from the screen after Brother Rat and a Baby, and Dart became president of the Rexall Drugstore chain.

  They remained Reagan’s personal friends, surviving the collapse of his marriage to Jane and encouraging a relationship with his new wife, Nancy Davis. “We didn’t have to convert Nancy to the Republican side,” Dart later said.

  The gang’s all here: Fellow “Rats” (left to right) Wayne Morris, Eddie Albert, and Ronald Reagan carry their women (left to right) Priscilla Lane, Jane Bryan (and baby), and Jane Wyman

  The Darts first urged Reagan to run for governor of California and later for President of the United States. In the decades to come, the drugstore czar would become the bluntest and most outspoken of Reagan’s so-called “Kitchen Cabinet” of longtime friends invited to the White House.

  ***

  Her career on the skids, Mayo Methot was the third wife (all of them actresses) of Humphrey Bogart, Helen Menken and Mary Philips having preceded her. Methot had been cast in a small role—that of a larcenous passenger on a bus—in Brother Rat and a Baby. Once designated as “The Portland Rosebud,” during her youth in her native Oregon, she had lost her looks, thanks to her very heavy drinking over the years.

  By the time she married Bogie in 1938, her alcoholism had taken its toll. In the 1920s, she had been a popular actress on Broadway. Signing with Warners in the ‘30s, she had specialized in the portrayal of tough-talking dames in such pictures as Marked Woman (1937), co-starring Bogie and Bette Davis.

  On the set, Methot chatted with Reagan and Jane, who were each well aware of her reputation as the more combative of “The Battling Bogarts.” Both were heavy drinkers known for their violent excesses under the influence. She was such a warrior that Bogie had nicknamed her “Sluggy.” During one fight in their kitchen, she’d taken a butcher knife and stabbed his left shoulder. After that, the press dubbed their home “Sluggy Hollow.”

  Bogie arrived one day on the set, congratulating Jane and Reagan on their marriage and inviting them to lunch with Methot and him in the commissary. “I hope your marriage will be as successful as mine,” he said, presenting a straight face to Jane and Reagan.

  Against Reagan’s better judgment, he accepted an invitation to dress in formal wear and attend a gala at the Cocoanut Grove with them.

  As they were dressing for the event, Reagan warned Jane, “We’d better confine our drinking to one glass, because we’ll have to carry Bogie and Methot home in our car.”

  At the Ambassador Hotel, Reagan and Jane nursed their respective drinks, while the Bogarts belted down quite a few. Jane couldn’t help but notice Methot’s “conspicuous cleavage.” When she dropped her purse and bent over, her left breast popped out of her gown.

  “Stuff in your tit, bitch!” Bogie snarled at her. Angered, she straightened up, lifted her glass of vodka, and tossed it into his face. Although Reagan expected an immediately violent response from him, Bogie, for the moment at least, gave the appearance of remaining calm. Meanwhile, Jane looked pointedly in another direction.

  But as he sat there, with liquor dripping from his face, it was obvious that Bogie was fuming. Slowly, he picked up a napkin and wiped away the vodka.

  At the end of the evening, Bogie and Methot headed for the lounges to freshen up. Jane and Reagan remained behind to pay the bill. “We survived the night, but barely,” he said. “Now, let’s get these two home and call it a night.”

  “Never again,” she vowed.

  With Reagan behind the wheel, driving them home, Methot suddenly demanded to be taken to the Cock n’ Bull Restaurant & Bar on Sunset Boulevard for a nightcap. Reagan demurred, saying that he and Jane had to get up early, but Bogie joined his wife in insisting.

  “Take us to the fucking Cock n’ Bull!” Bogie ordered Reagan.

  Finally, to keep the peace, Reagan drove them there in spite of Jane’s signals that she wanted to go home.

  The restaurant and bar was one of the favorite watering holes of the stars. In 1931, Methot had married its co-owner, Percy T. Morgan, and she still liked to patronize the bar because the staff never presented her with a bill.

  Seated at table, both Bogie and Methot each ordered vodka and tonic, the Reagans preferring coffee. When Methot’s drink was served, she spit it out. “This is gin and tonic, you fucker,” she called out, loudly, to the waiter. “I SAID VODKA, AND I MEAN VODKA.”

  The waiter moved forward to replace her drink. With condescension, showing his utter disdain for his wife, Bogie thanked her for not having tossed the drink into the waiter’s face. “That’s what she usually does,” he said to Reagan, “like she did with me tonight at The Grove.”

  Reagan glanced at Jane, noticing that she was growing decidedly uncomfortable as the night progressed.

  When the waiter returned with a different drink, Methot slugged down a fourth of it before turning to Bogart with a certain ferocity.

  He shot a glance at Reagan, saying to him in an undertone, “Take a good god damn look at that face on her. She’s getting ready for the kill. I can always see it coming.” Then he turned his full attention in her direction.

  “What is it now, my fair lady? What is going on in that vodka-soaked brain of yours?”

  She ignored him, focusing instead first on Reagan and then on Jane.

  “I found out today that my husband has been fucking Ann Sheridan.”

  Reagan squirmed in his seat, knowing that he was guilty of the same pleasure.

  Almost as if for the first time, Jane spoke up. “Mayo, that’s not true, Ann is a dear friend of mine, and she confides in me. She never once has mentioned Bogie, except as a vague reference as a friend.”

  Cocktail Parties That End Badly: The photo above shows the early stages of a stylish and formal gathering that devolved into a gunslinging disaster. Left to right: Mayo Methot, Humphrey Bogart, Ronald Reagan, and a very blonde starlet, Jane Wyman.

  “Listen, sweet cheeks, I know better,” Methot said. “Nothing gets by me.”

  “C’mon, bitch,” Bogie snarled. “We’re heading out of this joint.”

  Bogie stood up, along with Jane and Reagan, Methot rose on her unsteady feet, looking angry and distraught and also as if she were about to topple over.

  When Bogie reached to support her, she slugged him in the face, bloodying his nose. He struck her back, knocking her down onto the floor. When Reagan offered to help her up, she pushed his arm away. “I can rise on my own fucking feet,” she said, using the table to brace herself as she rose.

  Then, facing Bogart in all her fury, she reached into her purse and pulled out a revolver. “Okay, Mr. Gangster, Mr. Tough Guy, it’s twilight time.” Then she pointed the gun at Bogie.

  “I dare you,” he said, defying her.

  At first not knowing what to do, Reagan lunged toward her, impulsively wrestling the gun from her hand.

  “You bastard,” she shouted at Reagan. “I should shoot you, too.”

  Jane nervously intervened, taking the gun from Reagan’s hand and passing it to the restaurant manager, who had rushed to their table as the noise had escalated.

  “Come on,” Jane said to Reagan. “We’re going home. I’m sure that these two will get to their own home on their own steam if they don’t kill each other first. If not, it’s hardly our problem.”

  Reagan dutifully followed his new wife. As he exited from the restaurant, the entire place could hear the Bogarts screaming at each other.

  [As far as it is known, that incident at the Cock n’ Bull was the third time during her marriage to Bogart that Methot had threatened her husband with a gun.]

  Louise Brooks in her memoir, Lulu in Hollyw
ood, summed it up: “Bogie found Methot at a time of lethargy and loneliness, when he might have gone on playing secondary gangster parts at Warner Brothers for years and then been out. But he met Mayo and she set fire to him. Those passions—envy, hatred, and violence, which were essential to the Bogie character—which had been simmering beneath his failure for so many years—she brought to a boil, blowing the lid off all his inhibitions forever.”

  ***

  The marriage of Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan attracted such nationwide attention that the couple became known as “America’s Sweethearts.” Jack Warner ordered that another script be found for them, insisting that in this latest picture that they be jointly configured as man and wife.

  Top billing for their next project, An Angel from Texas (released in 1940), actually went to Eddie Albert and Wayne Morris, their Brother Rat cohorts.

  A face familiar to both Reagan and Jane, Ray Enright, was called in to helm the pair once again in this 69-minute B-picture released by Warner Brothers.

  The female lead went to Rosemary Lane, sister of the famous trio which also included Lola and Priscilla, Reagan’s former girlfriend.

  Enright assembled a strong supporting cast that included Ruth Terry, John Litel, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ann Shoemaker, Tom Kennedy, Milburn Stone, and Elliott Sullivan.

  An Angel from Texas represented an oft-repeated, unimpressive film concept with an overused, somewhat experimental history, a re-configuration of a tired old workhorse that should have been sent out to pasture years before. Its script, written by George S. Kaufman (not one of his better works), had originated in 1925 as a play on Broadway entitled The Butter and Egg Man. Its plot involved a folksy out-of-towner who is persuaded to invest in an iffy but eventually successful Broadway play, finding love in the intrigue associated with the production.

  Warners was hoping that by teaming Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman as a husband-and-wife in An Angel From Texas, the studio could cash in on the massive publicity generated by their recent marriage.

  The “Angel” in the film’s title represented a show-biz term for a financial backer. In the 1940 film, a good-looking, rather innocent Texan (Albert) sends his girlfriend (Lane) to Broadway, hoping she can break in as a working actress. Instead, she becomes a secretary to a fast-talking sharpie, a Broadway producer as portrayed by Morris, and his more restrained partner.

  Albert arrives with $20,000 of his mother’s life savings to invest in a hotel. But he’s lured into investing the money into a Broadway show, instead.

  Jane was cast in the film as Reagan’s wife. She easily outwits both her husband and his con artist partner and helps back their Broadway show with money from a winning sweepstakes ticket registered in her own name.

  ***

  During the first year of her marriage to Reagan and her subsequent pregnancy, Jane did not see John Payne, refusing to return his persistent phone calls.

  Reagan also temporarily abandoned his sometimes girlfriend, Ann Sheridan, at least until they started making more movies together.

  Sheridan, however, was a frequent visitor at the Reagan household, praising Jane’s cooking. Toward the end of the year, she began showing up at the Reagan apartment with George Brent, whom she would eventually marry.

  Joan Blondell later delivered a rather revealing insight into Jane’s relationship with her new husband. Blondell was aware of Jane’s romantic interest in Payne.

  “If you were making a movie with Payne and Ronnie, how would you cast it?” Blondell asked.

  “I’d cast John as the romantic lover,” Jane responded, “and I’d ask Ronnie to play the role of an older brother, who is a sort of a father figure to the heroine.”

  During their days off from the studio, both Reagan and Jane liked to play golf, so they applied for membership in the Lakeside Country Club. Their boss, Jack Warner, applied at the same time. Whereas his application was rejected, Jane and Reagan were granted membership.

  Later, Reagan asked the club’s president why Warner had been turned away. “We don’t want Jews in our club,” he told Reagan, who resigned from the club the following day, along with Jane.

  Subsequently, both Jane and Reagan joined the Hillcrest Country Club in Beverly Hills, where they were befriended by other golf-loving couples, including George Burns and Gracie Allen and Jack Benny and Mary Livingston.

  When An Angel from Texas opened across America, audiences were not particularly mesmerized. Variety referred to Albert’s “befogged cranial machinery,” and to Lane as “his school Bernhardt girlfriend.”

  The paper went on to say, “[Angel from Texas] wasn’t made with the hope of knocking critics for a loop or lining up standees at the box office, but it serves its purpose of a good little audience picture with a fair share of laughs, once the patrons are in.”

  The New York Times characterized the film as “a bright little farce about a couple of yokels from Texas who outwit a pair of Broadway theatrical sharpies. Ray Enright has directed it in a breezy, farcical manner.”

  Another critic said the script should never have been reactivated after its 1928 release as a silent.

  An Angel from Texas did absolutely nothing to advance the film careers of either Jane or Reagan. They were still hampered with reputations as actors limited to roles in B-pictures, hoping their big break would come soon. The sun would shine on Reagan far sooner than it would cast its powerful rays on Jane. Whereas he’d have to wait for only a few months, she would spend years languishing in the shadows.

  ***

  Lewis Seiler had already directed Jane Wyman in He Couldn’t Say No and in The Kid from Kokomo. For the third time around, he gave her fifth billing in his latest picture, Flight Angels, scheduled for release in 1940. The other stars included Virginia Bruce, Wayne Morris, Dennis Morgan, and Ralph Bellamy. She had worked with Bellamy before in Fools for Scandal, starring Carole Lombard and Fernand Gravet [aka Fernand Gravey], whom Jane had dated.

  The excitement within the cast was generated by Dennis Morgan, Warners’ handsome new leading man. Jane had heard the gossip: Now that Reagan had married her, he was no longer the favorite handsome hunk of Warners starlets. Almost overnight, Morgan became the most sought-after heartthrob, even though he had married his childhood sweetheart way back in 1933.

  Jane was most anxious to meet him, but in the meantime, she had to deal with her sometimes errant beau, Morris. In her dressing room, he told her that his divorce from Leonora Hornblow would be finalized as soon as he received some court documents.

  “Even though you’re now an old married woman, I still have the hots for you,” he ungracefully informed her.

  Flight Angels: Wayne Morris, Jane Wyman, Virginia Bruce, and Dennis Morgan.

  She thanked him for his continuing interest, but claimed, “I’m not ready yet to start cheating on my husband.”

  “I bet you won’t say that when you meet Dennis Morgan,” he said. “All my girlfriends are dumping me and going for him. Are you going to join the stampede?”

  “I haven’t met God’s gift to women yet, and I’m still very much in love with Ronnie,” she said.

  “You will be until he starts to bore you,” Morris responded. “When that day comes, think of old Wayne here. I can always rise to the occasion.”

  “I’m well aware of your manly charms,” she said. “Right now, I’ve got to put on my air wings to take flight with this B picture we’re making.”

  A 74-minute programmer, Flight Angels was an inside look at the pilots and stewardesses who work for a fictional airline. Morgan played an ace supervised by Bellamy, who grounds him when he learns his eyesight is failing. Bruce and Jane were cast as stewardesses, Bruce is in love with Morgan, who—in the film—eventually marries her. Morris was cast as an engineer working on a secret research aircraft called “the Stratosphere Ship.” If all goes well, the aircraft will fly higher and faster than any other plane.

  During the compilation of the film, Morris became so fascinated with flying that he told Jan
e that planned to study to become a naval aviator. “War is coming to America,” he said, “and I want to be ready to shoot the bastards down when it comes.”

  Seiler introduced Jane to Margot Stevenson, who had been cast in a minor role of a woman named “Rita.” Jane was rather cold and distant to this actress, because she suspected that the New York beauty had had an affair with Reagan when she had co-starred with him in the picture, Smashing the Money Ring.

  On the set of Flight Angels, Stevenson was spotted leaving Morris’ dressing room on two separate occasions. As Jane told Seiler, “Since Wayne isn’t getting anything from me, he’s wasting no time finding it elsewhere.”

  In Flight Angels, Dennis Morgan seemed to have been typecast. On screen, he played a pilot with a roving eye for the ladies, much to the distress of his on-screen wife, Virginia Bruce.

  Off screen, Morgan’s roving eye focused on Jane.

  At one point, John Garfield arrived late one afternoon for a date with Stevenson. Their affair would continue when she was cast in his next two films, Castle on the Hudson (1940) and Saturday’s Children (also 1940).

  ***

  At long last, the eagerly anticipated Dennis Morgan walked into Jane’s life. His romantic image had not been overly sold, as he was extremely handsome, radiating charm with his curly hair, broad shoulders, tall physique, and “Oscar-winning smile.”

  Jane agreed with the recent assessment of Ginger Rogers, who defined him as “the personification of the Arrow Collar Man.” Variety had announced that Morgan was set to co-star with Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940), each in meaty and highly dramatic roles.