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

by Darwin Porter

  Reagan was fretting not only about the health and welfare of Jane and little Maureen, but about his new role in an upcoming movie. So far, Warners’ hadn’t notified him of his next assignment as a contract player.

  He learned about it in a most unusual way when he was called back to the Warners lot to reshoot a scene with Rambeau.

  As he waited for the scene to be set up, he sat in a director’s chair reading the latest news about the war in Europe. Suddenly, a man approached him from behind. As he turned around to see who it was, he experienced a close encounter. He was shocked as a tongue darted into his mouth as part of a sudden and passionate kiss.

  “You’re gonna star with me in my next picture,” the man said. “I’ve been yearning to give you a few pokes, sport, and here is my chance.”

  It was Errol Flynn.

  Chapter Seven

  The Press Hails “Jane & Ronnie” as America’s Perfect Couple—But Were They?

  Above, in a scene he rehearsed endlessly, Reagan discovers he has no legs. Ann Sheridan (right figure in photo, above) is there to comfort him.

  In 1940, the Reagans were captured on camera, at home, cracking nuts, as a depiction of America’s most perfect, most adorable, and most wholesome couple.

  In 1940, Jane appeared in Honeymoon for Three, a film released in January of 1941, the month Maureen was born.

  She heard that she’d been cast when Joan Blondell called her one morning at eight o’clock. “Have you read Variety this morning?” her friend asked. “It’s been announced you’ve been cast in Honeymoon for Three with George Brent and Ann Sheridan. “Those two are having such a hot affair that I hope they have something left for the camera.”

  Reagan had left early for the studio that morning, and Jane and Blondell had a long woman-to-woman talk about husbands, careers, and motherhood.

  Blondell surprised Jane by telling her that her upcoming role was part of a remake of a movie that she had appeared in back in 1933. “I have no idea why Jack Warner is recycling this old script again,” Blondell said. “When I filmed it, it had already been a hit on Broadway called Goodbye Again. I appeared with Warren William and Genevieve Tobin. It was a passable little piece of fluff, but it was quickly buried in the graveyard of forgotten films.”

  “We made it pre-Code, before the Breen office began tampering with it, so your writers will have to clean it up to get it past the censors,” Blondell said. “There was a scene in our version where it was implied that Warren is taking a piss. It turned out to be running water. And in my version, I slept in the same hotel room with my boss—and it was understood that we weren’t married. That’s pretty risqué stuff, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d like to see it—sounds like fun,” Jane said. “I met Warren William when we appeared together in Stage Struck with you. I saw Tobin in The Petrified Forest with Bogie and Bette Davis. Then Tobin’s husband, William Keighley, directed Ronnie and me in Brother Rat.”

  “I know all that,” Blondell said.

  “Just trying to let you know what a Hollywood insider I’ve become.”

  “I made Goodbye Again when I was recovering from yet another abortion,” Blondell confessed. “George Barnes didn’t like the idea of having children. He believed that kids take the romance out of a relationship. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe in using rubbers.”

  [She was referring to the famous cinematographer, George Barnes, whom she married in Arizona in 1933, the union surviving until 1936. During the short run of that marriage, Blondell insisted on carrying a child to term. A son was born to the couple in 1934. She named him Norman. The boy was later adopted by her second husband, Dick Powell, and his name was changed to Norman S. Powell.”]

  “Ronnie wants to have children, but I don’t want to settle into the role of a bored housewife looking out for a lot of little Reagans running around the place. I’m going to continue to pursue my film career, as hopeless as it looks at the moment.”

  “That’s not what the fan magazines are claiming,” Blondell said. “They say that Ronnie has domesticated you.”

  Ruth Waterbury of Photoplay was among the hacks promoting Jane’s image as a woman wanting to settle down in the kitchen and bedroom as a dutiful wife playing second fiddle to her husband.

  Waterbury overlooked the fact that in 1941 alone, Jane would release four different movies. “Jane is madly in love with Ronnie and is devoted to him,” Waterbury wrote. “His every wish is her command. He comes first in her life, even if it means sacrificing her own career. She works constantly to build up his ego and confidence.”

  Blondell later said, “The Jane that Waterbury described was not the Janie I knew. She lacked confidence in her own talent, and didn’t spend much time building up Ronnie’s confidence as a screen actor from what I saw. She had a steely determination to succeed at all costs. Instead of being a wife and mother, she talked constantly about chasing that elusive dream of stardom.”

  Two “Dreamboats,” John Payne & Dennis Morgan, Pursue Jane, as Reagan is Ensnared by Rival Blondes, Betty Grable & Carole Landis.

  “I think Ronnie is cute,” Jane told Blondell. “If only he would stop talking about politics, he’d be a hell of a lot cuter. I’ve failed twice at marriage, and, frankly, I don’t know if I can make a go of it this time around, either. We put on our smiling faces for our fans, who read those pulp magazines, but in private, we can be a lot less charming.”

  Young Jane evolved into the odd girl out, appearing in a wardrobe disaster she hated. Warners’ wardrobe department promoted it as “a foulard dress with a wide-brimmed hat.” Jane denounced it as “frumpy.”

  Even at that point in her life, Jane showed a fierce independence. When her friend, Lucille Ball, had called to congratulate her on her marriage, Jane made a frank admission. “Even though I’m married, I still have my eye trained on every good-looking guy I meet, especially if they’re named John Payne or Dennis Morgan. A really gorgeous guy can make me forget about home and hearth, at least put aside enough time for love in the afternoon. Which would your rather do, change some kid’s shitty diaper or let John Payne make love to you?”

  “You know me well enough to answer that question for yourself,” Ball said.

  The Motion Picture Herald and Fame Poll had designated Jane as a “Star of Tomorrow,” but after their forecast was released, she lamented to Ball, “But will tomorrow ever come if I keep appearing in one highly forgettable film after another? I’m on the rocky road to thirty, and still turning out these god damn programmers. Who do you have to sleep with to get ahead in this town!”

  Grannie Nelle, childminding Baby Maureen.

  “Try Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Darryl F. Zanuck, and most definitely Harry Cohn,” Ball said.

  ***

  The script for Honeymoon for Three arrived that afternoon. When Jane read it, she was shocked at how small her part was. More than her role as Elizabeth Clochessy, she’d have preferred the part that went to Osa Massen, a Danish actress who had come to America in 1937, after having begun her career as a newspaper photographer. The same year Jane met her, she’d been cast as Melvyn Douglas’ unfaithful wife dealing with blackmailer Joan Crawford in A Woman’s Face (1941).

  That night, when Reagan came home, Jane complained to him about her career frustration. “I was called the Hey Hey Girl. Now I should be renamed the Queen of the Sub-Plots. I’m living through the paper doll years of my career.”

  “I don’t expect much from Lloyd Bacon,” she said. “He’s the director. He races through a film like he did my appearance in Gold Diggers of 1937.”

  “I did all right when he directed me in Knute Rockne,” Reagan said.

  “I applaud your good luck,” she said, sarcastically. “Lady Luck hates me.”

  Jane’s competition: Danish beauty, Osa Massen.

  “She doesn’t at all,” he said. “After all, she brought me to you. How lucky can a gal get?”

  Sheridan was clearly the star of the picture, playing th
e secretary to George Brent, cast as the novelist, Kenneth Bixby, who is a literary Don Juan, eagerly sought after by hordes of women fans. One woman, Julie Wilson (Osa Massen, who, it’s revealed, is married to the character played by Charles Ruggles), sneaks into his hotel room in the hopes of getting her book published. Thus the action begins. Elizabeth (as played by Jane) is Julie’s cousin, who has followed her to Bixby’s hotel. Elizabeth is engaged to the character played by William T. Orr, with whom Jane had worked before in My Love Came Back. She remembered him talking obsessively about America’s possible entry into World War II.

  “I plan to become an Army Air Force officer,” he had told Jane.

  At the war’s end, Orr would marry Joy Page, Jack Warner’s stepdaughter. A rosy future in media, especially the fast-emerging field of television, awaited him.

  In Honeymoon for Three, Anne (Sheridan) gets her man Bixby (Brent) in the end.

  Key roles were also played by Walter Catlett, who has some funny bits as a waiter, and by Lee Patrick, who seemed adept at playing eccentric characters who included nurses, floozies, and dithery socialites. In the movie, as Mrs. Pettijohn, she names her children after her favorite authors, including Booth Tarkington.

  Jane enjoyed seeing Charles Ruggles again, an actor whose career would span six decades, a hundred pictures, and a reputation for playing absent-minded authority figures.

  On the set, Jane met the screenwriting twins, Julius and Philip Epstein. They were filled with bitterness toward Jack Warner. In spite of their commercial success, Warner despised them, resenting their pranks, their work habits, and the odd hours they kept.

  In 1952, the producer would turn their names over to the house Un-American Activities Committee. When asked if they were ever members of any subversive organization, the twins wrote, “Yes, Warner Brothers.”

  After their farce in which Jane appeared, the brothers went on to better things, winning an Oscar for the screenplay of Bogie’s Casablanca (1942). They worked on that script with Howard Koch.

  George Brent and Ann Sheridan, the stars of Honeymoon for Three, outshone Jane in this frothy romp, but Jane claimed, “My Day Will Come.”

  Like some other cast members, Catlett, defined by Jane as “the ugliest actor I ever met,” was going on to greater things. Playing a testy and pompous waiter in Honeymoon for Three, he would soon be cast in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney.

  Jane had never appeared this unglamorous on the screen before. Ironically at the same time she was posing for some of the most glamorous publicity shots for Warners. Some critics ridiculed her film outfits, calling them “in preparation for playing an old maid.” Another critic noted, “If Jane Wyman dressed like that in private life, she would never have nailed heartthrob Ronald Reagan.”

  Walter Catlett...”The ugliest actor ever.”

  During the filming of the movie, Hollywood writers made frequent visits to the set, looking for hot copy about the romance between Brent and Sheridan. Jane was with Sheridan when she was asked if she planned to marry Brent before Christmas. “Honey, I wouldn’t spoil Christmas that way,” she answered.

  Even when Brent gave her a square-cut diamond, placing it on the third finger of her left hand, she still denied any engagement. “It’s just a gift from a friend,” she told reporters. “I place it on the finger where it fits best—and that’s all there is to it. We’re not engaged. Every time George gives me something, the press declares we’re on the verge of eloping.”

  Honeymoon for Three was an obvious attempt to capitalize off the current flood of Brent-Sheridan publicity. But when the film was released, one critic wrote, “Brent and Sheridan may go up in flames off screen, but on screen, they make one burned-out couple.”

  Charles Ruggles... Specializing in mousy, stuttering, henpecked husbands.

  To Jane, Sheridan confessed that they were having an affair, and that she was considering marrying him. Up to then, after her divorce, she’d been playing the field, dating David Niven, Allan Jones, and Frederick Brisson, along with directors Jean Negulesco and Anatole Litvak after he escaped from the clutches of Miriam Hopkins. Her dates with César Romero, “The Latin from Manhattan” were strictly platonic, as he was really lusting after Desi Arnaz, much to the annoyance of Lucille Ball.

  “Frankly, George doesn’t have a good marriage record,” Sheridan said. “His first marriage to Helen Campbell lasted less than thirty days. Although he was married to Ruth Chatterton for two years, they didn’t live together for most of that time. His third marriage to Constance Worth didn’t survive the honeymoon.”

  Julius (left) and Philip Epstein: Irreverent and identical screenwriting twins working feverishly on the script for Casablanca

  “What’s the matter with him?” Jane asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said. “As for me, I have a sexual problem with him.”

  “What kind of problem?” Jane asked.

  “Brent bent!” Sheridan said before being called to the set.

  [Sheridan’s comment about Brent’s sexual equipment, unprintable at the time, was made to Hedda Hopper, in explaining why their marriage broke up so quickly.]

  Honeymoon for Three opened to bad reviews. The reasons most often cited for its failure included its direction, its acting, and its script. One critic in New York wrote, “George Brent is cast as a Lothario novelist, but it’s not apparent why the ladies throw themselves at this dull character. Clark Gable he isn’t.”

  The film opened in January of 1941, the month Reagan and Jane added Baby Maureen to their household.

  Many of Jane’s friends, such as Paulette Goddard, called to congratulate her. Jane was rather frank. “Thanks, but no thanks. I am terribly disappointed. I was carrying around a girl all these months, and I wanted a boy, really wanted a boy. I had even selected a name for the kid: Ronald Reagan, Jr.”

  As a new father, Reagan was also being interviewed by the press. “The experience [of having a baby] made all this cartoon stuff about prospective fathers seem cheap. After work at the studio, I would go directly to Jane’s hospital room. I was glad to be working because it took my mind off worrying about Jane. When she went into labor, she threw aside the hands of both the nurse and doctor. She grabbed mine and hung on for dear life. That gave me such a thrill, as I can’t believe.”

  After the birth of their daughter, the Reagans found their living space too cramped. Although he held back, she urged him to go into debt and build a house. He had taken her to see the Rosalind Russell film, This Thing Called Love (1940), and she had fallen in love with the house depicted in the movie. She sought out the designer, asking him for a copy of his architectural plans, which he turned over to her.

  After searching every weekend, Jane and Ronald bought a plot of land on a steep hill overlooking Hollywood Boulevard. A contractor was hired, and a new eight-room home was built. Jane decorated and furnished the house without any help from Reagan. “All he did was remind me that I was spending too much money,” she lamented to her friends.

  She was glad when he was cast in Santa Fe Trail (1940) with Errol Flynn. That gave her a chance to put some finishing touches on the house. She, too, was excited to have been cast, almost simultaneously, in another picture, Bad Men of Missouri (1941). As she told Blondell, “It stars my former lover, Wayne Morris, and my future lover, Dennis Morgan.”

  “Are you worried about Ronnie appearing in a movie with Flynn?” Blondell asked. “Do you think he’ll tell Ronnie about the fling you two guys had?”

  “No,” Jane said. “Errol will be too busy chasing after Ronnie. I think I’ll write a message for Flynn on Ronnie’s dick—‘This dick is mine.’”

  ***

  For the most part, Reagan continued to ignore calls from Carole Landis, the celluloid blonde goddess, perhaps wanting to forget their romantic liaisons of the late 1930s. Nonetheless, he continued to tell friends such as Pat O’Brien, Robert Taylor, and Dick Powell, that, “Carole is one of the most luscious dames in Hollywood
, but she’s also among the most promiscuous where the competition is stiff for that honor.”

  His friends agreed, perhaps having sampled Landis’ charms themselves. He knew that Powell had.

  Unexpectedly, an urgent call came in from Landis that he felt he had to take. She informed him she was in the hospital, having been severely beaten. “I trust you as my friend. I need you to come to the hospital and help me figure out what to do.”

  When he got there, he found part of her face bandaged, and her nose was causing her a great deal of pain.

  After a few minutes, she revealed what had happened. She’d become romantically involved with Pat DiCicco, a so-called Hollywood agent with no clients. He was in reality the front man for gangster Lucky Luciano’s illegal activities in the Los Angeles area. Luciano was the city’s major drug dealer, and those foolish enough to move in on his territory usually ended up with bullets in their bodies.

  Reagan talked very earnestly to her, telling her that although he didn’t want to dictate to her, “If you continue to hang out with DiCicco, you might end up dead. He’s already been involved in at least two famous murders, and god knows how many gangland slayings. I know the guy’s handsome and charming when he wants to be, but he’s lethal.”

  Pat DiCicco...a documented henchman of Lucky Luciano, a brutalizer of women, and an omnisexual gigolo.

  DiCicco was an already well-documented beater of women. During his marriage to actress Thelma Todd (1932-34), he sent her to the hospital several times after assaulting her. Later, he was implicated in her murder.

  In time, he’d marry heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, who, as published in her memoirs, stated that he beat her, too.