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

by Darwin Porter

  DiCicco had earned his negative reputation with Reagan because he had been partially responsible for the beating death of Reagan’s friend, comedian Ted Healy. Wallace Beery and Albert (“Cubby”) Broccoli were also involved in that fatal beating.

  Landis promised to dump DiCicco. “If I do, I hope that means you’ll start calling on me again,” she told Reagan.

  “Maybe sometime in the future, but right now, I’m trying to stay true blue to Jane. Maybe you should get married, too. Settle down.”

  “If you’d divorce Jane and agree to marry me, I’ll straighten out. You’re the kind of guy who can help me.”

  “I can’t.” he said. “I’m taken. But if you try hard enough, you can find the right man. Just make sure he’s not already married.”

  After Landis was released from the hospital three days later, she kept her promise to Reagan and dropped DiCicco. She even followed his advice and in 1940, she got married, a state of affairs that remained intact for only two months.

  Her groom was an infamous playboy of the time, Willis Hunt, Jr., scion of a wealthy California society family in the yacht business. He lived in the Art Deco-style Sunset Towers Apartments on Sunset Boulevard, former home of John Wayne, Errol Flynn, director Howard Hawks, and gangster Bugsy Siegel.

  Bon vivant Willis Hunt, Jr., with Carole Landis at their wedding. He preferred “sex without gender” and desired Reagan.

  Hunt thrived on speeding, and officers in the L.A.P.D. let him dress up in a police officer’s uniform and arrest speeders along Santa Monica Boulevard and in the Hollywood Hills. At night, he was a party boy, often throwing orgies described as featuring “sex without gender” inside his deluxe apartment.

  “I’m not really a homo cocksucker, because I’m always the top,” he assured Landis.

  During his two-month marriage to Landis, they were often seen cruising around Beverly Hills in his custom-made Lincoln convertible. On weekends, he took her flying, piloting his own plane. Later, in the evening, they were seen dancing and drinking at the Mocambo or at the Trocadero.

  When Landis could take him no more, she walked out, filing for divorce. The very next night, he was seen dating Betty Grable, who had divorced Jackie Coogan. Landis later told Reagan, “I’m seriously pissed off. He’s going out with Grable because he knows she’s my rival at Fox, and he’s dating her to spite me.”

  Dysfunctional playboy Willis Hunt chased blondes. In addition to Carole Landis, he heavy-dated Martha O’Driscoll.

  Hunt was also seen dating New York actress Eleanor Frances, a dead ringer for Landis. He was also involved with starlet Carol Gallagher.

  Hunt’s most serious involvement was with Florida-born Martha O’Driscoll, who had appeared in 1939 with Mickey Rooney in Judy Hardy and Son. She was also set to have a minor role in Preston Sturges’ classic comedy The Lady Eve (1941), starring Barbara Stanwyck, and also in Cecil B. DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

  Hunt called Reagan and invited him—“without Jane”—to one of his infamous parties. Reagan politely turned him down. Not put off, he phoned Reagan two days later and invited him to Bakers Field. He explained that at the airfield, he had become friends with some Royal Air Force pilots, who had a fleet of six two-seater fighter planes. They were training Americans who wanted to volunteer to shoot down Nazi planes flying over England during the Battle of Britain. With his fear of flying, Reagan turned down that offer. Hunt, however, was persistent, consistently calling Reagan and annoying him with his invitations.

  Finally, he called Landis to protest Hunt’s calls. “Why does he keep calling me? Are you behind this? Have you told him about us?”

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I did,” she said. “He’s not jealous—in fact, he finds you really cute. Actually, he wants to make it with you, perhaps join us in a three-way. He keeps calling because he never accepts the word ‘no.’”

  “Tell him to butt out, god damn it!”

  “I’ll not only do that, but I’m divorcing the fucker. I’ve had it. Since he can’t get you, he’s settled for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who swings both ways. If you don’t believe me, ask Joan Crawford. Of course, she swings both ways, too.”

  After her divorce, in reference to her brief marriage, Landis told the press that, “It took exceptional forbearance just to make it through those sixty days.”

  She called Reagan to ask him to come by her home one night after work, but he refused. A short time later, she phoned him again, telling him she was going on a location shooting in Florida and asking him to slip away with her for a short vacation.

  “The star of the picture is that bitch, Betty Grable, whom I detest. She claims she knows you, Like I’d believe you’d hang out with trash like that bleached blonde whore.”

  He wanted to say, “It takes one to know one,” but he held his tongue. “I can’t go away now. I’m making a movie with Errol Flynn.”

  “Better take along your chastity belt, darling,” she said before hanging up.

  ***

  A call from Warner Brothers came in to the Reagan home at six o’clock that morning. Jane was already awake, but Reagan was still sleeping. She called him to the phone. “It’s Warners.”

  On the line, he learned that he was to report at eight o’clock for a costume fitting for Errol Flynn’s new picture, Santa Fe Trail.

  Ronald Reagan impersonated George Armstrong Custer (right) in Santa Fe Trail, a loosely historical tale of an anti-slavery rebellion in Kansas.

  “Wayne Morris is off the picture,” the voice said. “You’re taking over the role of General Custer.”

  In the wardrobe department, a bright new cavalry uniform, blue with gold braid, had been crafted specifically for him. On the floor, he noticed a crumpled, discarded uniform with Morris’ name pinned to it.

  In his memoirs, Reagan recalled that that uniform had made a lasting impression on him. “It occurred to me that it would be just as easy someday to throw my clothes in the corner and hang some other actor’s in their place. It’s a highly competitive business.”

  Santa Fe Trail was the only film set in the Old West that Reagan would make for Warners. On the set, he was greeted by screenwriter Robert Buckner, who had also written the script for Knute Rockne—All American. “I’ve just been polishing your lines,”

  “Michael Curtiz will be on the set soon,” Buckner said, “But I’ve got to warn you: The bastard didn’t want you in the role. He didn’t want Morris either. Those two guys had a big fight and the Mad Hungarian ordered Morris off the set. Curtiz wanted John Wayne, who turned it down. He sent Curtiz a note: ‘I REFUSE TO PLAY FLYNN’S PUSSY.”

  Before leaving Reagan to read the script, Buckner told him, “Actually, it was Jack Warner who wanted you to play Custer. He said war is coming, and he was about to lose his leading male actors. He told us the Army won’t take you because you’re blind as a bat.”

  Reagan sat down to read the script through his contact lenses. “Do I make my last stand against the Indians?”

  “It’s not that kind of role,” Buckner said. “The plot revolves more around John Brown, the abolitionist crusader. It’s not history. I’ve taken poetic license.”

  As he read Buckner’s script, Reagan realized that little of it made sense from a standpoint of historical fact. The script called for Flynn to interpret the early military career (i.e., during the 1850s) of J.E.B. (“Jeb”) Stuart, later the Confederacy’s most renowned cavalry commander. Reagan had been hired for a sanitized (and chronologically incorrect) interpretation of George Armstrong Custer’s career before the Civil War, covering events which might have happened years before the 1876 massacre by Native Americans of his military contingent at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

  When the film opens, Custer and Stuart are graduating from West Point in 1854, although in reality, Custer was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy at the time. Jefferson Davis also factors into the narrative, as do future Civil War generals such as Philip Sheridan, James Longstreet, James Hood, and
George Pickett. Raymond Massey was cast as John Brown, a fanatical American abolitionist who advocated the use of armed insurrection as the only means of overthrowing slavery in the United States.

  From behind him, Reagan heard the thick Hungarian accent of the film’s flamboyant director, Michael Curtiz. “I want you to do good job. Earl Flint will be asshole as usual.” [The director always botched the names of people.]

  To many viewers, Buckner’s script seemed to haphazardly combine the dramas associated with the westward expansion of the U.S. with a retelling of the abolitionist crusade of John Brown, a love story between the characters played by Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland; and a story about the growth of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroads.

  Left: John Brown (1800-1859), from a 19th century photo of the idealistic abolitionist, and (right) Raymond Massey, interpreting John Brown as an un-hinged fanatic.

  [The railroad was the subject of a popular song composed by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren, “On the Atchison, Topeka, and The Santa Fe,” written for the film, The Harvey Girls (1946), and sung by, among others, Judy Garland.]

  “It’s eight parts entertainment, two parts fact,” Bruckner told Reagan. “Or, as Curtiz with his accent says, ‘It’s not the exact facts and we haff the facts to prove that.’”

  Warners’ re-enactment of salad days at West Point in the years immediately preceding the Civil War:

  Left to right, Reagan in a loose interpretation of the student with among the lowest test scores (Custer); Flynn as J.E.B. Stuart; David Bruce; and in the right foreground, William Lundigan, Flynn’s off-screen lover.

  Before the day was over, Reagan met most of the cast—some new faces, but a lot of familiar ones with whom he’d worked before. Guinn (“Big Boy”) Williams shook his hand, and Reagan smiled at him, though he detested the braggart. Ward Bond came up to greet Reagan. “I play Windy Brody,” he said. “I think they mean for me to fart a lot.”

  Olivia de Havilland was most gracious, extending her hand to Reagan. She discussed working with Jane Wyman on My Love Came Back. In Santa Fe Trail, she played Kit Carson Halliday. “In the movie, both you and Errol are in love with me. In the end, he wins. But in real life, I’d much prefer you.”

  A shifty villain in an era of shifting alliances: Van Heflin

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m flattered.”

  “Alas, Jane saw you first,” De Havilland said. “But fortunately, right now, I have James Stewart to keep my company. He keeps talking about marriage, but his voice doesn’t have a sincere ring.”

  De Havilland later told her biographer and film archivist, Tony Thomas, “My problems with Errol on the set of Santa Fe Trail are purely personal. He deliberately and provocatively up-staged me in two scenes, something he had never done before. Since then, I have wondered if his behavior might have something to do with the fact that I was seeing a lot of James Stewart and that our affable co-star, Ronald Reagan, spent a lot of time talking to me on the set. Errol was still married to Lili Damita, albeit unhappily, and he was hardly in a position to court me, but I knew he was fond of me, as I was of him. Someone else paying attention to me seemed to bother him a bit.”

  Reagan losing De Havilland.

  Flynn was not scheduled to appear on the set for a few more days, so Reagan went around greeting the cast.

  Alan Hale had just made Tugboat Annie Sails Again with Jane and him. Before that, he had been a regular sidekick of Flynn in such movies as The Adventures of Robin Hood. Hale and Reagan, in their near future, would be making more films together. Hale later said, “I like guys you can hang out with—Errol Flynn, Ward Bond, John Wayne. Reagan was too stiff and formal for my tastes.”

  Flynn winning De Havilland.

  Reagan also greeted such familiar faces as Henry O‘Neill, who had been cast as De Havilland’s father. He had a warm reunion with John Litel, who had played his boss in two of the Brass Bancroft movies. Hobart Cavanaugh also greeted him.

  Reagan met an up-and-coming star, Van Heflin, who had been cast as Rader, a disciple of John Brown. In the movie, he too attends West Point, though he is discharged for distributing anti-slavery pamphlets.

  Emerging from the bowels of Oklahoma, stage actor Heflin seemed to hold Reagan in contempt, though it was not obvious. He’d later refer to both Reagan and Flynn as “Hollywood pretty boys. They’re not actors at all.”

  Heflin had appeared on the Broadway stage with Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. He was still angry that he had not been cast in the play’s screen version, the role eventually going to James Stewart.

  In one of the coincidences of that day, Stewart himself showed up on the set to take his girlfriend, De Havilland, for lunch in the commissary. An angry Heflin confronted him, eventually cursing him. Before they came to blows, Reagan came between them. “C’mon, guys, if I fought every actor in Hollywood who got a part I wanted, I’d be beating up someone every day…or getting my ass licked.”

  When Heflin wasn’t needed on the set, he hopelessly pursued De Havilland.

  Unlike Reagan, Heflin would achieve early success in Hollywood, winning an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his role in Johnny Eager (1942), wherein he played the boozy, philosophical pal of gangster Robert Taylor.

  Reagan chatted with William Lundigan, learning that most of the cast shunned him, dismissing him as “Flynn’s plaything.” Flynn consistently placed him in minor roles within his films. Reagan and Lundigan shared joint memories of their days as radio announcers.

  He told Reagan, “If the United States goes to war, I’m joining the Marine Corps.”

  “Will your buddy, Flynn, join too?” Reagan asked.

  “He doesn’t want this known, but he can’t pass the physical. From the outside, he looks gorgeous, but inside, he’s a mess.”

  The craggy-faced Canadian actor, Raymond Massey, seemed so self-absorbed in his portrayal of the spooky fanatic, John Brown, that he had little time for Reagan. Jack Warner had personally supervised his makeup to ensure that he came off looking like a lunatic. A critic later defined Massey’s interpretation of John Brown in Santa Fe Trail as “frighteningly demented, vaguely echoing Hitler’s evil.”

  [Massey would make a far more lasting cinematic impression the same year when he appeared as Hollywood’s definitive Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). Two years later, he would appear with Flynn and Reagan again in the wartime action and aviation story, Desperate Journey (1942). And in 1955, Massey would star in the low-budget film, Seven Angry Men, in which he presented the character of John Brown as a far more sympathetic figure than his portrayal of him in Santa Fe Trail.]

  Finally, four days later, Flynn arrived on the set. He attempted to kiss Reagan on the mouth as he’d done before. Since Reagan was now aware that the swashbuckler was a kissing bandit, he turned away. Flynn’s lips only managed to brush against Reagan’s ear. “Just a friendly gesture, sport, since we’ll be making our first picture together, I thought we might as well get cozy.”

  “I don’t go in for man kissing,” Reagan said, “although I know it’s a show biz tradition. Everybody kisses everybody in Hollywood.”

  “And ain’t it fun, sweet cheeks?” Flynn said. “I’d better read the god damn script. That asshole Curtiz has been shooting scenes with Massey for four days without one call for me, the fucking star of this flick. If that doesn’t change soon, Curtiz is going to face big trouble and a one-way ticket back to the goulash factories of Budapest.”

  Although he tried to conceal his jealousy, Reagan envied Flynn as America’s fourth-ranking box office star in America. Reagan didn’t even place in the first one hundred.

  “I once swore I’d never speak to you again,” Flynn said. “Perhaps bloody your nose if we ever met up. But time has passed, and I’m in a more forgiving mood.”

  Reagan was dumbfounded and wanted an explanation, but none was forthcoming from Flynn.

  Years later, a Flynn biographer, David Bret, provided a possible
clue. “It was rumored that Ross Alexander had taken his life because he believed that Ronald Reagan had been signed by Warner Brothers to replace him. Although he would work with Reagan in the future, Errol would always detest him and hold him personally responsible for his friend’s death.”

  If Flynn had felt such an emotion, it wasn’t obvious when they co-starred together. Actually, during the making of Santa Fe Trail, Flynn spent a lot of time talking to Reagan, enough to incite a jealous rage in Lundigan.

  Flynn discussed his troubled marriage to Lili Damita. “We are in a connubial war,” he said. “I play the field from my base in a bachelor apartment. Damita doesn’t accept this. She watches and pursues me as Javert pursued Jean Valjean.”

  “Her possessiveness upset our marriage from the start. As you’ll find in your marriage to Jane, it’s not man’s nature to be monogamous. Neither is it woman’s. The proof of this is in the well-known rejection of the whole standard of monogamy by so many people. You’ll find what I’m saying to be true in your own marriage once you and Jane settle in. You’ll stray and so will she. Movie stars are faced with challenges to their morality that are far greater than what’s faced by 99% of the population.”

  “I plan to remain faithful,” he protested.

  “Time will tell,” he answered. “Actually, you’re lucky to have Jane. She’s one hot little piece of ass with a twitching pussy.”

  “How would you know that?” Reagan asked, his anger growing. “You don’t talk like that to a man about his wife.”

  “I was just speculating,” Flynn said. “Call it a wild guess. Of course, I don’t have any personal experience…with your maiden fair.”

  “If only I could believe that,” Reagan said. “Let’s drop the subject.”

  Seething with anger, he turned and walked away.