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

by Darwin Porter

  During the making of the film, Jane had several intense talks with Virginia Brissac, born in San Jose, California, in 1883. Upon meeting her, Brissac asked Jane for her autograph. “I want to add it to my collection, along with those of Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Henry Irving, and Rudyard Kipling.”

  “I’ll be in distinguished company,” Jane said, signing her book.

  Brissac had had a long stage career when she was young, later appearing in such movies as Dark Victory with Bette Davis and Ronald Reagan and in Destry Rides Again (1932), with Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. Brissac would retire from the screen in 1955 after playing James Dean’s grandmother in Rebel Without a Cause.

  Jane always found comic actor Walter Catlett amusing, having appeared with him in Kid Nightingale with John Payne and more recently, in Honeymoon for Three.

  Jane on Howard da Silva: “He is the kind of man so easy to detest.”

  During a rainy afternoon, when she was told she would-n’t be needed for the rest of the day, Catlett approached her. “One of your dear friends is waiting for you in a car outside.”

  At first, Jane refused to approach the car in the pouring rain unless he told her who was waiting for her inside. “He wants it be a surprise. He’s a dear friend.”

  Under a heavy black umbrella, she approached the car on its passenger side as the door was thrown open for her. Sitting behind the wheel was Payne himself.

  Once inside, he took her in his arms and passionately kissed her. “I’ve missed you so, darling. My heart is breaking for being separated from you for so long.” Then he started the motor. “I’m taking you away to my hideaway.”

  When Jane saw this publicity still of John Payne, she exclaimed, “the fantasy come true of every fair maiden.”

  As she’d reveal to Catlett the next day, “I once made a movie called He Couldn’t Say No. Well, you’re looking at The Girl Who Couldn’t Say No. Let’s keep my little rendezvous with John our secret.”

  “My lips are sealed,” Catlett promised.

  From that day forth, Payne became a fixture in Jane’s life, coming and going at frequent intervals. His marriage to Anne Shirley was falling apart. He told Jane that she was still involved in an affair with her co-star, John Garfield.

  “Shirley is out of her mind,” Jane said. “What gal in the world would want Garfield when John Payne, the sexiest man in pictures, is available?”

  Linking up romantically with Payne again didn’t diminish Jane’s passion for the dashing Dennis Morgan. She eagerly awaited their reunion on the set.

  During her absence from him, he was often the subject of Hollywood gossip. He’d made Kitty Foyle, The Natural History of a Woman (1940) with Ginger Rogers, the former dancing partner of Fred Astaire, in a drama about a working girl, which had brought her a Best Actress Oscar.

  In the picture, Rogers found herself caught between two of the handsomest actors in Hollywood, not only Morgan, but James Craig, hired as a “replacement” for Clark Gable, to whom he bore some resemblance.

  Rogers later wrote about Morgan in her memoirs, finding him “extremely handsome and intensely romantic, without manufactured overtones.” However, in the celluloid world of Kitty Foyle, the character she played found only unhappiness after she married him.

  Morgan had also completed Affectionately Yours (1941), a charming comedy [which somehow flopped at the box office] starring Merle Oberon and Rita Hayworth. Rumors abounded that both Oberon and Rogers had taken “leading lady’s privilege,” and seduced Morgan.

  As regards her involvement in Bad Men of Missouri, Jane later told Goddard, “I’m the leading lady in this Missouri western, and I, too, am going to take leading lady’s privilege with this super cute guy.”

  During the shoot, Jane got to know Morgan, and she took delight in their romance. She began to arrive later and later at home every night, telling Reagan that she was held up at the studio. He couldn’t understand why such a small role in the picture would be such a burden to her, requiring so many late hours. She didn’t bother to explain.

  Nine years older than Jane, Morgan, whose birth name had been Earl Stanley Morner, had briefly worked under the acting pseudonym of Richard Stanley. At the debut of his association with Warners, the studio assigned him the new name of Dennis Morgan.

  He told Jane that if not for a whim of fate, she might have been playing opposite Humphrey Bogart instead of with him. At the last minute, Bogie had turned down the script and had been placed on suspension.

  Jane interpreted Morgan as the antithesis of the gritty Bogart, and wondered why Jack Warner had assigned him as Bogie’s replacement. That would happen again when Bogie rejected the script for God Is My Co-Pilot in 1945, and Morgan had great success with the role.

  He had married his childhood sweetheart, Lillian Vedder, way back in 1933. “It was love at first sight,” he said, “when I saw her selling poppies to passersby at a war veterans’ benefit.”

  Originally, he was signed by MGM as a “threat” to Nelson Eddy, the singer-actor who often co-starred with Jeanette MacDonald.

  As Morgan would later confide to his best friend, Jack Carson, “MGM didn’t quite know what to do with me. Off the screen, even though I love my wife, I had the time of my life. Let me see: Jean Harlow in Suzy (1936).”

  “Instead of fucking these MGM beauties, who did nothing for my career, maybe I should have let some of MGM’s homo directors blow me, but that’s not my style.”

  As one reporter claimed, “Warner’s put Dennis Morgan on the assembly line with Wayne Morris, Arthur Kennedy, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, and Ronald Reagan—likable young lugs squiring the heroine until Bogart, Cagney, or Flynn came crashing down to sweep her up.”

  Later, Jane told Goddard, “Dennis stands six feet two inches, and weighs 175—and he’s all man. And yes, even in that department you worried about.”

  Jane later talked with Goddard about her affair with Morgan and the understanding they’d reached. He’d told her, “We’re very attracted to each other, but we won’t let our romance interfere with our marriages. In fact, by letting off some pent-up love steam with each other, I’ll be a better husband to my wife and you’ll be a better wife to Ronnie.”

  “You’re very special to me, and I’d marry you in a minute if both of us were free,” she’d told him. “But I think you’re right. Instead of getting married, we’ll have a back street affair.”

  “It’s more fun to get out of that stinking alley and slip off to a perfumed boudoir,” he said.

  As she’d later relate to Goddard, “Bad Men of Missouri was, for me at least, the worst of my movies. But I’d rate Dennis a ten on a scale of ten. John Payne is more sex driven, but Dennis combines romantic love with kindness. He worships a woman and makes her feel like a goddess.”

  One night, he’d told her, “You fit into my body so smoothly, it’s like you were meant to stay by my side forever. I think we’re going to know each other for many a year.”

  “If not decades,” she accurately predicted.

  As he once told Jane, “I’m always faithful to my wife in my heart. Where I put my prick is my own god damn business.”

  Before its release, cast members were shown the final cut of Bad Men of Missouri. In the darkened screening room, Jane sat next to Morgan, and he held her hand.

  After he’d seen it, Kennedy later recalled how unhappy Jane was with her role. “There’s talent in that girl, and Enright should have taken advantage of it. The film would have been better if there were less horse chases and more of Jane. She gave it her best. But bigger and better things awaited her in her future roles.”

  Critic Jennifer Logan wrote, “The love scenes with Jane Wyman and Arthur Kennedy go by in a blur of speed. Wyman, a very pretty girl, has what must be one of the shortest romantic roles in the history of horse opera.”

  Variety weighed in: “Bad Men of Missouri is a cinematic glorification of that daring band of desperadoes, the Younger Brothers, operating in Missouri a
fter the Civil War. It’s strictly a shoot-em action melodrama, with plenty of excitement for a programmer. Expect lots of tough riding, robberies, and dusty chases.”

  ***

  In between films, Reagan took time off to catch up with Betty Grable, who was finally getting star billing after years of slaving in minor roles. Her divorce from child star Jackie Coogan had been finalized a few months before, and she told Reagan that she was enjoying “my role as a bachelor gal with a roving eye.”

  She had just completed Moon Over Miami (1941), a Fox Technicolor musical co-starring Don Ameche and Robert Cummings. “Unfortunately, that bitch Carole Landis was in it, too. She hates me. She wanted to be me, and resents Zanuck for building me up. Zanuck is fucking her, not me. When he called me to his office and took his dick out for me, I said, ‘Darryl, that’s very beautiful, but you can put it back now.”

  “I’m having a turbulent private life, but at least stardom has come to me,” she said. “After I rejected Zanuck’s sexual advances, he’s gotten even by casting me with Landis. He has this thing about pitting one star against another. He used me to remind Alice Faye to stay in line. Now he’s using Landis to remind me that I can be replaced. She and I hated each other on sight.”

  “That’s understandable, because of the position Zanuck put you in,” Reagan responded.

  “Landis makes it worse than it is with her big mouth,” Grable said. “She’s telling everybody that she stole Moon Over Miami from me. She also claims she’s far more beautiful than I am. She told Zanuck, Don Ameche, and others that ‘Grable is so full of herself, it’s a wonder she doesn’t explode.’”

  “It sounds as if a big catfight is shaping up,” he said. “Count me out.”

  In the passenger seat of his car, she hiked up her dress. “I don’t want you to have an accident, but my gams have been voted the most beautiful in the world. Fox has insured them for $1,250,000.”

  “How do you feel about all this publicity about your legs?” he asked.

  “It would have been fine when I was a struggling chorus girl,” she answered. “But right now, I’d rather the guys wrote about me as an actress. Frankly, I always felt the face of an actress was more important than her figure.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, except for someone like Garbo or Katharine Hepburn,” he said.

  At that point, Grable asked about the welfare of Jane Wyman. “I haven’t seen her for some time. You may not know this, but Jane and I, along with Paulette Goddard and Lucille Ball, got our starts together in this clunker called The Kid From Spain, a vehicle for Eddie Cantor way back in ’32. Jane was billed as Sarah Jane Fulks. Give the kid my love, won’t you? Congratulate her on snaring a prize like you. I know what a treat it is to get pounded by you.”

  Hot, Competitive Blondes: Landis with Grable in Moon Over Miami.

  “I’ll give her your regards, but leave out that bit about what a prize I am,” he said. “Sometimes, I don’t think she appreciates me like some of my gal pals.”

  After they’d talked and had a few drinks, Grable asked Reagan to drive her home, since it was starting to rain heavily. She’d been driven to Warners that morning by a dancer friend.

  En route back to her place, she suggested that she would be willing to become his “mistress in waiting,” as she defined it.

  “You’re the most gorgeous gal in Hollywood, and I may be a god damn fool, but I’d better take a raincheck, although that is the most tempting offer I think I’ll ever receive in my life.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “I’m even more experienced than I was since our last round. It looks like I’ve got to take the bull by the horn.” Then she reached over and swiftly unzipped his pants. Before he fully realized what was happening, she was voraciously fellating him.

  [Long before the world heard of Linda Lovelace and her movie, Deep Throat, Betty Grable’s oral skills became an underground legend during World War II.

  Biographer Mart Martin, among others, wrote, “Grable had a lifelong affection for chorus boys and dancers, many of whom were homosexual. When she couldn’t find other sexual partners, she’d press her demands on them to service her. But she really preferred rough men of the truck driver and bartender type and especially liked to fellate them.”]

  As she later bragged, “I brought Ronnie to a climax that rivaled the eruption of Vesuvius.” As she got out of the car, she blew him a kiss. “That will have to do until next time, Big Guy.”

  He looked a bit stunned at first, trying to recover from the assault. He seemed to have changed his mind about her offer. “When can I call you again?”

  “Come over Saturday afternoon at around two o’clock,” she said. “Tell Jane you’re playing golf with Dick Powell, or some such shit.”

  She later relayed details of her sexual encounters of the 1930s and the World War II era to her homosexual dancer friend, Bob Foster, who wrote Betty Grable’s Men, whose publication was ultimately rejected by a number of publishers. In it, he described her affairs with Jackie Coogan (she married him), Desi Arnaz, Victor Mature, George Raft, Tyrone Power, Mickey Rooney, Robert Stack, Don Ameche, John Payne, Dick Haymes, Buster Crabbe, George Montgomery, and Ronald Reagan.

  The final two chapters were devoted to her second husband, band leader Harry James.

  ***

  After appearing in some twenty-three films for Warners’, Reagan was cast in the 1941 version of MGM’s The Bad Man.

  [Note that Reagan’s The Bad Man is an entirely different film from Bad Men of Missouri, a Jane Wyman film, which, confusingly, was also released in 1941. The Bad Man represented Reagan’s first loan-out by Warner to another studio, in this case, MGM.]

  MGM had requested Reagan for the role of Gil Jones, an impoverished but well-intentioned American running a ranch in Mexico. MGM’s decision to hire him was based on executives there who saw his performances as George Gipp in Knute Rockne and as General Custer in Santa Fe Trail.

  Conceived as a remake of a remake of what had originated as a Broadway play more than twenty years before, The Bad Man, in addition to Reagan, featured Laraine Day, cast as his leading lady, and the veteran warhorses Wallace Beery, playing a noble-hearted Mexican bandit, and Lionel Barrymore.

  [Earlier versions of its script had been released in 1923 as a silent film, starring Holbrook Blinn, and again in 1930 as a pre-Code talkie starring Walter Huston.

  Beery had been selected as a leading player in the 1941 version because of his authenticity as a Mexican bandit in Viva Villa! (1934). But in this 1941 reincarnation, he played the character like a buffoon, blustering and mugging, booming out his lines in an annoying rendering of pidgin English.]

  Who’s The Bad Man? Left to right: Laraine Day; golden oldies’ Lionel Barrymore; Wallace (“wifebeater”) Beery; and the future President of the United States.

  The film’s director, Richard Thorpe, was in a bad mood when Reagan greeted him. Variety had just revealed in painful detail the circumstances of his firing as director of Judy Garland’s The Wizard of Oz after only two weeks of shooting. He was pondering a libel suit.

  Among his previous achievements, Thorpe had directed Jane Wyman in a bit role in The Crowd Roars (1938), starring Robert Taylor.

  Thorpe warned Reagan that Beery and Barrymore were notorious scene stealers, “using every trick in the book and adding a few never invented. That asshole Beery even stole a picture from Rin-Tin-Tin, The Wonder Dog.”

  For that and for other reasons, Reagan approached Beery with a certain disdain. He’d never liked him on the screen. He held a personal grudge against him as well:

  In the 1941 version of The Bad Man, Beery plays a kind of Mexicano Robin Hood, helping Gil Jones (Reagan) and his wheelchair-bound Uncle Henry (Barrymore) avoid the loss of their ranch to greedy bankers. Complications materialize when Gil’s childhood sweetheart (Laraine Day) arrives at the ranch with her difficult and quarrelsome husband (Tom Conway). Predictably, the ranch will be saved, Conway will be chased away, and Reagan will be f
ree to get involved once again with his love from yesteryear.

  Beery, a veteran actor who during the course of his lifetime would be a player in 205 films, originated in Missouri, He ran away from home in 1901 at the age of 16 to work for the Ringling Brothers Circus as an elephant trainer until he was attacked and mauled by a leopard.

  From there, he migrated to Hollywood, appearing with his future wife, Gloria Swanson, in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). He married the vamp a year later, and she wrote about her horrendous time with this brute, beginning with his drunken, bloody rape of her on her wedding night. His violence and alcoholism led to her divorce from him in 1919.

  One of his most successful pictures had been Min and Bill (1931), starring the formidable Marie Dressler. For The Champ in 1931, he’d won an Oscar as Best Actor. He’d also appeared with Dressler in Tugboat Annie (1933).

  When he met Reagan, he told the young actor that he’d seen the sequel, Tugboat Annie Sails Again, and that he was not impressed. “You and your blonde floozie wife sure fucked up that picture. Poor Dressler must be turning over in her grave.”

  “How can anyone, even Marjorie Rambeau, follow in Dressler’s footsteps?” Reagan asked. “And Jane is not a floozie. She’s a lady.”

  “You might also wonder how any actor can follow in the footsteps of yours truly here,” Beery loutishly answered.

  During his heyday in the 1930s with MGM, this unlikely star became the highest paid actor in the world, starring with such luminaries as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, George Raft, Fatty Arbuckle, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Joan Crawford.

  Because the editors feared libel, this frontpage of New York’s Daily News was yanked at the last minute, before the newspapers hit the streets.

  In the version that replaced it, the Wallace Beery photo (on the right) was removed, along with a caption which identified him as a murder suspect.