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

by Darwin Porter

  Coming so soon after the equivalent allegation about Jane and John Payne, Reagan became deeply depressed, trying to convince himself that Da Silva was a liar.

  In the middle of the shoot, Jane invited Joan Blondell and Dick Powell for dinner. They were obviously having their own marital difficulties.

  Blondell recalled, “I sensed that Ronnie was greatly depressed. He was polite and he even told a few jokes, but he kept looking at Jane when she wasn’t looking back. It was like he was studying her with a questioning look on his face. I suspected that some nasty little shit had been spreading gossip about Jane. But he had his own guilt. I’d heard through the grapevine that he was slipping around knocking off a piece here and there. Dick was doing the same with me. I just brushed off his infidelities. I referred to arrangements such as ours as a typical Hollywood marriage.”

  James Gleason: Played tough guys or cops, always with a suspicious whine in his voice.

  Cast in a small role as a mechanic, John Ridgely had appeared with Reagan in Secret Service of the Air (1939) and with Jane in He Couldn’t Say No (1938). Now, he observed Reagan closely, sensing something was wrong. “He had changed,” Ridgely said. “He seemed depressed, and his heart wasn’t in his work. I felt he was going through marital troubles, like most couples do after they get hitched. He also talked about the draft, wondering if he’d be called up. Because of his bad eyesight, he couldn’t fight on the front lines, but he might end up in some desk job. With his contact lenses, he could always push papers.”

  During the shoot, Reagan spent most of his time with Joan Perry. The two bonded and often had lunch together, but it wasn’t a case of “Leadinglady-itis.”

  He knew that Perry was marrying one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. He feared that Jack Warner might not renew his contract, and that he might find himself pounding on the door of Columbia, looking for work. The way he figured it, if he were a close friend of Harry Cohn’s new wife, he’d have a better chance of getting a contract with that studio.

  To his surprise, he found that Perry had also been announced as the leading lady in his next picture, [The title of that film, originating as Eagle Squadron and later changed to Flight Patrol, would eventually be released in 1941 as International Squadron.]

  John Ridgely: He found the future president “a troubled soul.”

  As regards his acting technique in Nine Lives Are Not Enough, Reagan had taken Sutherland’s advice. One critic defined his performance as “helter-skelter.”

  The film had taken just twenty-two days to shoot, and Jack Warner had ordered the rough cut sent to his office for a screening. In a somewhat confusing memo, he claimed that Nine Lives Are Not Enough was “a peachy picture.” But then he wrote, “I have about a half dozen more revamping shots, inserts, and effects to put in, and I cannot understand why they were not done in the first place, especially in the off-scene fight where Reagan slugs the newspaper reporter and throws him off-scene. Undoubtedly, they had mufflers on their black jacks.”

  Sutherland was left to figure out what all that meant.

  Warner also said that he detested the title Nine Lives Are Not Enough, since it had little connection to the plot. He promised he’d send over a new title, but he never did.

  Reviews were tepid, as were attendance and box office receipts. One critic called the film, “a mystery-comedy—and not much of either.”

  ***

  In a Manhattan night club, in 1935, a beautiful model, Betty Miller, 21, danced by the table of Harry Cohn, aged 44, the chief honcho at Columbia pictures. Miller was in the arms of another man, but Cohn was intrigued by her striking figure.

  As a fast worker, he offered her a Hollywood contract before the night was over, telling her “to dump that faggot you’re with.”

  When she reached Hollywood, she found that he was in the process of trying to divorce his first wife, the former Rose Barker, whom he had married in 1923. Cohn personally drove Miller to Columbia, where he ordered both makeup and wardrobe to transform her natural beauty into something very glamorous for her screen test. He approved the test himself, and the newly re-christened “Joan Perry” found herself co-starring in The Case of the Missing Man (1935) opposite Roger Pryor. Cohn had told her that “Betty Miller” was too commonplace. “Sounds like a cobbler’s daughter.”

  Perry moved in with Cohn long before his divorce was finalized. They lived together on Lexington Drive in Beverly Hills. After marrying her on July 30, 1941, at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan, he returned with her to their home in Hollywood. Now that she was his bride, they began to entertain the Hollywood elite, including Louis B. Mayer, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Cary Grant, even Sabu and Humphrey Bogart.

  On the set of Nine Lives Are Not Enough, Perry invited Reagan and Jane to one of her fabulous dinner parties. As a stunning hostess, she appeared in a gown designed by Jean Louis of the Columbia Wardrobe department. She presided at one end of the table, with Cohn at the other end. Placed on either side of him were phones which were constantly ringing.

  After dinner, Reagan joined Cohn in his library, where the male guests gathered for cigars and brandy. Perry was entertaining the women guests, including an emerging star, Rita Hayworth, in the adjoining saloon.

  “Did Joan tell you?” Reagan asked Cohn. “She’s starring in my next picture, Flight Patrol.”

  “I prefer for you to refer to her as Mrs. Cohn,” he said.

  In spite of that slight embarrassment, Reagan was amused by Cohn, who seemed more well-versed in Hollywood legend and lore than anybody he’d ever met.

  Before meeting Cohn, Reagan had heard many stories about him. He’d been born in 1893 into a working class Jewish family in New York City. Eventually, he landed in Hollywood and helped open Columbia Pictures on Poverty Row. His fortunes changed after the release of It Happened One Night (1934), a Frank Capra comedy starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. The picture swept up five major Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony that year.

  Behind his back, Cohn was derisively called “White Fang,” ruling like a tyrant, and presiding over Columbia like it was his own private police state.

  Perry had admitted to Reagan that her new husband had a personality like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was loud, brash, and had an intimidating personality. On his desk rested an autographed portrait of Mussolini, which he’d obtained in Rome during a visit there in 1933.

  He was also known for demanding sex from his starlets as part of their employment. Over the years, he would seduce an array of established actresses, starlets, and extras, often deflowering A-list stars who included Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, and Lucille Ball.

  Joan Perry (aka Betty Miller, aka Mrs. Harry Cohn).

  He maintained a secret passageway that led directly from his office into a dressing room filled with starlets, in a style something akin to a harem.

  Everyone in Hollywood had an opinion about Cohn, usually negative. Hedda Hopper told Reagan, “He’s a man you stand in line to hate.”

  Director Elia Kazan asserted, “Cohn is the biggest bug in a pile of horse shit.”

  In the library of his home, Cohn put his arm around Reagan and whispered in his ear, “Let me tell you about Hollywood: It’s all about horses and cunt.”

  Reagan later recalled him: “Cohn was a great vulgarian, but at moments he had a certain charm. To him, all women were broads who could be had. At one point during our dinner party, when he cornered my Jane, he told her, ‘If that Reagan boy can’t satisfy you, you’re looking at a man who can.’ On that very night, he told me, ‘I kiss the feet of talent. I won’t be kissing your feet, Reagan.’”

  Above is the logo/avatar inspired by the physicality of Mrs. Harry Cohn. It became recognizable throughout the world. Hail Columbia!

  That night, he also told Reagan that he’d seen him only once on the screen—and that was with Bette Davis in Dark Victory (1939). “You were supposed to be playing a homo, but you didn’t do it right. In that bar scene
with Bette, when you held up your drink to your mouth, you should have raised your little pinkie. That way, you’d signal the audience that you were a homo.”

  “I didn’t see the role that way,” Reagan protested.

  “Bullshit!” Cohn said. “Edward Everett Horton could have given you lessons in how to play a fag.”

  Despite the pedestal on which he placed his wife, Joan Perry, Harry Cohn continued to fuck around with, among others, Rita Hayworth, who’s depicted above.

  He told Reagan that long after she’d been a silent screen goddess, Gloria Swanson arrived at Columbia with two screen treatments she wanted him to produce. “I scanned both of them and turned each of them down. Three weeks later, the little over-dressed dwarf arrived with another screen treatment, which she insisted on reading to me, all twenty-five pages of it. I found it far too depressing, about a heroine who goes blind at the end of the picture. You guessed it. I turned down Dark Victory.”

  Before Reagan left Cohn’s home at around midnight, the drunken mogul approached him. “I know you’ll be working with Mrs. Cohn again, and that you’ll be in close proximity to her, perhaps even playing love scenes. I also know what can happen when a hot-to-trot stud like you meets a horny broad like my young wife.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Cohn, I’ll be a perfect gentleman,” Reagan said. “You can count on that. Any love scene between us will be strictly in the script.”

  “Thanks for that,” he answered. “It’s not just having my wife cheat on me. It’s a health issue.”

  “I don’t understand,” Reagan said. “I’m not contagious.”

  “It’s like this,” Cohn said. “You guys with uncut dicks can cause a vaginal infection in women. Joan is used to clipped men like me. We Jews are a hell of a lot safer than you Protestant germ carriers.”

  ***

  Cast as “Denny Costello,” Jane Wyman had the female lead in her latest movie, Larceny, Inc. (1942), wherein she played the adopted daughter of “Pressure” Maxwell (Edward G. Robinson).

  They worked with three strong supporting players: Broderick Crawford as “Jug” Martin, a dim-witted gangster; Jack Carson as Jeff Randolf, a fast-talking salesman; and Anthony Quinn as the villainous gangster, Leo Dexter. Its plot was based on a Broadway play, The Night Before Christmas, by the distinguished humorist, S.J. Perelman, although this comedy-drama was not one of his greatest achievements.

  Its director, Lloyd Bacon, welcomed Jane to the set and gave her a copy of the script, where she learned that Carson was the unlikely choice for her love interest. Bacon had most recently helmed Jane in Honeymoon for Three (1941).

  The plot of Larceny, Inc. evokes Woody Allen’s much later film, Small Time Crooks (2000). It spins around a supposed bank robbery that never quite comes off. A fellow inmate at Sing Sing, Dexter (Quinn) tries to intrigue Pressure (Robinson) and Jug (Crawford) into joining him in a bank robbery after their release from prison.

  Pressure actually wants to purchase a dog-racing track in Miami with Jane, but the bank turns down his request for a loan. Along with Jug, he purchases a luggage shop next door to the bank. From the basement of the luggage store, they plan to dig a tunnel into the bank’s vault.

  In the meantime, a slick salesman (Carson) arrives to entice them into buying an inventory of fine luggage, wholesale, for their otherwise virtually empty store. Advertising gimmicks are devised by Carson to line up customers. Eventually, based on the spectacular success of his luggage business, Pressure decides to become legitimate and stops digging the tunnel.

  Tension rises after Dexter (who’s still in jail) hears that Pressure has “stolen” his idea about digging a tunnel, and that he’ll pocket the money from its success. Vengefully, Dexter breaks out of jail, with the intent of extorting money from Pressure. Burglar alarms are set off, there’s gunfire, a police raid, and the luggage store erupts into flames. Dexter is captured and returned to Sing Sing, Pressure rebuilds his store and becomes a mogul in the merchandising of luggage and a civic-minded patriarch. Jane and Carson end up in each other’s arms.

  Robinson told Jane that he had accepted the comic role of Pressure Maxwell to off set the tough guy image he’d established in his star-making role of “Rico” in Little Caesar (1931).

  With the world at war, Warners was making fewer films. In 1942, Jane’s only release was Larceny, Inc. In it, she was teamed with “tough guy” Edward G. Robinson. He turned out to be a man of culture, unlike his portrayals on screen.

  Perhaps awed by his reputation, she was prepared not to like Robinson until she actually met him. In private, he was soft-spoken, cultured, and spoke seven languages. Born to Romanian Jews in Bucharest, he had emigrated to Manhattan, where he launched his acting career in Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side. His success in Little Caesar typecast him into gangster roles at Warners. His chief rivals for parts became George Raft, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart.

  “Eddie wasn’t the prettiest mug ever to appear on the screen, but I learned a lot from this sensitive, talented man,” Jane recalled. “He was a real pro.”

  Larceny, Inc. Jane appears here with Jack Carson, marking the beginning of a long friendship.

  He later said, “I found Jane a delight, totally professional and very pretty. I’m amazed that Jack Warner kept her dangling on the vine for so long before giving her a meaty roles like Ginger Rogers had in Kitty Foyle. Jane was one hell of a dame, who could do both serious drama and light comedy, each equally well.”

  Although Robinson praised Jane’s talents to reporters, she was disappointed when he published his memoirs, All My Yesterdays in 1973. He didn’t even mention her. All he wrote about their film was this line: “Then back to Warners’ for Larceny, Inc.”

  “Eddie had this pug face with a snarling, snapping delivery that I had a hard time keeping up with,” Jane later said. “He could play a milquetoast on occasion, although he excelled as a tough guy. No, he did not begin every sentence by saying, ‘See.’ I was a bit nervous working with him. When I met him, he’d just made Manpower (1941) with Marlene Dietrich. I could hardly imagine at the time that one day little ol’ me would be cast opposite the formidable ‘Kraut’ in a movie shot in London.”

  Jack Carson, from the windswept plains of Manitoba, had made it to Hollywood, “kicking around” in movies since 1937. Usually, he was cast as an overbearing boor or some beefy lug, a hapless target of derision. But by the 1940s, he had been recognized by Warners as a first-rate comic actor who deserved better roles. At the time Jane met him, both of them were getting bigger parts. Between 1937 and ’38, Carson had appeared as a minor player in some two dozen films. Larceny, Inc. marked the first of several movies in which he would be cast with Jane.

  Today, Carson is best remembered for his dramatic roles, including that of the rejected suitor to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945), and the oafish brother of Paul Newman and the father of those “no-neck monsters” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) by Tennessee Williams, co-starring Elizabeth Taylor.

  “Jane and I truly bonded,” Carson later said. “We’d both survived a lot of crappy movies, and she, like myself, was a real trouper. I was also the best friend of Dennis Morgan, and he truly adored her. The three of us often hung out together. I was used as the ‘beard’ to cover up their romance. I didn’t mind at all. I knew when I’d served my purpose. I’d frequently disappear into the night back in those days.”

  “On the set, I had to watch Jane,” he said. “If not, she’d steal every scene we were in. I thought she had real potential. For all I know, one day she’d be the Queen of Warners after she dethroned Bette Davis. I knew she’d have to compete with Olivia de Havilland for the crown.”

  According to Jane, the screen didn’t reveal just how big Carson was, standing 6’2” and weighing some 225 pounds. “Over the course of a life, he was married four times. At the time I met him, he was wed to Kay St. Germain Wells. [For many years, Kay was the radio voice of Elsie the Cow.] When they divorced in 1950, Jack indulged in
some heavy dating with Doris Day and wanted to marry her. Day was also indulging in heavy dating with another divorced man I knew so very well—Ronnie himself. Doris dumped both Ronnie and Jack to marry Martin Melcher, and brother, did she live to regret that choice.”

  Broderick Crawford: He had an unlikely look for a movie star.

  Actress Helen Broderick’s son, Broderick Crawford, was burly and brutish on the screen, but, in Jane’s view, “a lovable lug off the screen.” In 1937, he’d become famous for brilliantly playing Lennie in the Broadway production of Of Mice and Men. Ironically, and to his deep chagrin, he was not awarded that role in that drama’s Hollywood remake in 1939. The role Broderick had developed (and coveted) went to Lon Chaney, Jr. instead.

  “When Broderick and I used to go for a drink,” Jane later reflected, we never thought for a moment that B picture stars like us would each end up one day winning an Oscar for Best Actor or Best Actress of the Year.” [Cast as Willy Stark, a charismatic, rough-edged character based on the crooked Louisiana politician, Huey Long, All the King’s Men (1949) would bring Crawford a Best Actor Oscar.]

  Malevolently handsome Anthony Quinn under arrest at the conclusion of Larceny, Inc.

  During the filming of Larceny, Inc., Jane and Reagan invited Crawford to join them at a steak house, a style of restaurant he’d specifically requested. “That night, I saw the beginning of his downfall: Lots of liquor and heaps of food. I couldn’t believe it. He ordered three big steaks cooked blood rare and told the waiter to keep his glass of liquor full at all times.”

  When Jane met Anthony Quinn, he’d just finished playing Chief Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On (1941), starring Errol Flynn. Throughout his career, Quinn would not only play Indian chiefs, but Hawiian chiefs, Filipino Freedom fighters, Chinese guerillas, and, in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), a clever and dynamic desert sheik.