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

by Darwin Porter

  “Those are the breaks, sweetheart,” Demarest said. “I did my best for you, gal. At least I kept you working.”

  [Like Jane, Drew, an early beauty contest winner, had emerged from Missouri. Her status as a beauty queen had brought her to the attention of Demarest, who managed to find a position for her at Paramount. Soon after, she appeared in several pictures, including Sing You Sinners (1939) with Bing Crosby and The Lady’s From Kentucky(1939) with George Raft.

  In 1944, she’d switch from Paramount to RKO, where she appeared on screen with leading men who included William Holden, Basil Rathbone, Robert Preston, and Ronald Colman.

  In the 1950s, as Drew’s career faded, Jane’s spiraled upward.]

  When My Favorite Spy opened across America, this whirlwind of dizzy intrigue received lackluster reviews. As the sultry blonde, Jane personified most of its sexual energy. Movie posters provocatively presented her as bosomy in a filmy black négligée.

  Screenland magazine defined the zany film like this: “A spy comedy with Kay Kyser playing a not-too-bright bandleader who is called to Army Service on his wedding day. He is later released and made a counter-espionage agent. Of course, Kyser bags the spies in the end, returns to his bride (Drew), while Jane plays his blonde secret operator-partner. It’s not our favorite Kyser film.”

  Another movie magazine asked, “How can we win WWII with bandleader Kyser as our spy? Nonsensical music-comedy tried to explain.”

  In 1973, Kyser, in an interview, remembered Jane, reflecting on her sense of humor and her keen sense of loyalty. “She had a heart as big as the outdoors. She’s also big on soul, too, and can sing a pretty darn good song herself.”

  “She also gave me many good tips on acting, though claiming she couldn’t act herself,” Kyser said. “After she won an Oscar for Johnny Belinda, I accused her of being a liar for telling me she couldn’t act.”

  Garnett, the film’s director, later commented, “Because of Jane, our troupe had great chemistry on the set while making My Favorite Spy. Too bad that chemistry wasn’t reflected on the screen. The picture should have been much better than it was.”

  ***

  The surprise is that Kings Row, a controversial novel by Henry Bellamann, ever made it to the movie screens of America in 1942. Its release coincided with the debut of America’s entry into World War II.

  It seemed that every theme in this novel about a small town in the Middle West in the 1890s was flagrantly contrary to the Hayes Production Code: Homosexuality, incest, suicide, insanity, premarital sex, nymphomania, sadism, and mercy killing.

  Jack Warner first asked Wolfgang Reinhardt to produce the film. But after reading the novel, he wrote back: “As far as the plot is concerned, the material in Kings Row is for the most part either censurable or too gruesome and depressing to be used. The hero finding out that his girl has been carrying on incestuous relations with her father; a host of moronic or otherwise mentally diseased characters; people dying from cancer, suicides—these are the principal elements of the story.”

  Warner turned to Hal B. Wallis and asked him if he’d produce the film, and he agreed, signing David Lewis as his associate producer. As he’d promised Reagan months before, Lewis began to lobby for the role of the second male lead, the character of Drake McHugh, to go to Reagan.

  However, Wallis had other stars in mind. But first, he sent galley proofs of the novel to screenwriter Casey Robinson, who had scripted the film Dark Victory with Bette Davis in which Reagan had played a homosexual. Robinson had also worked on the script of Million Dollar Baby, starring Reagan.

  Wallis hired producer Sam Wood as director. He’d already directed many films that evolved into hits, beginning his career in 1915 as an assistant to Cecil B. DeMille. Over the years, he’d helmed some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Gloria Swanson, the doomed Wallace Reid, Marion Davies, Clark Gable, and Jimmy Durante.

  A liberal, Jack Warner admired Wood’s talents, but found him such a right winger as to be objectionable. Groucho Marx had worked with him on A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937), calling him a “fascist,” denouncing him as anti-Semitic, and abhorring his racist comments about black people.

  Wood had previously directed Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), which had brought that actor an Oscar. That same year, Wood had been nominated for an Oscar as Best Director, but lost to Victor Fleming for his direction of Gone With the Wind (1939). [Ironically, Wood had been an uncredited director of many of that film’s scenes.] The following year, he’d been nominated as the year’s Best Director for Kitty Foyle (1940), but lost to John Ford for his The Grapes of Wrath.

  Setting out on a cruise in Asia, Robinson leisurely read Kings Row and was horrified, although he admitted he found it a page-turner. “I also found it personally revolting,” he later said. “It seemed to be an attack on the very moral fiber of an American small town at the turn of the century. After finishing it, I took the galley proofs and tossed them into the Sulu Sea near Bali. But no sooner had the galleys hit the water than I realized how the story might be saved. Step by step, I’d have to eliminate the controversial scenes without losing the power of the book. For example, instead of the doctor committing incest with his daughter, I would have him covering up her insanity. I wired Wallis to purchase it, but warned him that we’d have trouble with those censors at the Breen Office.

  Bellamann’s view of small-town America as a sexually decadent, sadistic Hell was not compatible with the patriotic ferver then sweeping over the entertainment industry.

  The miracle, partly because of the howls of protest from censors, was that Reagan’s acclaimed film ever got made at all.

  On Robinson’s recommendation, Wallis purchased the film rights to the novel for $35,000, just $5,000 less than he’d unsuccessfully offered for the film rights to Gone With the Wind, [David O. Selznick eventually paid $50,000 for them.]

  Originally, Fox had wanted Kings Row with Henry Fonda, but later rejected it because of its censorship problems. Jack Warner liked the idea of Fonda playing the sensitive role of Drake that eventually went to Reagan. Warner even suggested to Darryl F. Zanuck at Fox that he’d consider hiring Tyrone Power to play the lead role of Parris Mitchell, but Fox refused to release its major star.

  After it had become clear that neither Fonda nor Power was available, Wallis and Warner penciled in several actors who might be ideal for the role of Parris, including Laurence Olivier (an odd choice for a dyed-in-the-wool resident of a small Midwestern town), Cary Grant, Robert Taylor, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Glenn Ford, Alexander Knox, Arthur Kennedy, John Garfield, Errol Flynn, and even Ronald Reagan. Warner rejected both Flynn and Garfield as “too sexy for the part.”

  For the role of Drake—the trust fund playboy who loses his money and later, his legs—the list of contenders being considered included Robert Cummings (who eventually was cast as Parris), Lew Ayres, Dennis Morgan, Franchot Tone, Fred MacMurray, Ray Mil-land, Lew Ayres, Robert Preston, Eddie Albert, John Garfield, Arthur Kennedy, and, finally, at the bottom to the list, Ronald Reagan.

  Wallis was more intrigued with an unknown newcomer, a young and handsome actor, Michael Ames, who had previously appeared in a brief role with Reagan in International Squadron (1941) when he was identifying himself, professionally, as Tod Andrews.

  Wallis had more or less assigned the role to Ames, but then news came in that the actor had been drafted into the Army. There went his one big chance, an acting opportunity which would never come again. Ames remained resentful throughout the rest of his life for losing the role.

  The role of Cassandra Tower, the neurotic daughter of the incestuous Dr. Alexander Tower (as played by Claude Rains), attracted far more interest from actresses than the more wholesome female lead of Randy Monoghan, the tomboy from the wrong side of the tracks.

  Bette Davis actively campaigned for the role of Cassandra, but Wallis thought she’d be overpowering and would distort the focus of the movie. Ida Lupino was sent the
script, but returned it, finding it “degenerate.” Ginger Rogers was mailed the script, but didn’t respond. Warners’ own Olivia de Havilland was a distinct possibility, but she wasn’t interested. Vivien Leigh was under consideration until she left Hollywood, returning to war-torn Britain with Laurence Olivier.

  Linda Darnell and Anita Louise were two other candidates, along with a virtually unknown actress, Adela Longmire. Warner sent a memo to Wallis, asserting that “Adela is a great actress,” but Wallis didn’t agree. Warner came up with some other actresses, none of whom met with Wallis’ approval either. They included Susan Peters, Joan Leslie, and Priscilla Lane, who had appeared with Reagan in those Brother Rat movies. Wallis strongly approved of Gene Tierney, finding her ideal, but Zanuck at 20th Century Fox had already signed her to another film, Tobacco Road (1941).

  Then, unexpectedly, the publicist for Marlene Dietrich announced that she had won the role of Cassandra, but nobody in Hollywood believed that.

  The part finally went to Betty Field, a Bostonian with sad, sultry eyes. She had scored a success in Hal Roach’s production of Of Mice and Men (1939), playing Curley’s sad, slatternly wife.

  Humphrey Bogart had read Kings Row, and he called his friend, Ann Sheridan, to suggest that she pursue the role of Randy, the well-adjusted girl who ultimately wins Drake’s heart. She read the novel, thinking at first it would never reach the screen because of its taboo subjects.

  When she became convinced that it could, she settled her contract dispute with Warners and aggressively sought the role—and won it. In fact, in the ads, she would take star billing, followed by Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, and Betty Field.

  Wallis lined up one of the best supporting casts of any drama ever filmed at Warners—Charles Coburn, Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Nancy Coleman, Maria Ouspenskaya, Harry Davenport, and many lesser but very talented lights. He also had to cast child actors, Ann Todd; Scotty Beckett; Douglas Croft; and Mary Thomas to play childhood versions of the lead roles.

  “As I read the novel, with all its hypocrisy and narrow-minded people, it evoked for me my memories of growing up in Denton, Texas, where I fought against those traits and those people,” Sheridan recalled in 1966. “Like Ronnie, I would give my best performance in any picture.”

  By the time Robinson sent his fourth screenplay to the Breen office, he had eliminated any hint of homosexuality between Parris and Drake; cut out Parris’ mercy killing of his grandmother; and axed the death scene where Drake dies of cancer. Everything connected with Dr. Tower’s incest with his daughter, Cassandra, was replaced with a theme of insanity. Tower kills her instead, thus keeping her from marrying Parris and ruining his life.

  Kings Row was a precursor of Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place that dominated the bestselling novel lists of the 1950s.

  The Breen office even objected to the dialogue between Cummings and Reagan when Parris had to sleep over at his friend’s home. Originally, Reagan was to say: “You have to bunk with me. I hope you don’t mind the change.”

  In a decision that left its actors trying to figure out their motivation and meaning, the Breen censors ordered that the dialogue be changed to: “You have to bunk with me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Mitchell.”

  Wood didn’t want Reagan to wear a lot of makeup in Kings Row. But Cummings, a drag queen in private life, insisted on heavy makeup, so much that a critic later said, “In Kings Row, Robert Cummings looks like he’s made up to be third girl in a chorus line.”

  Reagan knew from the beginning that he was facing his most challenging role. He recalled, “I drew upon some of the traits of Moon [his brother, Neil Reagan.] My brother was rakish, charming, and of good humor, a spicier version of myself. I felt the town of Kings Row in the movie could easily have been Dixon.”

  Two views of Betty Field, seen in the lower photo with Reagan in Kings Row. She took on the difficult role of the emotionally mal-adjusted Cassie, stealing the part from Bette Davis.

  During the course of the filming, Reagan spent a lot of time with Sheridan. Always attracted to each other, they resumed their romance, as Wood closely observed. “I made sure that Reagan got advance notice when Jane visited him on the set. I knew she and Ann were good friends, a friendship that would have come to an abrupt end if she’d caught her husband banging Ann in her dressing room. Fortunately, that never happened.”

  “The role of Drake was an acting chore that got down and deep inside me and kind of wrung me out,” Reagan recalled, years later. “The early scenes were easier. In those, I played a gay blade who cut a swathe among the ladies.”

  “Ann was a great help, practically giving me acting lessons. We spent a lot of time rehearsing the scenes, not just of the two of us. Sometimes, she played Parris when Cummings wasn’t around to rehearse with me.”

  During the making of Kings Row, Sheridan told him that she’d heard “a rumor that Bette Davis wants your strong brown arms around her in her upcoming film, Now, Voyager.”

  “I thought Bette detested me,” Reagan said.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Sheridan said. “She wants you to fuck her in spite of your rejection of her offscreen in Dark Victory.”

  Both Sheridan and Reagan knew that Cummings was better suited to comedies than to heavy drama. However, Alfred Hitchcock didn’t think so. The Missouri-born actor told them that Hitchcock had just signed him to star in Saboteur (1942).

  In the controversial adaptation of the novel Kings Row, Reagan played Drake, a young trust-fund philanderer, a radical change of pace for him.

  Robert Cummings (left) was cast as Parris, his close friend from childhood.

  Just as Reagan hated flying, Cummings had a passion for it, and kept urging Reagan to “come fly with me.” Sheridan had told him that their fellow actor, who was to marry five times and father seven children, “Liked an occasional boy.” Reagan assumed that Cummings’ invitation “to come fly with me” was actually a sexual pass.

  To attend a cast party, Sheridan made Cummings up and let him wear her clothes to the informal event.

  In later life, Reagan was saddened to see Cummings, an advocate of natural foods and a healthy diet, succumb to drug addiction.

  Within a year after making Kings Row, Cummings would join the U.S. Army Air Corps, becoming a flight instructor.

  Reagan recalled, “Robert fell for all that Warners publicity crap about what an ace pilot I was. In all my talks about flying with him, never once did he see through the ruse. I must have sounded like the aviator I certainly wasn’t.”

  “Young Reagan was such an easy-going and fun person to be around that he was clearly the best-loved actor on the set,” said Coburn. “I really hated it later when I had to amputate his legs,” he joked.

  Rising from the swamps of Georgia, Charles Coburn, born in 1877, said he started his theatrical career handing out programs in the local Savannah Theater. He’d made his debut on Broadway back in 1901. He often performed on stage with his first wife, actress Ivah Wills. After his wife died in 1937, he came to Hollywood to begin film work. Today, he is best remembered for his appearance opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. At the time he met Reagan, he’d just finished The Lady Eve (1941), with Barbara Stanwyck.

  In the same year that he played a sadistic doctor in Kings Row, he also made In This Our Life. Reagan kidded him: “As Bette Davis’ pathetic uncle, you seemed to display an unnatural interest in your niece.”

  An associate producer, David Lewis, was on the set almost every day. As Sheridan noted, “David seems to follow Ronnie around with panting tongue.”

  [But did Reagan keep his promise to let Lewis give him nude massages during filming? The only source for that is Wood, who claimed he walked in one day on Reagan as he lay nude on a cot receiving a sensual massage from his associate producer.

  “I told the boys to carry on and left,” Wood told Sheridan. “I suspect it’s one of those George Cukor/Clark Gable director/actor seductions.]

  Reagan lat
er recalled that two of the most formidable actresses he ever worked with were Maria Ouspenskaya and Judith Anderson. Born in 1876 during the days of the Russian Empire, Ouspenskaya became an acting teacher and a stage star. She came to Hollywood and had early success in Dodsworth (1936), which brought her an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. When she met Reagan, she was at the peak of her career, appearing as an old Gypsy fortuneteller in the horror film, The Wolf Man (1941). She had had other hits in The Rains Came (1939), with Tyrone Power, and in Waterloo Bridge (1940) with Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh.

  A major-league sadist masquerading as a decent, small town doctor: Charles Coburn.

  Anderson, an Australian, had just been nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the malevolently lesbian Mrs. Danvers (the housekeeper) in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940). After Kings Row, she would go on to appear in many memorable films, including Laura (1944), and in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman.

  London-born Claude Rains had first thrilled Reagan in his appearance in The Invisible Man (1933). “From Casablanca (1942) to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Claude was one of the most talented actors who ever appeared before a camera,” Reagan claimed.

  Nancy Coleman, who came from Washington State, was a minor actress who played Louise Gordon (the daughter of Coburn’s character, the sadistic Dr. Gordon) in Kings Row. Her early romance with Reagan prompts the doctor to (sadistically and unnecessarily) amputate his legs after an accident at the railroad tracks.

  Coleman would work with Reagan and Errol Flynn in their upcoming movie, Desperate Journey (1942).

  Three talented technicians contributed greatly to the success of Kings Row. They included a Chinese American cinematographer, James Wong Howe, a master of the use of shadow and one of the first to use deep-focus cinematography.