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

by Darwin Porter

  At table, Ball said to Jane, “Long time no see, kid.”

  “I heard you turned down my role,” Jane said. “Is my part that bad?”

  “It was okay, rather routine,” Ball said. “My real reason is that I wanted to star in The Big Street (1942). If I’d accepted Footlight, I wouldn’t be available for The Big Street. By the way, I hear RKO is not going to renew my contract.”

  “I hope that’s just a rumor and that it isn’t ture,” Jane said. “All of us live in fear of losing our contracts. I think you’re great, and I loved you and Desi [Arnaz] in Too Many Girls (1940).”

  “I did, too,” Ball said, “and at least I met Desi. I’m mad about the boy. So are a hundred other women. Darling Desi likes to service all of us, including, on occasion, the cocksucking mouth of César Romero.”

  Both women shared memories of the early 1930s and their struggles at the time, remembering when they’d been cast in the chorus line of The Kid From Spain. Although Jane wasn’t delighted with her current role, she vowed to make the best of it.

  “For me, the highlight of the movie will be when I put on boxing gloves and duke it out with Betty,” Jane said. “My anxiety is that we’ve both got to wear shortie short shorts, and her legs were voted most beautiful in the world.”

  “We all fall short in some department,” Ball said. “As for me, I’m always getting cast with well-stacked broads, and I’m known as the ‘No Tit Wonder.’”

  For the most part, Jane and Grable got along during the shoot. So far, it seemed that Jane was still unaware of any involvement with the blonde goddess and her husband.

  Jealousy did arrive on one occasion, and that was when the costume designer, Earl Luick, presented Grable with a very sexy gown. Grable rejected it. “I’d prefer to wear skunk,” she told Luick.

  He then crossed out Grable’s name on the garment’s design sketch and wrote in Wyman’s name in its place. After the gown was made, Jane wore it in a scene. At its conclusion, the crew “wolf-whistled” her. In Jane’s words, “Betty was seriously pissed off.”

  Four days later, Grable had recovered from her upset and invited Jane to go with her to Zanuck’s office. “I want you to sit outside the door in the secretary’s office. If Zanuck tries to rape me, and if you hear me screaming, call security.”

  Grable remained in Zanuck’s office for nearly an hour, and Jane heard no screaming. When she finally emerged, Grable’s face was beaming. “No rape, darling, but I got a pay raise to $2,000 a week. Also, a promise to shoot all my future films in Technicolor. And you know how gorgeous I look in Technicolor. He told me he would have shot Footlight Serenade in color, but he was in short supply of color stock because of the war.”

  Jane later said to friends, “I adore Betty, but the green bug bites me, hard, ever so often. Especially that afternoon when she left Zanuck’s office. It was not just the pay raise, but she told me she was getting some 5,000 fan letters a week, mostly from servicemen.”

  Grable had a tough dancing number with her song, “I Heard the Birdies Sing.” She had to (cheerfully) engage in a boxing match with her own shadow. For help, she called in her sometimes boyfriend, George Raft. Jane had been seduced by him during the production of Rumba, when she had a bit part opposite the female lead, Carole Lombard. Jane came over to him to shake his hand. She later complained to Grable, “The conceited bastard once fucked me. Now he doesn’t know me.”

  Former lovers who hustle—George Raft (left) and Rudolf Valentino.

  “What does it matter?” Grable asked. “By the way, I think he’s a latent homosexual. He lived with Valentino in New York, and I heard those roomies really went at it. During my so-called affair with George, about the only time he ever touched me was to beat me up.”

  As always, director Ratoff rattled off instructions in his thick Russian accent filled with more malapropisms than Samuel Goldwyn. When he saw that Jane didn’t like her role, he suggested, “You should become a bobcat (perhaps he meant ‘wildcat’?) like Olivia de Havilland and Bette Davis. They barged into Jack Warner’s office and demanded stronger parts. They’re getting them.”

  “I can’t do that,” Jane said. “Frankly, I’m glad to be employed. Let’s face it: Those wisecracking blondes of the 30s, of which I was one, are being shown to the door. Take Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell, for instance. I fear I might be next. At least, I’m occasionally given the female lead, as when I co-starred with Edward G. Robinson. It’s better to work than it is to stand at the gate of Warners looking through the iron bars.”

  Jane found herself appearing with Phil Silvers again, after having co-starred with him and Jimmy Durante in You’re In the Army Now.

  “This time around, poor ugly Phil, a scene stealer himself, had to compete with two handsome hunks, and he was no match for John and Victor,” Jane said. She introduced him around, presenting him as a comedian. He corrected her. “I’m a comic actor. I don’t do stand-up.” Because he’d just completed filming My Gal Sal (1942), he needed no introduction to that picture’s male star, Mature himself.

  Many envious stars had become profoundly bored with the constant barrage of fan magazine fluff about what an ideal couple Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan were. Consequently, they were eager for news of infidelities associated with either member of the marriage of “America’s Sweethearts.”

  One case emerged when Jane invited singer Joy Hodges to the Fox commissary for lunch. Reagan remembered Hodges fondly for her help in snagging his first screen test. Involved in a car accident, Hodges couldn’t make it to the luncheon, but Mature wandered in and asked Jane if he could share her table.

  He had been freed of Grable that afternoon because she and John Payne were meeting with director Irving Cummings about their next co-starring vehicle, Springtime in the Rockies (1942). “I don’t envy Payne,” Mature told Jane. “In this upcoming movie with Betty, he’s got to fight off the sexual advances of both César Romero and Carmen Miranda.”

  Throughout most of the luncheon, Mature was quite flirtatious with Jane. She didn’t exactly welcome his advances, but didn’t reject them either. A photographer snapped a picture of the two of them as he was holding her hand. The next morning, when it appeared in the papers, the rumor mill began grinding out tales of a torrid affair that Mature was conducting with Jane during the filming of the picture. Jane was not as upset as she might have been, because the faux romance with Mature threw “the hounds off the scent of John and me,” as she told Goddard.

  In front of his assembled cast, Ratoff predicted that Footlight Serenade would become the hit musical of 1942. He was wrong. Nonetheless, it attracted a reasonable box office success, in large part because of Grable’s marvelous dancing and the authentic-looking backstage sets.

  Footlight Serenade marked a key moment in Grable’s increasing visibility as the box office champion of World War II. Based partly on the success of that film, “The Girl With the Million Dollar Legs” would become the most famous pinup queen of World War II.

  ***

  Juke Girl wrapped late on a Saturday night. By Monday morning, Reagan was rushed into shooting Desperate Journey, a sort of anti-Nazi action/adventure/propaganda film with Errol Flynn as his co-star. The script depicted Nazis as dunderheads and nincompoops.

  With the exception of Michael Curtiz, Reagan didn’t always get a first-rate director, certainly not for his B pictures. That changed with Desperate Journey, directed by Raoul Walsh.

  Jean Douchet summed up the screen character of director Raoul Walsh, who’s depicted above:

  “His characters are projected on the world by their own energy and committed to a space that only exists for ther actions, fury, spirit, craft, ambition, and unbridled dreams.”

  Walsh, a New Yorker, had worn an eyepatch ever since his was driving through the Utah desert and a jackrabbit crashed through his windshield, spraying his face with shattered glass and putting out his right eye.

  Prior to his accident, Walsh had portrayed John Wilkes Booth, Linco
ln’s assassin, in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). As an actor, he had also interpreted the role of Gloria Swanson’s boyfriend in Sadie Thompson (1928). After the loss of his eye, this hard-core Hollywood veteran directed such stars as John Wayne, James Cagney, and Humphrey Bogart.

  [Marlene Dietrich told people that Walsh was the biggest “pain in the ass I’ve ever known.”]

  Reagan wasn’t thrilled at being directed by Walsh, who had just completed They Died With Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn cast as General George Armstrong Custer.

  Reagan still resented losing the role to Flynn, after he’d portrayed Custer in Santa Fe Trail. Reagan’s resentment—jealousy, really—increased when he learned that Walsh and Flynn were contemplating five more films in their immediate future—Gentleman Jim (1942); Northern Pursuit (1943); Uncertain Glory (1944); Objective, Burma! (1945); and Silver River (1948).

  Ironically, although many of these upcoming Walsh films contained roles that could have been handled by Reagan, he had to serve in the military. Cynically, he frequently wondered, “If Flynn were such a ‘perfect specimen’ (as the title of one of his movies had implied), why hadn’t he been drafted, too?”

  He’d heard rumors of Flynn’s ill health, but didn’t believe them. “The guy’s body looks too terrific to have anything wrong with it,” Reagan told his friends. “Walsh and Flynn are so close, they look like brothers…or should I say, lovers? They’ve got their arms around each other, and they go out at night lowering Hollywood’s liquor supply and bursting maidenheads even if there aren’t many of them around these days.”

  Flynn called Walsh “Uncle,” the director referring to his star and best friend as “The Baron.”

  “He’s my kind of man,” Flynn said to Reagan. “He was an athlete, a stunt rider, a man’s man. He’s also a man’s director, the exact opposite of cocksucking George Cukor, the so-called Women’s Director.”

  Reagan was provocative when he discussed Flynn privately with Walsh. “Does Flynn’s homosexuality bother you?”

  “Hell, no!” Walsh said. “A stiff prick has no conscience. A hole is a hole is a hole. If it provides sexual relief, it does its job. Why would the gender of a person matter if either one brings sexual satisfaction?”

  “I’ve never heard it put that way before,” Reagan said.

  “I don’t know how many times Flynn has told me he’s in love,” Walsh said. “Right now, he has the hots for Helmut Dantine. This weekend it will be someone else. He doubles his chances by not being gender specific.”

  Unusual for him, Reagan was also provocative when he talked privately with Flynn. “You look in great shape, man,” he said. “But Walsh told me you were classified 4-F.”

  “I’ve been examined by private doctors and Army doctors,” Flynn said. “My decadent lifestyle has caught up with me—too much sex, too much liquor, too much opium and cocaine, too many cigarettes. I was told that my heart and lungs are irreparably damaged. One doctor predicted that I have only two years to live.”

  Flynn leaned over to Reagan and whispered, “I don’t want this to get around, but I occasionally have recurrent bouts of venereal disease, although I’m clean for now, at least. I have a heart murmur and recurrent malaria. Get this: I also have tuberculosis in my right lung.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Reagan said. “You’d never know any of that crap by looking at you. How are you going to handle all this?”

  “I’m going to double up on my smoking and drinking,” he said. “I’m thirty-two years old now, and if I have to leave this earth so soon, I’m going to have sex three times a day—twice with women, the other with some boy ass. If I get horny in between, I’m going to take it out and masturbate, regardless of who’s looking. Would you like me to demonstrate, sport?”

  As Flynn started to unzip, Reagan protested, “Not today…maybe a week from now.”

  Of the many pictures snapped of Errol Flynn, dressed or undressed, this was his all-time favorite.

  He had only one complaint: “It doesn’t show my most celebrated asset.”

  Flynn admitted that he had specifically requested Reagan for the role, even though he resented any scene where he might shine. “I found on Santa Fe Trail that you and I blend in well together on the screen—good chemistry. Frankly, if you weren’t such a square, we could blend together perfectly off screen, too, as we’re well matched.”

  “Errol, I told you—it was NO yesterday, NO today, and NO tomorrow.”

  “You’re really missing out on the time of your life, sport,” he answered.

  As shooting progressed, Reagan began to take Flynn’s health claims seriously. Before the picture wrapped, his weight had dropped to just 165 pounds. Wardrobe had to re-tailor his wardrobe and in some cases, use padding.

  “They don’t have to pad me in the crotch, though,” he told Reagan. “That remains as fat as ever.”

  In spite of his bravado, he often didn’t make it to the set until noon, which inevitably brought a lashing from Walsh.

  “But ‘Uncle’ was the eternal forgiving father,” Reagan said. “No matter how many times Flynn fucked up in this preposterous Rover Boy-like saga we were making.”

  ***

  In its production of Desperate Journey, a film that was increasingly interpreted as a useful propaganda film suitable for viewing by audiences within each of the nations allied against Hitler, Warners made it a point to include portrayals of aviators from most of the Allied Nations.

  In Desperate Journey, Errol Flynn (left) and Ronald Reagan, wearing Nazi uniforms, make nincompoops out of the Germans in this preposterous, implausible yarn.

  In the movie, the leader of the mission is an Australian, Flynn himself, playing Flight Lieutenant. Forbes. Reagan got second billing—in letters as big as Flynn’s—cast as the American flight officer, Johnny Hammond. Alan Hale, Sr. played an R.A.F. veteran, Flight Sergeamt Kirk Edwards, who hailed from Scotland. As flying officer Jed Forrest, Arthur Kennedy represented Canada; and a very young Ronald Sinclair portrayed an Englishman, Lieutenant Flight Sergeant Lloyd Hollis II, the “baby” of the crew.

  The plot contained no real love interest, but Nancy Coleman was cast as Kaethe Brahms, who comes to the aid of the downed pilots. Reagan had appeared with her in Kings Row, in which she’d been cast as his first girlfriend. He told Walsh, “With Nancy, there is no way I’m going to come down with my usual disease of Leadinglady-itis. You’ve dressed her up to look like a dyke librarian.”

  Ronald Reagan: the only U.S. President to publicly impersonate a Nazi.

  The villain of the piece was the veteran actor Raymond Massey, playing Major Otto Baumeister, no longer John Brown or Abe Lincoln from Illinois. Wearing a monacle, no less, and menacing, he interpreted his role as a Nazi commander of a prison for Allied soldiers in a sneering, utterly unconvincing way.

  The mission of the Allied pilots involved flying over Schneidemühl, close to the Polish border, and bombing the railway junction that channeled Nazi munitions trains on to other parts of the Western and Eastern Fronts.

  After successfully bombing their target, the heroes’ plane is shot down and they are rounded up and imprisoned. They are interrogated and threatened in Massey’s office. But through a ruse, they escape and begin a cross-country trek through Germany, with the Nazis hot on their trail. At one point, they slip aboard a train and secretly enter Hermann Göring’s private railroad car, where they break into the Nazi’s private stocks of food and liquor until they’re discovered.

  As part of the process, they unveil a treasure trove of secret Nazi documents, including the locations of secret Messerschmidt factories manufacturing planes to bomb Britain.

  As they cross Germany, they leave a trail of destruction, including setting fire to chemical works in Berlin and mowing down hundreds of Nazis.

  Flynn declares, “We’re going to be the first invasion to hit Germany since Napoléon.” Their feats, as later appraised by critics, “would put even Superman to shame.”<
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  As Bosley Crowther of The New York Times put it, “The frenzied action is filled with hair-raising, side-splitting adventures, a wild goose trek across Germany, including slugging guards, knocking out Raymond Massey, car chases, and incidental sabotage. You need to turn to the comics to see action like this.”

  At the end, only three of the original crew, depicted as “The Three Musketeers,” remain alive. In a feat of astonishing daring, they manage to mow down fields of armed Nazis as part of their plan to commandeer a German aircraft ready for a bombing attack on the waterworks of England.

  After subduing the Nazi security guards protecting the plane, the three Allied airmen take off. But before they reach the English Channel, they release a bomb aboard the plane to destroy a German munitions factory.

  At the end of the movie, Flynn proclaims, “Now for Australia and a crack at those Japs.”

  Flynn had to memorize many lines in German, which he delivers fluidly and smoothly during scenes depicting his friends’ interrogation by Nazi guards.

  At one point, Flynn tells Reagan, “I don’t want you to upstage me. I’ve become used to sharing co-billing with females like Ann Sheridan or Bette Davis. But sharing such a billing with a male is a bit hard for me to take, sport.”

  Ultimately, Flynn demanded that Reagan’s best scene be transferred to him, a demand that eventually led to a widely observed argument between Flynn and Walsh. Of course, the two men later made up, but Walsh nonetheless insisted he wanted Reagan to interpret the scene. In it, Massey has prisoner Reagan brought into his office, hoping that the American might reveal the secrets of a newly developed American bomber plane.

  Desperate Journey’s incarnation of a malicious but incompetent Nazi: Raymond Massey.

  Although the character played by Massey speaks English, Reagan uses double-talk, inventing works such as “thermacockle” and “dermodyne.” He later knocks Massey out, eats his breakfast, and helps the other prisoners escape from the heavily guarded Nazi compound.