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

by Darwin Porter

  In the early 1940s, Fala was the most famous dog in America. He’s depicted here beside his owner, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  In Princess O’Rourke, the role of Fala as a symbol of the president himself was assigned to a (canine) stand-in.

  In the film, the princess writes a note to her suitor, Cummings, which the little Scottie dog delivers to his room. The setting, which accurately replicated the interior of the White House, was created by designers on Warner backlots.

  A New Yorker, Norman Krasna was a playwright, screenwriter, producer, and film director. Jane had first met him when she had a bit role on his movie, The King and the Chorus Girl.

  Gladys Cooper: Aristocratic and domineering.

  Krasna was mostly known for writing screwball comedies involving mistaken identity. For his script of Princess O’Rourke, he won an Academy Award.

  Not only did Carson and Jane lead a strong supporting cast, but they were joined by other major talent, notably an elegant Londoner, Gladys Cooper, playing a governess and secretary to the princess. Jane frequently had tea with her at four o’clock.

  She later recalled, “Dame Gladys was the most impressive actress I ever worked with.”

  Born in 1888, Cooper had begun her career on the stage as a teenager in Edwardian musical comedies before going into dramatic roles in silent films. She delayed her arrival in Hollywood until 1940, where she began to play a series of character parts, often cast as a disapproving, snobbish, aristocratic society woman. Famous roles include her casting in Rebecca (1940), starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. The year Jane met Cooper, she was also cast as the domineering mother of Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942), which would bring Cooper an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress.

  Jane chatted briefly with Julie Wilson, who had been cast as a stewardess. She was terribly disappointed in her reduced status as an actress. As Jane well knew, she’d been one of Reagan’s leading ladies in International Squadron.

  During the year he’d filmed Princess O’Rourke, Coburn also starred in The More the Merrier for which he would win a 1943 Oscar as Best Supporting Actor.

  “Because Ronnie has screened Kings Row countless times, I must confess I’ve come to hate you,” Jane said. “You seem so nice in person, but such a monster on screen.”

  “Don’t let my niceness fool you,” Coburn said, jokingly. “I have a black heart—in fact, I’m just a dirty old man.”

  During the making of Princess O’Rourke, Carson, in later life, admitted that he’d served once again as the “beard” for Jane during her illicit romance with Dennis Morgan. Ostensibly, Morgan made frequent visits to the set to see his best friend, Carson. “We lunched with Jane in the commissary and later retreated to my dressing room,” Carson recalled. “I’d slip out discreetly and leave Dennis and Jane to pursue whatever perversions they wanted to—just kidding, folks. The meetings with Jane and Dennis became easier in the future because Warner cast all of us in pictures together. In fact, my next picture was with Jane.”

  De Havilland conflicted on several occasions with Cummings. He ran into frequent scheduling conflicts, as he was also filming Between the Girls at Universal. Knowing that he was a secret cross dresser, film crews teased him endlessly about the title of the movie.

  When De Havilland did show up on the set, she was infuriated to find that Cummings was shooting at Universal. Often, she’d have to deliver her lines to a stand-in. She was also frustrated that Coburn kept forgetting his lines, calling for numerous retakes in his scenes with her.

  The tension between De Havilland and Warners intensified as shooting progressed, or didn’t progress, on Princess O’Rourke. Suffering from low blood pressure, De Havilland began to arrive late and leave early. Some days, she called in sick.

  Her frustration with Warners led to a lawsuit. Unlike Bette Davis, who lost her own bitter legal battles with Warners, De Havilland ultimately prevailed.

  The production of Princess O’Rourke was one of the most troublesome vehicles ever turned out by Warners. Although filmed mostly in 1942, its release was held up for almost a year because of legal issues, most of them revolving around De Havilland and her lawsuit to get out of her contract.

  Before the eventual release of Princess O’Rourke, a firestorm of criticism came from Washington and its wartime Bureau of Motion Pictures. A copy of the film was shipped for screening. Within a day, a strongly worded letter of objection arrived from BMP officers, citing that the script had not been pre-approved. Nelson Poynter, the director of the BMP Office in Hollywood, called on Warner at Burbank. He accused Warner Brothers of “recklessly using the war for background incidents in an opportunistic attempt to capitalize off America’s epic battle rather than to interpret it.”

  He also objected to the depiction of the President, who remained looming somewhere in the background. “You make him sound like a busybody,” Poynter charged. “You’ve also caricatured the Secret Service and made fun of our Allies among European nobility.” In spite of these stern objections, BMP did nothing to stop the eventual release of the picture.

  In general, Jane was mostly singled out for decent reviews, and in some ways, Princess O’Rourke marked a turning point in her career as it provided a showcase for her comedic talents. She was especially good and appraised as “Sparkplug capable with her foil, Jack Carson.” For the most part, the picture got good reviews, Variety defining it as a “spritely, effervescing, and laugh explosive comedy-romance.” It enjoyed moderate success in its day. When it was re-released decades later, modern viewers were not as kind.

  ***

  When gossips got word of Robert Taylor’s entry into the armed forces, they joked that an even more effective fighter might be his wife, Bloody Babs, shown here brandishing scissors in the tough, lady-like but macho style for which she had become infamous.

  It was early morning in the household of Barbara Stanwyck and her husband, Robert Taylor. Pouring her morning coffee, Stanwyck went to the phone to hear Reagan’s cheerful voice. “You’re always so god damn pleasant,” she said to him. “Not me in the morning. I’m like a caged tiger who hasn’t been given any red meat in four days.”

  “It’s my fault for calling so early, but I wanted to alert Bob that I’m on my way to pick him up.”

  She put down the phone and walked down the long hallway toward the bathroom. “Junior, she shouted through the closed bathroom door, over the sound of running water, “your boyfriend is on the phone.”

  “Coming!” Taylor shouted back.

  “I bet that’s what you say to him,” she said, sarcastically.

  Stanwyck had always taunted him about his homosexuality, and she accused him of having a crush on Reagan. Taylor had repeatedly denied that.

  Reagan was driving Taylor south, to a local marina, where their mutual friend, actor Robert Stack, had rented a small yacht to take them on a weekend sail to Catalina. Jane didn’t want to go, and Stanwyck wasn’t invited.

  Fan magazines propagandized the marriage of Barbara Stan-wyck and Robert Taylor as another ideal couple, evocative of the marriage of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman.

  Here, Stanwyck poses with Lt. Robert Taylor at home from active duty in the Navy.

  Over a quickie breakfast, Stanwyck demanded to know why she couldn’t come along. “I know that the late, much-lamented Carole Lombard used to accompany Gable, you, and the other guys on hunting trips.”

  “This is different,” Taylor told her. “It’s like boys’ night out. The guys will be nude on the boat wanting to get a suntan all over. No place for a woman.”

  “God knows what you boys will do with your dicks hanging out,” she snapped.

  At the sound of a honking horn, he jumped up from the table and grabbed his bag. “Take care, Queen!” He always called her that.

  “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” she asked.

  “Later, when I come back,” he said, heading out the door and racing toward Reagan’s car, since they were running late for t
heir rendezvous with Stack, an actor as handsome as they were.

  Reagan was much closer to Taylor than he was to Stanwyck, an actress he found intimidating, although Jane seemed to admire her style and commanding presence. Since their marriage in 1939, Taylor and Stanwyck had become Reagan’s closest friends, included in their inner circle of Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, James Stewart, Claudette Colbert, and Eddie Albert from their Brother Rat movies.

  The night before picking Taylor up, Reagan had told Jane, “Barbara treats Bob like an unruly child, and she always humiliates him, suggesting he’s not a real manly man. You know, unlike us, they occupy separate bedrooms.”

  “Even on their honeymoon?” she asked. She’d heard rumors that Taylor and Stan-wyck had a “lavender marriage,” Both of them were known for sleeping with others on the side. Taylor had had affairs with Howard Hughes, Errol Flynn, and Tyrone Power, but with some females, too, including Virginia Bruce and even Greta Garbo, when he’d made Camille with her. He’d just completed Johnny Eager (1942), in which he’d been intimate with Lana Turner. Stanwyck had had her own affairs, dating from the A-list with Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford.

  “Bob and Barbara must come together sometime,” Reagan told Jane. “The other day, Bob told me that she always wants to control the fuck. As for their honeymoon, Bob claimed he’d found her so overpowering and commanding that he became impotent— and she’d mocked him.”

  “That’s a sure-fire way to give a man an erection,” Jane said.

  “Evenings with them can be rough,” he said.

  “Better than time out with the Battling Bogarts,” she said. “Mayo Methot, as you remember, once pulled out a revolver and threatened to kill him.”

  He recalled an evening at dinner when Stanwyck was on a rampage, attacking her husband’s masculinity.

  “No wonder the press is hailing us instead of them as the ideal couple,” Jane said. “It looks like we’re going to remain unchallenged as Hollywood’s most ideal couple,” he said. “Me in uniform while you’re staying behind.”

  “I guess the press will write about all your daring aerial combats shooting down Göring’s Luftwaffe pilots,” she said. “Of course, you’ll still be in California behind a desk somewhere.”

  On the boat to Catalina Island, about a mile offshore, Reagan, Stack, and Taylor sailed with a three-man crew. The rental of the yacht was a gift from Howard Hughes, the aviator and billionaire. Reagan had heard rumors that both Stack and Taylor on occasion were “Hughes’ boys.”

  It was Stack who first stripped down and suggested that Taylor and Reagan drop their trunks, too. “Let’s get a suntan all over.”

  Not afraid to take off his trunks, Reagan stripped down and headed for a mat on the deck. Taylor was the most reluctant, but, he too, took off his trunks.

  On the trip to Catalina, Stack had talked about his friend, John F. Kennedy, who had just left Hollywood for Navy duty. Reagan was familiar with Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, but knew nothing of his children. Stack said that, “After the war, he plans to get into politics from his home state of Massachusetts. Probably run for Congress. After that, the Senate. And, then, the Presidency.”

  “I wouldn’t take that ambition too seriously,” Reagan said. “Doesn’t every red-blooded American boy want to be President of the United States, even me?”

  ***

  Robert Stack (seen above with Barbara Stanwyck) often went swimming with Stanwyck, Jane Wyman, Reagan (when available), and Robert Taylor.

  The first time Stanwyck saw Stack in a bathing suit, she told him, “Your body is perfect, a piece of sculpture when compared to Bob or Ronnie.”

  To Blondell, Jane recalled the last dinner party she had hosted for Stanwyck and Taylor. “It was a disaster.”

  “Ronnie held back, but Bob and Barbara were drinking heavily. Bob teased Ronnie about his first days in Hollywood when Ronnie was touted as “the next Robert Taylor.’”

  “I’m still working on it,” Reagan had retorted.

  At the party, Taylor had revealed that he’d never seen the 1940 movie, Waterloo Bridge, in which he’d played a soldier and Vivien Leigh had played a ballet dancer/prostitute in London.

  “I don’t get off on too many of my pictures,” Taylor said. “When Louis B. Mayer learned I’d not seen Waterloo Bridge, he held a special screening of it in his living room in front of friends.”

  “You seem so casual about the movies you make,” Jane said. “How unlike Ronnie. When tour buses stop by our house, Ronnie runs out the door and invites them in for a screening of Kings Row.”

  “Jane exaggerates,” Reagan said, looking embarrassed. “I have shown it on occasion to a very select few of our friends.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jane retorted. “He defines ‘friends’ as anyone listed in the Los Angeles phone book.”

  “I understand why Junior doesn’t want to see his own films,” a rather drunk Stanwyck had chimed in. “After all, I’ve made a couple with the guy myself. I prefer to work with a real man. I’ve just finished Ball of Fire with Gary Cooper (1942). Talk about a real man.”

  Then she looked over at Reagan. “You look like a real man,” she said. “Not like pretty boy over there. How about it, Reagan? Why don’t you and I make a movie together one day?”

  “I’d love it, but I don’t see that happening.”

  On the night before Reagan’s departure for San Francisco and his new post with the U.S. Army, Jane threw an intimate dinner party for him, inviting Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Jack Benny, and Mary Livingston. Pat O‘Brien showed up with his wife, Eloise, and George Brent escorted his wife, Ann Sheridan. Reagan and Brent had made up in the aftermath of Brent giving him a black eye when he and Sheridan were filming Juke Girl.

  Taylor said he was anxious to put on a uniform, but that his wife objected.

  “You’re too old,” Stanwyck told him. “They want young men, not grandfathers.”

  Taylor was only thirty-one.

  [In February of 1943, Taylor would be sworn into the U.S. Navy under his original name of Spangler Arlington Brugh. Although he would apply several times for active duty, he was turned down because of his age. Instead, the Navy sent him to Livermore, California, to make seventeen training films for Naval Air cadets. Reagan, in contrast, would find himself making films for the U.S. Army Air Force.]

  ***

  Upon the release of Desperate Journey, The New York Times referring to it as “comic book stuff,” but the fast-paced action scenes, under Walsh’s direction, were generally singled out for praise.

  Hollywood, 1942: Lt. Ronald Reagan shows up in uniform with his wife, Jane Wyman, for the premiere of Tales of Manhattan at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

  Warner was horrified that Desperate Journey opened at the same time as Flynn’s notorious trial on charges of statutory rape, where the term “in like Flynn” was coined.

  The fear was not real. The courtroom revelations about Flynn’s romp with underage girls actually generated publicity that sent audiences flocking to movie houses. Desperate Journey earned more than $2 million, considered a big success in 1942 dollars.

  By the time the film was released, Reagan was not wearing a military uniform from the Warners’ wardrobe department, but a real one issued by the U.S. Army.

  Chapter Nine

  His Popularity Roars to an All-Time High, Even Though Jane Refers to Him as a “Has-Been”

  Ronald Reagaon, on the ranch with his favorite horse, “Baby,” took an athlete’s pride in the grace of his body’s “mechanics.” But his poor eyesight kept him off the battlefields in World War II, although he promised to “kill as many Nazi beasts as I can.”

  He made propaganda films instead.

  During a War Bond fundraising tour with John Payne, Jane wrote to her close friend, Paulette Goddard. “I’m traveling with the obscenely handsome John Payne. Men as sexy as he is should be rounded up and placed in a male harem for the girls to enjoy, especially me.”

  The day after Jane
hosted Reagan’s farewell party at their newly christened “dream house,” she drove him to Glendale, where he caught the night train north to San Francisco. During their tearful farewell, he left her with a cliché: “Jane, keep the home fires burning, and take care of yourself and our baby girl.”

  Poster Boy: America, in league with Hollywood as symbolized by Ronald Reagan, goes to war.

  Aboard the train, his identity shifted from that of a Hollywood movie star to a commissioned officer in the Army Air Corps, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force.

  As his train headed north during the frightening month of April, 1942, the publicity department at Warners was ordered, in cooperation with the U.S. Army, to inaugurate a massive buildup for Reagan and Jane. “We’re going to use them as our propaganda couple to promote the U.S. War effort,” Warner said.

  Almost within the week, the studio’s publicity department launched a campaign with such headlines as “MR. AND MRS. AMERICA FIGHTING THE WAR.” One feature story was headlined, “REAGAN & WYMAN—SO LONG BUTTON NOSE.”

  In spite of how it misled the public, Reagan and Jane aided Warners’ publicity campaign with zeal. Variety reported: “Ronald Reagan left today to join an Army unit in San Francisco, leaving behind his beloved young wife (Jane Wyman), and their daughter, Maureen. She told the press, ‘I will wait for him, pray for him, and live for the day when Ronnie comes marching home.’”

  Before heading out, Reagan had been photographed looking at horrific pictures of the swollen bodies of dying boys and girls being deliberately starved to death by Nazi soldiers in the ruins of Warsaw. “I hate war,” Reagan told the press. “But the scourge of Hitler’s Nazism has to be wiped from the face of the earth.”

  He would never be sent to fight on the battlefields of Europe or the Pacific. He did not reveal that his poor eyesight would keep him stationed in California throughout the duration of the war.