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

by Darwin Porter

  Three days later, Gable called and invited her for dinner and dancing at The Stork Club. She later said, “I was in a state of shock when I put down the phone. My heart was palpitating. I had worshipped him on the screen. I could not believe that I had actually spoken to him.”

  From reading fan magazines, Nancy was awed by the glamorous women Gable had conquered, including his late, doomed wife, Carole Lombard. The list included some of the most glamorous stars of the Golden Age—Lana Turner, Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Hedy Lamarr, Merle Oberon, Norma Shearer, Lupe Velez. “What would a man who’d had all those queens want with a mere handmaiden?” [Her reference was inspired by the role she’d played in Lute Song.]

  The slim, brown-eyed beauty from the Windy City paraded into the Stork Club on the arm of Gable himself. Photographers at the entrance snapped their pictures. In a memoir, Nancy would later rave about how “sexy, handsome, and affectionate,” he was. In the club, he held her hand, and she found him “romantic and fun-loving.”

  Nancy Davis, as a postwar Broadway ingénue, looked, acted, and dressed like a major-league star before she became one.

  “A flood of women walked by our table on the way to the powder room,” she wrote.

  She claimed that she didn’t know how many friends she had until Gable invited her to dance. “Oh, Nancy, darling, how wonderful to see you!” many of the women said, wanting to be introduced to Gable.

  The evening presumably ended with a kiss on the mouth. On many an occasion, his dates had complained about his bad breath, because of the false teeth he wore. Nancy had no complaints, and accepted his offer to be booked during every night of this stay in Manhattan.

  The World Series was being played at the time, and he invited her to Yankee Stadium following lunch the following day. At ten o’clock, a lovely bouquet of red roses arrived at her apartment before he picked her up. Actually, Gable did not cut as dashing a figure as he had when he’d played Rhett Butler back in 1939. Gore Vidal, whose mother, Nina Vidal, had once had an affair with him, wrote, “At this point in his life, Gable had put on weight, and he drank heavily. After a few drinks, he would loosen his false teeth, which were on some sort of peg, and then shake his head until they rattled like dice. His post-war movies had flopped at the box office, but he was still a big name to his public.”

  When Clark Gable made The Hucksters (1947) with Ava Gardner (see above), he told her “I’m not feisty Mickey Rooney, but there’s still fire in the engine.”

  To Sydney Greenstreet, he recalled dating Nancy Davis. “Something might have happened if I’d stayed in New York. But I went back to Hollywood, where I already had an over-full card of women—and Ava can’t be beat.”

  At Yankee Stadium, Nancy and Gable were mobbed. Four policemen had to escort Gable and Nancy to their box seats. Earlier, they had been seen lunching at the exclusive “21.”

  Walter Winchell, in his popular column, wrote: “At long last, Clark Gable had found a replacement for his beautiful doomed wife, who went down in that plane crash in 1942. He went into mourning, but now seems to have emerged. If anyone can bring him out of his depressive shell, it is a cute little brunette starlet whom he’s taking to all the hot spots of Manhattan.”

  Other reporters heard the sound of wedding bells, which had rung, at least in print, for Nancy before, but which had always stopped ringing before she was able to march up the aisle to an altar.

  Gable and Nancy continued their high-profile dating, attending a hot ticket Broadway musical, High Button Shoes. The musical starred Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray, with music by Jules Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Its director was George Abbott. As Gable walked in with Nancy, the audience stood up and gave him an ovation.

  Joan Crawford in a publicity still for Mildred Pierce, a role coveted and lost by Jane Wyman.

  Crawford was Clark Gable’s part-time lover. He confessed to her that in New York, he had “strayed with Nancy Davis.”

  “Nancy, who?” Crawford asked.

  Word of an affair reached Chicago. Edith telephoned one morning. “What in hell is going on between Gable and you?”

  “We’re just good friends,” Nancy said.

  “Like hell. I’ve talked to Spencer Tracy. As you know, he’s Gable’s confidant. Gable told Spence that he’s fucking you.”

  “Spence exaggerates.”

  “Well, if he’s plugging my daughter and you get knocked up, make sure you get a wedding ring.”

  Tracy seemed to fancy himself a matchmaker. He told Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor, Garson Kanin, and Ruth Gordon, “Clark is banging Nancy. She’s seen late at night leaving his suite at the Waldorf. He’s not much of a lay, as he freely admits himself, but she couldn’t do any better than wed the King of Hollywood. Actually, that title belongs to me, but I forgive Clark for using it.”

  Nancy more or less denied the affair, without actually saying so. Back in Hollywood, Joan Crawford, Gable’s steadfast friend and lover over the years, claimed that he had admitted to an affair with Nancy—“Whoever in hell she is.”

  In a memoir, Nancy hinted that Gable may have indirectly proposed to her. One night he asked her, “How would you feel about living on a ranch?” He was obviously referring to his ranch in Encino, California.

  She later claimed that she fumbled her response. She said, “Gee, I don’t know. I never have.” On looking back at that moment, she wondered, “Was Clark sounding me about a possible future together? And, if so, how should I have responded? I wasn’t in love with him, but if we had seen more of each other, I might have been.”

  And then, suddenly, it was over.

  Gable flew back to Hollywood and to the arms of Ava Gardner, with Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe looming in his future. A year later, he entered into an unsuccessful marriage (1949-1952) to Sylvia, Lady Ashley, a socialite.

  Tracy told his gossipy friend, the director George Cukor, that “Clark was Nancy’s first choice for a husband. Ronald Reagan was just the consolation prize.”

  ***

  Long before Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman became big stars on television, Nancy broke into the medium during its infancy. As she recalled, “I had to wear green makeup and black lipstick! TV was very new, and you had to wear some strange colors if you wanted to look good on those early, primitive black-and-white TV sets.”

  An offer came through for her to appear in a telecast called Broken Dishes, set to air on May 12, 1948, on Kraft Television Theatre. Some biographers have suggested that this was a new script. Actually, it had been around for years. Broken Dishes had premiered as a Broadway play in 1929 when it had introduced another newcomer to the theater, also named Davis—Bette in this case. The screen diva defined November 5 of that year as “the greatest triumph of my professional career, the night I first saw my name on a Broadway marquee.”

  Far from being an unknown property, Broken Dishes had already been adapted into three separate Hollywood movies, each with a different title: Too Young to Marry, with Loretta Young (1931); Love Begins at Twenty with Patricia Ellis (1936); and Calling All Husbands with Lucile Fairbanks (1940). When Nancy starred in the teleplay, the property was viewed in Hollywood as “a tired old workhorse.”

  It was a comedy focusing on a henpecked husband in the Middle West, with a nagging wife always talking about “the man I should have married.” The daughter, as played by Nancy, seeks independence from her domineering mother by marrying a man her mother finds objectionable. At the finale, that man the mother idealized turns up. Ironically, he has become a penniless fugitive, desperately fleeing from the police.

  Benny Thau, head of casting at MGM, had flown to New York to confer with Tracy at his temporary home at the Waldorf Towers. Nancy had alerted Tracy to watch her debut on TV. He invited Thau for drinks with him and to view the telecast as well. Thau detested television and feared future competition from the new medium, so he sat, visibly suffering, through the telecast. Apparently, however, the fifty-one-year-old man, unmarried at the tim
e, became quite fascinated with the twenty-eight year-old actress, Nancy herself.

  Star Maker Benny Thau: When the MGM Lion roared, starlet Nancy Davis answered the call.

  At the end of the broadcast, Thau expressed his interest in dating Nancy. Tracy agreed to call her, finding her excited when she heard he was in charge of casting at MGM, “The Tiffany of Studios.”

  After his first date with Nancy, Thau discussed with Tracy that he might arrange a screen test for her. “We need another clean cut, girl-next-door type at Metro,” Thau said. “We’ve already got enough sultry types—take Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, for example. Of course, for class, we already have your beloved Katharine Hepburn.”

  In her memoirs, Nancy doesn’t even mention Thau, although he became one of the most influential men in her screen career. According to unconfirmed reports, Thau’s long affair with Nancy actually began in New York.

  She wanted to believe Thau when he told her he would arrange a screen test for her at MGM. If the studio bosses liked it, a seven-year contract would follow. “I could hope and dream,” she recalled.

  In the meantime, while awaiting that contract, she did more live television. ZaSu Pitts cajoled once again and asked Nancy to repeat their roles in Ramshackle Inn as part of a telecast for Philco Television Playhouse. It aired on January 2, 1949.

  Nancy’s performance went over so well with the Philco producers that she was invited to repeat her role in The Late Christopher Bean, the play in which she had toured with Pitts. However, she was not available for the telecast, and the Davis’ family friend, Lillian Gish, took the star role. That telecast was premiered on February 6, 1949.

  By that time, Nancy’s screen test at MGM had been scheduled. She often had long talks on the phone with Thau.

  When her air tickets arrived, she organized the details of her departure and packed her luggage.

  She told her friends, perhaps in exaggerated jest, “Greer Garson replaced Norma Shearer as Queen of MGM. Now I’m on my way to dethrone Garson.” Nancy never actually “dethroned” her, but she did replace Garson in one of her roles: The British actress had been Thau’s mistress.

  Although Nancy arrived on the scene at the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age, she still managed to win a seven-year contract at a time when more established MGM contract players were being let go. As she set foot on California soil, many stars were desperately free-lancing in search of acting jobs.

  Although Edith encouraged her daughter’s film career, Loyal did not, claiming, perhaps correctly, that Hollywood was “an unsavory place.”

  Spencer Tracy had contacted his gay friend, director George Cukor, known as the best women’s director in Hollywood, and asked him to direct Nancy’s screen test. That was unheard of; Cukor didn’t do screen tests. But for Tracy, he agreed to supervise Nancy’s try-out.

  Tracy also placed a call to Dore Schary, a former screenwriter now in charge of production at MGM. He would soon replace Louis B. Mayer. Schary had written the script for Boys Town (1938), which brought Tracy an Oscar. “Nancy knows how to look like she’s thinking when she’s on stage,” Tracy said. “I’m told you want to make message pictures. Nancy would be ideal for those.”

  When Nancy heard that Schary suffered back pains, she put him in touch with her stepfather, Loyal Davis, a high-profile neurosurgeon. The doctor relieved the executive’s pains, which made him grateful to Nancy.

  Before her screen test, Nancy spent three weeks with Lillian Burns, MGM’s drama coach, who rehearsed the starlet in voice, dancing, acting, deportment, and appearance.

  For the test, Thau arranged for Nancy to have as her cameraman George Folsey, who was said to photograph women more beautifully than anyone in his field. “I can turn a snaggle-toothed hag into a sultry, classical dame,” he proclaimed.

  Sent to makeup, Nancy found herself sitting between June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor. Both of them would eventually become her friends.

  Women who drove Benny bananas: Greer Garson (left) and Nancy Davis.

  The top hair stylist in Hollywood, Sydney Guilaroff, was assigned to tangle with her hair. William Tuttle, acclaimed as the leading makeup artist in Hollywood, rivaled only by Perc Westmore, did her face. He told her, “We’ll have to do something about your eyes: They are too big for pictures.”

  She walked onto the set with her eyes half closed until the cameraman, Folsey, asked, “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

  Macho, magnetic, and charismatic: Howard Keel “wiving it wealthily” in Kiss Me Kate.

  She explained what Tuttle had said.

  “It was a fucking joke. You can’t have eyes too big for the movies. Ever see a Joan Crawford picture?”

  As her leading man, Howard Keel was selected to appear opposite her. The handsome, strapping, macho baritone from Illinois would become the movie equivalent of Alfred Drake on Broadway, eventually appearing in such upcoming musicals as Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and Show Boat (1951). He was known for his big, booming voice. Nor was he modest, claiming, “I’m big in all departments.”

  Keel and Nancy were given a script for an upcoming MGM film, East Side, West Side (1949). Ironically, when shooting began for that film, Nancy would be assigned a role in it.

  During the filming of her screen test, Nancy admitted, “I was terribly nervous, but Howard talked to me and made me calm down.” During a break, he told her of his background, asserting that he’d come from a coal-mining town where his father had committed suicide when he was a young boy.

  As he grew in stature in the coming years, he would become a sex symbol at MGM, and he boasted of having scored with his leading ladies. They had included Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, and Esther Williams. He said that before that, he’d seduced Norma Jeane Baker (Marilyn Monroe) when she was only thirteen and he was twenty-one. He referred to Monroe as “San Quentin jail bait.”

  Four years after his screen test with Nancy, Hedda Hopper asked Keel, “You appeared on camera with both of Reagan’s wives, Nancy and Jane Wyman. You are known in Hollywood as quite a ladies’ man Did you get lucky with Nancy or Jane?...Maybe both?”

  “I can answer your question with a question,” Keel said. “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  After the screen test, Nancy had to fill out a questionnaire about herself. She shaved two years off her age, defining it as twenty-six. Among her phobias, she listed that she hated “vulgarity, untidiness of mind, and cigars.”

  When she signed with MGM, Nancy stood 5’4” and weighed 116 pounds. She named her favorite actors as Walter Huston and Spencer Tracy, her favorite female star as Laurette Taylor, the older, Irish-American actress. In 1944, on Broadway, she had been the first to interpret the key matriarchal role of Amanda in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie.

  George Cukor: Very outspoken in his negative impression of Nancy.

  Nancy also asserted that her greatest ambition was “to have a successful marriage.”

  Although he masked it, Cukor took an instant dislike to Nancy. Privately, he told Tracy, “She has absolutely no talent.”

  [Throughout the rest of his life, Cukor made nasty remarks about her. In his most notorious comment, he claimed, “If I had a nickel for every Jew Nancy was under, I’d be rich.”]

  Cukor showed her screen test to producer Pandro S. Berman, who had dealt, frequently, with such über-luminaries as Katharine Hepburn. He told Cukor, “Nancy Davis just doesn’t have star material.”

  Nancy later recalled, “I escaped the usual star buildup, having to pose in bathing suits and the like. From the beginning, I was cast either as a young girl with children, or I was padded to appear as pregnant more times than I can recall. From 1949 to 1956, I would make eleven films, but, except for a few of them, I hardly remember what happened during the shoot.”

  Unlike Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman, Nancy didn’t seem to be particularly susceptible to “Leadingman-itis.” Male stars who failed to light her fire included Van Heflin, James Mason, Zachory Scott, James
Whitmore, Ray Milland, Ralph Meeker, and George Murphy, Reagan’s best friend. “Glenn Ford was attractive enough, but he was involved,” she said. In one of her final films, however, her leading man really turned her on—Reagan himself. By then, she’d already married him.

  During her first interview with Louella Parsons, the aging gossip maven asked her, “Is there one man in your life?”

  “Not yet,” Nancy said. “I don’t want to sound trite, but I’m married to my career, and that’s pretty much the truth.”

  Actually, the first journalist to interview Nancy after she signed her contract was columnist Ines Wallace. What she wrote was rather bland. Privately, she had a sharper opinion: “My impression of her was dismal. She was more like a character actress than a leading lady. She looked a bit long in the tooth. Mayer liked to sign young girls—take Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, or Lana Turner, for example. I was told that MGM planned to build Nancy up. Up for what? Oblivion? The fans won’t go for this one. Trust me!”

  Nancy also realized that within MGM, she couldn’t compete with those “child-woman” stars, the rosy-cheeked “girl next door” type. June Allyson and Jane Powell were already under contract for those parts, with Debbie Reynolds looming on the horizon.

  “I had to be something in between,” Nancy said. Thau told wardrobe and makeup that he wanted them to create “that respectable lady look, an image of manicured prettiness.”

  “Nancy was not glamorous,” Thau said, “and she knew that.”

  “After I put my “Jane Henry” on that contract, I started receiving a weekly paycheck,” Nancy said. “No longer would I have to depend on Edith and Loyal for support.”

  [In later years, Nancy, in her real-life role as a mother, would have to provide money for her son, Ron Reagan, Jr., during the early stages of his career as a ballet dancer.]