One night during one of their communal dinners, Alexis announced, “I’m going to play Cole Porter’s wife, Linda, in my latest film, Night and Day (1946),” Alexis told the Reagans. “My leading man is Cary Grant. Of course, he’s not as handsome as Craig is.”
Was the real Cole Porter as good-looking as Cary Grant? Actors up and down Broadway responded with a resounding NO!
In Night and Day, Jane played a good hearted turn-of-the Gilded Age cutie, but resented having such a small role while Alexis Smith got the star part.
As a means of maintaining her friendship with Alexis, Jane tried to conceal her jealousy.
The Lost Weekend had not been released yet, and Jane’s career appeared to be going nowhere. She had left word with Jack Warner. “Please notify me of any roles that Joan Crawford or Bette Davis turn down. I’m your gal.”
So far, he had not heeded her desperate call.
Two days after the dinner with Alexis and Stevens, a call came in for Jane from Michael Curtiz, the director of Night and Day. [He had only recently directed Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce, a role Jane had coveted.] To Jane, Curtiz said, “Girlie, I promise you role. I deliver role to you. Cole Porter story. Well, not the faggot’s real story. Movie is Night and Day. Part for you.”
“But I was told you’d already cast Alexis Smith as Porter’s wife,” she said.
“Not the female lead, dummy,” Curtiz said. “That of song-and-dance cutie. You get to work with Grant. A big shit. Best of all, you get me. Greatest director west of Budapest.”
“Send over the script,” she said. Within two hours, a studio messenger from Warners arrived on her doorstep with the script for Night and Day. She studied it for a few hours, and was greatly disappointed with her role of showgirl Gracie Harris. At the time, she appeared only briefly at the beginning of the film, although her role was later expanded.
The ultimate curmudgeon: Monty Woolley.
She was pleased that her part as a showgirl gave her a chance to show off her talent as a singer and dancer. Her big number in Night and Day was “Let’s Do It,” with all its risqué suggestions. The role called for her impersonation of a gold-digging hooker, pursuing millionaires, each of whom she called “Peaches,” so she wouldn’t have to remember their names.
Under contract, and needing money for her recently expanded family, she accepted the role and showed up the next day at the studio. By then, the complete cast had been assembled, including Eve Arden, her friend from The Doughgirls, who relayed scandalous stories about having co-starred with Crawford in Mildred Pierce.
Also cast was a friend of both Cary Grant and Cole Porter, character actor, Monty Woolley, known as “The Beard” for obvious reasons.
“I had given up being blonde,” Jane recalled. “But the role called for a blonde. I headed to my hairdresser and a bottle of bleach. I was back to being a blonde cutie like I was in the 30s. Although I was a ripe old thirty-two years old, I was once again a chorus girl.”
Even though her appearance in Night and Day was brief, Jane’s bubbly personality came out. Grant defined her performance as “vivid,” as opposed to the more demure Alexis, cast in the role of Porter’s long-neglected wife, as indeed the real Linda had been during the course of marriage to her gay husband.
Jane was shocked to learn that Warner had paid Porter $300,000 for what turned out not as an accurate overview of his life story, but a fictionalized, sanitized overview. Porter had specifically requested that Grant play himself onscreen, even though physically, the two men did not resemble one another at all.
[Ironically, two other famous figures would request Grant to play themselves on the screen—notably John F. Kennedy in PT 109, and gangster Lucky Luciano in the film version of his crime-soaked life. Grant said, “Even I would like to play me on the screen.”
Porter also demanded that his longtime friend, character actor Monty Woolley, be cast as himself in the film. The white-bearded actor had achieved his own measure of screen stardom when he had appeared with Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941).
On the set, Jane met Woolley, who greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. “I hope you’re here to welcome me to Hollywood, he said. “It’s rather like living on the moon, wouldn’t you say?”
Publicly, Jane expressed admiration for Grant’s talent. Privately, she asserted that she “loathed” him. To Reagan and her girlfriends, she called him “a queenie prima donna.” Her troubles with him began on June 14, 1945, during the early filming of Night and Day on a back lot at Warners, where a simulation of the New Haven railway station had been crafted.
“In stifling heat, I was dressed in this period costume fit for a winter in Alaska,” Jane recalled. “Grant demanded that our scene be reshot, reshot, reshot, and then reshot again. He didn’t like his dialogue, although he’d previously approved it. He objected to our costumes, claiming they were not authentic to the period. He objected to what he called ‘my fucking rotten characterization in this stinker.’ Since he was facing Technicolor cameras for the first time, he objected to his makeup, claiming that it was giving him skin rash. By quitting time, all of us were in a piss poor mood—and hating Grant. He was one leading man who didn’t capture my heart—and a homo to boot.”
After the release of The Lost Weekend and its subsequent acclaim, Warner ordered Jane back into the studio. Her role in Night and Day had been expanded, and as such, her character was needed for additional sequences which would appear near the ending of the film.
She acquiesced, but regrettably for her, she had already been cast as Ma Barker in The Yearling. “Sometimes, on the same day, I had to be a chorus girl in the morning and then in the afternoon appear as a drab frontierswoman. I nearly had a nervous breakdown.”
She confessed to Paulette Goddard and others, “I’ve ordered Ronnie out of my room at night. I can’t be his sex slave and make two movies at once.”
In the final weeks of shooting Night and Day, Curtiz finally lost his patience with Grant, with a screaming denunciation in front of cast and crew. The director called his star “a limey faggot,” and then walked off the picture. Warner persuaded him to return the following day.
At long last, filming ended. On the final day of the shoot, Grant confronted Curtiz: “If I’m ever stupid enough to work with you again, you’ll know I’m either broke or I’ve lost my mind.” Then he stormed off the set.
When the film was released, Porter praised it. But privately, he said, “It was a plot of absurdities concocted by a string of Hollywood hacks. But I wouldn’t want the truth depicted anyway.”
Said to be the toughest woman in Florida, hard-drinking, hard-scrabble Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings became a literary legend in the Southeast.
Film historian Lawrence J. Quirk later wrote: “Of course, the real Cole Porter, bitchy, tormented, wildly homosexual, compulsive promiscuous, never got to the screen—to his own secret amusement.”
Screenland accurately summed it up: “Movie audiences who elect to see this Technicolor extravaganza will have a delicious feast of Cole Porter songs, as well as notable personalities.”
[A 2002 film, De-Lovely, starring Kevin Kline and Ashley Judd, dealt more frankly with Porter’s homosexuality.]
***
In 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, based on her coming-of-age novel, The Yearling, the tender story of a young boy in the late 19th century wilds of north-central Florida. He adopts an orphaned fawn with disastrous consequences. It was also the story of a family‘s struggle against the elements of nature.
MGM acquired the novel’s film rights, with Sidney Franklin set to produce it. His attempt, begun in 1941, failed. He had cast Spencer Tracy in the lead role, opposite Anne Revere, who was later blacklisted during the Joseph McCarthy witch hunt era. Cast as the young boy, Gene Eckman was thirteen years old and from Georgia.
Although MGM invested half a million dollars in location shooting near Ocala, Florida, the production e
ventually shut down. Tracy feuded with director Victor Fleming of Gone With the Wind fame. He complained, “The god damn insects devoured our flesh and then ate our bones.”
Eckman was deemed wrong for the role.
The Yearling remained shelved throughout most of the war until Franklin revived it in 1945. This time, he demanded an all-new cast. Penny Baxter, the story’s patriarch, had been originally conceived as a smalltime farmer and game hunter, warm-hearted and loving. In contrast, the novel was very clear that the boy’s mother, Ora, is deeply embittered by the death of her three previous children, and profoundly resents the harsh frontier conditions in which they live.
The boy, Jody, raised in the bug-infested scrub country of north central Florida, is desperate for love, which he is not getting from his mother. He showers affection on the fawn, nicknamed “Flag.” Penny had to kill the fawn’s mother as part of a folk-medicine ploy that involved using her internal organs to draw the poison out of his bloodstream after he was bitten by a rattlesnake. Jody takes the fawn home with him, but as it matures, the deer become destructive, damaging the family’s meager crops. Flag has to be put down, which catalyzes tragic consequences for Jody.
Child star Claude Jarman, a Tennessee hillbilly boy, snuggles up to his movie father, Gregory Peck. Jarman had to beat out 12,000 other Southern boys for the coveted role.
After he’d seen The Lost Weekend, Benny Thau thought Jane might be possible, as part of a remarkable change-of-pace role for her, as Ma Baxter.
One Friday afternoon, Jane was summoned to Thau’s office, receiving instructions that she was to read The Yearling over the weekend. Thau wanted her to audition, the following Monday, for the role of Ma Baxter.
She bought two copies of the novel, one for herself, the other for Reagan to read. This time, he showed an interest in one of her roles. He thought it could mean a breakthrough for her, telling her, “You might even win an Oscar like Luise Rainer did for The Good Earth, another film about survival against powerful odds.”
Jane mentioned that Thau was known for his infamous “casting couch.”
“Go over there and say you’ll do the part. But let me know if the bastard gets fresh with you. I’ll storm over there and kick some ass.”
That Monday, with trepidation, she arrived at 10AM at Thau’s office. Although she desperately wanted the part, the idea of doing it terrified her. At this point in her life, she felt very insecure.
Jane, glamour queen of the 30s and early 40s, went plain, “care-worn, and embittered” on this testiment to the survival instincts and grit of the impoverished American Frontier.
In this case, the “Frontier” was the insect-and-alligator-infested scrublands and swamps of north-central Florida.
Introduced to Thau, she found him “a perfect gentleman speaking in a soft voice.” He spent about half an hour discussing the role with her before summoning the producer, Sidney Franklin, and the film’s director, Clarence Brown, into his office.
When Brown shook Jane’s hand, he appeared shocked. “I thought you were a brunette.”
She explained that she had to have her hair dyed blonde for her role as a showgirl in Night and Day.
“If you get the role in Yearling, you’ve got to dye it back,” Brown told her.
“Not so fast here,” Thau said. “If we cast Gregory Peck in the lead, he’s already very dark. The boy we’re considering, Claude Jarman, Jr., is very blonde. If Jane is a blonde, it would explain how Jarman came along.”
Peck was summoned back to Thau’s office the next day. He was currently making David O. Selznick’s Duel in the Sun, a Technicolor Western. He had complained, “It’s difficult making love to Selznick’s woman [a reference to Jennifer Jones] while your boss is looking on.”
In Thau’s office, Peck was told that MGM wanted him for the role of Penny Baxter opposite Jane Wyman.
“Surely, you don’t mean Wyman!” Peck asked in astonishment. “Wouldn’t she be better in light comedy?” He had not seen The Lost Weekend.
“The gal has untapped possibilities,” Thau assured him.
At first, Thau had considered the young British actor, Roddy McDowall, to play the boy, Jody. But Thau eventually rejected him as “too prissy,” deciding to launch a nationwide talent search. That led to the discovery of Claude Jarman, Jr., who at the time was a fifth grader in Nashville. He was tested and signed for the role.
Brown might have seemed an odd choice to direct The Yearling. After all, he was famous for having helmed Greta Garbo in seven movies and Joan Crawford in six. Although born in Massachusetts, he had grown up in Tennessee and was familiar with rural America. That had been amply demonstrated in such films as Of Human Hearts (1938), a saga of pioneer life.
Once again, an MGM crew journeyed to Ocala, where filming on The Yearling began on March 15, 1945. There, they faced the same problems as before: Rainstorms, oppressive heat, humidity that drenched clothing and caused makeup to run, and endless attacks by swarms of insects.
Casting the fawn proved especially difficult. The deer grows during the course of the film, changing his body shape. Before shooting ended in January of 1946, a total of 72 different deer had been used, and since none of them could act on cue, endless re-takes were necessary. Peck recalled that for one scene, Brown had to shoot the scene in 72 takes, which was the same number of deer used in the depiction of Flag.
As Ora, Jane had never looked so drab on film. Although still in her early 30s, she appeared to be at least forty, maybe more. But she didn’t object. “I wanted to be taken seriously as an actress. I knew that would only happen if I showed Hollywood I could take on a major dramatic role.”
One day, Jane received an unexpected visitor to the set, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings herself. After asking Jane if she had any rotgut liquor, she settled onto Jane’s sofa, where she endlessly chain-smoked unfiltered Lucky Strikes. Very outspoken, she candidly said, “Back home, I pound my typewriter day and night while in my bathroom, I make bathtub gin and float red roses in my toilet. The problem is that every time I take a crap, I have to replenish them.”
“I’ve got to tell you!” Rawlings continued. “You and Peck don’t look like the characters in my novel. Penny is a runty little frontiersman, a farmer and game hunter, and Ma Baxter is as big as a barn. I figured the only way you got the part was because Brown is fucking you.”
A ballsy, über-extroverted hurricane of male flash: Forrest Tucker. Jane said “no.”
“I hope Greg and I will surprise you,” a flustered Jane stammered, diplomatically.
A rather drunk Rawlings departed three hours later, but only after demanding a kiss on the lips from Peck. He and Jane were then introduced to Jarman, their “son.”
“The Kid [a reference to Jarman] worked increasingly well with both Greg and me,” Jane said. “He even got a Juvenile Oscar for his performance. But I feared that after The Yearling, there would be no more great roles for him.”
Their romance (and their affair) continued beyond the filming of The Yearling.
Here, Peck and Plain Jane appear in deliberately soiled—and historically accurate—scrub-farmer garb.
The Yearling’s third male lead was played by the rugged Forrest Tucker, cast in the film as a member of the redneck Forrester family, distant neighbors of the Baxters. In the early 40s, Jane had seen Tucker in two movies, The Westerner (1940) with Gary Cooper, and Keeper of the Flame (1942) with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
“He seemed perfect for the role of backwoods Lem,” Jane said. “He stood 6’4”, weighing 200 pounds. He was famous for his endowment, said to be one of the largest in Hollywood. Although married to the former Sandra Jolley, he had plenty of girlfriends coming and going. Word about his big attraction traveled fast in Hollywood. With Tucker, the line of beauties formed on the left and right.”
Tucker kept inviting Jane to go out drinking with him, but she refused, claiming, “I fear I’ll lose my virginity.”
“How could that be?” he ask
ed. “Aren’t you married to that Reagan fellow?”
“I am,” she said, “but he hasn’t gotten around to deflowering me yet.”
“You’re such a bullshitter, Janie, but I like you, a gal with spirit.”
The supporting players didn’t mean much to Jane during the shoot. Her interest involved bonding with Peck. “He looked absolutely gorgeous in spite of his frontier rags. After meeting this tall, sturdy, and urbane young actor, she told her girlfriends, “He is the handsomest man in Hollywood—the new Gary Cooper.”
In 1942, Peck had married Greta Kukkonen, a Finnish hairdresser. They would have three sons. As a means of learning more, Jane put through a call to Paulette Goddard, the world’s expert on the bedtime habits of stars, both male and female, who played around.
“He cheats on his wife only on that rare occasion,” Goddard told her. “Of course, that nympho, Ingrid Bergman, got him on the set of Spellbound. Hitch [Alfred Hitchcock] told me that the Swede would fuck a doorknob if nothing else were available.”
Jane told Goddard “If Bergman can seduce Greg, so can I.”
As always, Goddard urged her on. “Go, Girl, Go.”
At first, Peck was too busy to spend any time with Jane. Like her, during her early involvement in filming The Yearling, he’d have to race between the sets of two separate pictures, Duel in the Sun and The Yearling. He later defined that period of his career as “a kind of cinematic schizophrenia. The film sets were a mile apart. I’d get out of my Florida cracker overalls and put on my sexy cowboy stud clothes and practice my Texas drawl on the way to make love to Jennifer Jones. What a contrast in characters! Jane faced the same dilemma in Night and Day, doing her final scenes as a showgirl before getting all drab for Ma Baxter in The Yearling.”
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 73