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

by Darwin Porter

  As the play’s star on Broadway, Margaret Sullavan, who had been married to Henry Fonda, had generated rave reviews. “I’ve tried to negotiate with the bitch, but to no avail,” Warner lamented. “What a whore! She never met a highway pickup she didn’t go for. You wouldn’t want to work with a dame like that.”

  “Then who are you going to cast as my leading lady?” Reagan asked. “I think June Allyson would be ideal if you can get Louis B. Mayer to release her.”

  Because of the wide variety of roles she played, Eleanor Parker was called “the woman of a thousand faces.” Here, depicted romantically with Reagan in The Voice of the Turtle, her makeup and hairdo evoke Margaret Sullavan.

  “I’m casting Eleanor Parker,” Warner answered.

  At the time, Parker was one of the stars at Warners who had emerged during the war. Reagan had not seen her performance in the remake of Of Human Bondage (1946), in which she played W. Somerset Maugham’s mean-spirited waitress-prostitute.

  Reagan protested, wanting to co-star with a bigger name. “Listen, Ronnie, my boy,” Warner said. “You used to be very cooperative. Now you’re protesting everything like some grand diva. You don’t have box office clout, not that you ever did. If you want that paycheck to continue coming in, you’ll let me direct your career. Also, to put it mildly, I’m god damn pissed off at your union activities.”

  That Monday morning, Reagan reported to work and was greeted by Rapper, who had previously scored a hit helming Bette Davis in Now, Voyager (1942).

  During their talk together, Rapper told him that he’d recently talked with Davis. “I told her I was directing you in your new movie. She said. “Watch out for little Ronnie Reagan.’”

  Playing a wannabee actress, Eleanor Parker (center) tries to separate man-eating Eve Arden from her soldier boyfriend (Reagan).

  “What in hell did she mean?” Reagan asked.

  “Only Bette knows what Bette means,” Rapper said. “We have this love-hate relationship.”

  “What I have with Bette I would-n’t call love,” Reagan said.

  Rapper gave him the finished script from Van Druten, who had also written the screen version. Rapper said that within a few days, Reagan would meet the co-stars. They included Eve Arden, Wayne Morris, Kent Smith, John Emery, and Nino Pepitone, Reagan’s horse-breeding friend from the Italian cavalry. Pepitone needed a job, and Reagan had used his influence to get him cast in the movie as a headwaiter.

  The Voice of the Turtle revolves around an aspiring actress, Sally Middleton (Parker), who has come to New York to conquer Broadway. Her friend is Olive Lashbrooke (Arden), a promiscuous man-chaser who doesn’t believe in chastity.

  Because Olive’s weekend date, Bill Page (Reagan), can’t find any hotel space in wartime New York, Olive maneuvers Sally into housing him in her new apartment. Despite their mutual reserve, love wins in the end, and Bill and Sally become romantic.

  When he first met Parker, Reagan thought she was Margaret Sullavan. [In a nod to Sullavan’s success in the Broadway version, Warner had ordered that Parker’s hair and makeup be inspired by that of her predecessor.]

  “What in hell does ‘Voice of the Turtle’ mean?” he asked Parker.

  “Rapper told me it comes from the Old Testament’s Song of Solomon,” she said, and that it’s a reference, like many other of the passages within that book, to erotic love.”

  For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

  “Oh, I see…Turtle as in turtle dove,” he said. “Well, here I am, back in my military clothes again. But in the army, we didn’t have such well-tailored uniforms.”

  He later recalled, “After I played my first scene with Parker, I had no more reservations about her. The question became, could I hold my own with such a talented actress?”

  Over lunches and between takes, they got to know each other. Although he admitted to Rapper that he found her “extremely attractive,” there would be no Leadinglady-itis. She had recently married film producer Bert E. Friedlob, and “she seemed very involved on the home front,” Reagan said. “And, of course, I had my ongoing woes with Jane. The air was not made for a romantic attachment, although it might have been diverting…for me, at least.”

  On his last day on the set, Reagan wished her luck in her future. “Perhaps we’ll work together again.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Things have a way of working out for me. I maintain that if you work, believe in yourself, and do what is right for you without stepping all over others, the way somehow opens up.”

  “That is the most un-Hollywood philosophy I have ever heard in my life, especially in dog-eat-dog Hollywood,” he said.

  On the set of The Voice of the Turtle, he was reunited with Wayne Morris, with whom he’d made those Brother Rat movies. The former Golden Boy of Warners never regained his footing in films after the war. He told Reagan, “If you hadn’t come along, I would have won Jane for myself.”

  For Reagan, The Voice of the Turtle was a modest success. His reviews were tepid. “At least I wasn’t attacked.” A typical overview appeared in Newsweek. “Ronald Reagan turns in a pleasantly sensitive performance as the sergeant.”

  ***

  J. Edgar Hoover, with a lot of right-wing help, launched the most sweeping and penetrating witch hunts in American history. He saw Red everywhere, a river of conspiratorial corruption whose tentacles, he claimed, incorporated the highest offices in Washington, as well as most of the movie studios and film stars in Hollywood. The hunt was on to ferret out communists in all walks of life, but mostly in politics and the film colony. In the “Red Scare” that J. Edgar spearheaded in the aftermath of World War II, lives, friendships, reputations, and careers would be destroyed.

  The very conservative J. Parnell Thomas, a former stockbroker, had been elected seven times as New Jersey’s representative in Congress before being sent to prison for nine months on charges of corruption. Prior to his downfall, he was an avowed anti-communist. He claimed that the Federal Theatre Project presented nothing but “sheer communism propaganda.”

  He seemed to have a special aversion to Hollywood. When Thomas became chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, J. Edgar supported him totally. The FBI fed Thomas a constant stream of accusations as to who was a communist and who might make a friendly witness before HUAC.

  In May of 1947, Thomas and his chief aides visited Hollywood on a “fact-finding” mission. He held several secret meetings with Reagan, who promised his full support in “weeding out the Hollywood garden of Red weeds.”

  Thomas returned to Washington to launch his investigations of HUAC, with America’s radios and early televisions tuned in. At first only friendly witnesses were called. Many of the spectators wanted not only to hear who was a communist, but to view the testimonial performances of movie heartthrobs who included Gary Cooper and Robert Taylor.

  Reagan arrived days before the hearings for secret meetings with Hoover and his lover, Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s chief aide at the FBI. Reagan promised his full cooperation. Because of his connections with SAG, he claimed “I’m in the ideal post to go after the commies polluting our industry.”

  Accompanied by the sound of popping flashbulbs, Reagan’s appearance before HUAC hardly prompted the heartthrob hysteria brought on by the testimonies of sexpots Taylor and Cooper.

  Having already promised to combat the movie industry’s “domination by communists, radicals, and crackpots,” Reagan had volunteered to appear before HUAC.

  He looked rather studious in a white gabardine suit complete with thick glasses. As president of SAG, he claimed he had always opposed communist propaganda. “I do not believe that the communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion picture screen as a sounding board for their ideology.” He contradicted testimony by Robert Taylor in that regard.

  Before the committee, he seemed to be unde
rgoing a major political change, drifting uncomfortably from an FDR New Deal liberal into a conservative Republican. On some weeks he would take one position, appealing to his liberal friends, and at another time he would be turning them in as suspected communists.

  Earlier, he’d told Hoover that “I am firmly convinced that the Congress should declare the Communist Party illegal.”

  After his testimonies, he hurriedly left Washington for a return to Hollywood and his marital woes.

  ***

  After Reagan’s return to Hollywood, Alexis Smith tried to bring about a reconciliation between Jane and her distraught husband. Along with Smith’s husband, Craig Stevens, she invited the estranged couple to drive east with them into the desert for a long weekend of rest in Palm Springs. Friends had made their vacation home available to Alexis and Stevens.

  “I had to do a lot of persuading, but Jane has agreed to come with us,” Alexis said. “I used the argument, ‘You must do it for the children if not for Ronnie.’ She was very hesitant, but finally agreed. Actually, to tell the truth, I think she wants to make Lew Ayres jealous.”

  Reagan had won the sympathy of Alexis when they had co-starred together in Stallion Road, his first picture after the war. As for Stevens, he was up for a major role in one of Reagan’s upcoming pictures, Night Unto Night.

  At the time of the ill-fated trip to Palm Springs, Alexis and Stevens had become Jane and Reagan’s closest friends, and both of them were saddened at Jane’s separation from her husband.

  In Hollywood, Good Friends Should Swing Together. (aka “Going Too Far with Ronnie and Jane.”

  Depicted above, Craig Stevens and his wife, Alexis Smith.

  As Jane once told Ann Sheridan, “Alexis and I often drift off somewhere to indulge in girl talk, but Craig hangs out with Ronnie. He seems to worship him.”

  Stevens had told Jane, “Everything I ever knew about politics I learned from Ronnie.”

  Reagan seemed pleased to have such a devoted person listening to his political views. But Jane was suspicious. “Craig and Ronnie sometimes went for an occasional weekend together, like a sailing trip to Catalina,” Jane told Sheridan. “When he gets back, I always ask Ronnie what happened.”

  “If you’re implying anything, don’t,” Reagan warned her. “I had initial suspicions about Craig, but not now. He’s had plenty of chances if he wanted to move in on me, and he’s been a perfect gentleman. When we’ve been in a small cabin and had to share the same bed, nothing happened. Forget your fears. He’s married to one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood. What makes you think he wants a man?”

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell you, but Joan Crawford told me that Alexis is a lesbian,” Jane said. “Crawford thinks Craig and Alexis have a lavender marriage.”

  “I only learned what that meant a few weeks ago,” he said. “You know the same is said about our friends, Bob Taylor and Babs Stanwyck. I don’t believe it’s true. I’ve also gone away with Bob. He’s all man, with an eye for the ladies.”

  “Crawford told me more,” Jane said. “She suspects that Craig had an affair with her husband, Phillip Terry. As for Terry himself, Crawford told me he had an affair with Bob Taylor.”

  “You’re nothing but a little Hedda Hopper today,” Reagan said. “Okay, since you’re spreading rumors, let me reveal a few about you. It was rumored that when you made Magic Town, you had an affair with Jimmy Stewart. That’s not all. You were said to also have had an affair with Wild Bill Wellman” [i.e., director William Wellman].

  “Well, maybe I did, smart ass,” Jane said, walking out of the room.

  “Now that you’ve become a big star, you’ll be hearing a lot more rumors spread about yourself, and you’ll get bad press.”

  [Reagan’s prophecy came true.]

  Jane still managed to enchant both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, but columnist Hy Gardner in the months ahead began making digs at her. He had been hired as an entertainment reporter and syndicated columnist for The New York Herald-Tribune.

  He once wrote: “Jane Wyman, that woman unlike the genuine cream of the cinema crop, whose names are box office magic, seems to consider the approach of a reporter as an irksome intrusion upon the privacy of a high-priced public goldfish.”

  Jane retreated to Palm Springs that weekend with Reagan, Alexis, and Stevens. But she returned alone. Reagan later left the villa where Stevens and Alexis were staying and checked into a hotel, as he needed a few days’ rest after the pressure he’d faced in Washington delivering his testimony before HUAC.

  When word of this reached gossipy Hollywood, it was assumed that Reagan’s attempted reconciliation with his estranged wife had failed. But Joan Blondell later reported a very different version of what happened that weekend. Blondell claimed that she heard only a very sketchy version from Jane.

  “Ronnie and I did not get back together,” Jane told her. “We also ended our friendship with Craig and Alexis.”

  “After buttering us up for months, making us think they were friends who liked our company, it turned out that they liked more than that,” Jane said. “Friday night went beautifully. The house had two bedrooms. The four of us talked openly. It was suggested, and Ronnie and I agreed, that we would not share a bed our first night back together. We’d wait and see how things went that Saturday.”

  “But by midnight, we found out that wasn’t the real reason Craig slept with Ronnie and Alexis bedded with me. As I was drifting off, she started feeling my breasts, wanting to make love to me. Ronnie experienced much the same assault. He was half asleep when he felt Craig’s lips come down on his, and his hand feeling the family jewels. We both packed our bags, and I headed back to Lew Ayres. Ronnie rented a hotel room and stayed on.”

  Blondell responded, “The war brought a lot of changes in sexual attitudes, and in post-war Hollywood, there’s a lot of that shit going on. I know there is. Wife-swapping’s been around for a long time. But now there’s a new game out here. It’s about sexual bonding, husband to husband, and lovemaking among wives.”

  “Count me out!” Jane responded.

  ***

  Although both Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons had publicly forecast that the marriage of Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan might be “everlasting,” each of them was eager to rush into print with headlines. “RONALD REAGAN SCOUTS MARITAL BREAK,” wrote Hopper. In even bigger headlines, Parsons announced, WYMAN, MATE IN RIFT. Jane got the focus in the headline because by then, she was by far the bigger star.

  After the appearances of those “scoops,” Reagan called each of the columnists directly, telling them “It’s only a ‘tift.’ All married couples have them. I’m confident that we’ll solve our problems and have a long and happy life.”

  When Louella Parsons heard that Jane was making indiscreet remarks about Reagan’s sexual performance, she lectured her severely. In her column in a 1948 issue of Photoplay, the columnist wrote: “It is unfortunate but true that Hollywood can shrug off most marriage crack-ups. But when they are Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan—well— we just can’t take that. For eight years, they have shared a beautiful life that has earned them the respect and admiration even of people who did not know them personally. To those of us who are close friends, they were an ideal Mr. and Mrs. That’s why this hurts so much!”

  Rosemary DeCamp, the actress, had been one of the first to recognize an animosity coming from Jane, whose impatience with Reagan was clearly evident during the course of a SAG meeting. In the middle of a verbose speech by Reagan that went on and on, Jane stood up. “Oh, for god’s sake, Ronnie, shut up and go shit in your hat.”

  Months before the actual filing of the divorce, Hollywood gossips and the town’s press corps were speculating about a warring twosome who had, throughout World War II and the years leading up to it, been defined as Tinseltown’s “Most Ideal Couple.”

  For the most part, the press took Reagan’s side, concluding that he was the wronged party. In the spring of 1948, Fredda Dudley in Silv
er Screen magazine wrote: “Hollywood sympathy in this case is one hundred percent behind Ronnie, who is a prince. Jane is a moody person, temperamental, ambitious, restless, and seeking; furthermore, she is not now and hasn’t been well for some time. It is to be hoped, that as her health improves, her other problems will vanish, and that two of the town’s favorite people will resume their marriage.”

  Parsons warned Jane, “You’re losing a good, decent family man. They are hard to find in Tinseltown. Most of the men out here are looking for a good man themselves.”

  For Reagan’s birthday on February 6, 1948, Jane presented him with a turquoise-colored Cadillac, but signed the card, “Love, Michael and Maureen.” Then she flew to Las Vegas for a quickie divorce.

  Once in Las Vegas, she checked into the Flamingo Hotel. According to the Los Angeles Examiner, on February 27, 1948, “She was seen in the casinos and out dancing every night with a different man, her various beaux having one thing in common: Youth and beauty.”

  But within a week, she flew back to Los Angeles, telling a reporter, “I couldn’t stand the wind blowing in from the desert.”

  Later, she told Reagan, “There is no chance for us. I’m filing for divorce and charging extreme mental cruelty.”

  Years later, during recollections of her years with Reagan to her Catholic priest, Robert Perrella, as well as to her girlfriends, June Allyson and Paulette Goddard, Jane claimed, “It was exasperating to awake in the middle of the night, prepare for work, and have someone at the breakfast table, newspaper in hand, expound on the far right, the far left, the conservative right, the conservative left, the middle-of-the-roader.”

  When Reagan was told that his leading lady would be Patricia Neal, he didn’t know who she was.

  Producer Jerry Wald told him, “Jack Warner has the hots for her. She’s only twenty-two. He wants to configure this Southern belle from Tennessee as Warner’s answer to Greta Garbo.”