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

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  After viewing the drab and uncompelling Night Unto Night, which, based on his orders had been shelved for years, Jack Warner decided to co-star Reagan and Viveca Lindfors in yet another movie together, a casting choice he never explained. He summoned Reagan to his office: “I have this important new film I want you to make with Viveca and Claude Rains. It’s called Up Till Now, and in it, you play a communist.”

  “At first, I thought he was joking,” Reagan recalled. “Then I realized he was serious.”

  “Me, a communist?” Reagan asked Warner in astonishment. “In case you don’t know, there’s a Red scare on. Do you want me to get blacklisted?”

  “Read the script tonight and you’ll understand why I want to make this movie, particularly right now when all of us are under investigation from Washington.”

  That night in his library, Reagan studied the script by David Goodies, who had just signed a six-year contract with Warner Brothers to develop screen treatments. The credibility he was currently enjoyed was based on the successful transition of his novel, Dark Passage, into a movie co-starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. [Released in 1947, it had been marketed with the tagline: TOGETHER AGAIN: BOGART AND BA-CALL—IN DANGER AS VIOLENT AS THEIR LOVE.]

  In Up Till Now, Claude Rains would be cast as a puzzled father of two sons, one of whom (Reagan) becomes a communist, and another (possibly Arthur Kennedy), a fascist.

  Lindfors would play a naturalized American citizen who explains the value of democracy to the politically errant brothers. Her conversations would, before the end of the film, persuade each of them to repudiate their former political convictions.

  Warner told Reagan, “You see, with this film, I can go before HUAC and repudiate communism and present myself as a defender of democracy, attacking evil communism. In the HUAC witch hunt in Hollywood, I don’t want them to catch me flying a broom.”

  Actually, even though the movie had not been made, weeks later, Warner appeared before HUAC and cited Up Till Now as testimonial to his commitment to the propaganda war against the communists.

  “The film will star Ronald Reagan, the truest American and the most anti-communist in all of Hollywood. With the help of its producer, Jerry Wald, Up Till Now will show us battling un-American ideologies. It will unmask Reds in the film industry and expose our foreign enemies. Democracy has no middle lanes, left detours, or right alleys—only the great big highway of American Liberty, sufficiently broad and straight for all to travel in peace.”

  Back in Hollywood, Reagan met with Goodies, finding that he was currently rewriting a script based on W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter, which in 1940 had been one of Bette Davis’ most memorable movies. The new treatment was to be entitled The Unfaithful.

  Goodis told Reagan that he’d written Up Till Now “to give people a look at themselves and their American heritage.” In his own words, Goodis was “mesmerized to meet a bigtime movie star like you.”

  Reagan later told Wald, “That Goodis fellow practically was foaming at the mouth. It seems he worships my screen image. He wanted to date me. Imagine!”

  A few weeks later, without explanation, Warner abruptly canceled Up Till Now.

  As late as 1957, Goodis still harbored a crush on Reagan. He got in touch with him and asked him to play the male lead opposite Jayne Mansfield in an upcoming film, The Burglar. Reagan rejected the film role, just as he had turned down the author’s sexual advances. Dan Duryea was cast as the male lead instead. Today, The Burglar (1957) reigns as a film noir classic, one of the greatest heist films ever made.

  Instead of The Burglar, Reagan accepted the lead in Hellcats of the Navy opposite his wife, the former starlet Nancy Davis.

  As Nathan J. Juran, the director of Hellcats of the Navy, later said, “Ronnie could have been making love, at least on screen, with Jayne Mansfield. Instead, he ends up with Nancy. I hope they have some off-screen chemistry. They sure didn’t have any on screen in our turkey of a movie.”

  ***

  Meeting in a closed door session at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the Motion Picture Association of America released on December 3, 1947, what became notorious as “the Waldorf Statement.” In a two-page press release, studio moguls ranging from MGM’s Louis B. Mayer to Columbia’s Harry Cohn, attacked the “Hollywood Ten,” a group of writers and directors, each of whom was facing a jail term for contempt of Congress.

  Although Reagan initially had reservations about the Blacklist, knowing what harm in could cause, particularly to innocent people, he ultimately endorsed it as a necessary evil.

  In a speech to SAG, Reagan lauded its members “for doing more than any other union in America to rid itself of communists” He went on to vilify producers who still hired suspected communists.

  [By 1953, Reagan got what he wanted: SAG adopted a bylaw that barred communists and required new members to swear loyalty oaths.

  A cynical Melvyn Douglas was still bruised from the beating which his wife, Helen Gahagan, had experienced in recent Senatorial elections at the hand of Reagan’s ally in the suppression of pinkos, Richard Nixon. Douglas later commented on that: “Reagan was hardly the family values man he appeared to be. He was seducing practically every virgin in Hollywood. Before he banged them, he did not, so I heard, require them to sign a loyalty oath.”]

  ***

  Some observers defined it as “Love on the rebound.” With the understanding that Jane Wyman was spending her nights in the arms of Lew Ayres, two shapely blondes were about to enter Reagan’s life.

  At the end of the war, Reagan and William Holden bonded as never before. Each of them turned to the other for emotional support. In many ways, Holden replaced Robert Taylor, George Murphy, and Dick Powell as Reagan’s closest comrade.

  In 1941, Holden had married an attractive divorced woman, actress Brenda Marshall, whose real name was Ardis Ankerson. On May 2, 1946, the couple gave birth to Scott Porter Holden.

  As Holden admitted, “I was never much of a family man.” He spent many nights away from home, often out with Reagan as his drinking companion. When the two men walked into Ciro’s on many a night, all that the waiter had to ask was, “The usual?”

  In addition to their respective family problems, both of them were worried about their careers. Holden would listen sympathetically to Reagan’s woes about Jane and the movies he’d been assigned, before pouring out plenty of his own pain. He admitted to Reagan, “I’ve hit rock bottom. I’m almost thirty and a wreck—a second-class actor in Hollywood with little hope of longevity. I’m getting shit wages, just enough to feed my family and perhaps pay my liquor bill. On most nights, I stick you with the tab, since you’re drawing bigger bucks.”

  Holden invited Reagan to pick him up after a day’s shoot at the set of his latest movie, The Dark Past (1948), co-starring Lee J. Cobb, Adele Jergens, and Nina Foch. It was a remake of the 1939 Blind Alley. As the star of this psychological thriller, Holden played an escaped convict, convicted killer, and dream-shackled gunman, who hides out with his gang in the isolated home of a psychiatrist, whose family and guests he holds hostage.

  “When I joined him on the set, Bill’s biggest complaint was the flat-top haircut which the film’s director, Rudolph Maté, ordered him to get,” Reagan said. “Bill hated it. That man was fastidious about his hair, going to the barber once a week. He told me he didn’t want to play a killer, preferring to make Westerns instead. That’s what I wanted to do instead of so-called romantic comedies.”

  At the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, a beautiful blonde, Adele Jergens, was voted “The Fairest of the Fair.” In Hollywood, her publicists began calling her “The Girl with the Million Dollar Legs,” which “seriously pissed off” Betty Grable, the holder of that title.

  Subsequently, Columbia redefined Jergens as “The Champagne Blonde.” When William Holden introduced her to Reagan, he admitted, “I fell in love.”

  It was on the set that Holden introduced Adele Jergens to Reagan. He lat
er said, “I think I fell in love with her the moment I saw her walking across the sound stage toward me. I asked her out that very night for a date.”

  A “chorus girl blonde,” the Brooklyn-born actress accepted. Over dinner at the Brown Derby, he learned about her background. During a stint as a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, she was named “Number One Showgirl in New York.”

  She had also worked as a chorus girl at the Brooklyn Fox Theater and as a model for the John Robert Powers Agency. While understudying for the role usually reserved for the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, in the 1942 stage version of the musical review Star and Garter, she filled in for the star one night when Lee was ill. A Columbia talent scout had chosen that particular evening to attend. His “discovery” of Jergens eventually led to a movie contract in 1944. During the months to come, she was cast opposite Rita Hayworth in Tonight and Every Night (1945).

  In the final years of World War II, Jergens became one of the most popular pinup girls among G.I.s, rivaled only by Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, both of whom viewed her as formidable competition.

  In films, Jergens was often cast as either a blonde floozie or as a burlesque dancer. After Reagan began taking her out. Holden noted that their romance was taking a serious turn.

  One night, Reagan proposed marriage to her, and she accepted, with the understanding that they’d marry as soon as his divorce was finalized. She had never been married. Since it would not be proper for her to wear an engagement ring, as he was still wed to Jane at the time, he gave her a diamond bracelet instead. He even purchased a mink coat to go with it.

  A jealous Evelyn Keyes claimed, “Jergens knew how to get ahead at Columbia. She slept with Harry Cohn, who had the hots for her. At one time, she was fucking both Ronald Reagan and Cohn.”

  Jergens was often seen out on the town with both Holden and Reagan. At first, Hollywood gossips assumed that Reagan was merely “The Beard,” concealing the adulterous relationship Holden was having with his co-star. When Holden, Jergens, and Reagan were spotted one morning leaving his Londonderry apartment at 5AM, each of them dressed for work, word spread that the “chorus girl cutie” was having a three-way with both actors.

  At this point, Jergens developed a friendship with Virginia Mayo, who, ironically, was set to co-star in The Girl from Jones Beach with Reagan.

  In her home in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2004, shortly before her death, Mayo told author Darwin Porter, “Adele and I had many talks about Reagan. She told me that he was a “real gentleman, and he bestowed many gifts on her.”

  “I think I’m helping him recover from the loss of Jane,” Jergens confessed to Mayo. “I think he’s rushing too soon into another marriage, although I’ve already agreed to it. Encouraged by Bill Holden, he’s going through a heavy drinking period. Even when drunk, though, Ronnie is still a gentleman, unlike Bill. When he’s stinking drunk, Bill becomes a monster and sometimes hurts me. He gets very rough.”

  Mayo asked Jergens if the rumors about a three-way with Holden and Reagan were true.

  Too Many Blondes?

  Adele Jergens, (left), with Marilyn Monroe, her ferociously competitive co-performer in Ladies of the Chorus. As it happened, Reagan got involved with each of them at the same time.

  “Adele was evasive, but I read between the lines,” Mayo recalled.

  Jergens told her, “I won’t go into that, but I will tell you this: Bill and Ronnie are the two cleanest actors in Hollywood. I once came over to Ronnie’s apartment. He’d given me the key, and I planned to meet him there later. In the living room, I poured myself a drink. I heard all this laughter coming from the shower. At first, I thought Ronnie had brought home another woman. It turned out to be Bill. Both of them came out of the shower a little later, with their bodies wrapped in towels. If you ask me, you must know, both of them smelled like a bar of soap. But they always did. I think each of them took at least four showers a day, unlike some actors, who managed to get under the water only two or three times a week, if that.”

  When Reagan was starring in The Girl From Jones Beach (1949) with Virginia Mayo, Adele Jergens was filming Ladies of the Chorus (1948), at Columbia. Cast as a chorus girl, she starred opposite Marilyn Monroe in her first significant film role. The two actresses played mother and daughter, even though Jergens was only nine years older than Marilyn.

  Reagan remembered that he had once met Marilyn at a photo shoot. He greeted the director, Phil Karlson, who welcomed him to the set. In the early 1950s, he would direct John Payne, Jane Wyman’s former lover, in three movies, eventually helming Elvis Presley in Kid Galahad (1962).

  Karlson liked Reagan and invited him to watch Marilyn do her big number—“Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy.”

  “I could tell that Reagan was mesmerized by Marilyn,” Karlson said. “His eyes practically bulged. He told me that he felt Marilyn was heading for big stardom. Frankly, I think she gave him a hard-on. Fortunately, Adele was nowhere around. She would have been jealous.”

  At the end of the number, which she did in one take, Marilyn ran over to Reagan. She gave him a wet kiss on the lips. “We’ve met before. Don’t you remember?”

  “Who could forget you, kid,” he said. “You were sensational.”

  “I’m even more sensational when you get to know me,” she claimed.

  Before Jergens appeared on the set, Karlson noticed that Marilyn slipped Reagan her phone number. “Come up and see me sometime, big guy,” she said, imitating Mae West.

  “I knew from that moment that Adele had some serious competition.” Karlson claimed.

  ***

  Lauren Bacall, backed up by Humphrey Bogart, announced that she was willing to risk suspension by refusing to appear in The Girl from Jones Beach. As she told friends privately, “My main objection would be having to appear in such a revealing white bathing suit.”

  “It was the second Ronald Reagan picture I turned down,” Bacall said. “Both Bogie and I had refused to appear with him in Stallion Road.”

  The lead female role in The Girl from Jones Beach, a fluffy romantic comedy, went to the blonde bombshell, Virginia Mayo, to be directed by Peter Godfrey, who had previously helmed Reagan in that abject disaster, That Hagen Girl.

  After reading the script, Reagan objected to his role, telling Jack Warner that he didn’t want to do it. “I see myself sitting tall in a saddle for the camera—you know, like John Wayne or Gary Cooper. Are you, by any chance, sitting on a script like Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Look what it did for Jimmy Stewart.”

  “You’re doing that Jones Beach thing or else,” Warner warned him. “Just today, I put Bacall on suspension for refusing to play the female lead.”

  Reagan himself knew that it was a role that called for Cary Grant. In fact, when the movie was released, one reviewer claimed, “Cary Grant could have phoned in Reagan’s role.”

  Reagan described his role as that “of a modern painter of the Vargas or Petty Girl type. Eddie Bracken played my sidekick. The plot called for me to romance a dozen or so gorgeous models.”

  In the plot, Reagan played Bob Randolph, who, as an illustrator, has drawn the perfect model, “The Randolph Girl.” Bracken is hired by television producers to find the real life Randolph Girl. But Reagan, as Randolph, loudly asserts that the beautiful girl in his illustration had been inspired by a composite of a dozen or so models.

  Eventually, the search leads to Ruth Wilson (Mayo), who looks like the living image of the illustrated version of the Randolph Girl. When the character played by Reagan learns that, he changes his name to Robert Venerik, claiming that he is a Czech immigrant who knows very little English. That allows him to enroll in a class where Ruth teaches English “as a second language” to new arrivals. From that point on, the plot leads to its inevitable, somewhat contrived, conclusion. The viewer easily surmises, based on dozens of clues and signals, that Reagan and Mayo will, before the film’s end, fall in love.

  Jones Beach: Lotsa Girls, Lo
tsa Flesh, Lotsa Fun.

  Left to right: Ronald Reagan, Virginia Mayo, Eddie Bracken, and Donna Drake.

  Mayo recalled the late morning when she had to make her first appearance in a skimpy white bathing suit. “The bathing suit is the most unfriendly garment in the wardrobe department. A girl can’t keep a secret in a bathing suit.”

  Reagan gets The Girl from Jones Beach. “Mayo They Be Happy Forever.”

  Summoning her courage, she put on the bathing suit and walked outside her dressing room door. Reagan was waiting there for her. “He gave out a wolf whistle that could be heard in Chicago,” she said. “I loved it! He restored my confidence.”

  He later said, “That bathing suit on Virginia would have raised the dead. The film we were making wasn’t much, but Virginia’s white thighs would guarantee box office.”

  Reagan later wrote that at one point, “Eddie Bracken got so goggle-eyed over the beauties in the film—not just Virginia—that he stepped on my heels and tripped me. It cracked my coccyx. It was my first experience with the pain of a broken bone. Unfortunately, it would not be my last.”

  Godfrey had to shoot around Reagan until he recovered, which caused the picture to run over budget.

  Jane Wyman had taken the children, Maureen and Michael, for a holiday in Hawaii. She turned her house over to him, since she had a live-in staff there, who would take care of him during his convalescence.

  One afternoon, Bracken visited Reagan. “I was filled with apologies for causing the accident. As I was heading into his bedroom, a beautiful young blonde emerged,” Bracken said. “She flashed a smile at me and quickly left. After her face registered with my brain, I realized that it was that new girl, Marilyn Monroe, who had just come from Ronnie’s bedroom. She was getting a hell of a lot of publicity, and I just knew it was Marilyn.”