In the next room, Bracken faced Reagan who, despite being bedridden, had a smile on his face.
“That blonde,” Bracken said. “That was Marilyn Monroe!”
“One and the same, but let’s keep that as our little secret.”
“My lips are sealed,” Bracken responded.
“Thank god Marilyn’s weren’t,” he quipped.
“For three seconds, I didn’t get it, until the light dawned,” Bracken said. “Marilyn had given him a blow-job, so that he wouldn’t have to exert his back.”
“Ronnie looked at my face as I was registering what had happened. He quickly picked up on it.”
“You catch on quick, you dumb bone-crusher,” Reagan said. “look what you’ve done to me, you fart!”
“Lying flat on your back obviously has its rewards,” Bracken said.
“But Marilyn and I are going to have to delay ‘number two’ until my back heals, thanks to you.”
***
[Film historians and movie trivia buffs have long speculated about what prompted Adele Jergens to break off her engagement to Ronald Reagan. Virginia Mayo provided the answer.” Adele found out that Marilyn (Monroe) was slipping behind her back for sex with Ronnie. She called the whole thing off, but she didn’t return the mink coat or the diamond bracelet.”
Before her death on November 22, 2002, Jergens gave her final interview. At the time, she was living in a retirement community at Camarillo, California.
“If I had played my cards right, I might have become the first actress ever to be First Lady of America. Too bad I let Reagan slip through my fingers over a jealous spat over Marilyn Monroe. I should have forgiven him.”
Today, the world, except for dieheard fans, have forgotten the dazzling blonde of the film noir era.
Journalist Alan K. Rode summed up her appeal: “Adele Jergens could sing, dance, strut, and act with the best of them. She will always epitomize that bygone era of hardboiled repartee, sleek fedoras, and sequined, spangled burlesque queens. For better or worse, she was that gorgeous gal that the heavies in movies just had to have along for the ride.”]
***
Reagan had serious misgivings when it was announced that he was going to co-star with Ida Lupino in a movie called Woman in Hiding, to be shot during the late summer of 1949.
This was to be his first picture under a new deal Wasserman had arranged with Jack Warner. Reagan still had three years to go under his contract with Warner Brothers. Under the revisions arranged for him by Wasserman, he would make only one picture a year for Warners for a pre-defined fee of $150,000. He would otherwise be free to work for other studios.
Then Wasserman arranged for yet another contract, this time between Reagan and Universal Studios. In May of 1949, an agreement had been reached that stipulated that Reagan would make five pictures for Universal over a five-year period for a salary of $75,000 per picture.
On the surface, he had maintained an uneasy friendship with Lupino, “except she leans too far to the left for my tastes.”
“If Lupino is not an actual Red, she’s at least a deep magenta,” he told William Holden.
Apparently, at the time they were scheduled to make a movie together, Lupino had not yet learned that Reagan was filing reports about her political activities with the FBI.
Twice before, he had been slated at Warners to co-star with Lupino, in both Kings Row and Juke Girl, but in each instance, she had gone on suspension rather than accept parts she disliked.
On the Saturday before shooting was scheduled to begin the following Monday, Reagan agreed to play in a for-charity baseball game for the benefit of the City of Hope Hospital. Some of the town’s leading male actors were teamed against an opposing group composed of film comedians.
Before the end of the first inning, Reagan, after hitting the ground during a play, screamed out in excruciating pain.
Rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, he learned the bad news. He would not be shooting with Lupino (or with anyone, for that matter) on Monday. “My leg was sheathed in layers of tape and moleskin, with straps from these mummy wrapping hitched to a thirty-five pound weight by means of a pulley,” he wrote in a memoir. “Twenty-four hours later, my eyes were swollen shut, my teeth hurt at even the touch of a tongue, and I itched and peeled all over. I was allergic to the wrappings. For more than a week, the massive histamine doses kept me only semi-conscious; then I settled down to weeks of discomfort because there was no removing the bandages.”
An X-ray had shown that he had broken his right thigh bone in six different places. His hospitalization lasted for seven weeks. After that, he still would not be fully recovered. “Months in a cast was followed by a steel-and-leather brace, and that was followed by crutches. At long last, I was able to hobble around on a cane.”
Initially, when Jane Wyman was in London shooting Stage Fright, she lent Reagan access to the home they used to share but which now, thanks to their divorce settlement, she occupied. There was a staff on site to take care of him. When she returned from England, Reagan was moved to the home of his mother. There, Nelle waited on him day and night at the house he had purchased for her on Phyllis Avenue. She was in her late sixties and ailing, but drove over to the Farmers’ Market every day in her old Studebaker to buy fresh fruit and groceries for him.
Reagan recovers from a shattered thighbone after a charity baseball game. Marilyn came to give him “lip service.”
“I cooked all his favorite foods and tended to him like the baby boy I had long ago given birth to,” she recalled. “When he could walk again and take care of himself, he moved out. I cried all that day and half the night. I didn’t want him to leave, but to stay with me.”
Directed by Michael Gordon, Woman in Hiding went into production on schedule. The director arranged for actor Howard Duff, fresh from an affair with Ava Gardner, to replace Reagan as the male lead.
Lupino objected to the handsome replacement when she met him. “I don’t like him,” she told Gordon.
Apparently, she changed her mind. One night, Duff seduced her, and she later married him.
Months later, Reagan encountered Duff at a party. “Thank you for breaking your leg. Ida was against me until she succumbed to my masculine charm.”
Years later, by the time Reagan ran for Governor of California, Lupino still retained her negative impressions: “I blamed the bastard for deserting the Democrats,” she claimed.
***
During his long periods of convalescence, Reagan could count on only one visitor, Marilyn Monroe. As he told William Holden, “I never knew when she would show up. For the most part, she was always in a hurry, perhaps going off on another date. She was one busy girl, but she knew I needed sex. I was flat on my back, but I could count on her to give me lip service. That brought me some sexual relief. My back and leg might not be in working order, but at least one part of my plumbing was still satisfactory. Marilyn’s a great gal. You should date her sometime, Bill. Just don’t let your wife know.”
During World War II, Captain Ronald Reagan was stationed in California, handling PR for the Army. In that capacity, Captain Reagan ordered his staff photographer, Private David Conover, to visit a local factory to take pictures of women on the homefront who were turning out aircraft, munitions, and parachutes. These morale-boosting photos of pretty girls contributing to the war effort were for publication in Yank magazine.
One of the girls he photographed that day was Norma Jeane. She could hardly know at the time that she’d eventually have an affair with Private Conover’s commanding officer – or that the officer would become, long after her own death, the President of the United States. Conover later claimed that the eyes of Norma Jeane “held something that touched and intrigued me. She should be a movie star.”
After lunch, he requested that she change into a red sweater, and he took more pictures of her in which her breasts were more prominent. When Conover came into the office of his boss (Reagan) a week later, he noticed that he�
�d pinned up that picture of Norma Jeane. Reagan said, “This young lady, not Lana Turner, should be called The Sweater Girl.”
Holden, among others, including Dick Powell and June Allyson, believed that Marilyn viewed Reagan as a father figure more than a lover. “She was going through a rough period in her life,” Allyson recalled. “Even though he was incapacitated, Ronnie was that shoulder for her to lean on.”
Sometimes, Marilyn didn’t seem so rushed, and she’d spend hours with Reagan in his Londonderry apartment during his long recuperation.
She related to Reagan that originally, Harry Cohn had held out such promises to her, even admitting that he’d put her on the casting couch. “He told me he was looking for a backup for Rita Hayworth, with whom he was having a lot of trouble,” Marilyn said. She even shared some of her secrets with Reagan, including that her hairline had been lifted through electrolysis, with the intention of highlighting her widow’s peak.
On one visit, she shocked him. “I thought you were my old girlfriend, Lana Turner. You look just like her.”
“Only younger,” Marilyn said. “I am the new Lana Turner, made up to look just like her.”
One afternoon, she arrived heartbroken and fell into his arms. “Cohn has let me go from Columbia. His promises are shit.”
“You know what Cohn’s final words to me were?” she asked Reagan. “He called me a ‘goddamn cunt’ and told me he never wanted to see me on the Columbia lot ever again.”
When Reagan had met her on the set of Ladies of the Chorus (1948), Marilyn had told him that the picture with Adele Jergens was going to be a big hit. It wasn’t—in fact, it flopped at the box office.
She revealed that she had studied and “worked so very, very hard” for the part. At one point, she’d gone to a seedy burlesque theater in downtown Los Angeles. Billing herself as “Mona Monroe,” she’d stripped for the men. She later said, “I heard from one of the ushers that whenever I came on, the men placed their coats over their genitals to do their business in the dark.”
She even went to see a performance by the elegant Lili St. Cyr. This tall, buxom, and statuesque blonde brought glamour, almost a sense of refinement, to the art of striptease. Marilyn visited her performance every night and met her backstage. What she didn’t tell Reagan was that she had a lesbian affair with St. Cyr.
While at Columbia, Marilyn had fallen in love with her strikingly handsome voice coach, Fred Karger, who conducted his own band. What she didn’t know, but would soon find out, Karger had another woman competing for his love-making. The competition was formidable: Jane Wyman.
During her chats with Reagan, Marilyn apparently left out many details of her life. She presented only limited but often tantalizing facts about her past. She didn’t tell him about her lesbian affairs, because she knew he wouldn’t understand such things.
As author Michael John Sullivan once wrote in his book, Presidential Passions, “Reagan’s understanding of sexuality was exceedingly simplistic: For him, sex was either black or white so that sexual feelings of a highly complex or conflicting nature were both threatening and incomprehensible. The inflexibility of his narrow sexual sensibilities is perhaps best seen in his unchanging attitude toward homosexuality. Working in a business that is home to a very high percentage of gays and bisexuals, he remained intimidated by the prospect of sexual diversity.”
In contrast, Marilyn understood.
In addition to St. Cyr, Marilyn was also engaged in a lesbian liaison with Natasha Lytess, her drama coach at Columbia.
Marilyn had to carry around a datebook to keep abreast of her affairs, which included Karger, but also actor John Carroll and even producer Joe Schenck.
When Reagan saw a picture in Variety of Marilyn on a date with Pat DiCicco at the Cocoanut Grove, he warned her about this hustler, who had been married to Thelma Todd (murdered) and Gloria Vanderbilt (beaten).
It was through Reagan that Marilyn once met Holden, who was scheduled to appear in Born Yesterday at Columbia.
Over drinks with Holden and Reagan, Marilyn said, “You two butch numbers are excepted, but I find that most male actors are ‘pansies,’ because acting is a feminine art. When a man has to paint his face and pose and strut and pretend emotions, he isn’t doing what is normally masculine.”
“Hello, fellow pansy,” Holden said to Reagan. “To prove my masculinity, I’m going out to fuck every starlet in Hollywood.”
Holden seemed enchanted with Marilyn—in fact, he left Reagan’s apartment that night, promising to drive her home.
When she visited Reagan again, during a discussion about Holden, she said, “Through Bill, I’ve discovered the dumb blonde role that will make me one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. In Born Yesterday, I’ll play Billie Dawn, a great role. Bill thinks I’m perfect for it. He’s going behind Cohn’s back and arranging a test for me at Columbia. He thinks the test will convince Cohn to give me another chance.”
One rainy afternoon, Marilyn arrived at Reagan’s apartment, her eyes red from crying. She said that the designer, Oleg Cassini, had made a gown for her, and had presented it to her as a gift. “I returned the favor,” she said.
In her gown, she attended a party at the home shared by Cassini and his wife, Gene Tierney. “The bitch threw me out the door the moment I came into the foyer,” Marilyn claimed. “In front of everybody, she exploded in fury. Her exact words, and she shouted them loud enough for everybody to hear, were, ‘How could you invite this tramp? She’s a nothing!’”
Reagan offered her what comfort he could, and then, in return, she offered him her own kind of comfort.
Four days later, Marilyn was back in Reagan’s apartment, this time telling him the bad news. Harry Cohn had refused to look at her test for Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. “I won’t tell you what else the bastard said about me.”
Somehow, she managed to get herself cast in a cameo role in another movie, Love Happy, with the Marx Brothers. She asked Reagan, “Will I have to bed all the Marx Brothers?”
“Probably, but not at the same time,” he answered.
That was followed by another role that year in A Ticket to Tomahawk, with Dan Dailey and Anne Baxter. She was delighted when the director, Richard Sale, told her, “You can sing and dance better than Betty Grable.”
That Saturday, Grable herself arrived at Reagan’s apartment with a gift. He hadn’t seen her since her marriage to bandleader Harry James.
When June Allyson heard about their reunion, she said, “I’m only guessing, but I don’t think they resumed their affair. It was just two old friends getting together to talk about their early days in Hollywood, trying to climb rungs of the ladder to stardom.”
Reagan was very saddened to hear news over the radio on July 5, 1948, that Carole Landis—another blonde he’d known from his early Hollywood years—had overdosed on sleeping pills and died. It was reported that she had been despondent over the breakup of her affair with Rex Harrison.
Allyson admitted to her friends, Peter Lawford and Van Johnson, that she, too, had had a brief fling with Reagan when he came to visit her one afternoon. “He was still walking on crutches at the time. I was the one who had to seduce Ronnie. It was just a two-week fling. I was mad at Richard [a reference to her husband at the time, Dick Powell] at the time. Ronnie was between marriages. Nothing came of it. We remained friends.”
Years later, she told Johnson, “Could you imagine? I’m one of the few women in Hollywood like Marilyn Monroe, who seduced two U.S. presidents. Although I had John F. Kennedy before Marilyn, in her case, she had Ronnie before I did.”
At one point, Reagan flew Marilyn to Miami Beach. He checked into a suite at the Roney Plaza, booking her into the more modest Helen Mar Hotel, a few blocks away.
During their time together, he took her for three nights in a row to hear his favorite entertainer, Sophie Tucker, billed as “the Last of the Red Hot Mommas.” She was appearing in a sold-out revue at the Beachcomber.
To end each show
before the essentially Jewish audience, she sang, “Yiddische Momme.” For some reason, this was Reagan’s favorite, although he was the least Jewish person in the night club.
Sophie also invited Reagan and Marilyn to her big birthday bash on February 9,1950. In 1887, she had been born in the Ukraine, which had been ruled during that era by Czarist Russia. A crowd of celebrities flew in from around the country, including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, George Burns, and Joe E. Lewis, along with newer comedians who included Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Frances Langford sang.
Nightclub entertainer Sophie Tucker: “Ronnie got it all wrong. What in hell did I have to do with Whistler’s Mother?”
Reagan was among the honored guests asked to say a few words at the podium. For some reason known only to himself, he called Sophie “the Whistler’s Mother of Show Business.” He praised her talent and congratulated her for her contribution to charity. “Sophia fled from Czarist Russia to come to our shores seeking the American Dream. That dream has come true for her.”
Sophie closed her birthday gala by singing her signature song, “Some of These Days.”
Backstage, as a farewell, Reagan and Sophie lip-kissed. After that, Sophie kissed Marilyn, revealing to Reagan in a broad aside, “My advice, Ronnie, is to marry this sweet little sugartit. Make an honest woman of her. Take the word of the Last of the Red Hot Mommas.”
Marilyn Monroe: The last of the Red Hot Mommas urged Reagan “to make an honest woman out of her. Marry her and to hell with Jane Wyman.”
During their final dinner together on Miami Beach, Reagan told Marilyn that he’d booked her aboard a plane separate from his own flight as a means of discreetly hauling her back to Los Angeles. “It’s been fun,” he said, “but it’s over now. Someone else has moved into my life.”
“So, it’s just one of those things,” she said, appearing on the verge of tears. She never could stand rejection.
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 82