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

by Darwin Porter

  Ruth Roman: “If guys like Ronnie Reagan couldn’t get Ava Gardner, they settled for me.”

  Her father had been a circus barker, who died when she was very young. As a means of supporting her family, her mother became a char-woman.

  Reagan told Hedda Hopper, “Ruth has really struggled to get beyond one of those ‘blink-and-you-miss-me’ parts.”

  Roman played a supporting role to Rita Hay-worth in Gilda (1946) and to Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest (1949). Finally, she nabbed a key role in Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas.

  “I love acting,” she told him. “But it can break your heart. It has mine several times.” She said that she had posed for stills for crime magazines at $5 an hour as a means of earning $200 to travel by train from Massachusetts to Hollywood.

  One day, Reagan visited the set of Champion where he chatted briefly with its director, Mark Robson. While Roman was in the shower, Robson introduced Reagan to Lola Albright. Reagan then secretly asked Albright out on a date.

  Eventually, after months of struggle, Roman was awarded the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951). Originally, the male lead was to have gone to his friend, William Holden, who pulled out at the last minute. Subsequently, that key role went to a weaker actor, Farley Granger. The second male lead was given to Robert Walker, who was dating Nancy Davis at the time.

  After her completion of Strangers on a Train, Roman was cast with Jane Wyman in Starlift (1951). Reagan became a bit agitated after hearing that. Doris Day, whom he was also dating at the time, was in that movie, too, and he didn’t want either Day or Roman to discuss him with his ex-wife. “Jane and I are divorced,” he told Roman, “but I still feel embarrassed when she encounters women with whom I’m having an affair.”

  By the time she made Starlift, Roman was no longer bedding Reagan, but he did see her on occasion. “In my talks with Jane, your name never came up,” she assured him. She told him that Gary Cooper was also in Starlift.

  “He propositioned me, even though I heard he was still in love with Patricia Neal.”

  “And married, too,” Reagan added.

  ***

  Hailing from Akron, Ohio, singer/actress Lola Albright was buxom and blonde. On her first date with Reagan, she wore a gown with such low colletage that it left little to the imagination. She came to Hollywood in 1947, but didn’t get a good role until her involvement in Champion, two years later.

  Reagan wondered if she’d been seduced by Kirk Douglas, who was known for bedding actresses with whom he appeared.

  Reagan may have gotten her a role in his own The Girl from Jones Beach, released the same year as Champion. At any rate, he admired her very much and noted that she had a fairly successful career in Hollywood without ever becoming a big star.

  Lola Albright tried to imitate Betty Grable’s celebrated World War II pinup photo, but didn’t quite pull it off.

  Years before, Reagan had seduced the real thing. Lola was “merely the mock.”

  In time, he saw her as a nightlife singer on television’s detective series, Peter Gunn (1958-1961), as created by Blake Edwards. Albright was cast as the romantic interest of the series’ namesake, Peter Gunn, played by Craig Stevens. Reagan as a rather crass joke said, “Until you, I used to be Craig’s love interest.” Later, Reagan went to see Elvis Presley’s Kid Galahad (1962), because he heard that Albright was in it.

  Reagan also maintained another, indirect link, to Albright. In 1952, she married actor Jack Carson, the best friend and often movie sidekick to Dennis Morgan, with whom Jane had conducted her most enduring love affair.

  As far as Albright’s dating of Reagan, it appears that he took her out to a nightclub on perhaps two occasions as part of “a harmless encounter,” he said. “Lola was very charming, a talented star who could both act and sing, and a nice person, something not always encountered in Hollywood.”

  ***

  Ann Sothern was acquainted with Reagan’s second wife, Nancy Davis, before he was. Both of these women had appeared in Shadow on the Wall. If the blonde-haired Sothern had had her way, she might have been the one who married Reagan instead of Nancy.

  Ann Sothern: “I worked with Nancy Davis, but what I did with Ronnie, I wouldn’t exactly call ‘work.’”

  In 1949, Sothern was in the throes of divorcing Pennsylvania-born actor Robert Sterling, whom she’d impetuously married in 1943, when thousands of other couples seemed to be rushing with equivalent wartime zeal into the bonds of matrimony.

  Sterling had been a flight instructor throughout most of the war. After his release from the military, he found that his career had faltered during his absence. Likewise, after appearing in several postwar films, including as the featured actress within the popular Maisie series, Sothern’s own career “was on the skids,” as she put it.

  Since Reagan and Sothern always seemed to be laughing and joking with each other on their “fundates,” his friends, including Dick Powell and June Allyson, thought they might eventually traipse down down the aisle together. “I knew that Ann was most willing,” Allyson said.

  Reagan, however, may have found Sothern too aggressive. She’d told him, “When a gal is getting rid of a husband, it’s time for her to go shopping for another.”

  Although he dated her from anywhere from three weeks to a month, marriage was not on his agenda. She’d gained a bit of weight, and she was two years older than he was. As he told William Holden, “I like my dates to be ten to fifteen years younger than me.”

  “So you can be a father to them?” Holden facetiously asked.

  “Yeah, right!”

  “You say ten to fifteen years,” Holden said. “You’ve got it all wrong. Try twenty to twenty-five years.”

  The Sothern/Reagan romance ended abruptly. Allyson thought she knew the reason why. Shortly after filming A Letter to Three Wives (1949), Sothern contracted infectious hepatitis after being injected with an impure serum as part of a medical procedure while she was in England for a stage performance.

  Reagan didn’t wait around long enough for her to recover.

  ***

  A more serious relationship for Reagan developed with Betty Underwood, a starlet who had had a minor role in The Girl from Jones Beach (1949).

  A former Powers model in New York, the strikingly beautiful Underwood was one of dozens of young women who had come to maturity during World War II and had migrated to Hollywood. She arrived there in 1948, and began dating Reagan, who was in the last throes of his divorce from Jane Wyman.

  One night, he invited her to a premiere. “I like to arrive with a bombshell on my arm,” he said. “That way, Jane won’t think I’m still in mourning over her desertion of me.”

  In Hollywood, Underwood became better known for dating famous men than she was for her movie career. She enjoyed a romance with the former Mr. Joan Crawford (Franchot Tone), which caused a rift between her and actress Jean Wallace, who was married to Tone at the time.

  Betty Underwood. As one reporter wrote, “Betty Underwood plays Ronald Reagan like a fiddle, making him chase her all over the East Coast, from New York to Florida.”

  Scott Brady, the brother of Laurence Tierney, was a handsome stud, the former lover of Anne Bancroft, who dated him at the same time Underwood did. “Scott was very proud of his equipment—and rightly so,” Bancroft said.

  Brady said, “I liked Betty a lot. But in those days, my phone was ringing off the walls, not only from hot babes, but a lot of famous male stars, too. I guess word of my gift had gotten around. I turned her over to Reagan.”

  That was not exactly the case. Brady didn’t actually turn her over to anybody. Underwood charted her own course.

  Reagan’s affair with her lasted until March of 1951. The year Reagan married Nancy (1952), Underwood became engaged to Lester Deutsch, the multi-millionaire aeronautics pioneer.

  Shirley Ballard on Reagan: “A hard guy to nail down.”

  At last report, she was still alive in 2013. If asked
to dredge up a memory of Reagan, she recalled him as “charming, delightful, and very romantic.”

  If she had any regret at all, it involved her burning of his love letters, which would potentially be worth a lot of money today.

  ***

  A Los Angeles native, the attractive starlet, Shirley Ballard, also appeared in Reagan’s date book at the time. Fourteen years younger than him, she was another talented newcomer to the industry who never became a full-fledged star. After her heyday, parts were infrequent and minor, and included a brief appearance in the 1979 film Mad Max, starring Mel Gibson.

  When Hedda Hopper asked Reagan about Ballard, he said, “It was nothing, Hedda, She’s a fine girl. We were just ships who passed in the night without colliding.”

  ***

  Reagan was introduced to Peggy Stewart by her brother-in-law, Wayne Morris, who had co-starred with Reagan and Jane Wyman in those Brother Rat movies.

  Peggy Stewart: “After my divorce at the end of the war, I was shopping around. Ronnie fell into my cart, but hopped out.”

  Growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida, Stewart, a beautiful starlet, was twelve years younger than Reagan. She’d entered a wartime marriage to actor Don (“Red”) Barry, but their wedded bliss didn’t make it till the Victory parades.

  She became known for a string of B Westerns, in which she appeared with such cowboy stars as Sunset Carson, Wild Bill Elliott, and Gene Autry.

  She broke into movies at the same time as Reagan did, making her debut in Wells Fargo (1937), in which she was cast as the teenage daughter of Joel McCrea.

  “I’ve played every role from a chorus girl in Man About Town (1939) to a convict in Girls in Chains (1943),” she said.

  When Reagan no longer called, she “free lanced” in the romantic department until actor Buck Young came along. She married him in 1953, and was still married to him at the time of his death in 2000.

  In later years, Stewart often appeared dressed as a cowgirl at film festivals, where her fans remembered her. A fan would approach her, “I still remember you in Cheyenne Wildcat (1944).”

  Stewart was still working as late as 2012, when she was cast as “Grandma Delores” in the Adam Sandler comedy, That’s My Boy.

  ***

  Reagan momentarily fell for “my songbird,” Monica Lewis, a dimple-cheeked beauty known as “America’s Singing Sweetheart.” One of her biggest hits was “Put the Blame on Mame,” the highlight of Rita Hayworth’s movie Gilda. Other hits included “I Wish You Love” and “Autumn Leaves.” The theme and title associated with the Autumn Leaves was made into a movie (1956), starring Joan Crawford.

  Lewis’ singing voice was later used for commercials on the TV series, General Electric Theater, which Reagan hosted.

  No, it isn’t Lana Turner. It’s Monica Lewis!

  Still alive at the time of this writing, Lewis wrote an autobiography, Hollywood Through My Eyes: The Lives and Loves of a Golden Age Siren, in which she detailed her romances with Reagan and Kirk Douglas.

  She also wrote about her discovery by Benny Goodman and her ill-fated stint at MGM, where she was groomed “as a threat to Lana Turner. I was in the right place at the wrong time.”

  At the time Reagan dated her, Lewis was the singing voice of “Miss Chiquita Banana,” a cartoon TV commercial. In 1948, she appeared on the first ever Ed Sullivan Show. She married record producer Robert Thiele in 1945, but divorced him in 1947. A few months later, she was seen out with Reagan. They made an attractive, compatible couple, but nothing very serious came out of their romance, since Reagan, and perhaps Lewis, too, were each “playing the field.”

  Reagan was reportedly shocked when he learned that Lewis had married Jennings Lang in 1956.

  Monica Lewis with her husband, Jennings Lang, the man who delivered the only known punch to the face of Ronald Reagan.

  [In 1951, Lang had been involved in one of that year’s biggest Hollywood scandals. Producer Walter Wanger discovered that his wife, the beautiful and sultry Joan Bennett, sister of Constance Bennett, was having an affair with Lang, a theatrical agent at the time. They conducted their romance clandestinely, often at vacation spots in the Caribbean. In Los Angeles, they enjoyed “quickies” at his apartment in Beverly Hills.

  Wanger learned of the affair. Like a crazed cuckold, he lay in wait for them, shooting Lang in the testicles when he emerged from a car with Bennett. Helater pleaded temporary insanity, eventually escaping with a four-month jail sentence.]

  Reagan was acquainted with Lang, as he had become the head of MCA’s West Coast TV operations.

  In the halls of one of MCA’s office buildings, Reagan encountered Lang during the time he was married to Lewis. “Jennings, my good fellow,” Reagan said, mockingly. “I hope everything is in working order. You’re the first castrato I’ve ever met.”

  Losing control, Lang punched Reagan in the face, bloodying his nose. Apparently, this was the first and only time Reagan had ever been struck in the face in Hollywood.

  Lang later became a producer, turning out such pictures as Airport 1975. He never forgave Reagan for his insult. After he left MCA, he attacked him. “Reagan is the invention of that Hollywood conglomerate, MCA,” he charged. “Every facet of his life, from his film career to his entry into politics, to his money in the bank, is indirectly controlled by MCA. He is the puppet, with MCA pulling his strings, with the help of the Mafia.”

  ***

  A diminutive beauty, Wisconsin-born Christine Larson graced movie screens from 1948 to 1955 in a series of grade B Westerns and long-forgotten potboilers like Last Train to Bombay (1952) and Valley of the Head Hunters (1953).

  She became better known in TV series, including The Cisco Kid and Four Star Playhouse, and in 1950, she also starred in five episodes of Dick Tracy.

  In Hollywood, Larson became notorious for her varied affairs with screen actors, and was often featured in the gossip columns. She had a long affair with actor Johnny Mack Brown, who had been one of the greatest halfbacks ever to play for the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide.

  In Hollywood, Brown had been a romantic leading man, appearing opposite such stars as Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, and Joan Crawford. His widely publicized affair with one of his leading ladies, Marion Davies, then mistress of William Randolph Hearst, damaged his career.

  Baha’i Beauty: Christine Larson

  When Jack Carson spotted Reagan with Larson one night at the Cocoanut Grove, he quipped, “Out with a redhead for a change?”

  Larson and Reagan were often spotted together going horseback riding, usually on Sunday afternoons. She was a champion equestrian and a rodeo queen. She told him, “My greatest ambition in life is to own a Lipizzaner stallion. Why don’t you buy me one?”

  “I thought I was stallion enough for you,” he answered.

  She not only went riding with him along the trails of the Hollywood Hills, but she designed his cowboy gear too. Before dating him, she had been a designer for the Western Costume Company. “I prefer to dress my men from the skin, beginning with their jockstraps,” she once said. He liked the suits she gave him, except for one. It was all in red, and included red boots and a red ten-gallon hat. He refused to wear it.

  William Holden said, “Christine was different from Ronnie’s usual girlfriends. She was absolutely gorgeous with great legs. I slipped behind Ronnie’s back and bedded her a few times. A hot little number.”

  Holden later claimed that “Neither Christine nor Nancy Davis knew it—at least I don’t think they did—but Ronnie was also carrying on at least three other affairs when he was courting them. I screwed around a lot myself in those days. But I was more selective than he was—I mean, I went for the class dames like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.”

  For Reagan, at least, there was a potential problem associated with Larson’s choice of religions, especially if Reagan continued his involvement in politics. She was a follower of the Bahá’i faith. It was reported that Larson got Reagan to attend at least four Bah
á’i services with her.

  [Ranked as one of the world’s fastest-growing religions, and founded by Bahá’u’lláh, a much-persecuted visionary who was exiled for his teaching in 19th-century Persia, Bahá’i is a monotheistic religion emphasizing the spiritual unity of humankind, asserting that there is only one God, the source of all creation, and that the human purpose is to learn to know and love God through such methods as reflection, service to humanity, and prayer. The religion, which has more than five million adherents worldwide, recognizes the link to God of such prophets and messengers as Moses, Muhammed, Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna.]

  The playwright, O.Z. White, who knew both Reagan and Larson, claimed, “Reagan would talk about politics, Christine about the Bahá’i. In that religion, it is forbidden for a member to enter politics.”

  Even so, Larson claimed that Reagan was moved by her faith and its universal message. When he became President of the United States, he asked for a halt to the executions of the Bahá’i people in Iran.

  At one point, as reported by June Allyson, “Ronnie got down on bended knee and proposed marriage to Larson the old-fashioned way. She told me she was in her twenties, but I’d heard that she was actually 33 at the time.”

  Along with an engagement ring, he presented her with a diamond wrist watch. She promised she’d get back to him with her answer the next day. As promised, she called him the following afternoon, rejecting his offer of marriage, but telling him that she planned to keep the wristwatch.

  At the time, he was dating Larson at her apartment on North Beverly Glen, he was also dating Nancy Davis, who had an apartment on South Beverly Glen. On some days, he’d have a late afternoon session with Larson before driving over to escort Nancy to dinner.

  One night, according to Larson, “Ronnie appeared on my doorstep in a state of panic. Even though I’d not accepted his marriage proposal, we had continued to see each other. He’d told me he’d just come from the apartment of Nancy Davis.”