SAG entered into a dispute with motion picture producers. At one point, actors threatened to go on strike.
The dispute, as Reagan explained it, developed within a context wherein screen actors had sold their services with the understanding that movies were intended only for exhibition in theaters. “Films should not be used in television without additional payments to actors.”
The producers claimed they had a right to use a film they made and paid the actors for in any medium they chose.
In the end, the producers held firm on not granting residuals from television to actors for films they had made, some dating back to 1930, long before television became an almost universal fixture.
***
Patricia Neal was not Jack Warner’s first choice, nor the first choice of director Vincent Sherman, for the role of the nurse, Sister Margaret, the only female role in The Hasty Heart (1950), based on the hit play by John Patrick. Originally, Eleanor Parker, who had co-starred with Reagan in The Voice of the Turtle, had been cast in the role, but had to drop out because she was pregnant.
Reagan and Neal, as friends and “civilians” aboard the ship returning to the US from England at the conclusion of filming.
Reagan seemed pleased when Neal was designated as her replacement, because he had worked so smoothly with her in John Loves Mary. That was a comedy. The Hasty Heart was a serious drama set in Burma during World War II, most of its scenes taking place in a military hospital. When Reagan signed on, he thought he was going to be cast as Latchie, a dying Scottish soldier, clearly the film’s most meaty and pithy part. But he soon learned from Sherman that the role had gone to an Irish newcomer, Richard Todd. A handsome actor born in Dublin, Todd walked off with the prize, for which he would later win an Oscar nomination.
Reagan had to be satisfied with the far less charismatic role of “Yank,” a compassionate American soldier recovering from malaria. In the hospital, he tries to befriend the often hostile Latchie.
Neal, instead of uprooting herself to London for the four-month filming, with Reagan, of The Hasty Heart, would have preferred to remain in Hollywood, co-starring with Gary Cooper in Task Force, because she was madly in love with him. Cooper promised to write her every day during their separation, which he did not do.
Neal and Reagan arrived together in bombed-out, post-war London during one of the bitterest, coldest winters in twenty or so years. “There was no heat anywhere,” Reagan said.
Although jealous of his having been awarded the star role, Reagan maintained a surface politeness with Todd. Todd later recalled, in an interview, “Reagan had a lot of complaints about filming in England. After the war, England froze the amount of money a producer could take out of the country. To spend the revenue earned in Britain, movie companies were shooting in England. Reagan felt that that represented a total lack of grace on Britain’s part, considering that the United States had ‘saved England from Hitler’s Nazi grip’ (his words).”
Filming was at the financially troubled Elstree Studio, which was being rebuilt after damage from Nazi bombardments during World War II, and slowly being adapted for use as a television production facility.
Barely Speaking: Richard Todd, (left) with Ronald Reagan.
In The Hasty Heart, Latchie can’t relate to others in the ward, although Yank tries to win his friendship, as does Neal as the nurse. At the time of his casting, Todd was thirty years old and had been a British paratrooper. He asked Reagan, “How many Nazis did you kill during the war?”
“I made propaganda films for the Americans,” Reagan said, perhaps with a pang of guilt.
“We were shooting in England, but we were supposed to be in Burma, where it was hot,” Todd said. “Sometimes, we had to appear in our shorts. Reagan continued to complain about the chill and dampness. ‘I’m freezing my balls off,’ he told me. ‘The gals back in Hollywood won’t like that.’ That was the first time I realized that Reagan could talk like a regular bloke.”
After the first week of filming, Todd invited Reagan to go on a pub crawl with him. Reagan told Todd, “I feel my film career is about over and yours is just beginning. I envy you. But one thing I don’t envy is trying to make it in post-war Hollywood. It was always a vicious place. But the deadly rattlers have been replaced with man-eating dinosaurs. I may go into politics on a national level, although my involvement in politics has damaged my film career. I made enemies of directors and producers who might otherwise have hired me.”
Todd also claimed that, “The image of Jane Wyman hovered over the set of The Hasty Heart like she was the co-star of that picture. Reagan was still in love with her, although having dates—perhaps affairs—with others. He and Patricia Neal were together practically every night. He once told me that he thought he and Jane would get back together. Once, I jokingly asked him, ‘if he got back with Jane, would he give me his cast-offs?’ He had no answer for that. While shooting the film, he spent a lot of time on the phone with Jane in California. He was eager for news not only of her, but also of the children. “
Neal later credited Reagan with giving her a lot of support during the filming. “We would have dinner and even go dancing at one of the local halls. He was a good dancer. People may have been shabbily dressed and their food rationed, but at night they sang and danced with all their hearts. They were happy the war was over. English food was horrid, a lot of cardboard fish with soggy bread crumbs and exhausted vegetables. Reagan missed his steaks and had a batch flown in from ‘21’ in New York. But when he invited Neal to a steak dinner at the Savoy Hotel, the chef came out and apologized. ‘The steaks, Mr. Reagan, have gone bad.’”
Neal said, “Ronnie knew differently. The chef and the kitchen crew had eaten them.”
Sherman recalled, “Both Pat and Ronnie were depressed over their affairs of the heart. They were pining for Gary Cooper and Jane Wyman. I had to put up with these two lovesick puppies.”
At the Savoy, Neal and Reagan had adjoining suites. Waiters and maids noted that they kept the connecting doors open at all times. One maid reported that she’d caught them having a shower together. When Todd heard about this, he said, “My motto is, if you’re not with the one you love, make love to the one you’re with.”
When Neal was appearing on Broadway with Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker (1959), she modified her account of her experiences in London. Bancroft was seriously dating the designer, Stanley Mills Haggart, at the time.
“I once said that Ronnie never made a pass at me,” Neal said. “What I didn’t say was that I made a pass at him. On several nights, we cuddled up. What else was there to do? It was so god damn cold in London after the war. Of course, I wished it were Gary in my bed. At the time, Ronnie was mourning for Janie but getting cozy with Doris Day—and with me.”
In the Dining Room of the Savoy Hotel, Reagan and Neal often dined with Elizabeth Taylor and Robert Taylor, who were in London together filming Conspirator (1949). He still numbered Robert among his best friends. Robert confessed to Reagan, “Elizabeth and I are getting it on.”
Neal formed a friendship with a young dentist, Hamish Thomson, who was in love with her friend, Helen Horton. One weekend, Thomson drove Neal and Reagan on a sightseeing tour of the Cotswolds. “We played a quiz game,” Neal said. “The question was, ‘What would you like to be if you could be anybody in the whole world’?”
Reagan answered, “President of the United States.”
Virginia Mayo, who had made The Girl from Jones Beach with Reagan, attended a Royal Command Film Performance of the movie, Scott of the Antarctic [the third most popular film at the British box office in 1949], starring John Mills. “Our party in London included Alan and Sue Ladd,” she recalled, “along with Larry Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Vivien fell asleep during this dull and depressing movie, and her right breast popped out. I nudged Ronnie to awaken her and inform her of her tit malfunction. Instead of watching John Mills, he spent the rest of the movie staring at that exposed breast of Scarlett O’Hara, whi
ch he didn’t get to see in Gone With the Wind.”
Before the screening, Reagan had met Queen Elizabeth (a.k.a. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, identified in later years as Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother], but not her daughter, Princess Elizabeth [who ascended to the throne in 1953, and was later identified as Queen Elizabeth II], who was pregnant at the time. Reagan was also introduced to Princess Margaret and Prince Philip.
When not otherwise involved, and when he had time off, Reagan wandered among “the nooks and crannies of Mayfair, exploring old curiosity shops. I expected Nell Gwynne to emerge from her royal carriage at any minute.”
One night, at the Bar of the Savoy Hotel, Neal heard Reagan pondering whether the United States should attack the Soviet Union and destroy it while the U.S. still had exclusive access to the atomic bomb. “We could establish for centuries to come the Pax Americana,” he said.
Whereas Vincent Sherman had known Reagan for years—in fact, he’d directed some of the scenes from his Juke Girl with Ann Sheridan—Neal met the director in London for the first time. He had a reputation for seducing some of his leading ladies, such as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. “You’re next,” he told her.
Reagan and Todd bonded more as filming progressed. “I think he forgave me for taking the role he wanted,” Todd said. “At one point in the film, he gave me a massage on camera. If he had not become president, he could have hired out as a masseur. If I recall, he gave me an erection.”
It can be assumed that Todd was joking, but perhaps not.
Todd later recalled, “Ronnie buttered me up when he heard I had been cast opposite Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich in Alfred Hitchcock’s upcoming Stage Fright (1950), to be shot in London. I think Reagan wanted me to be a go-between, running messages to Jane on the set in our upcoming film. He told me he thought there was a good chance that if she would agree to meet with him, there could be a reconciliation.”
“I didn’t think so, but I humored him,” Todd said. “I promised to put in a good word for him with Jane.”
Todd later delivered a bombshell, telling Sherman, “Reagan approached me shortly before his marriage to Nancy Davis and asked me to make one final plea with Jane Wyman to re-marry him. I found this astonishing, because the grapevine claimed that Nancy was already carrying Reagan’s baby on her long route with him to the altar.”
According to Todd, Reagan said that he’d call off his upcoming marriage to Nancy “if Jane came through.”
During the filming of The Hasty Heart, Sherman claimed that Reagan was “very thin skinned when I critiqued his performance. In his memoir, Where’s the Rest of Me?, he had good words for everyone but failed to mention me.”
During the four months that Reagan worked in London, Sherman noted a radical shift in his politics, as Reagan moved away from the Democrats and into the camp of the Republicans. As he’d later put it, “I spent those months in England while the Labour Party was in power. I saw firsthand how the welfare state sapped incentive to work from many people in a wonderful and dynamic country.”
Sherman claimed that Reagan tried to get over Wyman by having a secret affair with a script girl on the set of The Hasty Heart. “She was sort of a mousy-looking creature with glasses, but she had big tits,” Sherman recalled. “I heard that she joined him for shack-ups when he took a vacation after filming. They were seen together in Wales, Ireland, and France.”
When Sherman returned to Hollywood, Jack Warner told him, “I want to get rid of Reagan. Most of his pictures are lousy. Did you see crap like That Hagen Girl and Night Unto Night? He was a pretty boy when he was running around Hollywood in the early 40s fucking Betty Grable and Lana Turner. But he’s getting jowly and moving into middle age. I’ll throw him in crappy films and maybe he’ll break the contract.”
As Reagan entered the 1950s, he faced the dilemma of all other actors confronting the Big 4-0. He had long talks with Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Dick Powell, and George Murphy. Hollywood was a great burial ground for young romantic leads turning middle-aged. A few of the better ones, including Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Cary Grant, could survive in the right pictures, but most of the others were cast aside.
Reagan feared that his tomb was waiting for him at Forest Lawn. If he couldn’t continue a career in movies, what should he do with the rest of his life? Though he initially resisted it, did appearing on that little black-and-white box in people’s living rooms loom in his future?
Reagan had signed to make five movies with Universal at a salary of $75,000 per movie. When he refused to appear in the first two movies Universal offered him, Lew Wasserman, his agent, was forced to renegotiate his contract. What emerged was a three-picture deal, beginning with Louisa (1950), followed by Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), and concluding with Law and Order (1953), the last finally fulfilling his dream of getting cast in a Western.
***
Universal filmed Louisa in 35 days for a budget of $800,000, much of which went to its “elderly talent” that included Charles Coburn, Edmund Gwenn, and Spring Byington. On the set, Reagan had a reunion with Coburn, accusing him once again of “cutting off my legs in Kings Row, you miserable old fucker.”
In this scene from Louisa, Piper Laurie evokes a rebellious teenager, Reagan a frustrated middle-aged adult. Charles Coburn looks on.
It was during the making of Louisa that Stage 18 was converted into a mammoth party hall, marking Coburn’s 60th anniversary in show business. A surprise guest at the party was Jane Wyman, who made no special overtures to the man she’d just divorced.
Even though Reagan was appearing in weak films during his post-war era, he still maintained a certain popularity among fans who cited his “likable personality.” In the first poll of Modern Screen readers, Reagan ranked fifth in popularity, following in the wake of John Wayne, Alan Ladd, Clark Gable, and newcomer Farley Granger.
Reagan and Piper Laurie in Louisa. She was barely legal.
Most movies at the time were devoted to young love, but not Louisa. It was about the romance of a dotty grandmother (Byington), torn between two suitors. Directed by Alexander Hall, the congenial family comedy cast this plump woman as the mother of the character played by Reagan. She comes to live with her architect son. Once there, she is pursued by an elderly grocer (Gwenn). Coburn was cast as Norton’s boss, an aging, bombastic roly-poly who is also a rival for Byington’s affections.
Reagan, as Norton, is the befuddled, anxious son, watching his mother’s antics. Cast in the role of Reagan’s wife was Ruth Hussey, sweet as his helpmate in an un-challenging role. Piper Laurie, making her film debut, is cast as Reagan’s daughter, who’s coping with the affections of Scotty Becket, her young boyfriend.
Some critics hailed the film as a “geriatric love story.”
Reagan’s role could have been played by any one of dozens of actors. It was not a showcase for his limited acting talents. Yet in spite of his lackluster role, he later said, “Louisa is a good and healthy plus to any list of screen credits.”
Reagan found London-born Gwenn a delight, and congratulated him on his performance as Kris Kringle in the 1947 film, Miracle on 34th Street, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Reagan had known Byington since the 1930s. She told him that she had two dreams: One involved purchasing a small coffee plantation in Brazil—she was already learning Portuguese—and another involved enrolling in flying lessons.
“Two worthy goals,” Reagan told Hall. “Not a bad ambition for a woman born in 1886.”
Reagan welcomed Hall’s direction, telling him, “If you could do for me what you did for Robert Montgomery in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), I’d be pleased indeed. [For his involvement in that picture, Hall had been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Director of the Year.]
Cast as boyfriend Jimmy Blake in the movie, Scotty Beckett was a Californian who started in show business when he was three years old. Although he had made a name for himself appearing in the Our Gang comedies of the 1930s. Reagan had met hi
m when he played the child manifestation of the Robert Cummings’ character in Kings Row.
One might assume that an off-screen as well as on-screen romance might have developed between Laurie and Beckett. He was born in 1929, she in 1932. But instead, that eighteen-year-old neophyte actress fell into the arms of a 39-year-old instead, Ronald Reagan.
Laurie accompanied Reagan on a tour to promote Louisa in his former residence, Des Moines, and later to his hometown of Dixon. Nelle, looking very frail, also joined the tour. In the words of one reporter, Reagan appeared in a “cocoa brown suit and tie” at the Paramount Theater in Des Moines, where he had once been a radio announcer. He introduced a stunningly beautiful Laurie, who wore an emerald green strapless gown as temperatures soared outside, within a theater that had no air conditioning.
Reagan told his audience, “Hollywood people aren’t really like what you read in the gossip columns.” Backstage, he whispered to Nelle, “They’re even worse.”
After leaving Des Moines, witnessing all the changes that World War II had brought to the town, he remarked, “You can’t go home again.”
It seemed that the entire town of Dixon came out to greet Reagan and his mother. The mayor presented him with a key to the city, and banners along the main street proclaimed WELCOME HOME DUTCH. He led the parade, riding down Main Street in a cowboy outfit on a palomino. Later, at a banquet, Nelle and Reagan serenaded diners with “In the Good Old Summertime.”
During his dedication of a new swimming pool, Reagan addressed a crowd, calling them a “pack of sissies. We used to swim in the river.”
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 86