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

by Darwin Porter

  She had nothng but high praise for him, telling a reporter, “He’s a woman’s man, thoughtful, considerate, attentive. If you ask him to the most informal dinner party, he’ll send flowers the next day with a sweet note. If you go nightclubbing with him and are separated from him for so much as one dance, he’ll send a waiter with a scribbled message, ‘Miss you.’ When you’re with him, you know that for him—at that moment at least— you’re the only woman in the world and the most beautiful.”

  Bosley Crowther of The new York Times agreed with Tennessee about the miscasting of Lawrence. He called her “a farcically exaggerated shrew with the zeal of a burlesque comedian to see her diffident daughter wed. Her Southern accent has an occasional cockney strain.”

  Crowther, however, had kinder words for Jane’s performance, defining her acting as “beautifully sensitive.”

  Time magazine wrote: “Miss Wyman is constitutionally incapable of looking so ethereal as Julie Haydon, who played the role on Broadway. But with the help of shoulder-length hair and a childlike smile, she gives the part of the girl half her age an almost equally poignant sincerity.”

  Jane told Rapper, “I worked harder on Laura than I did on Johnny Belinda.”

  ***

  A native Californian, the same age as Reagan, Greg Bautzer began to date Jane in 1950. He was one of the most prominent attorneys in Hollywood, with clients who ranged from Howard Hughes to Ingrid Bergman.

  Many of his female clients—most of them top stars—were also his lovers. He seduced Lana Turner when she was just sixteen and went on to long, tumultuous on again, off again affair with Joan Crawford. His roster of seductions featured Dorothy Lamour, Ava Gardner, Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Peggy Lee, Merle Oberon, Joan Caulfield, Marguerite Chapman, and Evelyn Keyes. He finally married actress Dana Wynter in 1956.

  Others seduced by him included Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Gene Tierney, Marlene Dietrich, and Jayne Mansfield.

  “I think Greg was born with really good looks,” Jane said. “He stood 6’2” and was a great dancer. He was well built and took care of his athletic body. He was not only very intelligent, but a brilliant attorney with great charisma.” She shared these views with the homosexual actor, Clifton Webb, with whom she co-starred in the 1959 movie, Holiday for lovers.

  The July, 1951 issue of Photoplay filed a report on the romance between Jane and Bautzer:

  “The guy has something, there’s no doubt about that. ask any man what it is and he’ll tell you. Bautzer’s a man’s man, virile, successful, a gentleman where he works, or where he plays. and he’s out to win, wherever he is, in the courtroom, at the poker table, or on the tennis court. Yet somehow, once he has won, he seems to lose interest—as though the fun were all in the battle, and the victory anticlimactic.”

  It appears that Bautzer seduced Jane long before they made any high-profile appearances, such as escorting her to the premiere of her hit movie, The Blue veil (1951).

  At that premiere, both of them encountered Ronald Reagan, who was dating starlet Nancy Davis at the time. After Bautzer introduced her to Nancy, he whispered to Jane, “Not my type. Maybe it’s all that Reagan can get these days.”

  Once they went public with their affair, columnists and fan magazines speculated on the probability of an upcoming Bautzer/Wyman marriage.

  Modern Screen proclaimed, “At last, a girl who can make Greg Bautzer forget about Lana and Ava, etc.”

  A reporter discovered that both Jane and Bautzer had taken blood tests as a prelude to marriage.

  Another reporter for Modern Screen saw Jane and Bautzer at a party hosted by George Sanders. He wrote, “Usually Bautzer works the room. But on this particular evening they spent most of the night in the corner making goo-goo eyes at each other. They did talk to their host and later to the producer Gabriel Pascal. That was big of them, since the party was in Pascal’s honor.”

  Then, suddenly, Bautzer was no longer seen with Jane, but with Ginger Rogers, who had recently made Storm warning with Reagan. After listening to Lena Horne at her show at the Cocoanut Grove, Bautzer and Rogers danced the night away. At their booth, he frequently kissed her.

  Paulette Goddard later provided the clue as to why the affair between Jane and Bautzer ended so abruptly. “Greg could charm the pants off a girl, and Hollywood cock-suckers never let him alone—notably his client, Rock Hudson. He arranged Hudson’s divorce, incidentally. But there was a Jekyll and Hyde quality to Greg. He had violent fights with Joan Crawford—I mean knock down, drag-out fights. Alcoholism ran in his family. When he had too much to drink, Mr. Hyde came out.”

  “Jane told me that he arrived at her doorstep unexpectedly one night and caught her in bed with that handsome hunk, Howard Keel, with whom she was co-starring in Three Guys named Mike. Jane said that Keel escaped, but Greg practically put Jane in the hospital. That was the end of that.”

  ***

  Lana Turner turned it down, and Ava Gardner rejected it. June Allyson accepted it, but at the last minute had to notify MGM that she had to bow out because she was preganant. “A Blessed Event is on the way. But call Jane Wyman. She’s looking for something light and fluffy after The Glass Menagerie.”

  Allyson was right. Jane accepted the role in Three Guys named Mike (1951), in which she played Marcy Lewis, an airline stewardess, in this black-and-white comedy directed by Charles Walters.

  Three Guys named Mike was made in an era when a job as a “stewardess” was considered glamorous, and when an airplane ride to anywhere was an exciting and adventurous novelty.

  The three handsome “Mikes” in the film included Van Johnson, playing a research scientist; Barry Sullivan, an advertising executive; and Howard Keel, an airplane pilot. Sidney Sheldon, who in time would evolve into one of the bestselling novelists in the world, wrote the screenplay, whose theme revolved around three guys chasing after Marcy.

  Walters, who was gay, had just directed Judy Garland in Summer Stock (1950). Garland had been fired from annie Get Your Gun (1950), the title role subsequently being awarded to Betty Hutton, with Keel as her leading man.

  Even though Allyson had to bow out of the film’s lead role, she telephoned Jane every two or three days for updates about what was happening.

  Allyson had always remained in touch with Johnson, her close friend and co-star.

  As Jane told Allyson, “All that Van and I do is talk girl talk. I’m ever so grateful to him for all those nights he took me dancing during the War.”

  A New Yorker, Barry Sullivan stood 6’3”, and Jane found him “very manly, the type of guy whose shoulder a girl can lean on.”

  She met him during the peak career period of his life, when he’d appeared in his most famous movie, cast as a director in The Bad and the Beautiful (1951), opposite Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas. He had also played opposite opposite Bette Davis in Payment on demand (1951).

  Keel was married, having wed Helen Anderson, who had been in the chorus of his stage musical, oklahoma!. In the early 1950s, at the peak of his career, he became known for seducing his leading ladies, especially Kathryn Grayson and Ava Gardner, each of whom had co-starred in Show Boat. Apparently, he struck out with Doris Day in Calamity Jane (1953).

  Jane had been attracted to his macho flair, his booming baritone style, and his studly good looks. During luncheons together, they shared memories of their awful childhoods. Keel had been born the son of a poor and violent coalminer who had committed suicide when he was a young boy. Before breaking into show business, he’d been a singing waiter and other more dubious professions. He admitted to Jane that on rare occasions, “When I was broke, I sold my services to older women.”

  “Well, I’m two years older than you. How much do you charge?”

  “For you, baby, it’s free. I’ll pay you.”

  “That’s very flattering. I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

  She later told Allyson, “Our bopping lasted until the end of filming. Then for him it was back to Helen. How
lucky she is. Howard is a man and a half, maybe even more than that.”

  In his memoir, only Make Believe, Keel wrote, “I lost Janie at the end of the film. I guess she thought airline pilots were a wayward lot.”

  The movie made a tidy profit for MGM, although reviews were tepid at best. Time found Jane’s performance perky enough, but claimed, “The plot device of three Mikes chasing her is a thin idea spread pretty thin.”

  ***

  For her next picture, Jane moved over to Paramount, wanting to take her dressing room trailer with her. However, the gates of Paramount weren’t wide enough to allow it access inside.

  She was looking forward to her next picture, Here Comes the Groom (1951). Not only would it give her a chance to sing and dance, but it would mean a reunion with Bing Crosby, one of her favorite performers.

  They had seen each other infrequently over the years for “dalliances.” He’d first seduced her when she had an uncredited bit part in his 1936 musical, anything Goes. [ironically, Crosby appeared in the 1956 version of Anything Goes, too.]

  Their director assigned to Here Comes the Groom was Frank Capra, with whom Jane had always wanted to work, even though, since the end of the war, his career had fallen into great decline. Critics derided his style of filmmaking as old-fashioned, overly idealistic and sentimental. More sophisticated movie fans had emerged from the ashes of World War II, calling for more cynical heroes than a Capra character.

  Here Comes the Groom: Perpetuating the myth that weddings make a girl happy.

  In the Paramount commissary, Jane lunched with both Crosby and Capra until Crosby was summoned to the head office. She told Capra, “Bing’s still adorable, but I’ve noticed a lot of changes in him. He seems deeply troubled. More temperamental. Although he’s so very nice to me.”

  “As long as he treats you like a lady, what else matters?” Capra asked. She seemed to agree.

  After their luncheon reunion, she spent the night with Crosby, inviting him to a friend’s apartment. She encountered a disillusioned man, who seemed to find comfort in her arms. He was still married to the former actress and nightclub singer, Dixie Lee, but they lived in separate parts of their home, along with their four boys: Gary, twins Dennis and Phillip, and Lindsay.

  For the first time, she learned that Dixie was suffering from ovarian cancer, and had been an alcoholic for years.

  Crosby sensed that Jane was very unhappy to be appearing with Alexis Smith. “I thought you, Craig Stevens, and Reagan had all been great friends.”

  She told him she didn’t want to talk about it. “That’s over now.”

  The rest of the cast consisted of Franchot Tone, James Barton, Alan Reed, Minna Gombell, and wünderkind Anna Maria Alberghetti, an opera prodigy from Italy.

  Alberghetti had performed professionally since the age of six and had made her Carnegie Hall debut in New York at the age of thirteen. In time, she would appear on several occasions on The ed Sullivan Show.

  Jane learned that the original story of Here Comes the Groom by Robert Riskin had been shopped around for several years, and that it had, for a while, been considered as a vehicle for James Stewart and later for Bob Hope. Hope, Crosby’s co-star in all those “Road Movies,” called on the first day of shooting: “Bing, so now you’re reduced to taking my rejects?”

  [during the shooting of Here Comes the Groom, Riskin, Capra’s alter ego, suffered a stroke and had to undergo surgery for a blood clot in his brain. He was left partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He would never write again.]

  In the plot, Crosby was cast as a newspaper reporter, Pete Garvey, stationed in Paris. He visits an local orphanage and falls in love with a young boy, Bobby, and his little sister, Suzi. He wants to adopt them and bring them back to live with him in Boston. But U.S. Immigration warns him that he must marry within five days or the adoption will be voided and the Parisian kids deported.

  In the movie, the child character (Theresa) played by Alberghetti is also up for adoption. Her immediate problem gets solved when an well-meaning American couple, Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey (Alan Reed and Minna Gombell) take her away after her soulful rendition of “Caro Nome.”

  Back in Boston, Crosby learns that Jane, his fiancée when he left, is now engaged to her boss, the blueblooded and very rich Wilbur Stanley (Franchot Tone), and that she plans to marry him. Garvey learns that Smith, cast as Winifred Stanley, is also in love with her fourth cousin (Tone). The usual Capra complications ensue, but the public knew in advance that it could count on a happy ending with all matters resolved.

  In their duet together, “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,” written by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, Jane and Crosby overshadowed even their talented array of backup musicians.

  When it was released by Decca Records, “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” reached the bestseller chart on Billboard, landing there in September of 1951 and nesting there for six weeks.

  The lyrics had Americans singing throughout the autumn:

  In the cool, cool, cool of the evenin’, tell ‘em i’ll be there.

  In the cool, cool cool of the evenin’, better save a chair

  When the party’s getting’ a glow on, ‘n’ singin’ fills the air,

  In the shank o’ the night, when the doin’s are right, you can tell ‘em i’ll be there.

  On screen, Jane showed such chemistry with Crosby that a reporter visiting the set wrote of a possible romance. He was right. Columnists began to pick up on that, even though Crosby was still married.

  He and Jane got to know each other as never before. He confided details of his life to her which he had shared with only two or three other friends. Louis Armstrong described him as “a lost, lonely dude.”

  He admitted that he “suffered Catholic guilt” but had indulged in a series of extramarital affairs, calling himself a “serial adulterer” and labeling his behavior as “compulsive.”

  “I have no trouble finding beautiful women willing to hop into bed with me,” he confessed. “Often, they just want to use me.”

  “Are you sure it’s not your melodious voice that wins them over” she asked him, facetiously.

  When Hope arrived on the set, Crosby told him, “Jane and I are considering marriage, but only after Dixie dies. We are mutually supportive of each other. She’s also great in bed, a charming companion, and a rather sophisticated lady. I think she would make a wonderful wife.”

  “Make me best man,” Hope said. “Of course, since it’s a public appearance, I’ll have to charge you.”

  “Let me put it this way,” Crosby said. “Jane is the tonic in my vodka, the cream in my coffee, the caviar on my toast.” As for the best man fee, I’m being generous giving you two dollars.”

  One day, Crosby said, “I’d like to meet Maureen and Michael. In the meantime, I’ve invited my four boys to lunch with us in the commissary. You might find out for yourself if you want to be the stepmother of these losers.”

  During the lunch, Jane sensed that his sons were afraid of their father. “He was rather sharp with them,” she later told Capra. “In Gary’s case, he canceled his order of a steak and selected a salad for him instead.”

  Jane was correct in her assessment of the tensions between Crosby and his boys. After the singer died in 1977, son Gary wrote a “Daddy Dearest” type of memoir entitled Going My own way, in which he depicted Crosby as “cruel, cold, remote, and both physically and psychologically abusive.”

  Crosby did admit to Jane that he reserved the harshest punishments for Gary. As the young man later wrote: “Each Tuesday afternoon, he weighed me in, and if the scale read more than it should have, he ordered me into his office and had me drop my trousers. I dropped my pants, pulled down my undershorts, and bent over. Then he went at it with a belt dotted with metal studs he kept reserved for the occasion. Quietly, dispassionately, without the least display of emotion or loss of self-control, he whacked away until he drew the first d
rop of blood, and then he stopped. It normally took between twelve and fifteen strokes. As they came down, I counted them off one by one, and I hoped I would bleed early.”

  A famously tragic American family: The four Crosby brothers in 1959. (left to right) Dennis, Gary, Lindsay, and Phillip.

  [Bing Crosby’s sons came to tragic ends. lindsay died in 1989 and dennis in 1991, both of them suicides from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. Gary died in 1995, when he was 62, of lung cancer. in each case, Jane still retained fond memories of Crosby and wrote him long, heart-warming letters, addressing his grief.

  None of these sons inherited any of Crosby’s millions. His will created a blind trust stipulating that none of his offspring would receive inheritances until they reached the age of 65. only Phillip lived beyond that age, dying at 69, in 2014, of a heart attack.]

  Capra later said, “When I finally got Jane and Bing to walk down the aisle at movie’s end, it was straight out of it Happened one night [released in 1934, and directed by Frank Capra] with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I decided that if I was reduced to having to steal from my own picture, it was time for me to take a long rest.”

  Crosby was paid $150,000 for his performance; Jane, $125,000. Capra made off with $176,000.

  Jane later told June Allyson, “I withdrew from Bing’s affection because stories were printed that he planned to divorce Dixie and marry me. I was getting awful letters at the studio. Homewrecker was the mildest accusation against me. I realized it was time to go.”

  Here Comes the Groom made money in spite of its critical reviews. Joseph McBride, Frank Capra’s biographer, wrote, “The plot itself had seen better days. All Capra was able to do was magnify its flaws.”

  The kindest words appeared in The new York world-Telegram in a critique by Alton Cook: “Now that Jane Wyman has her Oscar safely tucked away, she is back at being our most pixieish comedienne and making her share of things very mirthful as a fisherman’s daughter out to crash Boston’s most blue blooded circles. When Frank Capra is in exactly his best mood, he and his writers have the maddest and funniest flights of fancy ever produced on this continent.”