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

by Darwin Porter

  One moonlight night on Santa Monica Beach, Karger, a bit tipsy, said those three magic words that Marilyn was longing to hear—“I love you.”

  She later told columnist Sidney Skolsky, “Those words were better than a thousand critics calling me a movie star. All the fame and bright lights I had dreamed about suddenly were in me.”

  But the next day, in Marilyn’s words, “Freddie forgot about what he’d told me on the beach. He was his same cynical self with all the barriers to his emotion erected around him. He even teased me about my ignorance of culture and history.”

  He told her, “Your mind isn’t developed. Compared to your body, it’s embryonic.”

  Joan Blondell later said, “All the problems that Freddie found in Marilyn he didn’t find in Jane. Jane was more his type. Marilyn for sex, Jane for marriage.”

  Karger’s first known outing with Marilyn as his date was at the premiere of The asphalt Jungle (1950), her first breakthrough movie. “I deserved something from him,” she told Skolsky. “In 1948, for his Christmas present, I bought him a $500 gold watch which I’m still paying off at the rate of $25 a month.”

  She later told Skolsky, “One of the reasons I fell for John Kennedy is that he looks like Freddie.”

  When Karger began dating Jane, Marilyn heard about it and exploded in fury. When she learned that he planned to marry Jane, she told Winters, “I will hate Jane Wyman for the rest of my life, even in heaven. I wasn’t all that interested in Reagan, but I played around with him just to get even with Jane for taking Freddie from me. I’m still carrying a torch for the guy. He should have been an underwear model.”

  ***

  After The Blue veil, Jane returned to Warners for a cameo appearance in Starlift (1951). Directed by Roy Del Ruth, its all-star cast included James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Gene Nelson, Frank Lovejoy, Virginia Mayo, Phil Harris, Gordon MacRae, Randolph Scott, Doris Day, and Ruth Roman.

  At the time, Reagan was dating both Day and Roman.

  “I’m not on the screen for very long,” Jane said, “but at least I get to sing ‘I May Be Wrong (but I Think You’re Wonderful).’”

  The silly plot concerned two pilots, Mike Nolan (Dick Wesson) and Rick Williams (Ron Hagerthy), who try to meet Nell Wayne (Janice Rule), a fictitious film star performing in a star-studded musical in San Francisco. Before meeting Rule, Roman introduces them to Day and MacRae, who are rehearsing, “You’re Gonna Lose Your Gal.”

  Although Starlift takes place during the Korean War, Jane said that it evoked fond memories of her times at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.

  Bosley Crowther, the acerbic critic for The new York Times, summed it up: “The acts are unspeakably slapdash, and the romance is painful beyond words. The performances given by Janice Rule and Ron Hagerthy as the flier are as sappy as they could possibly be, and Dick Wesson as a pushy pal of the flier is downright insufferable.”

  ***

  Hollywood columnists were surprised when Jane accepted the role of Betty Blake Rogers, the wife of Will Rogers, Sr., the legendary humorist and lariat-twirling cowboy from the Ziegfeld Follies. The picture was The Story of will Rogers, set for a 1952 release from Warner Brothers, with Michael Curtiz directing.

  Glam Jane becomes Plain Jane again, this time in The Story of will Rogers.

  As columnist Sidney Skolsky noted, “The part of Rogers’ wife so clearly called for that gentle lady, Phyllis Thaxter, who once played Ronald Reagan’s wife in a film. Thaxter knows how to play ‘nice,’ without the usual spoonful of saccharine. But why did a big star like Oscar-winning Jane Wyman take such a small role—a part that could have been handled by hundreds of actresses of minor talent?”

  Thanks to the passage of time, Jane’s reasons for accepting the minor role can be determined. To begin with, she was planning to star in a very strong role as a movie star who returns to Broadway in an aptly titled script called Broadway Revisited. It was a powerful role, although there was a rumor that Jack Warner had originally offered it to Lauren Bacall, who would play a similar role in her future on Broadway in applause, a stage musical based on all about eve.

  Jane had a secret reason for wanting the part: She hoped that, based on her performance, producers could see that she could impersonate a stage actress. She had witnessed many stars approaching forty or beyond who had extended their professional lives, after movie roles evaporated, by appearances on the stage.

  There was another reason. She had just appeared with her pal and sometimes lover, Bing Crosby, in Here Comes the Groom. He thought he could play Will Rogers and actually submitted to a screen test. He asked Jane to co-star as his wife. However, when he saw himself on the screen, he had to admit that his own personality and the persona of the humorist were not a perfect fit. As he told Jane, “Will and I don’t go together like love and marriage, or a horse and carriage.”

  Jane was ready to bow out of the role after Crosby’s screen test bombed, but Warner persuaded her to accept the role as a favor to him. He had decided to cast Will Rogers, Jr. in the part of his father, but he was very inexperienced and had no marquee name.

  “I need someone who can get movie fans to buy tickets,” Warner told her. “If you’ll go along with me on this one, I’ll assure you of some big pictures coming up where I’ll give you the lead. I’ve requested this kind of concession from Bette Davis on at least on two occasions when she was big around this studio, and she agreed.”

  The mogul was referring to Davis taking a secondary role in The Man who Came to dinner (1941) with Monty Woolley and watch on the Rhine (1943) in which she played second fiddle to Paul Lukas.

  Directed by Michael Curtiz, with whom Jane had a dreaded reunion, The Story of will Rogers featured a supporting cast of now familiar faces to her, including James Gleason, Carl Benton Reid, Eve Miller, and Slim Pickens. Steve Brodie and Eddie Cantor were also in the cast.

  Virtually all of America had tuned in for details about Rogers’ tragic death in 1935, when he was killed in a plane crash en route from Fairbanks to Alaska’s northernmost tip, Point Barrow. His close friend, Wiley Post, also died in the wreck. In the movie, Noah Beery, Jr. interpreted the role of Post.

  During a dialogue with Curtiz, he told her that her role had been offered to both Eleanor Parker and Phyllis Thaxter—yes, the same housewifey actress suggested by Skolsky.

  The role of Will Rogers, in addition to being offered to Bing Crosby, had been considered for both Herb Shriner and Charles Drake. Curtiz also told her that Will Rogers, Jr., the son of the subject of the film, had been screen tested and subsequently rejected for the role way back in 1942. In contrast, on this newest effort, he got the part.

  “Big year for me, 1942,” Curtiz said. “I was hot shit. Casablanca, you know. Your boy, Reagan, didn’t get Bogie’s part.”

  Jane was introduced to her leading man, Will Rogers, Jr., who had had a varied career. From January 3, 1943, to May 23, 1944, he had been a U.S. Congressman from California when he resigned to rejoin the U.S. army. Through a varied career, he’d been a minor actor, writer, and publisher.

  He closely resembled his father, though lacking any of his talent. He later told the press that he found Jane “wonderful to work with, tremendously helpful and supportive. She taught me more about acting than Curtiz did.”

  Publicly, Jane said nothing, but complained to Curtiz, “I find him tiring to work with— retake, retake, and more retakes until he gets it right, if he ever does.”

  Reviewers were puzzled that the script by Frank Davis and Stanley Roberts contained so many historical inaccuracies about Will Rogers, Sr. Although his son was very familiar with his father’s life, he apparently never alerted the writers about the points where they were wrong. For example, the movie depicts Rogers’ father, Clem Rogers, as a delegate from Oklahoma at the 1932 Democratic convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. Clem Rogers, the grandfather of Rogers, had died in 1911, the year his grandson was born.

  After a screening, Jane told Curti
z, “I don’t like the way I look on the screen. As for that drab wardrobe you forced me to wear, it stinks. I refuse to do anything to promote the film.”

  She was right. The critics damned her performance with faint praise, using such words as “likable,” “supportive,” “pleasant,” and “displays a gentle attitude.”

  She described her role as “a simpering onlooker.” Years later, when she saw it on TV, she said. “I think I used Nancy Davis as my role model, you know when she gazes adoringly at Reagan when he’s making one of his endless speeches.”

  In spite of its many weaknesses, The Story of will Rogers was one of the top box office hits of 1952, grossing $2.65 million in U.S. rentals.

  In later life, Rogers, Jr. appeared in several TV productions, and was one of several actors to host syndicated reruns of the hit series, death valley days, whose original run was hosted for a season by Reagan himself.

  Jane lived long enough to be saddened by the increasing deaths of people she had known. In 1993, she heard over TV news that Rogers, Jr. had committed suicide at the age of 81, after suffering heart problems, several strokes, and an ongoing series of hip replacements.

  ***

  Jane always listened to broadcasts from Hollywood, especially roundups of news in the entertainment industry.

  Cougar Jane with the younger and very well-heeled Travis Kleefeld, whose society mother was anything but amused.

  The date was March 4, 1952. Leading off the afternoon news was an announcement that Ronald Reagan had married the MGM starlet, Nancy Davis, in the Little Brown Church in the Valley, in Studio City, California.

  Stunned, Jane turned off the TV. The next day, reporters besieged her, wanting her to reveal her feelings and reactions. It seemed that the world wanted to know.

  “I wish Ronnie and his bride all the happiness—and that’s all I have to say. It’s not my affair.”

  “What do you think of Nancy Davis?” one reporter called out to her.

  “I have never heard of the lady until today,” she falsely claimed.

  “But she’s a movie star,” he yelled back.

  “I doubt that,” she said. “I read variety from its front cover to the back page. I don’t recall reading about any Nancy Davis. Excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”

  Exactly thirteen days from the date of Reagan’s marriage, Nancy made her own announcement to the press. She reported, “I’m engaged to Travis Kleefeld, and I’ll have nothing else to say about it.”

  As reporters rushed back to their offices and their typewriters, the first questions on everyone’s lips was, “Who in the fuck is Travis Kleefeld? Do we have a picture of this guy?”

  A devastatingly handsome young man, Kleefeld was ten years younger than Jane but looked much younger even than that. When they had been secretly dating, he was often mistaken for her son.

  After the announcement of his engagement to Jane, he became an overnight celebrity. The search was on to find out who he was.

  No complete answer ever emerged, but there were clues. It seemed that Jane had met the dashing young man at a Christmas party, and had begun to date him right away.

  Speculation was rampant. Had Jane deliberately chosen to announce her engagement so soon after Reagan’s marriage? Was she rushing into something impetuous because her former spouse had beaten her to the altar? Only she knew the answers.

  Very little was known about him. He was said to be rich, and that he didn’t have to marry Jane for her money. He was the scion and heir to a well-known contracting family, and he worked in the family business, which he would one day inherit. His friends, however, said that his secret desire was to be a singer like Frank Sinatra.

  [Five years after the announcement of his engagement, Kleefeld did launch a fairly unsuccessful singing career, billing himself as “Tony Travis.” He generated little enthusiasm for his talent, despite the fact that he had quite an acceptable singing voice.]

  Two weeks after Jane’s wedding announcement, she was summoned to Warner Brothers. The studio mogul told her that a ton of fan mail had come in from her devotees, denouncing her decision to marry a man so much younger than herself.

  “You’ve been called everything from a cradle snatcher to an old bag lady seeking to corrupt a handsome young man,” Warner said. “You’ve made a laughing stock of yourself. Your fans are deserting you in droves. Hundreds claim that they will never go to see another Jane Wyman picture.”

  When a reporter investigated the reaction of Kleefeld’s parents, it was obvious that collectively, they interpreted the upcoming marriage as horrifying. One family member said, “I hear Jane Wyman is forty-five if she’s a day.”

  Actually, at the time, she was only thirty-eight.

  When the fan magazines hit the stands, Jane was humiliated and burst into tears at the unflattering coverage.

  Columnist Ruth Waterbury, a close observer of Jane’s, later recalled, “The situation matched that [of the storyline] of her future picture with Rock Hudson called all That Heaven allows, the story of an older woman falling for a young man. Was Jane in love with Kleefeld enough to withstand the hostile reaction of the public? I think she loved him in her fashion. But eventually, she started to give in. She couldn’t stand up to the mounting pressure and ridicule. In a few weeks, she called off the engagement, claiming that ‘Travis and I aren’t right for each other.’”

  Since his family controlled the purse strings, the son and heir opted to acquiesce to their complaints. Modern Screen wrote, “Travis Kleefeld put a down payment on a mink coat for Jane Wyman just before the engagement was called off. Incidentally, relations between Jane and Kleefeld’s mother were what you might call ‘strained’ when we were going to press.”

  Jane was also quoted as saying, “Age had nothing whatever to do with our decision not to marry. I guess we’re the only two people who are not conscious of the difference in our ages. It was just that we decided that marriage was wrong for us and it was silly to go into as serious a matter as matrimony without being perfectly aware it was what we both wanted. Believe me, Travis and I will always be friends. I think he is one of the finest men I’ve ever met. But we have both realized that we went into this thing too quick and that it’s better to break up before marriage than to go into the divorce courts later.”

  What Louella Parsons knew and other reporters didn’t was that after breaking off the engagement, Jane continued to see Kleefeld on several occasions. “He’s great in bed,” Jane told Parsons in a confidential aside. From then on, she saw him in secret for the next few weeks, although he dated other, younger women.

  When asked why she continued to see Kleefeld after breaking off the engagement, Jane said, “It’s best that way—no entangling alliances.”

  She admitted to Parsons that she was jealous of the starlets that Kleefeld dated, knowing that the columnist would not print that comment.

  Riddled with insecurities, Jane told Ruth Waterbury, “God, I feel old looking at Travis out with all those young, beautiful women. Don’t print that!”

  ***

  In spite of the fiasco associated with her engagement to Kleefeld, Jane entered her “cougar” period, although that term was not in vogue at the time. Today, of course, “cougar” is used to describe an older woman pursuing a younger man.

  Along came Tony Trabert, an extraordinary tennis player who was thirteen years younger than Jane, but looked twenty-five years her junior. In the opinion of some observers, it survived as one of the most mysterious relationships of her life.

  Was it an affair, a friendship, a passing fancy, or something serious? Jane was not talking. Trabert became the World’s no. 1 tennis champion, and is included in the list of the twenty-one greatest players of all time.

  Standing 6’1”, he was considered by reporters “cute rather than handsome.” There had been speculation that Kleefeld looked like Jane’s son, but Trabert, in the words of one journalist, “could pass for her grandson.”

  Jane with the very
young future tennis star, Tony Trabert. When June Allyson heard of this relationship, she sniffed, “The less said about it, the better.”

  As a cynical Hedda Hopper said when she saw a picture of Jane with Trabert at a tennis match, “The next thing I’ll hear is that Jane has been hanging out around kindergartens.”

  [Born in Cincinnati in 1930, Marion anthony Trabert was a stand-out athlete in both tennis and basketball at the University of Cincinnati.

  In 1955, three years after dating Jane, his record was one of the most spectacular ever associated with an american tennis player. He had won a trio of the most prestigious amateur tennis tournaments—the French, wimbledon, and american Championships en route to being ranked world no. 1 among the amateurs for that year. He turned professional that autumn of 1955.

  After his retirement in 1971, he began a 33-year career as a tennis and golf analyst for CBS, covering such events as the U.S. open. after an amazing career, Trabert retired in 2004, three years before Jane died.]

  ***

  Originally, Judy Garland had signed with Paramount to appear as a Broadway star in a film entitled Just for You. Robert Carson had written its screenplay based on Stephen Vincent Benet’s story, Famous.

  But after being fired by MGM on the set of annie Get Your Gun, Garland was still struggling with pill addiction. Bloated and puffy, she had failed in her diet.

  Grande dame of the American Theater, Ethel Barrymore, co-starring with der Bingle and Jane in Just for You.

  Consequently, Paramount decided to rewrite the script into a vehicle for Jane Wyman and Bing Crosby, pairing them together as a team based on the success of their previous hit, Here Comes the Groom.