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

by Darwin Porter

  Just for You, with a reworked script, was shot within a context of speed and intense pressure beginning in mid-October of 1951, and finished shortly before Christmas for an early release in 1952.

  Filming it was not a happy experience for either Jane or Crosby, who had discussed a possible marriage during the making of their previous film together.

  This time around, however, “Der Bingle” was not in a romantic mood. Consumed by what he described as “Catholic guilt,” Crosby was morbidly obsessed with the agonies of his slowly dying wife, the former star, Dixie Lee, a victim of ovarian cancer. Also, his conflicts with his sons, especially Gary, were growing increasingly wrenching and bitter.

  Jane’s private life was in upheaval as she drifted from beau to beau. Consumed with emotional anxieties, she also faced a health crisis, leading eventually to hospitalization because of a kidney stone.

  In spite of her problems, and despite her status as a woman on the doorstep of middle age, she looked like a far younger actress than she actually was. That was fine with her, considering the skimpy costumes she’d have to wear in her upcoming picture.

  Its director, Elliott Nugent, had assembled a strong supporting cast, including the formidable Ethel Barrymore, along with Robert Arthur, Natalie Wood, Regis Toomey, and veteran actress Cora Witherspoon.

  Jane was cast in it Just for You as Carolina Hill, a musical comedy star on Broadway with a personal style evocative of Mary Martin. Carolina is the girlfriend of Jordan Blake (Crosby), a Broadway producer who is so busy and self-involved that he neglects his two children, Jerry Blake (Robert Arthur) and Barbara Blake (Natalie Wood).

  In the film, Jane tries to bring harmony to the family and reconcile Crosby’s character to his son and daughter.

  During their first luncheon together, Jane and Crosby talked about the plight of alienated children as being “a little too close to home” to each of their individual situations. Crosby was very estranged from his four sons, and between Jane’s career and her heavy dating schedule, she saw little of Maureen and Michael.

  She was anxious to meet and work with “Miss Barrymore,” whom she regarded as the greatest actress in the history of the American theater. Ethel had been cast as Alida De Bronkhart, the principal of a snobbish girls’ school.

  She found Ethel in declining health, living the last decade of her life. “I was young back in 1901, somewhat of a beauty. Look at me now, a withered rose in the summer garden, deep in December.”

  Whenever possible, the two actresses met for tea or else had lunch together in the commissary.

  “Zinging a Little Zong”...Just for You, with Bing and Jane.

  Barrymore shared many memoires of Jane during their long discussions together, revealing details about her private life that didn’t get included in her autobiography, Memories.

  Ethel tantalized Jane with tidbits from her past. “Twice in my life, two people have attempted to rape me. Tallulah Bankhead and my brother, John. Only one of them succeeded, but I won’t tell you which one.”

  She also said that in 1900, Winston Churchill had proposed marriage to her. “Perhaps I should have accepted his proposal,” she told Jane.

  Jane hadn’t seen Natalie Wood since they’d worked together on The Blue veil, where she’d played Joan Blondell’s adolescent daughter. “Here I am again playing a daughter,” she told Jane. “When will I ever grow up?”

  [Four months later, Jane encountered natalie at a Hollywood premiere. The young girl rushed up to her to whisper confidential secrets. “Guess what? i’ve had my period. The flow of blood terrified me. i screamed for my mother, thinking i was dying. Mother had never explained to me the finer points of menstruation.”

  “Congratulations!” Jane said. “welcome to womanhood.”

  “i can’t wait to check out the dicks of so many guys—Tab Hunter, Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson, maybe even Robert wagner. or perhaps that new guy, Jimmy dean. i’ve talked it over with my mother, and she thinks it should be this hot young actor, nick adams. in fact, she’s selected nick to teach me the ways of the world.”

  “i think fourteen is an acceptable age,” Jane said. “it wasn’t that long ago that a fourteen-year-old was getting married and having children and following daniel Boone into the american wilderness.”]

  Paramount hoped to repeat the success of a Crosby/Wyman duet, which had been such a hit in their rendition of “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.”

  In response, the composers came up with “Zing a Little Zong.” When it was released as a recording, it enjoyed a moderate success, but they did not replicate the sales of their previous hit.

  For his appearance in Just for You, Crosby was paid his standard fee of $150,000, with Jane receiving $133,000. During the shoot, she also signed a contract with Decca, who wanted to promote her as “The Dinah Shore of Tomorrow.”

  She was rather blasé about a recording career, although she made some records with Danny Kaye, Groucho Marx, and Jimmy Durante. Two of her comedy releases included “Black Strap Molasses” and, on the flip side, “How Di Ye Do and Shake Hands.”

  Just for You enjoyed only moderate success at the box office, and was certainly not a hit the way that Here Comes the Groom had been.

  The Christian Science Monitor wrote, “As Broadway star Carolina Hill, Jane Wyman is abundantly qualified to strike a young man’s fancy—or, as the story indicates, a young man’s father’s fancy. She plays with genuine affection scenes in which she tries to promote better family relationships among the Blakes, and with tender understanding, the difficult passages in which she discovers that she has inadvertently encouraged the young son to fall in love with her.”

  Writing in Showplace, critic Jake Karr said, “Just for You is artificial hocus-pocus. Miss Wyman bobs about ingratiatingly, mainly in abbreviated togs, displaying an elegant figure. She also pipes prettily some of the film’s songs.”

  Mae Tinee of the Chicago Tribune found that “Miss Wyman sparkles like Lake Michigan on a sunny morning, and the studio provides her with some of the most becoming costumes a woman could have.”

  [after Just for You, Crosby and Jane went their separate ways, occasionally running into each other, but drifting apart.]

  ***

  On most occasions, Jane kept quiet when asked about Reagan. She’d often leave the room “to powder my nose,” if she were at a private party. If cornered by a reporter, she’d say, “Excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”

  But Reagan angered her when, as president of SAG, he “launched a stupid campaign” (her words). He wanted to prevent fan magazines such as Photoplay and Modern Screen from writing about the private lives of “established stars.” Jane expressed her disbelief that Reagan thought such a thing was possible to achieve in a free society with a free press.

  In a public statement, Reagan said, “Such stories are all right for youngsters on their way up—Natalie Wood or Tab Hunter come to mind, perhaps Tony Curtis or Janet Leigh.”

  “But there comes a time when established stars such as Jane Wyman and myself should have control over what is written about them, with the option of a veto.”

  It is not known what prompted his outrage. Jane told friends that she suspected it was an event that occurred back in September of 1951, when she, escorted by Greg Bautzer, attended the premiere of The Blue veil.

  On a chance encounter, the couple ran into another couple in the lobby of the theater: Reagan out on a date with the MGM starlet, Nancy Davis. He introduced his date to his former wife.

  As Bautzer noted, “An iceberg came between these two ladies big enough to sink ten ships the size of the Titanic. But all of us were ever so polite.”

  When both couples arrived later at Ciro’s, for some reason, Nancy and Reagan were directed to empty chairs at the table otherwise occupied by Jane and Bautzer. [Perhaps it was a mistake from a misguided maître d’hôtel, although it was later surmised that Bautzer himself had tipped the headwaiter and asked him to do that.] Not wanting to
make a scene, Reagan and Nancy sat at the table with Jane and the handsome attorney, whom he already knew.

  Bautzer said, “Reagan looked like he was sweating blood. But all of us were too well bred to make a scene. Boy, did that guy look like he wanted to crawl out of his seat. Both Nancy and Jane behaved like two proper ladies, not bitter rivals in a love triangle.”

  It must have been terribly awkward for Nancy, because I’m sure she’d heard all the stories about how Reagan was still moaning over the loss of Jane. Everybody ordered something, something light, that is, and this ‘double date’ soon broke up as we went our separate ways. My evening didn’t end until Jane swore on a stack of Bibles that I was better in bed than her former husband.”

  When the fan magazines heard what Reagan planned to do by presenting a censorship proposal to the members of SAG, they fought back. A typical response, an open letter to Reagan, appeared in Motion Picture Magazine, as composed by its editors:

  “You cited fan magazines about stories of your divorce from Jane wyman as being ‘false and irresponsible’ invasions of your privacy. we disagree, because you apparently didn’t feel the marriage itself was a private affair. during your marriage, you opened your home to photographers and reporters and allowed pictures of your home, your wife, and your children, Maureen and Michael, to be taken. But if a happy marriage is news, then it seems to follow that the breakup of that marriage is also news. Yours is a business, Mr. Reagan, which is built on publicity. in this sense, actors are like politicians.”

  Most actors were horrified to learn about Reagan’s position. Ida Lupino and many others at SAG advised him not to bring such a proposal to a vote.

  His censorship proposal died like a victim shot in the heart.

  ***

  Still floating from studio to studio, Jane was assigned a role in her next movie, love Story, scheduled for a 1953 release through Columbia.

  [its title was later changed to the more sexually suggestive let’s do it again.]

  She was to be reunited with Ray Milland, her co-star from The lost weekend.

  Doing It Again: Jane with Ray Milland, this time in a context more flippant than the emotionally wrenching The lost weekend.

  Three weeks before director Alexander Hall was to begin rehearsals and shooting, Jane arrived at Columbia to work on her dance routines and songs.

  As she waited in a rehearsal room, in walked Fred Karger. She’d first heard his small band at a party given by Evelyn Keyes and John Huston. “My dreamboat” she later called him. He had just come from a morning game of tennis.

  As she’d later tell June Allyson, “He was the man with the Betty Grable legs, the male equivalent, of course. He wore a pair of tennis shorts, very tight, making things rather obvious. His outfit and T-shirt were sunflower yellow. I had never seen a tennis player in anything but white. He was beautifully tanned and a living doll. He told me he was going to be my vocal coach at Columbia. I’m afraid I said something obvious, an old line.”

  Paramount promoted movie depictions of Jane as cheesecake, wearing leotards and sexy, strapless, form-fitting tops. Fearing that he was focusing exclusively on her legs, she told the photographer, “My breasts have not altogether fallen, in case you want to photograph them—fully covered, of course—too.”

  “And what was that, my dear?” Allyson asked. “Maybe I’ll use it sometime myself.”

  “I asked him, ‘Did it hurt?’”

  “You mean, my tennis game?”

  “No, when you fell from Heaven,” she answered.

  Karger had dark, wavy hair, a compelling smile, and an athletic build.

  Fred Lawrence Guiles, author of legend, The life and death of Marilyn Monroe, wrote, “Fred Karger’s eyes danced with an exuberance that become mystifying only after you bumped up against his reserve.”

  It seemed that Jane fell in love with him almost at once, although she later confessed, “I never did break down the wall of reserve he’d constructed around himself.” During the three weeks she worked with him, she got to know him “as Bathsheba knew David” (her words).

  “He looks great in clothes, from tennis shorts to a tuxedo,” Jane told Joan Blondell. “And he looks best of all without a stitch on. It would take a Michelangelo to sculpt a body like that.”

  Except for his tennis outfits, he always wore conservative, dark suits and never went out the door without putting one on. Most evenings, he wore a tuxedo when taking her nightclubbing and certainly for his public appearances as the leader of his band. Once, when he escorted Jane to a garden party, he selected a dark suit as his wardrobe to an event where other many other men were attired (his words) in “pussy pink or marigold pants.”

  “Almost overnight, Freddie has come to fill a void in my life,” Jane told Paulette Goddard. “I think he is the man for me.”

  “Sounds to me you’ve found husband number four,” Goddard said.

  “I think you’re right. I want to be with someone young and vital, not some grandpa like Reagan, who sits in the living room every night reading editorial pages and news magazines, not to mention endless books on politics.”

  “Ronnie talks politics day and night,” Jane said. “Freddie and I share the same interests, including similar tastes in music. He likes to gossip about the movie colony, like I do. He also likes to spend every evening dancing in nightclubs, just like I prefer. Unlike Van Johnson, he doesn’t drop you off at the end of the evening, with just a kiss on the cheek. After stripping down, he brushes his teeth, gargles, and jumps into bed to send a gal to Heaven.”

  ***

  Fred with Jane, in love, and happy.

  While working with Karger during the day and spending her nights in his arms, she learned more about him. He was more than a vocal coach. She knew he had his own band, but he was also a composer and conductor.

  He’d been born only a year before her, the son of the famous Maxwell Karger, a producer and director at the old Metro company before it became Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

  In 1921, Maxwell died young, suffering a fatal heart attack aboard a train traveling from New York to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Fred’s mother, Anne Karger, had lived with him at the Hollywood Hotel, and was known for staging Saturday night parties, which she called “Pops Evenings.”

  As a young boy, Fred moved among the Hollywood elite, getting a kiss on the lips from Rudolph Valentino, a lollipop from Charlie Chaplin, or the promise of becoming a child star from Mary Pickford. Jack Pickford, Mary’s brother, always tossed him in the air, and Buster Keaton once brought him a pet baby rattlesnake. “Imagine giving a rattlesnake to a little boy,” Fred said. “Buster was insane.”

  Fred with Jane, in love, and happy.

  Fred had been born a Catholic, but was not a practicing one. “I’m out all Saturday night into the wee hours. When it’s time for mass, I’m sleeping it off,” he told Jane.

  In August of 1940, he’d married a minor actress, Patti Sachs, who eventually left show business and became a high-powered lawyer. They had one daughter, Terence Meredith, nicknamed “Terry.” When Sachs and Fred separated, she used her skill as a lawyer “to fleece me,” Fred told Jane. “I got custody of Terry. My daughter and I live with Anne.”

  During his days, Fred was the assistant to Morris Stoloff, the musical director at Columbia. But at night, he made the rounds, playing at elegant private parties, including one at the home of Jack Warner. Because of his good looks, he and his band were often booked by some of the most famous hostesses of Hollywood, including Merle Oberon. Sometimes, he’d get a booking in the Escoffier Room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. On such an occasion, Jane always had a front-row table.

  Hedda Hopper summed up the attraction: “Fred Karger and Jane had music in common and had a lot of laughs together. Since he was practically her age, she didn’t have to go through any more older women/younger man publicity. He was as lonely as she was, and, unlike Bautzer, wanted to remarry. He felt rootless and disoriented, and wanted to get back into domestic harness ag
ain. At the time, everyone thought he was perfect for Jane. Even Ronald Reagan approved of him.”

  “I’m in love with Freddie Karger,” Jane said in a giddy voice over the phone to June Allyson. “He makes beautiful music on and off the stage. I’m already calling him Freddie. He’s gorgeous and all the plumbing is first rate and works perfectly—a maiden’s dream. He is my Prince Charming, the man I’ve waited for all my life and didn’t think I would ever find.”

  “Cool it, gal,” Allyson cautioned.

  As Maureen Reagan later wrote, “Mother brought Michael and me home one weekend from boarding school. It was a Halloween weekend, and I met Fred and his daughter, Terry, who was about six months younger than me. Michael, Terry, and I went trick or treating. When we got back, mother and Fred were waiting in the den. We walked in, and they sat us down and told us of their plans to be married. Boom! Instant extended family! Just add water and stir. When they got back from their elopement, we had these bags of rice to throw at them. I think I might have pelted Fred with clumps of rice a bit harder than tradition called for.”

  ***

  On November 1, 1952, Jane Wyman married Fred Karger in Santa Barbara at El Montecito Presbyterian Church, although both were Catholic, a church that frowned on divorce. Fred’s best man was Richard Quine, the actor and director. They had the shortest honeymoon on record, one Sunday night in a suite at a Santa Monica hotel.

  News of Jane’s Infatuation Goes Out to the A-list:

  Above, Ethel Merman, Jane, and Fred Karger share a meal and some gossip. But what are all three of them looking at? The formidable Bette Davis had just appeared before them.

  Both of them got up early Monday morning to begin filming let’s do it again (1953)..

  Back in Hollywood, they quickly learned that both Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper were furious at Jane for not giving either of them an exclusive scoop.

  In another part of town, a young starlet, Marilyn Monroe, was, as she later recalled, “Crying my eyes out. I vowed to get even with Wyman if it was the last thing I ever did.” There were rumors that she had contemplated suicide that day by overdosing on sleeping pills.