by Nancy Reagan
One day, when Mother and Nan had gone off to do some shopping in Los Angeles, Uncle Walter suggested that we record a radio play to surprise the girls when they got back. My father jumped at the idea. With Uncle Walter directing, my father and I recorded a scene from Dodsworth, a play that Walter and Nan had both starred in. Then we moved on to Othello, with my father as Iago, myself as Desdemona, and Uncle Walter in the title role.
Uncle Walter in action was amazing to see. Dressed in his usual summer outfit—a bathing suit and an old T-shirt—he became Othello before our eyes, transforming himself into a dark-skinned nobleman with a gold earring. My father had done well enough in Dodsworth, but in Othello he made the mistake of trying to compete with Uncle Walter, and he sounded ridiculous.
The next evening we played the tape for Nan and Mother. Dodsworth was a hit, but just as I feared, Othello was a disaster. Next to Othello, Desdemona sounded like a child, while my father came off like a pompous amateur. Nan and Mother started teasing my father and accused him of hamming it up, but Uncle Walter didn’t say a word.
Several days later, the two men were sitting out on the patio before dinner when Uncle Walter suddenly put his hand on my father’s knee and said, “Kid, I remember sitting in the operating theater in Chicago and watching you work. And you know what I thought? That doesn’t look so tough!”
Uncle Walter had known all along what was on my father’s mind, and the tactful and sensitive way he responded to my father’s feelings made a great impression on me.
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the theater, and in school my main interest was drama. I was only an average student at Girls’ Latin School in Chicago, but I was class president two or three times, and I acted in all the school plays.
In my senior year, I played the lead in First Lady, by George S. Kaufman. I don’t recall much about the story, but I do remember that I wore a black dress with a white collar, and that when my classmates forgot their lines, I was able to jump in and start talking until we got back on track. Everyone was terribly impressed—including me.
After high school, I went to Smith College, where I majored in English and drama—and boys.
During this time I had my first serious boyfriend. We met in Chicago, where I had a modest coming-out party during Christmas vacation of my freshman year. It was an afternoon tea dance, and I wore a white gown with silver bands.
The party was scheduled to begin at four o’clock, but not everybody was as punctual as my father, and at four, the place was still empty. I waited, wondering if anybody was going to show up.
The first guest to arrive was a Princeton student named Frank Birney. (The Princeton Triangle Show was in town, and to be sure there would be enough eligible men, Mother invited the entire cast.) Frank must have sensed my discomfort, because he went through the receiving line over and over, each time using a different voice and pretending to be somebody else. He had us all laughing, and he put me at ease until the other guests arrived.
Frank was charming, funny, and bright, and when I returned to Smith, we started seeing each other. I went to a few football games and dances at Princeton, and he came to Smith for parties. Sometimes we’d meet in New York, under the clock in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, for a weekend in the city. But don’t let that “weekend” business fool you. I stayed on the girls-only floor of the hotel, where men were not allowed—ever. There was even a chaperone to enforce the rules.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Frank was planning to go to New York. He must have been late, because he ran across the tracks to catch his train, not realizing how fast that train was moving. The engineer pulled so hard on the emergency brake that he broke it, but he couldn’t stop the train and Frank was killed instantly.
It was the first time that anybody I was close to had died, and it was a tremendous shock. My roommate forced me to go out and take long, brisk walks. Frank and I had skirted around the subject of marriage, and even though I doubt it would have worked out, he was a dear friend and I felt a great loss. His mother gave me his cigarette case as a memento—a silver case I had given him the previous Christmas with his name engraved on it. He had been carrying that case when he was killed, and I still have it.
I acted in several plays at Smith, but my real experience in the theater came during summer vacations, when I worked as an apprentice in the old summer stock theaters of New England. Apprentices did everything: We ran errands, cleaned the dressing rooms, painted scenery, sold tickets. Sometimes we even got to act. But mostly we learned, by sitting in on rehearsals and watching the actors and directors. Stock companies were a terrific place to learn your craft, and I feel sorry for today’s younger actors who don’t have these opportunities.
Being an apprentice was far from glamorous. Sometimes we were relegated to a separate section of the hotel dining room and weren’t even entitled to the same food as the other guests. But then, acting wasn’t everybody’s idea of respectable work. One evening, as I was rushing over to the tiny run-down theater across from the hotel, an elderly woman stopped me and said, “My dear, I hope you won’t let this experience ruin you for the rest of your life.”
Only once in those summers did I actually appear on stage, in a play with Diana Barrymore. I played the maid who announced, “Madam, dinner is served.” It wasn’t much of a part, but I made sure to follow Spence’s advice: I knew my line and I didn’t bump into the furniture.
My first professional role came after the war, when Mother’s old friend Zasu Pitts offered me a part in a play called Ramshackle Inn. I joined the cast in Detroit, replacing an actress who had dropped out. It was a tiny role—that of a girl who is kept in the attic during the entire play, except for one brief moment when she runs down the stairs and says about three lines before they whisk her right back up again. But it was a start!
This wouldn’t be the last time that I benefited from Mother’s network of friends in show business. Many children of well-known individuals, including my own children, are embarrassed about using contacts that their parents have made. But all a contact can do is open that first door. The rest is up to you.
I don’t think I would have had much work as a stage actress if it hadn’t been for Mother. There was just too much competition, and I didn’t have the drive that Mother had.
Ramshackle Inn eventually wound up in New York, and when our run was over, I decided to say there. I found a fourth-floor walkup at 409 East Fifty-first Street, not far from several of Mother’s friends: Walter and Nan Huston lived around the corner, Kate Hepburn was on East Forty-ninth, and Lillian Gish was up on Fifty-seventh. Sometimes I would watch Spence rehearse for a play he was opening in, The Rugged Path. He was nervous about returning to the stage, but, as always, he was excellent.
Mother’s friends looked out for me and invited me to their houses for dinner, so I was rarely alone. Besides, New York in the 1940s was an exciting place for a career girl to be. I felt safe, and I wasn’t afraid to walk home late at night from the theater. The crosstown bus went across Fiftieth Street, and I walked a block uptown to my apartment.
By now I had joined the ranks of unemployed actors, going from one audition to the next, looking for work. These were known as cattle calls, and I hated them!
If you were lucky enough to land a part, for the first five days of rehearsal you were on trial. When I was starting out, actors were routinely fired without pay during the trial period.
It happened to me once. On the third day of rehearsal, the director took my arm and led me out through the stage door and into the alley. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” he said, “but it’s just not working. You aren’t right for the part and we’ll have to let you go.”
I was so humiliated that I couldn’t make myself go back inside to face the rest of the cast. Fighting back tears, I asked the director if he would please go in and pick up my coat and purse while I waited in the alley.
This was the first time in my life that I had ever been fired, and I took
it very badly. “It’s just not working,” the director had said, but I believed he was simply being kind. What he was obviously thinking was, You’re no good. What ever made you think you were an actress?
Or so I imagined. It’s a terrible blow to your ego, and it helps when your friends describe their own firings and rejections—as mine did.
Eventually I appeared in Lute Song, a musical about the Orient starring Mary Martin and Yul Brynner, directed by John Houseman. After a long and unproductive series of tryouts, I was astonished to hear those magic words “You’ve got the part.” “You look like you could be Chinese,” said the producer. Nobody had ever told me that before. But Mary Martin and my mother were old friends.
It was Yul’s first major role, and all the girls were swooning over him—except me. And yes, in those days Yul Brynner had hair.
Years later I learned that John Houseman had intended to let me go, and that Mary had intervened to save my job. As John told the story in his memoirs, Lute Song included “the usual nepotistic casting.… At Mary’s behest, to play the princess’s flower maiden, we engaged a pink-cheeked, attractive but awkward and amateurish virgin by the name of Nancy Davis.”
I’ve always chosen to believe that John meant that as a compliment!
Lute Song was my first and only Broadway role, and opening night was terrifying and thrilling. My parents came in from Chicago, and following the time-honored tradition, the entire cast went to Sardi’s for a party. The reviews were good enough to keep Lute Song at the Plymouth Theater for six months.
One fall evening, Mother called to say, “Nancy, if you hear from a man who tells you he’s Clark Gable, be sure not to say, ‘Sure, and I’m Greta Garbo.’ It could very well be Clark Gable.”
Gable was coming to New York and Spence had given him my number. Then, nervous that he hadn’t done the right thing, he called Mother and told her that “The King” might be calling me.
I wasn’t holding my breath—it was hard to imagine Clark Gable climbing three flights of stairs in an ordinary brownstone to call on an unknown actress. After the release of Gone With the Wind he was the most popular actor in Hollywood, which made him just about the most glamorous and desirable man in the entire world. But he did call and invited me to dinner!
I had met famous actors before, but Gable was in a category all his own. He was so handsome, and he had that intangible quality called charisma.
He was there for a week, and we went out every day and night—to baseball games during the afternoon and a play or whatever at night. It was my first experience with somebody that famous; there were times when we had to have police protection to get in and out of theaters and World Series games. When we went to the theater, the audience refused to sit down until Clark acknowledged them with a wave. But he never signed autographs, and I believe that, like Spence, he was never entirely comfortable with stardom.
He had a quality that good courtesans also have—when he was with you, he was really with you. One night he took me to a party he had promised to go to, and I was afraid I’d be left standing in a corner while Clark talked to dozens of beautiful actresses and models. But when we arrived, he never took his eyes off me; he made me feel I was the most important person in that room.
Clark was sexy, handsome, and affectionate, but I found him less the seducer he was reputed to be than a kind, romantic, and fun-loving man. He sent me flowers and we held hands, but I think that in his case the lover image had been so built up that it was a relief for him to be with someone like me, who made no demands on him.
We usually ended up at the Stork Club, which was the place to go in those days. Each time we went, a flood of women just happened to walk by our table on the way to the powder room! When we got up to dance, I never knew I had so many friends. “Nancy! How nice to see you!” And then, of course, I had to introduce them to my date.
When you spend that much time with Clark Gable, people notice. The gossip columnists were busy, but although Clark and I were more than casual friends, our relationship never developed into a big romance. But there was enough in the papers to prompt a call from Mother, who asked, “Nancy, what exactly is going on with you two?”
I replied that there wasn’t much to tell, but I’m not sure she believed me.
We were together only a week, but the fan magazines had a field day. I still have one of the clippings, which asked, in the style typical of those publications, “Has something at last happened to Clark Gable, something in the form of a slim, brown-eyed beauty named Nancy Davis—that is changing the fitful pattern of his romantic life? Has he, in other words, finally found the Gable woman, for whom he is more than willing to give up the Gable women? The answer seems to be yes—even though, if it is a love at all, it is so far a love in hiding.”
Deep in hiding, I would have said. But perhaps I missed some of the signals he was sending out. He lived in Encino, and he referred to his house as a ranch. One night, at dinner, he asked me, “How would you feel about living on a ranch?”
I mumbled something foolish like “Gee, I don’t know, I never have.” But I have often looked back at that moment and wondered: Was Clark Gable sounding me out about a possible future together? And if so, how should I have responded? I wasn’t in love with him, but if we had seen more of each other, I might have been. I was certainly taken by his attentiveness and his kindness, and by his modesty. It just wasn’t what you would have expected from such a star.
After Lute Song, I played in two more productions with Zasu Pitts and did a little television. All I remember from my first TV show was that I had to wear green makeup and black lipstick! TV was still very new, and you had to wear some pretty strange colors if you wanted to look good on those early, primitive black-and-white sets.
I played in a TV production of Ramshackle Inn, again with Zasu, which was followed by a minor drama called Broken Dishes. I don’t remember much about that one, except that it led to the biggest career break in my life. Somebody from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer saw me in Broken Dishes and suggested to my agent that I come out to Hollywood and make a screen test.
As soon as Mother heard the news she called Spence, who called George Cukor to ask him to direct my test. Well, you couldn’t ask for better than that. George was one of the top directors in Hollywood and was known for being especially good at working with women. Howard Keel assisted in the test, and George Folsey, one of the top cameramen, photographed the scene.
Soon I heard from my agent that I had been offered the standard beginner’s contract: seven years with options. In other words, the studio could terminate the relationship at any point, but I was locked in. They paid me $250 a week for the studio year, which consisted of forty weeks, with twelve vacation weeks.
I was beside myself with excitement. Not only was Metro the greatest studio in Hollywood, but I was finally earning a regular paycheck, which meant that I would no longer have to accept money from my parents. Until then, my family had helped support me, just as, years later, Ronnie and I helped support our son, Ron, during the early stages of his career.
Joining Metro was like walking into a dream world. In the MGM commissary I’d see stars like Fred Astaire, Lana Turner, June Allyson, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Esther Williams, Robert Taylor, Van Johnson, Gene Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. You could get a severe case of insecurity when you came into makeup in the morning and found yourself seated between Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner.
Louis B. Mayer was head of MGM at the time, and when he threw a party, the stars would all be there. Years later, during Ronnie’s second term as president, I began house-hunting in Los Angeles for a place to live when we returned to California. One of the homes I was shown had belonged to Mr. Mayer, and I had been looking forward to seeing it again after almost forty years. But when I walked inside, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. Without Loretta Young, Vivien Leigh, and all the others in their finery, and Judy Garland providing the entertainment, that once-magnif
icent living room seemed empty and depressing.
I never became a big star, but I was far more successful in films than I had ever been in the theater. In the theater, you had to project “big,” and exaggerate to the point where even the most subtle gesture or expression could be seen and understood in the very last row. In pictures you could play “small” and still be effective. Another thing I liked about pictures was that you would work on a scene over and over again, until it was as good as it could possibly be.
And I preferred the studio system to the anxiety of looking for work in New York. Metro was like an intimate little city, and even, at times, a large, extended family. Time and again, older and more established performers went out of their way to be supportive and encouraging to newcomers.
Ava Gardner, who was so beautiful she took my breath away, came up to me at a newsstand on the Metro lot. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, but even so, her beauty was radiant. She told me that she had just seen one of my films, and she thought it was excellent. I was a nobody, and she certainly didn’t have to do that. But this wasn’t unusual; in those days, at least, it seemed that the bigger the star, the nicer and more down-to-earth he or she was.
I don’t mean to suggest that Metro was free of troubles. Some of the stars had serious conflicts with the studio, and everybody knew when Judy Garland was replaced by Betty Hutton during the shooting of Annie Get Your Gun. But at that time nobody realized that Judy was addicted to pills.
As a newcomer at Metro, I was nervous and gullible. On my first day on the set of my first picture, Bill Tuttle, the head makeup man, came by to introduce himself. “We’ll have to do something about those eyes,” he said. “They’re obviously too big for pictures.” He was joking, of course, but I didn’t know that. So for the rest of the day I went around with my eyes half-shut, trying to make them look smaller.