Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  13

  ACTRESS PATRICIA NEAL encountered Reagan at a Hollywood gathering and thought she had never seen a man so glum. “His wife, Jane Wyman, had just announced their separation,” Neal said. “And it was sad because he did not want a divorce. I remember he went outside. An older woman went with him. He cried.”

  Reagan continued working, not knowing what else to do. Eddie Bracken appeared with him in The Girl from Jones Beach, a forgettable film about the search for the perfect female figure. “Reagan was a lonely guy,” Bracken said. He thought it striking that Reagan ignored the beautiful women all around him. “He was never for the sexpots,” Bracken said. “He was never a guy looking for the bed. He was a guy looking for companionship more than anything else.”

  Work took him unexpectedly overseas. The Marshall Plan would help right Britain’s listing economy, but in the autumn of 1948 the stabilizing effect remained mostly in the future. The British needed every bit of cash they could lay hands on, and so the British government had forbidden the export of profits by foreign companies operating in Britain. For Warner Brothers and other Hollywood studios that owned and operated theaters in Britain, this meant that the profits their British theaters earned could be spent only in Britain. Warner decided to use its “frozen dollars,” as such funds were called, to make a film in England. Reagan, Patricia Neal, and other cast members sailed for England in November 1948 to shoot The Hasty Heart.

  The project tried the patience and endurance of all involved. The weather was cold, and persisting shortages of fuel compelled the British to spend even less on heating their buildings than usual. The setting of the film, Burma at the end of the war, aggravated the discomfort, requiring the cast to traipse around in tropical clothing.

  Reagan put on a good front for the cameras and the public. He and Pat Neal stayed at London’s Savoy hotel, prompting the mandatory speculation in the movie press about a romance. But the relationship was purely professional. “We got along well enough to choose each other’s company even when we were not working,” Neal remarked later. “We would have dinner and even go dancing at some of the local dance halls.” Yet the desire wasn’t there, not on his part and apparently not on hers.

  Reagan deflected his forlornness in various ways. He wrote a long, joking letter to Jack Warner describing the plight of the cast and crew in their distant island outpost. “To the finder: Please see this letter reaches J. L. Warner, Burbank, California,” the letter began. It continued: “Dear J.L.: I am putting this letter in a bottle and throwing it on the tide with the hope that somehow it may reach you. Perhaps my report of life here in this dismal wilderness will be of help to future expeditions. You will recall with what light hearts we set out such a long time ago—optimistic about an ability to find and thaw the ‘frozen dollar.’ If we could have known then what lay (‘lay’—there’s a word I no longer experience or understand) before us how different would have been our mood. Our first glimpse of this forbidding land was almost as frightening as a look at The Horn Blows at Midnight. There seems to be a heavy fog but it had the odor of cow dung and coal soot—fearing an explosion of this gaseous stuff, I ordered ‘no smoking.’ Better I should have ordered ‘no breathing.’ The natives were friendly in a sort of ‘below freezing’ way but were won over by gifts—mostly cash. We were quite generous in this inasmuch as it was your cash. They speak a strange jargon similar in many ways to our language but different enough to cause confusion. For example—to be ‘knocked up’ here refers in no way to those delights for which ‘Leander swam the Hellespont.’ It merely means to be awakened from a sound sleep by a native device somewhat like our telephone. Another instance of this language difference is the word ‘bloody.’ You could see a native cut stem to stern but to describe the spectacle as ‘bloody’ would get you thrown out of a saloon in London. Mentioning a pain in my ‘fanny’ (which is easy to get here) I was distressed to learn that even this standard American term has an opposite meaning. If I had what they call a ‘fanny’ I could be Queen of England … There is a cleared space near the center of the native capital called Piccadilly Circus. I have gone there many times and have yet to see an elephant or an acrobat. In fairness I must admit how even there are some characters (mostly female) who seem to be selling tickets to something. They keep pulling my sleeve and saying ‘two bob, Governor.’ One of the most interesting customs of the higher-class natives is something of a sport. They all wear red coats to chase some dogs which in turn are chasing a fox. I should add the natives are mounted on horses. This affair is mistakenly called ‘a fox hunt.’ I say mistakenly because the red object has nothing to do with the fox; they actually are doing this to muscle up the horses which are then served for dinner. I have been very lucky so far in that I have been able to avoid the horse and eat only the saddle and harness. In connection with this let me write a word about English cooking. What they do to food we did to the American Indian … Cheerio! (that is the native word for good by. It is spoken without moving the upper lip while looking down the nose).”

  Reagan did what he could to make England seem more like home. He ordered a cargo of steaks from New York’s 21 Club. But several fewer than he paid for reached his table. The hotel staff said the others had spoiled en route; Reagan suspected they had been pilfered by meat-hungry locals.

  Filming practices in England differed from those in America. The English took full weekends off. On one such weekend Reagan and Neal were driven about the countryside by an Englishman who was courting one of Neal’s friends. Conversation turned to what each would like to be more than anything else in the world. Reagan answered, with a wry laugh, “The president of the United States.”

  MAYBE HE MEANT it. More likely it was another joke, something to lift the gloom of the English winter, the gloom on his soul.

  He returned to America amid the debate over the North Atlantic Treaty, and he reached Hollywood just weeks after the arrival in the film capital of a young woman from Illinois who, as he had done the previous decade, traveled west to try her luck in the movies. Nancy Davis had been born Anne Frances Robbins in New York in 1921. Her parents were Edith Luckett and Kenneth Robbins, whose marriage foundered before their daughter was old enough to remember. She followed her mother, an actress, from theater to theater, until Edith decided the trouping life wasn’t good for a little girl and handed Nancy, as she was always called, to an aunt who lived in Maryland. After six years of separation mother and daughter were reunited when Edith married Loyal Davis, a Chicago physician. Edith abandoned the stage but took parts in radio dramas produced in Chicago.

  She kept in touch with former colleagues, and when the likes of Spencer Tracy, Mary Martin, and Lillian Gish passed through Chicago, they often stayed at the family’s Lake Shore Drive apartment. “Spence was the most charming man I have ever known,” Nancy recalled later. “He suffered from insomnia, and when I came home late from a date or a night out with friends, he would be up, eager to have a long talk.” With multiple role models in the business, Nancy eventually considered an acting career for herself. She mentioned the idea to Tracy, who offered simple advice: “Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” Katharine Hepburn, another visitor, offered a warning. She said Nancy had met only stars, people who had succeeded in the business beyond ordinary expectations. She needed to be aware that most hopefuls did much less well, requiring regular work as waitresses and secretaries to round out their meager pay from acting.

  Nancy nonetheless went ahead, moving from Chicago to New York to try her luck on the stage. She had acted in college, at Smith, and in summer stock, but the reality of the professional theater was daunting. Casting call after casting call left her unchosen. Eventually, she landed a small part in Lute Song, at the insistence of Mary Martin, the female lead. The play ran for four months, which turned out to constitute her whole Broadway career.

  Yet she made new contacts. Clark Gable was between wives and past his prime, but he was handsome, charming, and, after an introd
uction by Spencer Tracy, apparently interested in Nancy. They spent much of a week together in New York, inspiring speculation in the movie magazines about the new young thing in the leading man’s life. But when he went back to California, she stayed behind.

  Not for long, though. Edith decided Nancy might have better luck in movies than on the stage, and she called Tracy to see what he could do. He arranged a screen test at MGM with the studio’s best director, cameraman, and technicians. The test yielded the desired result, and MGM offered her a contract. She packed her few belongings and, in the spring of 1949, headed for Hollywood.

  She had more in mind than a movie career. Or perhaps she was simply hedging her bets. She had always imagined getting married, to someone as successful as her stepfather. Her sole serious love affair had ended tragi cally when her sweetheart was killed by a train. Now, at nearly twenty-eight, she had to consider how much time she had left. New York hadn’t turned up anyone marriageable, but Hollywood might.

  By at least one account she took pains to identify the most eligible men in the movie industry. An acquaintance at MGM recalled her sharing a list she had made, with unattached males listed by professional category: producers, directors, agents, lawyers, actors. At the top of Nancy’s list in the actor category was Ronald Reagan, perhaps Hollywood’s most conspicuously eligible bachelor following his divorce from Jane Wyman.

  Dore Schary, who knew Reagan through the Screen Actors Guild, had just become head of production at MGM. He learned of the studio’s new hire and that she wanted to meet Reagan. He and his wife hosted a small dinner that brought them together. “There was a lot of political talk and some arguments,” recalled Schary’s daughter, who took part in the dinner. “Reagan made his views very clear. He was terribly articulate. Nancy listened to him attentively. She was sitting opposite him at the dinner table and she kept smiling at him in agreement.”

  Reagan wasn’t smitten. He pleaded an early departure to New York the next day and left the dinner before the other guests. His SAG work kept him busy during the following weeks. Conceivably, he forgot about the dinner, for he subsequently claimed that the first time he met Nancy Davis was several months later, in the autumn of 1949. Nancy contacted him indirectly to express her worry that she was being mistaken for another Nancy Davis, who was associated with certain leftist causes. Reagan looked into the matter and assured the intermediary that all was well; the studios would keep the two Nancy Davises straight. But Nancy wanted to hear the message from the SAG president himself. Reagan reluctantly agreed.

  They met for dinner. He told her he had an early shooting session the next morning and couldn’t stay out late. She did too, she said. (“I didn’t, but a girl has her pride,” she admitted later.) He greeted her on a pair of canes, which he needed to help him walk following a leg fracture in a celebrity softball game. They dined at a restaurant on Sunset Strip, beginning their conversation with the identity problem that had ostensibly brought them together. As Nancy seemed to lack confidence that he had solved it, he offered a simple remedy: a name change.

  “I can’t do that,” she said matter-of-factly. “Nancy Davis is my name.”

  Plenty of actors and actresses worked under stage names, he countered.

  She wouldn’t think of it.

  The discussion moved on. He gradually warmed to her and said he might have time, after all, to take in the first show of a musical act that was opening down the street. Would her schedule permit it?

  “Just for the first show,” she said.

  They stayed for both shows.

  “I don’t know if it was exactly love at first sight,” she remembered, “but it was pretty close.”

  Closer for her than for him. They began dating but not as regularly as she wanted. “I wish I could report that we saw each other exclusively, and that we couldn’t wait to get married,” she recounted. “But Ronnie was in no hurry to make a commitment. He had been burned in his first marriage, and the pain went deep. Although we saw each other regularly, he also dated other women.” He described the circumstances of his divorce and in the process revealed much about himself. “He was totally unprepared for it,” she recalled. “He also had nobody to confide in when it happened.” She came to understand that he didn’t make friends easily or well. “It’s hard to make close friends or to put down roots when you’re always moving, and I think this—plus the fact that everybody knew his father was an alcoholic—explains why Ronnie became a loner.” The better she got to know him, the more she realized how difficult it was for him to let people near. “Although he loves people, he often seems remote, and he doesn’t let anybody get too close. There’s a wall around him. He lets me come closer than anyone else, but there are times when even I feel that barrier.”

  Reagan afterward acknowledged that he wasn’t the model suitor. “The truth is, I did everything wrong, dating her off and on, continuing to volunteer for every Guild trip to New York—in short, doing everything which could have lost her if Someone up there hadn’t been looking out for me. In spite of my determination to remain foot-loose, in spite of my belief that the pattern of my life was all set and would continue without change, nature was trying to tell me something very important.”

  Maybe it was nature, or maybe it was Nancy. His determination to be footloose was no greater than her determination not to let him get away. She abided his travels and his seeing other women, although not without jealousy. She overheard another actress tell of a gift he had given her. “That hurt,” she remembered decades later. He invited her to a ranch he had purchased in the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu, after owning a smaller ranch near Northridge; she gamely helped paint fences and do other chores around the place. One day he said, “You know, you really should buy a house. It would be a terrific investment.” She had been thinking about living in his house as his wife, and she was stunned by the comment. “I just about died!” she said.

  She hung on, though, and he decided he liked having her around. “Gradually I came out of a deep-freeze and discovered a wonderful world of warmth and deep contentment,” he remembered. He invited her to spend time with Maureen and Michael on the weekends they were with him. Her goal eventually seemed within sight. “I began to believe that we really would get married,” she said.

  At this point the previous Mrs. Reagan became a problem. “Jane was perfectly nice to me,” Nancy recalled of occasions when he would visit the children at their mother’s house and take her along. “But these visits were awkward. Not only had she been married to Ronnie, but she was very much The Star, and it was her house and her children. I felt out of place, and I was a little in awe of her.” She was also miffed. “I could see that Jane knew how to play on Ronnie’s good nature. She had convinced him that he shouldn’t get married again until she did.”

  Yet Nancy knew what she wanted, and she wouldn’t let a mere star stand in her way. “It took me a little time, but I managed to unconvince him.”

  REAGAN’S NEW ROMANCE caused him to reconsider other things he thought he knew. An old friend from Dixon had written saying she had lost her husband and was reconciled to never finding another love; Reagan responded with uncharacteristic reflectiveness. “Your letter led me to believe you are embarked on a course which can only lead to unhappiness and a barren future,” he wrote. “This is all wrong. You are young and very attractive and have a great deal to offer some worthwhile man and both you and your son need a man in your life or lives. You spoke of your aunt and the ‘ideals’ she gave you. It is high time you reviewed those teachings in the light not of modern living but of modern knowledge. I too was raised in a home where ‘ideals’ similar I’m sure to yours were taught, by my Mother. Now I have the highest regard for her and for her teachings but I have had to go on from there and find a ‘code for living’ in keeping with my conscience and knowledge of right and wrong. This does not mean casting her principles aside but rather it is building to meet my present needs on a foundation I learned from her. At the same
time I have learned painfully that some ‘idealism’ is in effect a flight from reality. You say you believe there is one love in life for each of us—this is just not true. Can you believe that God means for millions of really young people to go on through life alone because a war robbed them of their first loves? Maybe you’ll resent this, Florence, but I must say it—you have to look into your own heart and ask yourself if you really believe in one love now lost to you or if this is a shield behind which you hide because your past experience did not measure up to your girlhood dreams and now you fear men.”

  Reagan shared his own experience of love and sex and marriage. “I will grant you that all of us grow up with a ‘moonlight and roses’ outlook on romantic relationships and sometimes it comes hard to reconcile this dream with the actualities of physical contact. To show you how ‘over idealistic’ my training was—I awoke to the realization (almost too late) that even in marriage I had a little guilty feeling about sex, as though the whole thing was tinged with evil. A very fine old gentleman started me out on the right track by interesting me in the practices of, or I should say moral standards of, the primitive peoples never exposed to our civilization—such as the Polynesians. These people who are truly children of nature and thus of God, accept physical desire as a natural, normal appetite to be satisfied honestly and fearlessly with no surrounding aura of sin and sly whispers in the dark. By our standards they are heathens but they are heathens without degeneracy, sex crimes, psycho-neurosis and divorce. I guess what I am trying to say is that I oppose the dogmas of some organized religions who accept marital relationship only as a ‘tolerated’ sin for the purpose of conceiving children and who believe all children to be born in sin. My personal belief is that God couldn’t create evil so the desires he planted in us are good and the physical relationship between a man and woman is the highest form of companionship.”