Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: After appearing in his one-man show An Evening With Basil Rathbone on July 20, 1967, Rathbone returned to his New York home at 135 Central Park West. He was tired and upset by the death of a close friend. The next day his doctor examined the actor and gave him a clean bill of health. Rathbone went into his study to listen to a record he had recently bought. After five minutes his wife wanted to ask him something but when she pushed open the door, Rathbone was lying dead on the floor from a heart attack. He was 75.

  Andrew Ray

  (ANDREW OLDEN)

  Born May 31, 1939

  Died August 20, 2003

  Ted Ray’s film star son. Andrew Ray was the only male member of his family who was not sensitive about his age. Born in London while his father, the radio and stage comedian Ted Ray, was making his first broadcast, Andrew Ray became an actor when he was 10 but it was only by chance that he took to the boards. In bed recovering from an attack of mumps, the casting director for 20th Century Fox, Ben Lyon, called his parents to see if Andrew’s older brother Robin would be tested for a film part. But Robin was too tall, and Andrew was cast in the role. Andrew left Franklin House prep school in north London at the age of 11. “My education,” he said, “really stopped at 10. How can you go back to school and remain unchanged when you’ve suddenly become a film star?” The film that made him a star was The Mudlark (1950) and Ray played Wheeler, an orphan boy who earns a miserable living beachcombing on the lower Thames and sneaks into Windsor Castle. Critics acclaimed the film and Ray’s performance. He followed up his success with other films, notably The Yellow Balloon (1953), the story of Frankie Palmer, a child who gets mixed up with London gangsters; Escapade (1955), about three boys who steal an aeroplane – he played Max Hampden and Woman In A Dressing Gown (1957) in which he was Brian Preston. Ted Ray put his son’s earnings into a trust fund accessible at 17. When he got his hands on the money Ray went, in his own words, “a bit mad”. He bought sports cars and wrote off two in six months in near-fatal crashes. At 19, he became engaged to the Rhodesian-born actress Susan Burnet. His father did not approve but the couple was married in 1959. They had a son and a daughter and although separated in 1970 they never divorced and remained close friends. Ray went to work on Broadway but when he returned to Britain he found that he was no longer an instantly recognisable star. On April 16, 1965, feeling that he was “washed up” at 25, he attempted suicide and was taken unconscious to the Middlesex Hospital. Recovering, he returned to the stage in a West End production of Howard’s End (1967). In 1980 he played King George VI in the television serial Edward And Mrs Simpson. From 1992 to 1994 he played Dr John Reginald in the drama series Peak Practice. At the time of his death he was planning to write a biography of the Ray family.

  CAUSE: He died of a heart attack in London (as did his father) at the age of 64.

  Gene Anthony Ray

  Born May 24, 1962

  Died November 14, 2003

  Always Leroy. Gene Anthony Ray was born in Harlem, New York, and attended Julia Richmond High School. He lived on West 153rd Street and was 17 when he was cast as Leroy Johnson, the rebellious teen, in Alan Parker’s film Fame (1980), a role he reprised in the television series of the same name (1982–1984). In fact, Ray actually attended the High School of the Performing Arts where the show and film were set for a year before he was thrown out. His mother, Jean E. Ray, recalled, “It was too disciplined for this wild child of mine.” Ray was to claim that he won the role of Leroy with his eyes as much if not more than his dancing skill. “The eyes had as much to do with obtaining the role of Leroy as the dance. A flash from those babies followed by a routine and I had them all hooked.” Fame choreographer Louis Falco said, “Gene uncovered something inside me that I hadn’t witnessed before. He was just incredible. I felt like I was in the same shoes as the person who had maybe seen Fred Astaire for the first time.” Leroy was one of the most popular characters in the television series and he received a rapturous reception when he and the other cast members toured the UK in 1982 including a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Although the girls screamed for Ray, it was the boys that interested him. He ignored warnings to keep his homosexuality secret lest he alienate his fan base. In 1984, he was sacked from the show after his mother was jailed for running a drug ring, and he failed to turn up for work 100 times. “For five months I sat at home in front of the TV and stuffed my face with junk food,” he recalled. “Then one day I looked in the mirror and thought, ‘Man, you are the fattest pig on Earth.’ I couldn’t believe it was my reflection. So I bought a new pair of pants in my usual size – 28in waist – and couldn’t even get them over my thighs. Man, I was shocked! I ate like a bird on salad and worked out for two months until those pants fitted like a glove.” He landed a job dancing with The Weather Girls in their video for ‘It’s Raining Men’. Despite being newly svelte, he found it impossible to stay off the party circuit and to curb his fondness for drink and drugs. His life fell apart once again and he resorted to sleeping on park benches. His attempts to found a school for the performing arts in Milan flopped and he shared a flat with a porn actress. Back in America, one of his last projects was a documentary that reunited the cast of the TV series (apart from Lori Singer and P.R. Paul). His other films included Out Of Sync (1995) which was directed by his Fame co-star Debbie Allen and Eddie (1996) which starred Whoopi Goldberg. He never married.

  CAUSE: Gene Anthony Ray was diagnosed with HIV in 1996. In June 2003, he suffered a stroke and never recovered. He died in Manhattan of the effects of the embolism. He was 41.

  Ted Ray

  (CHARLES OLDEN)

  Born November 21, 1905

  Died November 8, 1977

  Multi-skilled comic. Born in Wigan, Lancashire, the son of the comedian Charles Olden and Margaret Ellen Kenyon, Ray was educated at Liverpool Collegiate School. He was remarkably secretive about his age, leaving a gap for his birthday in both his Who’s Who and Who’s Who On Television entries. His TV presenter son, Robin, who was born in September 1934, also suffered from the same reticence, never revealing his birthday. Ted Ray appeared in numerous radio (Ray’s A Laugh) and television shows and films, including Elstree Calling (1930), A Ray Of Sunshine (1947), Meet Me Tonight (1952) as George Pepper, Escape By Night (1953) as Mr Weston, The Crowning Touch (1957) as Bert, Please Turn Over (1959) as Edward Halliday and Carry On Teacher (1959) as the headmaster of Maudlin Street School, William Wakefield. Ray was due to star in the next Carry On… film Carry On Sergeant (1960) but the powers-that-be at Associated British, for whom Ray had once been under contract but never made a film, didn’t like his success in Carry On Teacher and pressurised ABC Cinemas to threaten to drop the Carry On… series unless Ray was replaced. He was … by Sid James. In the late Sixties Ray was badly hurt in a car crash and it seemed that he might face prosecution for possible drink driving. In 1933 he married Dorothy Sybil Stevens. She died in November 2002. Ray’s other son, Andrew (1939–2003), was also an actor and is noticed above.

  CAUSE: Ray died of a heart attack, aged 71, in London. He left £192,199.

  Martha Raye

  (MARGARET TERESA YVONNE REED)

  Born August 27, 1916

  Died October 29, 1994

  ‘The Mother Of The Troops’. Born in Butte, Montana, she was celebrated both for her ability to belt out a song and for her brash comedy. She entertained soldiers during Korea and Vietnam and appeared in, among others, Hideaway Girl (1936) as Helen Flint, The Big Broadcast Of 1937 (1936) as Patsy, College Holiday (1936) as Daisy Schloggenheimer, Mountain Music (1937) as Mary Beamish, Waikiki Wedding (1937) as Myrtle Finch, The Big Broadcast Of 1938 (1938) as Martha Bellows, The Boys From Syracuse (1940) as Luce, Hellzapoppin (1941) as Betty Johnson, Navy Blues (1941) as Lilibelle Bolton, Four Jills In A Jeep (1944) as herself, Monsieur Verdoux (1947) as Annabella Bonheur, Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962) as Lulu and The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979) as Loretta. To television audiences she was probably best known for playing Rock Hudson’s housek
eeper, Agatha, on McMillan And Wife. Away from the screen, she married seven times, the last one (on September 25, 1991) being to homosexual Mark Harris (b. 1939), and was estranged from her only daughter, Melodye Condos (b. February 22, 1943). Melodye was to later claim that the only reason Martha Raye didn’t abort her was because she was terrified of what then-husband Nick Condos might do when he found out.

  CAUSE: She died aged 78 after a long illness in Los Angeles, California.

  Ronald Reagan

  Born February 6, 1911

  Died June 5, 2004

  The acting president. If Ronald Reagan had not made the decision to go into politics (as a Democrat), he would be remembered, if at all, as a poor B-movie actor who was acted off the screen by a chimpanzee in Bedtime For Bonzo (1951) in which he played Professor Peter Boyd. Born, weighing 10lb, in a five-room rented flat above a bakery on Main Street, Tampico, Illinois, Ronald Wilson Reagan was the second son of John Edward ‘Jack’ Reagan (b. Fulton, Illinois, July 13, 1883, d. West Hollywood, California, May 18, 1941), an alcoholic shoe salesman, and his wife Nelle Clyde Wilson (b. Fulton, Illinois, July 24, 1885, d. Santa Monica, California, July 25, 1962) whom he married in a Roman Catholic ceremony at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Fulton, Illinois on November 8, 1904. Reagan was nicknamed ‘Dutch’ by his father because Jack Reagan thought his son looked like “a fat little Dutchman”. On June 21, 1922 Reagan and his brother, Neil known as Moon, were baptised at the Christian Church at 123 Hennepin Avenue, Dixon. He was educated at Filas Willard School (February 1916–1918), Central School, Monmouth (1918–1919), Tampico Grade School (1919– December 1920), South Central Grammar School (December 1920–1923), South Dixon High School (1923–1927), North Dixon High School (1927–1928) and Eureka College, Illinois from September 1928 until he obtained a BA in sociology and economics on June 7, 1932. During the summers from 1926 until 1933 he worked as a lifeguard at Lowell Park riverside beach near Dixon, Illinois and saved 77 people from drowning. One man he rescued gave Reagan a $10 tip for retrieving his false teeth from the riverbed. The town put up a plaque in his honour. Later that year he began work as a sports announcer on the wireless station WOC. On March 15, 1937 he had a screen test with Warner Bros and read from Philip Barry’s play Holiday, which Katharine Hepburn had also used for her tryout with RKO five years earlier. On April 20, 1937 he signed a seven-year contract at a salary of $200 a week to commence from June 1 and made his début in Love Is On The Air (opened on November 12, 1937) as Andy McLeod, a newsreader with a conscience. Reagan got the part because Ross Alexander, the actor originally cast, shot himself. (The story of Ross Alexander is elsewhere in this book.) The film began shooting on June 7, 1937 with a budget of $119,000. Filming took three weeks and the film-makers quickly learned that Reagan could not find the marks on the studio floor to see where he should stand. Twenty years later, he had the same problem and on election day 1980 he refused to speak to reporters until he had positioned himself squarely on the marked “RR” on the ground. In the 1940 film Knute Rockne – All American, in which he played the terminally ill George Gipp and beat off John Wayne, Robert Young and a host of others for the part, he uttered the words, “Someday, when things are tough maybe you can ask the boys to go out there and win just once for the Gipper,” a phrase that he was to utilise in the White House. In 1941 Warner Bros announced that Reagan was getting more fan mail than any of their other stars apart from Errol Flynn. In the film King’s Row (1942) he played Drake McHugh, the victim of a sadistic surgeon who amputated his legs. When he awoke, legless, he cried out, “Where’s the rest of me?” Bette Davis called it “the only passable performance Ronald Reagan ever gave”. Then the Second World War intervened. On April 14, 1942 he joined the army as a second lieutenant of cavalry but never saw active service because of poor eyesight. Before his demob with the rank of captain on December 9, 1945 he spent three years making training films. In 1946 Reagan signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros worth $2,500 a week (it lapsed on January 28, 1952) and became active in politics, having joined the board of the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) in July 1941. On November 17, 1947 he became SAG’s president and held the position for five terms until November 1952 when he was elected to a three-year term on the board. Further three-year terms followed in November 1955 and November 1958. In November 1959 he was again elected president, a position he held until his resignation on June 6, 1960. On July 9, 1960 he resigned from the SAG board. In 1947 he was a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. During the Forties Reagan was an FBI informant, code-named T-10, and gave up the names of actors he believed were Communists or had Communist sympathies. Reagan referred to himself as “the Errol Flynn of B pictures” and his work included: Sergeant Murphy as Private Dennis Riley, Swing Your Lady (1938) as Jack Miller, Accidents Will Happen (1938) as Eric Gregg, Cowboy From Brooklyn (1938) as Pat Dunn, a radio announcer in The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1938), Boy Meets Girl (1938), Girls On Probation as Neil Dillon, Brother Rat (1938) as Dan Crawford, Going Places as Jack Withering, Secret Service Of The Air (1939) as Lieutenant ‘Brass’ Bancroft, Dark Victory (1939) as Alec Hamm, Code Of The Secret Service as Lieutenant ‘Brass’ Bancroft, Naughty But Nice (1939) as Eddie Clark, Hell’s Kitchen (1939) as Jim Donohue, The Angels Wash Their Faces (1939) as Deputy District Attorney Pat Remson, Smashing The Money Ring (1939) as Lieutenant ‘Brass’ Bancroft, Brother Rat And A Baby (1940) as Dan Crawford, An Angel From Texas (1940) as Marty Allen, Murder In The Air as Lieutenant ‘Brass’ Bancroft, Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940) as Eddie Kent, Santa Fe Trail (1940) as George Armstrong Custer, The Bad Man (1941) as Gil Jones, Million Dollar Baby (1941) as Pete Rowan, International Squadron (1941) as Jimmy Grant, Nine Lives Are Not Enough as Matt Sawyer, Juke Girl as Steve Talbot, Desperate Journey (1942) as Flying Officer Johnny Hammond, the Irving Berlin written and produced This Is The Army (1943) as Johnny Jones, For God And Country as Father Michael O’Keefe, Stallion Road (1947) as Larry Hanrahan, That Hagen Girl (1947) as Tom Bates opposite Shirley Temple in her first adult role, The Voice Of The Turtle (1947) as Sergeant Bill Page, Night Unto Night (1948) as John Galen, John Loves Mary (1949) as John Lawrence, The Girl From Jones Beach (1949) as Bob Randolph, The Hasty Heart (1949) as Yank, Louisa (1950) as Hal Norton, Storm Warning (1951) as Burt Rainey, The Last Outpost (1951) as Captain Vance Britten, Hong Kong (1952) as Jeff Williams, The Winning Team (1952) as Grover Cleveland Alexander, She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952) as Professor John Palmer, Tropic Zone (1953) as Dan McCloud, Law And Order (1953) as Frame Johnson, Prisoner Of War (1954) as Webb Sloane, Law And Order (1954), Cattle Queen Of Montana (1954) as Farrell, a cowpoke in Tennessee’s Partner (1955), Hellcats Of The Navy (1957) as Commander Casey Abbott and The Killers (1964) as Jack Browning. In 1948 he campaigned for Harry S Truman but gradually moved to the right and in 1962 switched allegiance to the Republicans. In 1964 he campaigned for the arch-conservative Senator Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) against incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973) but was on the losing side as the Texan won in a landslide on November 3, 1964 – 538 electoral college votes to 52. From until 1966 Reagan was host of the television series Death Valley Days and in 1965 published his autobiography Where’s The Rest Of Me? On January 4, Reagan announced his candidature for the governorship of California promising to cut taxes and spending. He won the gubernatorial contest on November 8, 1966 beating the popular and experienced Democrat Pat Brown (1905–1996). Reagan was sworn in a few minutes past midnight on January 2, 1967. Jack Warner is said to have remarked, “All wrong. Jimmy Stewart for governor, Reagan for best friend.” Four years later, on January 4, 1971, he was sworn in for a second term having defeated Jesse Unruh. In 1968 and 1976 Reagan tried for the Republican nomination for the presidency but lost to Richard Nixon (Reagan came third with just 182 votes) and Gerald Ford (Reagan was only narrowly defeated – 1,187 votes to 1,070). Undeterred Reagan stood again in 1980 and was adopted on July 16, 1980 in Detroit. The camp
aign was clumsy and many people registered anti-votes rather than actively voting for a candidate. Reagan spoke of renewing ties with Taiwan while his vice presidential nominee George Bush was in Peking trying to cultivate good relations. Reagan blamed trees not cars for the smog that crippled Los Angeles. At a later meeting one wag tied a sign to a tree that read, “Chop me down before I kill again”. He claimed that air pollution was under control only for his plane to be diverted a few days later because LAX was closed due to smog. On November 13, 1979 Reagan appeared on television and told interviewer Tom Brokaw that, even at 68, he would be younger than many of the leaders he would be dealing with. Brokaw mentioned Valery Giscard d’Estaing, then French president and 15 years Reagan’s junior. “Who?” said Reagan. Brokaw repeated the name and Reagan admitted that yes he was a bit older than the Frenchman. Reporters were amazed at Reagan’s ignorance but his press secretary replied that the candidate had not heard Brokaw. Reporter Lou Cannon suggested, “We could run a correction. The good news is that Ronald Reagan knows who the president of France is. The bad news is that he can’t hear.” Reagan’s flack said, “We’d rather you say he was too ignorant than too old.” Reagan’s people stole President Jimmy Carter’s briefing book. Amazingly, the public didn’t seem to mind that Reagan constantly engaged mouth before brain and on November 4, 1980 he beat President Carter in a landslide, winning 489 electoral college votes to 49. When he left the Pacific Palisades polling booth Reagan was asked who he voted for and replied, “Nancy.” Reagan was inaugurated on January 20, 1981 at 11.57am and gave a 20-minute speech calling for “an era of national renewal”. As he finished the speech the Iranian government released the 52 American hostages that had been captured in Teheran on November 4, 1979 during the Carter presidency. It is believed that a deal was done so that the hostages would be released during Reagan’s term of office despite the efforts of President Carter. The Reagan inauguration cost $8 milllion, the most expensive ever at that time. Reagan’s presidency was an exceptionally right wing one. On March 6, 1981 Reagan held his second press conference and the first in history in which the questioners’ names were chosen from a jellybean jar. The event was boycotted by many of the major networks and the idea was quickly abandoned. Reagan was the first divorcé to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; the first president to have been born in Illinois; the first to have been head of a union; the first to address a meeting of the combined Houses of Parliament (on June 6, 1982) and the oldest president at 69 years, 349 days. At 2.35pm on March 30, 1981, his seventieth day in office, after addressing the American Enterprise Institute at the Washington Hilton hotel, Reagan became the eighth president to be the subject of an assassination attempt while in office. The would-be assassin was John Warnock Hinckley, Jr (b. Ardmore, Oklahoma, May 29, 1955), a mentally disturbed man, who thought that by shooting the president he could win the affections of the actor Jodie Foster. Reagan survived the attempt and left hospital on April 11, 1981. As he was wheeled into the operating theatre he is said to have asked if all the medical staff were Republicans. On discharge he said, “If I had got this much attention in Hollywood, I would never have left.” The Academy Awards were postponed for 24 hours because of the shooting. On June 21, 1982 Hinckley was acquitted on the grounds of insanity but sent to St Elizabeth’s Hospital, an asylum. On December 22, 1981 Reagan authorised the distribution of 30 million lbs of surplus cheese to the poor. Officials admitted that the cheese was more than a year old and was in a “critical inventory situation” – in other words it was mouldy. On March 1, 1982 a member of Reagan’s own party – Senator Bob Packwood from Oregon – criticised the president for passing off entirely fictional anecdotes as if they were real events. On December 12, 1983, addressing a meeting of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, he told a story of airborne heroism in the Second World War that resulted in the posthumous award of a Congressional Medal of Honor. A search among all 434 recipients during the war failed to trace Reagan’s story and a journalist reported that the tale was very similar to one that appeared in the 1944 film Wing And A Prayer and also the April 1944 issue of Reader’s Digest. President Carter commented, “President Reagan doesn’t always check the facts before he makes statements and the press accepts this as kind of amusing.” On April 5, 1982 Reagan refused to back the UK task force as it sailed for the Falkland Islands to retake the dependency from the Argentine invaders. “We’re friends of both sides,” he said. Ten days later, he told an audience that “England was always very proud of the fact that the police did not have to carry guns … In England if a criminal carried a gun, even though he didn’t use it, he was tried not for burglary or theft or whatever he was doing, he was tried for first-degree murder and hung if he was found guilty.” The next day Larry Speakes, the White House press secretary, admitted that the president was talking rubbish. Incredibly, Reagan repeated the fiction on March 21, 1986. On May 27, 1983, the night before a world economic summit in Williamsburg, Reagan eschewed his briefing notes and instead watched The Sound Of Music on television. On June 29, 1983 Reagan blamed poor student grades on the schools’ efforts to comply with racial desegregation. He sought to destabilise governments he disagreed with and broke the law by sending aid to the Nicaraguan contras, rebels who were attempting to overthrow the government of Sandanista. Reagan clashed with the Senate which disagreed with his policy. On March 1, 1985 Reagan called the contra leaders the “moral equivalent of our founding fathers” only to be rebuffed by historical novelist Howard Fast who said the comment was “an explosion of such incredible ignorance that … he is not fit for public office of any kind”. Reagan despatched $155 million of aid – food and guns – to the contras. He denied that secret funds were being sent: “Nothing of that kind could take place without the knowledge of Congress.” He sent aid to the Afghans fighting the Soviet troops and invaded Grenada on October 25, 1983 without informing the head of state (the Queen, by the way). Reagan claimed that it was “a rescue mission” rather than an invasion. Despite all this he was re-elected on November 6, 1984 in yet another landslide, winning 525 electoral college votes to the Democrat Walter Mondale’s paltry 13. It was the biggest number of electoral college votes ever won. When some Democrats drew attention to Reagan’s age, he came up with a nice response on October 21, 1984: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I’m not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Reagan’s second inauguration, on January 20, 1985, took place in the foyer of the White House because it was too cold outside for the president. The inaugural parade was also cancelled, only the second time ever in history. Andrew Jackson’s in 1833 was the first. On April 18, 1985 Reagan visited the Bitburg concentration camp and appalled many by claiming that the German guards “were victims, just as surely as the victims in the camps”. On November 13, 1986 Reagan admitted that his administration had been secretly selling arms to Iran in exchange for freeing the hostages. This arms-for-hostages contravened Reagan’s public declaration of never dealing with hostages. Later that month it emerged that the Iranians had been overcharged for the weapons and the profits – between $10 and $30 million – had been sent to the contras by members of the National Security Council. Reagan claimed not to know about the deals. A commission led by Senator John Tower was set up to investigate the misdemeanours. It discovered that Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North had been leading a shadow government from inside the NSC and Reagan was heavily criticised. When Rear Admiral John Poindexter, head of the NSC, testified before the Iran-Contra hearings on July 15, 1987 he said that he had made the decisions to send the money and kept Reagan in the dark. However, he added that if Reagan had known, which of course, he didn’t, he would have approved. In five days of testimony, Poindexter said, “I can’t recall” or variations thereof 184 times. During his candidature Reagan promised to resign at the first sign of senility but on February 20, 1987 he told the Tower Commission that he did not remember if he had authorised material shipments. (For more examples of Reagan’s
“forgetfulness” see below.) Later when questioned by reporters Reagan on two occasions pretended to be unable to speak due to laryngitis. Despite claiming to save money, Reagan spent more on military expansion during peacetime than at any other time in American history. The country spent $148 million in 1980 and under Reagan more than $300 million. Incredibly, Reagan believed that money spent on the armed forces did not add to the national deficit because it employed companies who hired American labourers who then “paid” the money back in taxes. During Reagan’s presidency the national debt soared (as indeed it did during the presidency of George W. Bush. President Clinton balanced the budget). He also sponsored tax cuts for the wealthiest in society. Following his retirement Reagan moved into a house at 666 St Cloud Road, Bel Air, bought for them by grateful friends. Superstitious Nancy Reagan changed the number to 668 in April 1987 before their move but city ordnance plans continued to refer to it as 666. Reagan was married twice. On January 24, 1940 at the Wee Kirk o’Heather wedding chapel in Glendale, California, Reagan married the actor Jane Wyman by whom he had a daughter Maureen (b. Los Angeles, California January 4, 1941, d. August 2001 of cancer) and an adopted son, Michael (b. March 14, 1945). A second daughter died the day after her premature birth at the Queen of Angels hospital in Los Angeles on June 24, 1947. Reagan and Wyman separated in May 1948 and divorced on June 28, 1948 becoming final on July 19, 1949 after nine years and 176 days of marriage. Reagan refused to discuss the break-up but Wyman said that it was due to his increasing political ambitions and her failure to show interest in them. On March 4, 1952 at the Little Brown Church in Los Angeles he married the actor Nancy Davis (b. Sloane Hospital, New York, July 6, 1921 as Anne Frances Robbins) who was pregnant at the time with their daughter. Patricia Ann Reagan who would adopt the professional name Patti Davis was born at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles on October 21, 1952 weighing 7lb. She would later embarrass her parents by writing Home Front (published February 1986), a novel about a heartless mother and a staid father who happens to be president, and posing for full-frontal nude shots for Playboy. Nancy Reagan suffered two miscarriages between 1953 and 1957. A son, Ronald Prescott Reagan (b. Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, California, May 20, 1958 at 8.04am weighing 8lb 8oz), worked for several years as a ballet dancer with the Joffrey Ballet until he left on January 17, 1983.