by Gore Vidal
I felt sorry for Nelson. I felt sorry for David Brinkley when a number of seriously overweight Sunbelt Goldwaterites chased him through the kitchens of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I felt sorry for myself when I, too, had to ward off their righteous wrath: I was there as a television commentator for Westinghouse. I felt sorry for the entire media that day as fists were actually shaken at the anchorpersons high up in the eaves of the hall. I felt particularly sorry for the media when a former president named Eisenhower, reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery, attacked the press, and the convention hall went mad. At last Ike was giving it to those commie-weirdo-Jew-fags who did not believe in the real America of humming electric chairs, well-packed prisons, and kitchens filled with every electrical device that a small brown person of extranational provenance might successfully operate at a fraction of the legal minimum wage.
* * *
As luck would have it, I stood leaning on the metal railing that enclosed the boxed-in open place where, side by side, Ronnie and Nancy were seated watching Ike. Suddenly, I was fascinated by them. First, there was her furious glare when someone created a diversion during Ike’s aria. She turned, lip curled with Bacchantish rage, huge unblinking eyes afire with a passion to kill the enemy so palpably at hand—or so it looked to me. For all I know she might have been trying out new contact lenses. In any case, I had barely heard of Nancy then. Even so, I said to myself: There is a lot of rage in this little lady. I turned then to Ronnie. I had seen him in the flesh for a decade or so as each of us earned his mite in the Hollyjungle. Ronnie was already notorious for his speeches for General Electric, excoriating communists who were, apparently, everywhere. I had never actually spoken to him at a party because I knew—as who did not?—that although he was the soul of amiability when not excoriating the international monolithic menace of atheistic godless communism, he was, far and away, Hollywood’s most grinding bore—Chester Chatterbox, in fact. Ronnie never stopped talking, even though he never had anything to say except what he had just read in the Reader’s Digest, which he studied the way that Jefferson did Montesquieu. He also told show-biz stories of the sort that overexcites civilians in awe of old movie stars, but causes other toilers in the industry to stampede.
I had heard that Reagan might be involved in the coming campaign. So I studied him with some care. He was slumped in a folding chair, one hand holding up his chins; he was totally concentrated on Eisenhower. I remember thinking that I had made the right choice in 1959 when we were casting The Best Man, a play that I had written about a presidential convention. An agent had suggested Ronald Reagan for the lead. We all had a good laugh. He is by no means a bad actor, but he would hardly be convincing, I said with that eerie prescience which has earned me the title the American Nostradamus, as a presidential candidate. So I cast Melvyn Douglas, who could have made a splendid president in real life had his career not been rejuvenated by the play’s success, while the actor whom I had rejected had no choice but to get himself elected president. I do remember being struck by the intensity with which Reagan studied Eisenhower. I had seen that sort of concentration a thousand times in half-darkened theatres during rehearsals or Saturday matinees: The understudy examines the star’s performance and tries to figure how it is done. An actor prepares, I said to myself: Mr. Reagan is planning to go into politics. With his crude charm, I was reasonably certain that he could be elected mayor of Beverly Hills.
In time all things converge. The campaign biography and the movie star’s biography are now interchangeable. The carefully packaged persona of the old-time movie star resembles nothing so much as the carefully packaged persona of today’s politician. Was it not inevitable that the two would at last coincide in one person? That that person should have been Ronald Reagan is a curiosity of more than minor interest. George Murphy had broken the ice, as it were, by getting elected to the Senate from California. Years earlier Orson Welles had been approached about a race for the Senate. Welles is highly political; he is also uncommonly intelligent. “I was tempted, but then I was talked out of it,” he said over lunch—cups of hot butter with marrow cubes at Pat’s Fish House in Hollywood. “Everyone agreed I could never win because I was an actor and divorced.” He boomed his delight.
* * *
Since Mr. Leamer is as little interested in politics and history as his two subjects, he is in some ways an ideal chronicler. He loves the kind of gossip that ordinary folks—his subjects and their friends—love. He takes an O’Haran delight in brand names while the “proper” names that are most often seen in syndicated columns ravish him. On the other hand, he is not very interested in the actual way politics, even as practiced by Ronnie, works. Although Reagan’s eight years as governor of California are of some interest, Leamer gets through the-time-in-Sacramento as quickly as possible, with only one reference to Bob Moretti, the Democratic speaker of the assembly who, in effect, ran the state while Ronnie made his speeches around state, country, world on the dangers of communism. When in town, Ronnie played with his electric trains (something omitted by Mr. Leamer). On the other hand, there are twenty-four references to “wardrobe” in the index. So, perhaps, Mr. Leamer has got his priorities right after all. In any case, he never promised us a Rosebud.
Leamer begins with the inaugural of the fortieth president. First sentence: “On a gilded California day, Ronald and Nancy Reagan left their home for the last time.” That is echt Photoplay and there is much, much more to come. Such lines as: “She had begun dating him when he thought he would never love again.” You know, I think I will have some of those Hydrox cookies after all. “Unlike many of his backers, Ronnie was no snob. He believed that everybody should have his shot at this great golden honeypot of American free enterprise.” The Golden Horde now arrives in Washington for the inaugural. “Ostentatious,” growled that old meanie Barry Goldwater, nose out of joint because the man who got started in politics by giving The Speech for him in 1964 kept on giving The Speech for himself, and so, sixteen years and four wonderful presidents later, got elected Numero Uno.
Leamer tells us about their wardrobes for the great day. Also, “as a teenager and a young woman, [Nancy] had had her weight problems, but now at fifty-nine [Leamer finks on Nancy: Long ago she sliced two years off her age] she was a perfect size six. Her high cheekbones, huge eyes, delicate features and extraordinary attention to appearance made her lovelier than she had ever been.” According to the testimony of the numerous ill-reproduced photographs in the book, this is quite true. The adventures simply of Nancy’s nose down the years is an odyssey that we Photoplay fans would like to know a lot more about. At first there is a bulb on the tip; then the bulb vanishes but there is a certain thickness around the bridge; then, suddenly, retroussé triumph!
The inaugural turns out to be a long and beautiful commercial to Adolfo, Blass, Saint Laurent, Galanos, de la Renta, and Halston. At one point, Ronnie reads a poem his mother had written; there were “tears in his eyes.” During the ceremonies, Ronnie said later, “It was so hard not to cry during the whole thing.” But then Ronnie had been discovered, groomed, and coiffed, by the brothers Warner, who knew how to produce tears on cue with Max Steiner’s ineffable musical scores. So overwhelming was Maestro Steiner that at one point, halfway up the stairs to die nobly in Dark Victory, Bette Davis suddenly stopped and looked down at the weeping director and crew and said, “Tell me now. Just who is going up these goddamned stairs to die? Me or Max Steiner?” She thought the teary music a bit hard on her thespian talents. No, I don’t like the Oreos as much as the Hydrox but if that’s all there is…
“As her husband spoke…her eyes gleamed with tears,” while “the Mormon Tabernacle choir brought tears to his eyes.” Tears, size sixes, Edwards-Lowell furs, Jimmy and Gloria Stewart, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, new noses and old ideas, with charity toward none…then a final phone call to one of Nancy’s oldest friends who says: “Oh, Nancy, you aren’t a movie star now, not the biggest movie st
ar. You’re the star of the whole world. The biggest star of all.” To which Nancy answers, “Yes, I know, and it scares me to death.” To which, halfway around the world, at Windsor Castle, an erect small woman of a certain age somewhat less than that of Nancy is heard to mutter, “What is all this shit?”
* * *
Mr. Leamer’s book is nicely organized. After “A Gilded Dawn,” he flashes back to tell us Nancy’s story up until she meets Ronnie (who thought he would never love again); then Mr. Leamer flashes back and tells us Ronnie’s story up until that momentous meeting. Then it is side by side into history. Curiously enough Nancy’s story is more interesting than Ronnie’s because she is more explicable and Mr. Leamer can get a grip on her. Ronnie is as mysterious a figure as ever appeared on the American political stage.
Nancy’s mother was Edith Luckett, an actress from Washington, D.C. She worked in films and on the stage: “Edith’s just been divorced from a rich playboy who’s not worth the powder to blow him up.” There is a lot of fine period dialogue in Make-Believe. Edith’s father was a Virginian who worked for the old Adams Express Company where, thirty-one years earlier, John Surratt had worked; as you will recall, Surratt was one of the conspirators in the Abraham Lincoln murder case. Mr. Leamer tactfully omits this ominous detail.
Edith’s marriage to Ken Robbins, “a handsome stage-door johnny…from a far better family than Edith’s,” is skimpily, even mysteriously, described by Mr. Leamer. Where did they meet? When and where were they married? Where did they live? All we are told is that “when Ken entered the service in 1917, he and Edith were newlyweds. But he had his duties and she had her career….Ken had been released from the army in January 1919. Edith had tried to keep the marriage going with her twenty-three-year-old husband [with her career? his duties?], but all she had to show for it was a baby, born on July 6, 1921, in New York City. Ken hadn’t even been there.” After two years of dragging Nancy around with her (“using trunks as cradles,” what else?) Edith parked baby with her older sister, Virginia, in Maryland, while Ken went to live with his mother in New Jersey. So when were Edith and Ken divorced? It does not help that Mr. Leamer constantly refers to Ken as Nancy’s “natural father.”
Nancy was well looked after by her aunt; she was sent to Sidwell Friends School in Washington, some four years before I went there. Mr. Sidwell was an ancient Quaker whose elephantine ears were filled with hair while numerous liver spots made piebald his kindly bald head. I used to talk to him occasionally: Never once did he mention Nancy Robbins.
Meanwhile, Edith had found Mr. Right, Loyal Davis, M.D., F.A.C.S., a brain surgeon of pronounced reactionary politics and a loathing of the lesser breeds, particularly those of a dusky hue. The marriage of Edith and Loyal (I feel I know them, thanks to Mr. Leamer) seems to have been happy and, at fourteen, Nancy got herself adopted by Mr. Davis and took his name. Nancy Davis now “traveled at the top of Chicago’s social world.” She was a school leader. Yearbook: “Nancy’s social perfection is a constant source of amazement. She is invariably becomingly and suitably dressed. She can talk, and even better listen intelligently…” Thus was child begetter of the woman and First Lady-to-be. Destiny was to unite her with a man who has not stopped talking, according to his associates and relatives, for threescore years at least.
Nancy went to Smith and to deb parties. She herself had a tea-dance debut in Chicago. She had beaux. She was a bit overweight, while her nose was still a Platonic essence waiting to happen. A friend of her mother’s ZaSu Pitts, gave Nancy a small part in a play that she was bringing to Broadway. From an early age, Nancy had greasepaint in her eyes. The play opened on Broadway unsuccessfully but Nancy stayed on. She modeled, looked for work (found it in Lute Song), dated famous family friends, among them Clark Gable, who after a few drinks would loosen his false teeth, which were on some sort of peg and then shake his head until they rattled like dice. I wonder if he ever did that for Nancy. Can we ever really and truly know anyone? The Oreos are stale.
Hollywood came Nancy’s way in the form of Benny Thau, a vice president of MGM. Nancy had a “blind date” with him. In 1949 Thau was a great power at the greatest studio. He got Nancy a screen test, and a contract. By now Nancy was, as Mr. Leamer puts it,
dating Benny Thau. Barbara, the pretty teen-age receptionist, saw Nancy frequently. Many years later she remembered that she had orders that on Sunday morning Nancy was to be sent directly into Benny Thau’s suite. Barbara nodded to Miss Davis as she walked into the vice-president’s office; nodded again when she left later.
No wonder Nancy thinks the ERA is just plain silly.
* * *
Now Mr. Leamer cuts to the career of Ronnie (“Dutch”) Reagan. This story has been told so much that it now makes no sense at all. Dixon, Illinois. Father drank (Irish Catholic). Mother stern (Protestant Scots-Irish); also, a fundamentalist Christian, a Disciple of Christ. Brother Neil is Catholic. Ronnie is Protestant. Sunday School teacher. Lifeguard. Eureka College. Drama department. Debating society. Lousy grades. Lousy football player but eager to be a successful jock (like Nixon and Ike et al.…What would happen if someone who could really play football got elected president?). Imitates radio sportscasters. Incessantly. Told to stop. Gets on everyone’s nerves. Has the last laugh. Got a job as…sportscaster. At twenty-two. Midst of depression. Gets better job. Goes west. Meets agent. Gets hired by Warner Brothers as an actor. Becomes, in his own words, “the Errol Flynn of the B’s.”
Mr. Leamer bats out this stuff rather the way the studio press departments used to do. He seems to have done no firsthand research. Dutch is a dreamer, quiet (except that he talks all the time, from puberty on), unread and incurious about the world beyond the road ahead, which was in his case a thrilling one for a boy at that time: sportscaster at twenty-two and then film actor and movie star.
Mr. Leamer might have done well to talk to some of the California journalists who covered Reagan as governor. I was chatting with one last year, backstage in an Orange County auditorium. When I said something to the effect how odd it was that a klutz like Reagan should ever have been elected president, the journalist then proceeded to give an analysis of Reagan that was far more interesting than Mr. Leamer’s mosaic of Photoplay tidbits. “He’s not stupid at all. He’s ignorant, which is another thing. He’s also lazy, so what he doesn’t know by now, which is a lot, he’ll never know. That’s the way he is. But he’s a perfect politician. He knows exactly how to make the thing work for him.”
I made some objections, pointed to errors along the way, not to mention the storms now gathering over the republic. “You can’t look at it like that. You see, he’s not interested in politics as such. He’s only interested in himself. Consider this. Here is a fairly handsome ordinary young man with a pleasant speaking voice who first gets to be what he wants to be and everybody else then wanted to be, a radio announcer [equivalent to an anchorperson nowadays]. Then he gets to be a movie star in the Golden Age of the movies. Then he gets credit for being in the Second World War while never leaving L.A. Then he gets in at the start of television as an actor and host. Then he picks up a lot of rich friends who underwrite him politically and personally and get him elected governor twice of the biggest state in the union and then they get him elected president, and if he survives he’ll be reelected. The point is that here is the only man I’ve ever heard of who got everything that he ever wanted. That’s no accident.”
I must say that as I stepped out on to the stage to make my speech, I could not help but think that though there may not be a God there is quite possibly a devil, and we are now trapped in the era of the Dixon, Illinois, Faust.
* * *
One thing that Mr. Leamer quickly picks up on is Ronnie’s freedom with facts. Apparently this began quite early. “Dutch had been brought up to tell the truth; but to him, facts had become flat little balloons that had to be blown up if they were to be seen and sufficiently appreciated.” In Hollyw
ood he began a lifelong habit of exaggerating not only his own past but those stories that he read in the Reader’s Digest and other right-wing publications. No wonder his aides worry every time he opens his mouth without a script on the TelePrompTer to be read through those contact lenses that he used, idly, to take out at dinner parties and suck on.
By 1938 Ronnie was a featured player in Brother Rat. He was and still is an excellent film actor. The notion that he was just another Jon Hall is nonsense. For a time he was, in popularity with the fans, one of the top five actors in the country. If his range is limited that is because what he was called on to do was limited. You were a type in those days, and you didn’t change your type if you wanted to be a star. But he did marry an actress who was an exception to the rule. Jane Wyman did graduate from brash blonde wisecracker to “dramatic” actress (as Mr. Leamer would say). After the war, she was the bigger star. The marriage fell apart. Natural daughter Maureen and adopted son Michael could not hold them together. Plainly, Jane could not follow Ronnie’s sage advice. “We’ll lead an ideal life if you’ll just avoid doing one thing: Don’t think.” Never has there been such a perfect prescription for success in late-twentieth-century American political life.