Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  “How is the factory [Reynolds Wire had reopened] running now?” she wrote and asked Mrs. Emmert. “I hope it won’t close down through the cold weather, for I think then is the time when more money is needed. One can stand a little discomfort in the summertime so much better.” Nelle’s heart was always in her missionary work. The second Christmas (1938) she was in California, she wrote that she had just finished wrapping five hundred Christmas gifts “for some needy folks.” By now her chief interest was the Olive View Sanitarium for tubercular patients.

  Jack was far more impressed with his son’s achievements. They were closer during the late thirties than at any other time in their lives. Moon’s defection to the Republican party had hurt Jack and he made no secret of it. Jack was completely dry, which might have added to his and Dutch’s closeness. But without his old friends, Jack had only Dutch to talk politics with. He listened endlessly to the radio—news and sports. The club chair and ottoman that he lounged on, as well as the radio, were Christmas gifts from Dutch. On Sunday nights, Reagan took his parents to La Rue’s (a popular Hollywood restaurant) for spaghetti and meatballs, Jack’s favorite. Reagan wrote that every morning Jack took “the slow careful walk the doctor prescribed.… He never tired of shaking his head about this new land, insisting that Cal-ifornians must be the hungriest people in the world. He said, ‘There’s nothing, by God, but real estate offices and hot-dog stands.’“

  Larry Williams remembered Reagan inviting him over to his apartment for a bachelor evening “with some other actors.” Two of Reagan’s college chums and one Warners contract player were present, and the men played bridge for low stakes and discussed the wisdom of investing in real estate in California.

  By the summer of 1938, a year after he had signed with Warners, Reagan’s films and the roles he played remained almost instantly forgettable. He projected a likableness even when the part, as in Accidents Will Happen, was not totally sympathetic. Warners tried to change his image slightly during 1938 by lightening his hair to auburn for five films. The hoped-for effect was to reinforce his ail-American look. (In black-and-white films, darker hair gave a Latin or Mediterranean cast to the player.) Warners picked up his option again in June. Fan mail was coming in; not an overwhelming amount, but enough to reassure the studio that he had potential. His early directors claim that Jack Warner liked and approved his casting because he did his job and never caused any waves. Warners also agreed to put Jack Reagan on the payroll at twenty-five dollars a week to answer the fan letters and requests for photographs that his son brought home.

  The noticeable thing about Reagan’s first two years in Hollywood is that he was not the same self-assured, cocky fellow he had been in Des Moines. He had lapsed back to his Eureka days (perhaps because of his TEKE friends), with Bryan Foy standing in for Ralph McKinzie. His pattern was to go to the coach to convince him to put him out on the field in action. “I soon learned that I could go in to Byrnie,” he confessed, “and tell him I had been laid off [after an assignment was complete],* but couldn’t take it at the moment because of all my expenses. He would pick up the phone, call a couple of his henchmen, and actually get a picture going on four or five days’ notice—just to put me back on salary.” The problem was that Foy, like McKinzie, did not think Reagan belonged on the varsity squad and was perfectly happy to keep him on the second string. Finding competent B leads was not as easy as it might appear. Actors who had been on contract for a long time feared the stigma of B films, and those with obvious star ability jumped from B’s to A’s and were thus unavailable.

  After more than a year under contract, Reagan seemed destined to play B leads and small roles in A films forever, a situation that he encouraged by always pushing Foy to find a film for him. By not being available when a good role came along, he missed out on many opportunities. Wayne Morris and Dennis Morgan (who had also started as a radio announcer) had made the leap after only a few B movies. Morris, in fact, was his strongest competition at the studio, and any role that he played, Reagan could easily have done. Someone should have advised him to fight for better roles, not the reverse. But once Reagan was under contract to Warners, the Meiklejohn Agency did little to help him in this respect.

  Unquestionably, his knowledge of the camera improved. His reputation at the studio was as a “dependable guy, never late, hung-over or difficult to work with.” Young New York actors like John Garfield were always fighting for the right “techniques.” They worried about things like “conflict” in a script, a scene with “enough bottom to it,” and they always wanted more time to think about the character’s motivation. Reagan did whatever the director or the publicity department asked him to do, never required a stunt man for action scenes, posed tirelessly for publicity photographs and dutifully escorted the starlets chosen by the studio to previews or other public social functions where press photographers would be ready and poised. Privately, he dated Ila Rhodes, a beautiful blond contract player who appeared with him in two films, Secret Service of the Air (in a supporting role) and Hell’s Kitchen (in an uncredited bit).*

  “I became the Errol Flynn of the B’s,” Reagan says. “I was as brave as Errol, but in low-budget pictures.… I fought in prisons [Code of the Secret Service and Smashing the Money Ring]… I fought in a dirigible down at sea [Murder in the Air]… I fought in an airplane which was complete with a trap door that could drop the unwary to an awful death [Secret Service of the Air]… I swam with… bullets, hitting the water six inches from my face [Murder in the Air]… I even let them shoot a bottle out of my hand with a sling shot [in the same film].”

  In all of the above, Reagan is referring to his role as Lieutenant Brass Bancroft of the Secret Service, in a series beamed toward the Saturday afternoon kiddie-show trade and based loosely (to say the least) on the memoirs of William H. Moran, a former chief of the United States Secret Service. Code of the Secret Service was so bad that Warners promised Foy they would never release it. They went back on their word, however, and distributed it in small towns where it had no chance to be reviewed.

  Reagan made eight films from January 1938 to January 1939, and yet found time in May to return to Des Moines to announce the Drake Relay for Radio WHO after receiving an invitation from Pete MacArthur. Myrtle met him at the train. She had recently married. “We realized we had meant more to each other than we had thought,” she later admitted. The time had escaped them both. Reagan also found that going back was no longer possible. He visited Cy’s Moonlight Inn, the Club Belvedere and saw his old friends. But their worlds had split. He returned to Hollywood accepting that this was now his home.

  The studio continued to have him play leads in B films and undistinguished supporting roles in major features. As Lieutenant Brass Bancroft, according to reviewers, he displayed “charm and vitality,” “impresses and handles his fists well,” “played his role of counter-espionage agent with the customary daring.” In Cowboy from Brooklyn (starring Dick Powell, Priscilla Lane and Ann Sheridan as well as Pat O’Brien) he had been cast in a role—that of a sharp Brooklyn promoter—in which he had to employ a New Yorkese dialect. “Scene after scene I would discover had been rewritten after one or two of my drawling rehearsals, and the rewrite would wind up with someone else being given most of my lines. I was miserable… and beginning to yearn for my good old Secret Service pictures where I was a big wheel.” Character actress Elizabeth Risdon and O’Brien helped him to some extent. But in the end his delivery sounded as though he might have been announcing a play-by-play tied game back at WHO, the bases loaded, a second strike called and the teletype machine gone dead.

  The Sam and Bella Spewack Broadway hit Boy Meets Girl was next. In this one he had a small bit—that of a radio announcer at a major film premiere, which was home ground for him. (“Ronald Reagan, as the radio announcer… makes his brief opportunity register,” The New York Times reviewer wrote.) For Reagan, who called himself at this time “a still worshipping movie fan,” the best thing about Boy Meets Girl was
being in a movie with James Cagney (the other stars were Pat O’Brien, Marie Wilson and Ralph Bellamy). Cagney had just returned to the lot after a court battle with Warners on a breach of his billing clause. (Someone else’s name had appeared above his in the credits.) His real aim was to get Warners to limit his films to four a year with a better choice of roles. Cagney was known as the bad boy on the lot at this time. He had grown a moustache in the middle of his last film and he continued to talk to Jack Warner in obscene Yiddish.

  Being allowed to join Cagney at a special table in the commissary—”one of the accolades of which I was proudest”—and to sit from time to time with other male stars on the Warner lot—Bogart, O’Brien and Dennis Morgan—gave Reagan the acceptance he badly wanted. Competency, friendship and admission to the inner circle of those he considered great were the extent of his ambitions. He aspired to be one of them, a star, much in the same way as he had once yearned to be a football hero. Unlike many of the contract players on the lot, he did not seek outside drama lessons or work with a little theater group, but doggedly went from one assignment to the other with the same determination with which he had duck-waddled up and down the length of Eureka’s football field.

  Girls on Probation (“from the Bryan Foy workbench”) followed. Reagan co-starred in this second feature with Jane Bryan, whom he greatly admired but who kept him at arm’s distance. Also in the cast, in a small role, was Susan Hayward, who was not as aloof. The film was a melodrama with no surprises; the dialogue was embarrassing. The New York Times would note: “The cast does not include strong WB marquee talent, but performances by the various members of the company are adequate. Ronald Reagan seems a little lightweight as a d.a. and is perhaps a little too soft for that kind of a job, but otherwise, especially romantically, he serves well.”

  When Warners cast him as one of a trio of cadets attending Virginia Military Institute in Brother Rat, an adaptation of the hit Broadway farce, he had hopes that better times were on the way. Brother Rat was the “friendly name cadets had for each other.” Reagan, who won his role over Jeffrey Lynn, played Dan Crawford, “who is always going along for the ride.” Wayne Morris was Billy Randolph, “who can get into more shakes than you can shake a shako at.” Eddie Albert, re-creating the role he had played on Broadway, was Bing Edwards, “who plugs along to accomplish things the hard way.” Despite the fact that Albert’s role (which had been the starring character on Broadway) had been pared down and the Wayne Morris role built up, Albert still ran away with the film and the reviews. Because Morris’s part was bigger and the character more interesting, Reagan—the middleman—was pleasant but otherwise lost in the sandwiching.

  The cast of Brother Rat also included Priscilla Lane (who had attended school in Des Moines), Jane Bryan, and “pretty, pert” Jane Wyman. Wyman, suing for divorce at the time, was attracted to Reagan, who she thought did his best to ignore her charms. Everything in Reagan’s background rejected the idea of responding to another man’s wife, no matter how close husband and spouse were to severing their legal ties. “Ronnie was always going around with his college frat brothers,” Wyman later said. “He never seemed to have time for girls. They were all enthused in sports… [yet] I was drawn to him at once.… He was such a sunny person.”

  Jane Wyman (her professional name) has always placed an aura of mystery about her birth date in St. Joseph, Missouri. On the surface, it seemed to indicate no more than an actress covering the actual date of her birth to appear younger. Generally, January 4, 1914, was given, but according to a registration blank filled out by her “parent or guardian” and signed by Emma Fulks, she entered grade one of Noyes School in St. Joseph on September 10, 1923, as Sarah Jane Fulks, born on January 28, 1917. Why a young woman should add three years to her age and change her birth date is mystifying but not necessarily of any great importance. In Wyman’s case, it has a bearing on the choices she made, the woman she became and the men to whom she was attracted. In 1980, she made a statement that January 5, 1914, was her correct birth date. But it is unlikely that a child would enter the first grade at age nine.

  Richard and Emma Fulks, Sarah Jane’s parents, were middle-aged. Both had been married before—Richard in 1891 to Nora Christman, who bore him one son (Raymond) before her death in 1894; and Emma (Reiss) to M. F. Weymann, whom she divorced in 1902, the year that she and Richard married. Emma was German by birth and had two children—a daughter, Elsie, and a son, Morie, by Weymann. By 1917, all three of the Fulks children were living away from home. Richard was fifty-two and Emma fifty-one (not a likely age to bear a child). The Fulks’ next-door neighbor had two young daughters. “I don’t want to get anything wrong,” one of them recalled, “but for a time there weren’t any children and then there was Sarah Jane. She was about four or five… I do know that Fulks was not her real name. Her name was May-field and she was adopted… her parents… were married and her mother used to come by and visit her some.”

  A certificate of birth was issued in the state of Missouri to Sarah Jane Mayfield, born January 5, 1917, to Gladys Hope Christian and Manning J. Mayfield (who had been married in Kansas City on May 17, 1916). The Mayfields filed a petition for divorce in October 1921. Gladys Hope had been employed as a stenographer and office assistant for a Dr. Elam, but had been let go. She told the court that she had to move to Cleveland, Ohio, where a job had been promised her so that she could support herself and her child. If the Fulks’ neighbor is correct, Gladys Hope Christian Manning left the child, then nearly five, with the Fulks and went off, but reappeared from time to time. (Since Sarah Jane’s birth certificate remains under the name of Mayfield and was never changed, one must assume that the child was never adopted by the Fulks and that she simply took their name upon entering school.) Manning Mayfield, Sarah Jane’s father, left St. Joseph about the same time and went to San Francisco to take a job as secretary of the Southern Pacific Westbound Conference, a shipping board, and died suddenly a few weeks later (January 21, 1922) of pneumonia at twenty-seven years of age.

  It appears to be no coincidence that Mrs. Fulks traveled to California with Sarah Jane in January 1922. Her daughter, Elsie (now Mrs. Wyatt), and her son, Morie (now an eye-and-throat doctor), both lived in Los Angeles. Contrary to what has been written, it is unlikely that Mrs. Fulks took Sarah Jane out to Hollywood to put the child in pictures. Sarah Jane was only five years old and had shown no indication of having undeveloped talent, and Emma had no reason to leave the security of her life with Richard Fulks to become a full-time movie mother. A better explanation is that Mrs. Fulks and Sarah Jane traveled west to see Manning Mayfield before he died to settle the guardianship of Sarah Jane. Mayfield’s obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle lists him as unmarried (yet, the divorce was not final at the time of his death) and without issue. The St. Joseph News Press gives his father, mother and two sisters as Mayfield’s only survivors. Since Manning Mayfield’s marriage, divorce and legal paternity of Sarah Jane are all documented by the state of Missouri, it appears clear that either he or his family wished not to acknowledge his paternity to little Sarah Jane, perhaps convinced that it would be best for the child if he did not. After two or three months in California, Emma and the little girl returned to St. Joseph.

  The Fulks’ house was run on Old World discipline and ideals. Emma’s heritage (Richard had been American-born) kept her stiff, apart from the child she was now raising. Age had a strong effect on the relationship as well. Emma and Richard were in their late fifties. Richard, a Democrat, was elected county collector in 1916, but served just one term (the only public office he ever held), a great frustration as he had hoped for a political career.* He joined the police force, advancing from patrolman to chief of detectives within a few years. He was a strict disciplinarian at home, a remote man, but a good and steady provider.

  “I grew up with hurt and bewilderment,” Wyman said in an interview in 1943. “A dreadful thing happened to me when I was a child in school.… It had to do with a note which was pas
sed to me by another girl at school and which was intercepted by the teacher. The teacher read it and gathered from it that the two of us were planning to run away from home. We were called up to talk to the principal. [Miss Cecil Crawford, the principal, recalled “Sarah Jane’s big, brown anxious eyes.”] Then our mothers were notified and in due course, we were both suspended from school… the other little girl, whom I had considered my best friend… put the blame squarely on me.… I was bewildered… dreadfully frightened, and I felt misunderstood and completely alone.

  “Actually, I don’t think we had the faintest notion of running away… but there was so much confusion and recrimination.… I felt I could never trust or confide in anyone again… it followed me through my formative years, poisoned my life and my whole outlook until I met Ronnie.”

  Occasionally on Saturday afternoons, Emma would soften and take Sarah Jane downtown for lunch (“that was exciting in itself, choosing anything you liked from that long, long list of fancy sandwiches—and ice cream…”) and to the matinee at the Lyceum, St. Joseph’s only theater. Sarah Jane, who had dreams of one day being an actress, managed to convince the Fulks to give her dancing lessons at the Prinz School of Dance after a roadshow company musical had played in town.

  On March 25, 1928, when Sarah Jane was eleven, Richard Fulks died, leaving sixty-two-year-old Emma in fairly dire straits. She rented their home, packed up Sarah Jane and traveled to Los Angeles where they moved in with Elsie. The Depression years were hard, but Morie helped out as much as he could. By 1932, Sarah Jane had dropped out of high school and taken a job as a waitress at Mannings Coffee Shop to earn enough money for her dance lessons. Somehow, she returned on her own to St. Joseph in the summer of 1933, where she shared a house at 913 North Second Street with Mrs. Gladys H. and Myrtle Johnson. (The similarity of Christian names could mean Gladys H. was Sarah Jane’s mother, Gladys Hope.) Another neighbor, Anna Pendergast, claimed Sarah Jane had been married in her teens (never verified), and recalled that she would sit out in the yard “with a pencil and paper in her hand. When I asked her what she was doing she told me writing—that she wanted to write.… She was a real sweet person.” By 1934, she was back in Hollywood. Leroy Prinz, the son of her old St. Joseph teacher, had become a successful dance director in films and promised her a break as a dancer.