Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  IT IS OUR UNDERSTANDING THAT YOU HAVE STATED TO THE DIRECTOR [H. Bruce Humberstone] OF THE MOTION PICTURE—QUOTE—SHE’S WORKING HER WAY THROUGH COLLEGE—UNQUOTE—THAT YOU WILL NOT WEAR THE TYPE OF WARDROBE DEEMED NECESSARY TO PROPERLY CHARACTERIZE THE ROLE YOU ARE PORTRAYING… NOR WILL YOU COMPLY WITH SAID DIRECTOR’S REQUEST THAT YOU WEAR… GLASSES TO CHARACTERIZE YOUR SAID ROLE STOP WE DESIRE TO CALL YOUR ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT YOUR CONTRACT WITH US PROVIDES AMONG OTHER THINGS THAT YOU WILL ACT, POSE, SPEAK OR OTHERWISE APPEAR AND PERFORM AS REQUESTED BY US AND YOUR FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THE REQUESTS AND DIRECTIONS OF THE DIRECTOR IS NOT IN COMPLIANCE WITH YOUR OBLIGATION TO US… YOUR FAILURE [to Comply] SHALL NECESSITATE THE SUBSTITUTION OF ANOTHER ARTIST TO PORTRAY THE ROLE YOU ARE NOW PORTRAYING… AND WE SHALL HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE FOR ALL DAMAGES, COSTS AND EXPENSES SUFFERED BY US IN CONNECTION WITH THE ENTIRE PRODUCTION OF “SHE’S WORKING HER WAY THROUGH COLLEGE.”

  Reagan wired back:

  YOUR TELEGRAM PURPORTING TO RECOUNT MY ACTIONS TOWARDS THE DIRECTOR OF YOUR PHOTOPLAY “SHE’S WORKING HER WAY THROUGH COLLEGE” IS A MISSTATEMENT OF THE FACTS STOP ALTHOUGH I DID ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH THE DIRECTOR REFERABLE TO ATTIRE TO BE WORN BY ME SUCH WAS A MERE FERVENT APPEAL OCCASIONED BY MY ENTHUSIASM FOR A REALISTIC INTERPRETATION OF MY ROLE AND WAS NOT NOR WAS IT INTENDED TO BE A REFUSAL TO COMPLY WITH ANY REASONABLE REQUIREMENT MADE BY YOU OR YOUR DIRECTOR. I HAVE COMPLIED WITH ALL MY OBLIGATIONS UNDER MY CONTRACT AND SHALL CONTINUE TO DO SO. RONALD REAGAN.

  Reagan wrote in his autobiography that he decided not to send his reply, and that he called Warner the next day and said, “Jack, when I got your wire last night I felt pretty foolish. We’ve been together thirteen years and something is awfully wrong if we start sending telegrams to each other. I’ve done a lot of things for which I’m sorry and I want you to know there won’t be any more.” However, the above original telegram is in the legal files of the Warner Brothers archives, so Reagan must have sent it.

  Reagan’s private life appeared to be doing better than his reel life. In March 1951, he dissolved the Northridge Horse Farm and bought 290 acres in Malibu Canyon to use as a horse breeding farm which he named “Yearling Row Ranch” (a name that would appear, curiously enough, to combine Jane Wyman’s film The Yearling with his own Kings Row). A portion of the eighty-five-thousand-dollar initial cost of acquiring the property had come from the sale of the old farm and several horses.* He kept Baby, whom he was now breeding. Reagan named the first foal born at Yearling Row Ranch “Nancy D.”

  His relationship with Nancy had shifted into a more serious commitment. Despite the problems and disappointments she was experiencing in her own career, Nancy was always cheerful, always supportive of Reagan and always more concerned about his trials than her own. People like the Holdens and the Scharys felt she considered his career of greater importance than her own. She commented that the studios were purposefully placing him in demeaning situations and that “Marlon Brando got all the good scripts.” She was equally sympathetic over his problems at the SAG. Jack Dales recalled that she was “quiet, very quiet” at the meetings. The minutes have almost no mention of her name, except in acknowledging her attendance or when she seconded a resolution Reagan had instigated. Another SAG staff member said, “I don’t know how she got reelected. I suspect the board did it as a favor to Reagan. People REALLY hated her, thought she was nasty. I literally never heard anyone say anything nice about her. But also I have never heard anyone say anything substantive about her. She came across like a nasty ditz.… I never saw her do anything at the Guild other than sit at meetings and ogle Reagan. She would just—sit.” Other board members recalled her “rapt attention” when Reagan spoke. Reagan was speaking out and writing articles at a prolific rate, all of an anti-Communist nature. Since he was the SAG president, these public statements appeared to be Guild policy as well.*

  One of the gravest issues the Guild had to deal with was the blacklist. Gale Sondergaard, one of the great character actresses in films, known for the mysterious and evil women she portrayed (The Letter, Spider Woman), was subpoenaed to appear before HUAC on March 21, 1951, following her husband director-writer Herbert Biberman’s conviction as one of the Hollywood Ten. Sondergaard had always been active in the SAG, and on March 13 she wrote Reagan and the board members:

  I am addressing you… not only as the directors of our union, but also as fellow actors. I am addressing you because I have been subpoenaed, together with other members of our union, before the Un-American Activities Committee. I will appear next Wednesday.

  I would be naive if I did not recognize that there is a danger that by the following day I may have arrived at the end of my career as a motion picture actress.…

  Surely it is not necessary for me to say to this Board that I love my profession and that I have tried to bring to it honesty of feeling, clarity of thought and a real devotion. Surely it is also unnecessary for me to state that I consider myself a deeply loyal American with genuine concern for the welfare and peace of my own countrymen and all humanity.…

  I believe in freedom of speech and religion and association as described in our First Amendment. Unfortunately, our present Supreme Court has not seen fit to spell out its legal availability to us in our own days. But it has done so in respect to the oldest right of the individual in recorded history—the right of silence—the right under the Fifth Amendment.

  I intend to avail myself of this right before the committee.

  Many Guild members called before the Committee will not agree with my choice. They will take other roads looking to their protection from the attacks, insinuations, and sneers of the Committee. But surely no one will believe that the economic well being of our members or the security of our union or the welfare of the industry is being served by the Committee.

  I must earnestly and fraternally ask the Board to consider the implications of the forthcoming hearing. A blacklist already exists. It may now be widened. It may ultimately be extended to include any freedom-loving non-conformist or any member of a particular race or any member of a union—or anyone.…

  For my own security—for the security of all our members, I ask our Board to weigh this hearing carefully—to determine whether it can afford to witness its approach with passivity.

  … I most especially appeal to the Board, to my fellow actors, to consider whether it will not be proper and necessary for it to make a public declaration that it will not tolerate any industry blacklist.… I can find no reason in my conduct as an actress or union member why I should have to contemplate a severing of the main artery of my life—my career as a performer—because I hold to views for which during the last war I was an esteemed member of the Victory Committee and the recipient of the thanks of my government, industry and union.…

  In an unprecedented action, Sondergaard published this letter as a paid advertisement in Variety. The SAG was forced to reply publicly. A special meeting was called, although only a small number of board members attended, presumably because of the short notice given (a matter of a day). The Guild’s position was discussed, a course agreed. Jack Dales drafted a letter based on the board’s decision. Reagan and Holden approved, and the letter addressed to Gale Sondergaard was published in The Hollywood Reporter on March 20.

  The Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild has received and carefully considered your letter of March 13th which you saw fit also to publish in the press. The Guild’s answer should be equally available to the public and will be published.

  Your letter (1) attacks as an inquisition the pending hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities into alleged Communist Party activities by a few individuals and (2) asks that the Guild protect you against any consequences of your own personal decisions and actions.

  The Communist Party press also has attacked the hearings as a “warmongering, labor and freedom-busting… witch-hunt… by Congressional inquisitors.” The Guild Board totally rejects this quoted typical Communist Party line. W
e recognize its obvious purposes of attempting to smear the hearings in advance and to create disrespect for the American form of government.

  The deadly seriousness of the international situation dictates the tone of our reply. This is not the time for dialectic fencing. Like the overwhelming majority of the American people, we believe that a “clear and present danger” to our nation exists. The Guild Board believes that all participants in the international Communist Party conspiracy against our nation should be exposed for what they are—enemies of our country and of our form of government.

  It is not the province of the Guild Board to decide what is the best method of carrying out this aim. It is our hope that the current House Committee hearings will help to do so, in an objective and intelligent manner. We are informed that the Committee will guard against smearing of any innocent individuals. We will watch with extreme interest the way in which the hearings are conducted and any and all developments stemming therefrom.

  The Guild as a labor union will fight against any secret blacklist created by any group of employers. On the other hand, if any actor by his own actions outside of union activities has so offended American public opinion that he has made himself unsaleable [sic] at the box office, the Guild cannot and would not want to force any employer to hire him. That is the individual actor’s personal responsibility and it cannot be shifted to this union.

  (Signed) BOARD OF DIRECTORS

  SCREEN ACTORS GUILD

  Gale Sondergaard took the Fifth Amendment when she appeared before the committee. Her husband had been sentenced to six months in jail for his silence. Sondergaard had all her existing contracts canceled and was denied work for more than fifteen years.

  “I think… it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils,” wrote another member of the Hollywood Ten, Dalton Trumbo. “… There were none; there were only victims. Some suffered less than others, some grew and some diminished, but in the final tally we were all victims because almost without exception each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to say, to do things he did not want to do, to deliver and receive wounds he truly did not want to exchange. That is why none of us—right, left or center—emerged from that long nightmare without sin.”

  The last film Reagan made for Warners, The Winning Team, was exactly the kind he had always pleaded Jack Warner to give him. He portrayed Grover Cleveland Alexander, one of baseball’s immortals. Doris Day, as his wife, received top billing, but the film, for what it was worth, was Reagan’s from start to end, and gave him a chance to work with some baseball greats. For three weeks before shooting he had studied daily with Detroit’s Jerry Priddy and Cleveland’s Bob Lemon to learn the difference between “throwing from the mound and just throwing.”

  Grover Alexander had not only been a heavy drinker but had suffered epileptic seizures. Recalling the dismal failure of Night Unto Night, where Reagan also played an epileptic, Warners dropped the illness from the script but unfortunately did not alter it enough for the audience to understand Alexander’s problem. As a result, despite Reagan’s and Day’s down-home performances, the story was unbelievable.

  When Reagan left the Warner lot on January 28, 1952, for the last time, after fifteen years, there was no gold-watch presentation, no party, not even a word of good-bye from Jack Warner. Reagan’s final check was to be sent to him. He left at noon. By two P.M. his name had been removed from his permanent parking place.

  * These figures are compiled by going through the many lists of supposed “travelers” or “fellow travelers” submitted by investigative agencies to the major studios. Those on the blacklist were denied work. Those on the graylist (meaning they had associations with those on the blacklist that made them suspect) were to a great extent denied work also. If those on the graylist were important to the economy of a studio, they stood a better chance of retaining their jobs than those who were not.

  * Brenda Marshall was perhaps best known for Espionage Agent (opposite Joel McCrea), The Sea Hawk (Errol Flynn) and Whispering Smith (Alan Ladd). She and Holden divorced in 1970.

  † Holden had made two brief previous appearances as an extra.

  * “Ronald Reagan is amusingly befuddled as the lady’s (Louisa’s) anxious son-in-law.” (New York Times, October 25, 1950.) “Ronald Reagan and Ruth Hussey have little to do except exclaim about the way Grandma is carrying on.” (New York Post, October 25, 1950.)

  † Reagan also made his television-acting debut in 1950 in an episode of CBS’s Airflyte Theater.

  ‡ Richard Todd was nominated for the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance in The Hasty Heart.

  * See page 440 for the financial questions raised by this purchase.

  * On January 22, 1951, Reagan published a two-thousand-word article in the magazine Fortnight titled “How Do You Fight Communism?” In it he stated: “… we know how the Communists have sought to infiltrate and control certain key industries. We know they operate with a 1 % minority but depend on organization. At meetings they ‘come early and stay late’ and they get confused ‘liberals’ to front for them at all times.…

  “The real fight with this new totalitarianism belongs properly to the forces of liberal democracy, just as did the battle with Hitler’s totalitarianism. There really is no difference except in the cast of characters. On one hand is our belief that the people can and will decide what is best for themselves, and on the other (Communist, Nazi or Fascist) side is the belief that a ‘few’ can best decide what is good for all the rest.…

  “The Congressional Committee accuses the industry of employing Communists—but several elected members of Congress are known Communists and the law says no employer can even question an employe [sic] as to his political beliefs. The Taft-Hartley law says every union official must sign a ‘non-Communist’ oath, but the same law says ‘no union can expel a member and keep him from working as long as he pays his dues.’…

  “A small group (about ten) of us in an independent political organization here in Hollywood a few years ago proposed an anti-Communist statement of policy. We did it to (as we naively put it) smoke out some suspected board members.…

  “… suppose we quit using the words Communist and Communism? They are a hoax perpetrated by the Russian Government to aid in securing fifth columnists in other countries and to mask Russian aggression aimed at world conquest. Every time we make the issue one of Communism as a political philosophy we help in this hoax. Substitute ‘Pro-Russian’ for the word Communist and watch the confusion disappear. Then you can say to any American… the so-called ‘Communist party’ is nothing more or less than a ‘Russian-American Bund’ owing allegiance to Russia and supporting Russia in its plan to conquer the world.”

  21

  “HE TELEPHONED ONCE WHEN WE WERE [IN Scottsdale] and asked me for Dr. Loyal Davis and I said who wants to speak to him and he said Ronald Reagan,” Edith Luckett Davis recalled of a night in late February 1952. “I thought what the hell’s he doing calling Loyal? I didn’t know what it was for. I said, ‘Just a moment.’ I went in and said to Loyal, ‘Ronald Reagan wants to speak to you.’ And he said, ‘Me?’ And I said, ‘Get to that phone ‘cause I want to know what he wants.’ Anyway, Loyal went to the phone. He said, ‘That’s interesting. Are you sure you can? Yes.’ And they talked. [After he hung up] Loyal said to me, ‘He wants to marry Nancy.’ And I said, ‘Oh, go on!’ He said, ‘No, I’m not kidding. He wants to marry Nancy.’ And I said, ‘That’s very exciting, very exciting.’

  “Then [Nancy called] and I said, ‘Why in hell is that man calling your father for this?’ And she said, ‘We want to get married, but don’t want to marry unless you and Daddy want me to.’ And I said, ‘Of course. If he’s a nice guy and you like him, then I’m sure he’s all right.’ And she said, ‘He is, you’ll love him.’ And I said, ‘Find out what you want for a wedding present. It can’t be extravagant, but I want you to have what you want.’ She called back [in a little while] and said, ‘I’ll
tell you what we want. We want a camera that can take moving pictures and a screen that we can show them on, and that’s all we want.’ And I said, ‘Sold.’“ The next day, February 24, an announcement was sent to the press. They were married eight days later, March 4, 1952, by the Reverend John H. Wells at the Little Brown Church in the San Fernando Valley with Bill and Ardis Holden as best man and matron of honor. The ceremony was simple. Nancy wore a plain gray wool suit with a white collar and a small veiled flowered hat that fit close to her head. The press had not been informed and the story had not leaked. After the ceremony, the wedding party drove to the Holdens’ home at nearby Toluca Lake where Mrs. Holden had ordered a cake and hired a photographer to take wedding pictures. They spent their first married days at the old Mission Inn at Riverside, California, which Reagan had discovered during the filming of Storm Warning. From there they went to Phoenix, Arizona, where Loyal and Edith drove from Scottsdale to meet their new son-in-law. “Meeting… the doctor, wasn’t the easiest moment I ever had,” Reagan later admitted. But the two men got on well. In a very short time, they realized they had more than Nancy in common. Davis was a political man who had always lived a bit vicariously in the theatrical lives of Edith’s friends, and no one could help liking Edith immediately because of her easy manner and warm personality. Even so, the saltiness of Edith’s tongue took somewhat longer for Reagan to be at ease with.