Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series)

by Darwin Porter

  Reagan told the handsome young man, “I believe I’m shaking the hand of a future President of the United States.”

  After JFK Jr. departed, Reagan told Nancy, “I hope my prediction never comes true.”

  A former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (on the right), greets a presiding First Lady, Nancy, as a smiling and indulgent President Reagan looks on. The June 25, 1985 rendezvous occurred in Boston at a fund-raiser for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

  Later, Reagan told his aide, Donald Regan, “I first met Jackie in Hollywood in the late 1950s, when she was screwing my best friend, Bill Holden.”

  (Above) Reagan and Nancy appear to be admiring a sculpted replica of a Komodo Dragon presented to them in Bali in May of 1986.

  His shirt was a gift from the Indonesian people. As he later quipped, “The only thing louder was the mouth of Jimmy Carter.”

  (Left) in the Oval Office, President Reagan shows off his golfing stance, hitting a ball within the sightlines of a real golf pro (Ray Floyd), who’s standing outside the frame of this photo.

  When this photo was published on June 24, 1986, golf pros thought Reagan’s pose was “effeminate.”

  When he heard that, Reagan, always fast with a quip, told aides, “They don’t know the half of it. in private, I give the best pansy imitation in the history of the Presidency.”

  (Left) President Reagan welcomes the Iron Lady of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, to Camp David on November 6, 1986. There was press speculation that he had always been drawn to strong-willed women. “Take his two wives or his mother, Nelle, as an example,” wrote one reporter.

  Another had a different view. “I think Mrs. Thatcher had the hots for him.”

  Reagan and Nancy dig into the earth at a ground-breaking ceremony for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California, on November 21, 1988.

  Again, Reagan was fast with a quip, telling reporters, “Nancy learned the use of a shovel by scooping up horse shit on my ranch in Malibu.”

  President Reagan certainly earned his place in the sun in American history. But was it good for his nose? Apparently not.

  In August of 1987, he appeared at a press briefing in the Old Executive Office Building in Washington. He’d just had surgery on his nose for cancer.

  (Left) In January of 1989, after eight years residency in the White House, President Reagan and Nancy bid farewell to their assembled well-wishers at Washington’s Andrews Air Force base, before a plane hauled them away to their retirement in California. The occasion caused them to shed tears.

  When Reagan was later asked about it, he said, “Richard Nixon in his farewell address also shed tears—and so did his wife, Pat. but Dick and I were tearing up for very different reasons during our exit from the White House.”

  Prologue #1

  Young Reagan in the arms of his first love, “Mugs,” who cautioned him to get a grip on his raging hormones.

  The Reagan family (left to right): Jack, Moon, Baby Dutch, and Nelle. Young Reagan is “all dressed up.”

  The son of an alcoholic Irish father and a Bible-thumping religious zealot mother, Ronald Wilson Reagan entered the world on February 6, 1911. As viewed through the windows of the family’s apartment, in the hamlet of Tampico, in northwestern Illinois, the scene could have been from the 1880s, with horse-drawn carriages traversing Main Street.

  The infant son, who would grow up to be called “The Great Communicator,” started early by crying his head off day and night. “For such a little bit of a fat Dutchman, he sure makes a hell of a lot of noise,” said Jack Reagan.

  Trim and fit, Dutch became a lifeguard in Dixon, saving 77 lives.

  The boy was nicknamed “Dutch.”

  The devout Nelle Clyde Wilson had previously given birth to another son, John Neil Reagan, who was nicknamed “Moon” after the cartoon character of Moon Mullins.

  When he was sober enough, Jack sold shoes and his friends admitted he had “the gift of Blarney and the charm of a Leprechaun.”

  Auburn-haired Nelle, of Scottish-English descent, had an ample bosom, narrow hips, and a strong jaw. She’d taken out one of her large breasts in church for Dutch to suckle. Later, she complained to Jack, “He sucked voraciously for his mother’s milk, practically biting my nipple off. He can’t get enough.”

  In his high school football uniform, Dutch was getting an early rehearsal for his first famous movie, Knute Rockne—All American.

  “That means in twenty or so years from now, he’s gonna be a tit man, chasing all the big bosom dames, if I know my son,” Jack said.

  The family was poor. As a boy, Dutch went to the butcher, where liver was given away free, as it was viewed not fit for human consumption. The boy said the liver was for their cats, except it usually was the main course at Nelle’s Sunday dinner.

  In later years, Dutch recalled growing up with Moon, “Ours was a Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn idyll.”

  In the years to come, the Reagans moved five times, including a dismal existence in a cold-water flat in Chicago, where they were called “trashy Micks.” Jack enjoyed Chicago, as it was labeled “the most drunken town in the Middle West.”

  Nelle and Jack in a 19th Century pose

  Reagan inherited his love of acting from “Jack & Nell,” who appeared in amateur theatricals, his father scoring his greatest hit as a female impersonator, with lots of powder, rouge, and bright red lipstick.

  In school, Dutch was known as a bookworm. “I got my ass beat a lot,” he recalled. “Those rough-and-tumble farmboys called me a sissy. I got used to black eyes and bloody noses, but I wanted to learn.”

  The highlight of his young life came in 1926, when he was made Dixon’s lifeguard along Rock River, a position he’d hold down for seven summers, during which time he heroically saved 77 lives—men, women, and children. Muscled, bronzed, and handsome, he became the most pursued young man in Dixon.

  Dutch’s first love, Margaret Cleaver (Mugs), in 1928. She looked like a flapper, but was a “Bible Thumper.”

  Wanting to play football, but too skinny, Dutch became a baton twirler for the school band. Moon called him “a majorette.” By his junior year, he also became an actor in school plays.

  Along came love into his life, Margaret Cleaver, nicknamed “Mugs,” a sparkling brunette with brown eyes. As he later revealed, “She told me to control my raging hormones. She always wore that chastity belt.”

  Washing dishes helped pay his tuition at Eureka College. He’d later joke, “The road to the presidency was paved with masses of dirty dishes.”

  As he physically filled out, he got to play football, his passions being football, drama, politics, and Mugs.

  Eureka College Man, Reagan, with his hair parted in the middle, starred in school plays.

  Although he qualified for the football team, the basketball team rejected him because of his poor eyesight. He became a cheerleader instead. The players called him “Sister Boy.” But he was elected the captain of the swimming team.

  Taunted by Moon for being a virgin, Dutch finally lost it to Peggy Hannah, 28, who charged young men from the nearby college $1.50 a throw.

  After a vagabond life, the Reagans settled in Dixon, Illinois, a hundred miles west of Chicago, on the banks of the Rock River. Dixon became the role model for President Reagan’s “a Shining City on the Hill.”

  Dutch’s favorite spot for having a cold lemonade was President’s Park with its statue of Abraham Lincoln. In 1823, the future president with his volunteers had roared through town to rout some hostile Black Hawk Indians, driving them north into Canada. Later, when Peggy got pregnant, she admitted, “It could have been any one of forty guys.” Both Moon and Dutch drove her to Chicago for an illegal abortion.

  After college, he drifted to Des Moines where, in time, he was hailed as “The Radio Sports Voice of the Middle West.”In his own words, “I became the Gay Blade of Des Moines.” He dated an array of beautiful young girls. Even a rich older widow fell
for him.

  Reagan achieved early fame in Des Moines, broadcasting sports and chasing corn-fed beauties.

  While there, Durch’s first major league seduction occurred when Aimee Semple McPherson, the most famous evangelist in America, seduced him after he interviewed her at his radio station. Big name Hollywood stars would follow.

  One winter day, his life changed when he was invited by the managers of the Chicago Cubs to watch their training on Catalina Island off the coast of Southern California. He shouted, “California, here I come!” and he was off.

  He was twenty-six years old, and the year was 1936, when he hit Tinseltown.

  In Des Moines, he’d interviewed a singer, Joy Hodges. He found out that she was the star nightlife attraction at Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel, where he was staying. She stood him up on a date, but, in remorse, arranged for him to meet a blonde starlet, Betty Grable, with whom she’d recently worked on an RKO picture, Follow the Fleet (1936). This close friend of another starlet, Jane Wyman, turned out to be the most glamorous woman Reagan had ever met.

  Aimee Semple McPherson, America’s most famous evangelical faith healer, had Reagan singing “Ave Maria.”

  On their first date, Grable seduced him. “She taught me more tricks than a whore learns in a whorehouse,” he later bragged to Moon.

  That spring of 1937, he returned to Catalina Island, ostensibly as part of an assignment from his work as a sportscaster to watch the Chicago Cubs in training. But after his re-arrival in California, he shifted his focus, heading for Hollywood instead. He stayed at the Biltmore once again. This time, Hodges kept her date with him.

  He told her, “I want to be a movie star.” In Des Moines, he would have been laughed at, but in Hollywood, that statement was typical. Issuing a warning, she told him, “Men who wear glasses don’t get passes.” She translated that phrase for him, explaining that men who wear glasses don’t get screen tested.

  Hodges arranged an interview with her own talent agents, who handled big stars like Robert Taylor, as well as minor starlets like Grable and Wyman.

  In Reagan, these agents thought they had discovered “the next Robert Taylor,” and a screen test was arranged for him at Warner Brothers.

  Reagan later recalled, “Some homos in wardrobe and makeup treated me likea slab of beef, but remade me to face the camera. On his report, the head of wardrobe wrote—”Greek god physique but not Johnny Weissmuller. Broad shoulders, slim waist, slight over six feet, face that would get a second look from Joan Crawford.”

  Starlet Betty Grable, on the dawn of World War II fame, was Reagan’s first conquest in Hollywood.

  His test went smoothly, but he had to get approval from Jack Warner.

  He could not wait around and returned to his broadcasting job in Des Moines.

  Five days later, back in Iowa, he received an urgent telegram from his agent. It read: WARNERS OFFER CONTRACT SEVEN YEARS. ONE YEAR OPTIONS. STARTING AT $200 A WEEK.

  It was late at night when he received the telegram. “I think I yelled so loud I woke up every coyote in Iowa.”

  In his newly purchased Nash convertible, he headed for the “Dream Factory” that was Hollywood in those days, in the full flower of what is known as “its Golden Age.”

  Warner Brothers promoted Reagan as a body beautiful.

  ***

  To his new friends in Hollywood, especially Dick Powell, Reagan recalled that screen test. “It was my introduction to Hollywood, which I found crawling with homos. I met a lot of them in makeup and wardrobe. They sure took liberties with my body, feeling and fussing, a little to much for my tastes. But they did turn a hayseed from the Middle West into a passable leading man.”

  Ronald Reagan, a former hayseed, now one of Hollywood’s leading men.

  Years later, Ron Reagan, Jr. would write about his father’s “physical beauty” at the time, citing his “charisma as a man who harbored an unquenchable flame of ambitions and believed in his dreams.”

  Prologue #2

  Baby Sarah Jane was a pug-nosed cutie abandoned by her parents.

  Even in school, Sarah Jane showed promise of the Hollywood chorus girl she’d become.

  Nicknamed “Saint Joe,” St. Joseph, Missouri, lies on the Missouri River on the Kansas/Missouri border in the northwestern part of the “Show Me” state. It was the starting point of the Pony Express and the death place of the outlaw, Jesse James. It is also the home of Missouri Western State University. Once, it was the last supply point before a pioneer ventured into the “Wild West.” Deep in this heartland of America, a movie star was born.

  Even though she was married to a man who became one of the most famous of the 20th Century, and even though she became an A-list, Oscar-winning movie star, much about the life of the screen star Jane Wyman remains a mystery.

  Her birthday, her actual parents, and the basic facts of her background and upbringing are consistently misreported.

  Much of the false information about her emanated not only from the Warner Brothers’ publicity department, but from Jane herself.

  Jane Wyman’s humble birthplace in St. Joseph, Missouri. From this, a multi-millionaire actress emerged into world fame.

  In defiance of her status as a minor, and as a vehicle to combat the possibility that she’d be rejected for employment because she was under-aged, Jane herself “invented” her birth date as January 4, 1914. In St. Joseph, authorities representing the state of Missouri registered her actual birth as January 5, 1917. Her biological parents were Gladys Hope Christian and Manning J. Mayfield, who had married in Kansas City, Missouri, on May 17, 1916, only eight months before her actual birth.

  The infant’s original name was Sarah Jane Mayfield, although most of the official records associated with her early life report her last name as Fulks. That was the surname of her foster parents, who never legally adopted her. Officially, her maiden name was never officially changed. Her surname of Wyman came from a mysterious young husband, a brief interloper who has since disappeared into the dustbin of history.

  Jane’s mother, Gladys (1891-1960), worked in St. Joseph as a stenographer and office assistant for Dr. Jackson Elam. Jane’s father, Manning (1885-1922), was a worker at a local factory that turned out food products made from grain.

  When Jane was five years old, her father unexpectedly opted to leave St. Joseph without his family, heading alone for San Francisco, where he found employment as an office worker at a local shipping company. He divorced Gladys in October of 1921, having taken a mistress in San Francisco. He died on January 21, 1922 at the age of twenty-seven, having contracted a severe case of pneumonia.

  Back in Missouri, when Dr. Elam’s wife discovered that her husband was having an affair with his stenographer, Gladys was fired. Instead of remaining to face disgrace in St. Joseph, she decided to take the train to the bright lights of then-burgeoning Cleveland, Ohio, to try her luck there.

  Gladys told her associates that she wanted to find another husband, and she believed that bringing a young child to her uncertain future in Cleveland would be “too much baggage” for her. She also couldn’t afford to hire a part-time babysitter for her young pre-school daughter.

  During her employment with Dr. Elam, she had met the Fulks couple. Richard Fulks, 65, the husband, was rather stern and didn’t have much to say, but his German wife, Emma, 60, seemed interested, perhaps, in arranging a future adoption.

  In an impulsive moment, Gladys proposed that she leave Sarah Jane with the Fulks family, who would take care of her and supervise her schooling. She promised that as soon as she found work in Cleveland, she would send child support.

  “Little Miss Wyman is a mystery no one ever bothered to solve.” —Marlene Dietrich

  Although somewhat reluctant at first, the Fulks agreed to take responsibility for the child.

  Jane’s foster parents were a hardworking, battered-by-life couple. Emma Reiss (1866-1951) had emigrated many years before from her native Saarbrucken, Germany, to Missouri. Jane’s
foster father, Richard D. Fulks (1862-1928), had been progressively promoted from beginnings as a low-level municipal bureaucrat to the community’s chief detective.

  Young Jane’s new home was a gloomy house she’d later call “a Victorian gingerbread monstrosity, something out of an Addams Family cartoon.”

  Her foster parents were stern disciplinarians. Her new stepfather was an aging, balding man with a walrus mustache. The sound of laughter was never heard in this decaying pile. It was a sad, lonely place for Jane.

  Once settled in Cleveland, Gladys did not send child support. Except for a brief visit with Jane in Los Angeles in 1933, Gladys never saw her daughter again, dying in New York City at the age of sixty-five in 1960.

  Later in life, Jane could not recall one pleasurable memory from her girlhood. “I was raised in such a bitter household that it took me years to recover from the memories that remained.”

  In a rare interview given to Guidepost Magazine in 1964, Jane said, “I was extremely shy as a child. Shyness is no small problem. It can cripple a whole personality. It crippled me for many years. As a child, my only solution to the problem of shyness was to hide myself and make myself as small and insignificant as possible. Through grade school, I was a well-mannered little shadow who never spoke above a whisper.”

  On September 10, 1923, “Sarah Jane Fulks” was enrolled in the Noyes School in St. Joseph. She had little interest in schoolwork and was not a good pupil. If called upon to answer a question, her vocal chords would become almost paralyzed with fear. Eventually, she dropped out of school.