Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series)
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LeRoy told her that Samuel Goldwyn was “always on the look-out for pretty young fillies to add to his stable of stunning chorines.”
It was on the set of this slapstick comedy (Jane’s first-ever film role) that she was befriended by Goddard and Lucille Ball, and also by the young star, Betty Grable.
Grable later recalled meeting Jane. “She and I were regarded as ‘ponies’ in the Goldwyn stable because we were the smallest of the dancing girls.”
The Kid from Spain: Jane Wyman is lower right; Lucille Ball is second from top; Paulette Goddard fourth from the bottom.
“I had signed a contract claiming I was sixteen years old,” Grable said. “Jane, too, lied about her age, making herself older. I would have to stand still for two years until my real age caught up with me. Jane, too.”
“Lucy, Paulette, Betty, and I were on the long road to stardom,” Jane said. “For Lucy and Betty, and for me, it was a long, tortuous road. But, frankly, Paulette took a few shortcuts to stardom, but I never wanted to play the casting couch game.”
After Jane’s violent rape by Eugene and his friend, she confided to Goddard, “I feel I don’t have any morality left to hold onto, not now, not after what happened to me. I was used like a cheap whore.”
“You can turn that to your advantage,” Goddard said. “Now that you’re already a fallen woman, fuck your way to the top, baby.”
Goddard certainly took her own advice, sleeping with Joseph M. Schenck, who became chairman of 20th Century Fox. She also bedded such big box office draws as Gary Cooper and Clark Gable before landing in the marriage bed of the very successful, very rich Charlie Chaplin, who had once exposed himself to Jane.
The comedian—frenetic, goggle-eyed Eddie Cantor—was the star of the picture. Other than waiting around between scenes, Jane didn’t have that much to do, so she watched Cantor emote in front of the camera, doing the eye-rolling song-and-dance routines whose oft-repeated gags made him famous. They had earned him the nickname, “Banjo Eyes.”
Even though her part was miniscule, and limited just to the chorus, Jane exchanged pleasantries with the film’s well-established director, Leo McCarey, who had been working in silent films since 1921.
Jane also met Busby Berkeley, who choreographed some of The Kid From Spain’s dance numbers. He gave Jane her first screen close-up, as part of the technique he had developed, the “parade of faces”–individualizing each chorus girl with a loving close-up.
Jane’s first Hollywood seduction was with a young Robert Young, who was ridiculously cast in Kid from Spain as Ricardo, a Latin Lover type with a pencil-thin mustache. Before breaking into pictures, he’d been a bank teller, a reporter, and a shoe salesman.
After three dates, he seduced her on a Saturday night. The following Monday, Goddard asked her, “How was it?”
“I was screwed by a real gentleman,” Jane said. “After my disastrous marriage, I thought all men were brutes in bed. Robert did it with courtesy and such politeness. He even thanked me profusely at the end.”
That same Monday, the film’s director, McCarey, confronted Young and told him, “You don’t have any screen eroticism. I don’t think you’ll make it in pictures.”
Chorine, Betty Grable
Weeks after the picture was wrapped, Jane had a chance encounter with Young on Hollywood Boulevard. “The reviews of The Kid from Spain have come out,” he said. “One paper wrote, ‘Robert Young is less noticeable than the rest of the cast.’”
“I’m sorry Robert. Better luck next time,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek before moving on.
***
Meanwhile, Paulette Goddard was sleeping with director Mervyn LeRoy, who, in time, would become known for helping launch such stars as Edward G. Robinson, Clark Gable, Loretta Young, and Robert Mitchum. LeRoy was also known for seducing some of the great beauties of Hollywood, including blondes such as Ginger Rogers and Lana Turner.
Chorine, Paulette Goddard
Goddard used her influence with LeRoy to get him to cast Jane in a small part in a film he was directing, Elmer the Great (1932), an ode to the Great American Sport, wherein a country hick bats his way to stardom.
Elmer the Great was conceived as a vehicle for the endless corny vaudevillian character actor, Joe E. Brown, whose wide mouth was frequently compared to the Grand Canyon. The female lead was awarded to Patricia Ellis, the self-proclaimed “Queen of the Bs” at Warner.
At Goddard’s urging, Jane hinted to LeRoy that she’d be available for dates, but he didn’t seem that interested. He later boasted that he had “discovered” Jane Wyman. “Jack Warner had signed her. I first spotted her walking around the lot in a yellow polo coat. I decided she’d be right for this part in Elmer. I cast her and she did a swell job. Her career was launched.”
Chorine, Lucille Ball
In contrast to LeRoy, Brown made many seductive hits on Jane, as she confessed to Goddard. “I think he’s goofy looking,” Jane said. “He’s not my type at all. Unlike you, I’ll sleep with a director or a star, but only if he’s good looking, I insist on that.”
During the filming, Jane and Goddard became close friends. Goddard, by now a star in her own right, confessed to Jane that she had gotten her start on Broadway “by letting Florence Ziegfeld fuck me.”
Goddard’s advice to Wyman was to continue to pursue her screen career, providing that she had married “some rich businessman who pays for your upkeep and isn’t stingy with mink coats and diamond rings.”
***
Why was Joe E. Brown called “Mr. Big Mouth?”
Robert Young in the 1930s... ”No erotic fire.”
Chicago-born director, Norman Taurog, who in time would helm eighty films, offered Jane a small role in the latest Jack Oakie film, College Rhythm. [Its plot involves the college rivalry of a piccolo player and an All-American halfback who both love the same coed.] Oakie had appeared in so many of these collegiate films that he was known as “The World’s Oldest Freshman.”
Busby Berkeley, a neurotic perfectionist, directing Babes on Broadway in 1941.
Although he liked Jane, Taurog failed to see her potential. “I’m not surprised,” she recalled. “My God, in the past few months, he’d directed Gary Cooper, George Raft, Charles Laughton, W.C. Fields, and Carole Lombard. How could I measure up to those guys?”
In College Rhythm, Oakie played the role of “Love ’n’ Kisses Finnegan,” a once-celebrated college quarterback who, after graduation, falls on hard times. He finds work at a department store, where his status as a former football star is broadcast as an advertising ploy.
Jane told Taurog that “Oakie made a pass at me, but didn’t score a touchdown off screen.” Even though she turned him down, she respected his comedic talent.
Jane asked Taurog if he thought she’d ever graduate from a bit-part player in the chorus line into a major actress. “Your speaking voice is poorly pitched and unsteady in tone,” he responded. “It doesn’t match your face. And that heart-shaped face of yours! I don’t know how it would go over in a dramatic role. The cast members call you ‘Dog Puss.’”
Jane spent much of her time on the movie set, laughing and talking with Franklin Pangborn, one of Hollywood’s most visible stately homos of the 1930s. His fussy and effeminate mannerisms were matched only by those of Edward Everett Horton.
Pangborn showed her an article written by the militant film censor Joseph Breen in 1932. Breen had claimed that sexual perversions were rampant among the Hollywood colony, alleging that many directors and male stars were queer.
[Between 1934 and 1955, Breen, a strict (some say rabid, with a sense of missionary zeal) Roman Catholic, was a film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America.He zealously applied the stuffy and punitive Hays Code to film production, much to the rage and frustration of avant-garde directors, actors, writers, and civil libertarians.]
Movie director, Mervyn LeRoy (right), boasted of launching the career of Jane Wyman. Matinee he
artthrob Robert Taylor would discover Jane in a more intimate way.
Pangborn also showed her an article from Variety. “Effeminate boys have crept into motion pictures,” it stated. “Winked at, they are now a comedy staple.”
“If a director needs a swishy interpretation, I’m his boy,” Pangborn told Jane.
On the set of College Rhythm, Jane met a fellow bit player billed as Clara Lou Sheridan. She would later become famous as the movie star, Ann Sheridan. She appeared in two scenes, first as a glove saleswoman and later as a spectator at the department store football game.
Non-Collegians: Jack Oakie with Mary Brian.
Jane spoke to her only casually, never realizing that she would, in the years to come, become a frequent visitor at her home during her marriage to Ronald Reagan, with whom Sheridan would later star.
When Jane went to see the final cut of College Rhythm, she said, ruefully, “Goo-Goo,” the mascot duck for the football team, walked off with the picture.”
***
Jane went on to play a very small role in the frothy 1935 film, All the King’s Horses, a mediocre musical about a movie star who exchanges places with lookalike king from the mythical kingdom of Ruritania, causing political and romantic complications for both of them.
Its director, Frank Tuttle, had helmed movies since 1922, including The Untamed Lady (1926), with Gloria Swanson, and Kid Boots (also in 1926), starring Eddie Cantor and Clara Bow.
A former prizefighter, the Danish film actor and singer, Carl Brisson, was the film’s dashing star, cast into the double roles of both the King (Rudolf XIV) and the hapless actor (Carlo Rocco) who temporarily “replaces” him.
A star from the British stage, Mary Ellis, was cast as the film’s dignified female lead, Elaine, Queen of Langenstein. Known for her roles in musical theater, Ellis had sung at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House with operatic superstar Enrico Caruso.
Two character actors, Eugene Pallette and Edward Everett Horton, became two of the most unusual characters Jane would ever meet. Early in his career, Pallette was a slender leading man, but he morphed into a very obese actor with a large stomach and a deep, gravelly voice.
Jane meets the two most visible and reliable homos of Hollywood—Franklin Pangborn (left) and Edward Everett Horton.
[Pallette liked Jane as a friend and would remain friendly with her throughout the war years. In 1946, he became convinced that a “world blow-up” was imminent, fearing—with some justification—that the planet was threatened by atomic bombs.
He purchased a 3,500-acre mountain fortress in Imnaha, Oregon, to await the nuclear holocaust.
Jane was among the people to whom he extended an invitation there for survival. On his ranch, he had a large herd of prize cattle, a vast amount of food, and his own canning plant and lumber mill.
Jane thanked him, but turned down his invitation. When the world blowup did not happen within two years, as he had predicted, he sold the ranch and returned to Hollywood, but never made another movie.]
After working with Pangborn, Edward Everett Horton became the second “stately homo” of Hollywood with whom Jane would work. She found him vastly amusing. He told her, “Even though homosexuality can’t be depicted on the screen, it is hiding in plain sight. I entered films at the height of the so-called Pansy Craze. It pays for me to be a sap or a mouse on screen. Those are euphemisms for queers. If a director wants a bumbling, stuttering, fluttering, actor, here I am. If the macho leading man needs a fairy friend, here I am, twinkle toes and all.”
***
Jane’s next picture was Rumba (1935). [A bored debutante pursues, romantically, a Latino dancer in a Broadway show.] Its 71-minute screenplay featured two big stars, George Raft and Carole Lombard. As its director, Paramount selected Russian-born Marion Gering. Before arriving in Hollywood to direct some Sylvia Sidney movies, he had helmed many plays on Broadway.
Carl Brisson
Raft and Lombard had had a hit when they’d filmed Bolero together the previous year. Paramount was hoping—in vain—that lightning would strike twice. In Bolero, Raft and Lombard had created fireworks both privately and onscreen, but their torrid romance seemed to have fizzled before filming began on Rumba.
The film is perhaps best remembered for a scene in which Raft, in tails, dances sublimely with Lombard, in shimmering silver lamé against a backdrop of stylized tropical vegetation. But in spite of its impressive cast, Rumba didn’t project the sparks that Bolero did.
Also appearing in Rumba as an uncredited chorus girl, like Jane, was Texas born Ann Sheridan, an actress known for her acerbic wit, her come-hither looks, and her deep, suggestive voice. She would soon be christened the “Oomph Girl” by Hollywood Publicists. She became friends with Jane on the set of Rumba. Despite its commercial appeal, however, Sheridan despised the “Oomph” label, telling Jane, “Oomph is a noise a fat man makes when he bends over to tie his shoelace in a phone booth.”
Apocalytic visionary: Eugene Pallette
Like Paulette Goddard and Lucille Ball, Sheridan planned to “sample the wares” of some of the leading stars of Hollywood—and she did.
Jack Benny said, “Annie was just a plain, simple girl. She liked her sex simple and her liquor plain, and she liked a lot of men and a lot of liquor.” Ultimately, Sheridan agreed with the comedian’s assessment of her.
While making Rumba, Sheridan took Jane on a “troll” of the Hollywood bars. “After a few drinks, I passed out,” Jane said, “but Annie was just starting her binge.”
During the making of Rumba, Sheridan agreed to pose for some publicity stills, trying to make herself look super sexy. Privately, she told Jane, “I have the body of a skinny young man.”
Since her figure was less than shapely, wardrobe made a chest harness for her, with rubber, size-38 breasts.
As Jane looked on, and as the day grew hotter, it became time for lunch. Annoyed at the discomfort of the harness, Sheridan took it off and slung it at Jane. “Honey, hold my tits for me while I change into something more comfortable.”
During her early days at Warners, Jane, like Sheridan, would also be asked to seductively pose for cheesecake. Jane herself was soonafter reminded of how Hollywood bestowed breasts upon its flat-chested stars and wannabees. As she was walking by Lombard’s dressing room, the blonde-haired star opened the door and called out to one of the wardrobe men. “Okay, faggot, bring me my tits.”
When Jane completed her work on Rumba, she bid farewell to the cast and crew, hoping they might work together on some future project. When she approached Raft, he said, “I like your looks, Pug Nose. How about a date with me tonight? I think there’s a role for you in my next picture.”
George Raft romances Carole Lombard, with Jane on the side, in Rumba
“I’d be honored to go out with you, Mr. Raft,” she answered.
***
To Jane, and to thousands of his fans, Raft was exciting, intriguing, and charismatic. A Broadway dancer, a Hollywood tough guy, a gambler, and a Don Juan with a life-long involvement in the Underworld, he had emerged from Hell’s Kitchen in New York. Having been born there in 1895, he was a juvenile delinquent and a member of a rough-and-tumble street gang before becoming a boxer.
Deciding that boxing wasn’t for him, he became a dancehall gigolo, rooming with and loving his counterpart, Rudolph Valentino. Together, they worked the “tea rooms” of Manhattan and later made professional love to aging, rich women before returning to their shared apartment and their mutual bed.
Ann Sheridan admitted, “I have no tits,” but Hollywood billed her as “über-glamorous, über-sexy.”
One client fell in love with Raft and nearly fatally stabbed him when she learned that he was dating her so-called best friend.
Eventually, Raft fell into the bed of the queen of New York City nightlife, Texas Guinan. She typecast him as a gigolo, an association that would remain with him throughout the rest of his career, in her movie, Queen of the Night Clubs (1929).
After his hit film, Scarface (1932), he joined the pantheon of Warner Brothers’ screen gangsters, the most visible of which included Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, and the emerging Humphrey Bogart.
Raft also starred in Mae West’s first film, Night After Night (1932), and had an affair with her. Later, after he saw the final cut, he turned on her. “The bitch committed armed robbery in stealing the picture from me.”
After 1932, he perfected his evil sneer and rude, stoic manner that would carry him through the 1930s. But with the passage of youth, his wooden presence on the screen would grow more dreary with each lackluster picture.
Jane would go out on two separate dates with Raft, both of which led to violence. Early on the evening of the first date, he’d taken her to the Café Trocadero on Sunset Strip. Almost overnight, it had become the place for Hollywood stars to be seen. A black tie, French-inspired supper club in the posh Sunset Plaza section of the Strip, it had quickly become one of the most famous nightclubs in the world.
But when a waiter served Raft a gin and tonic that was not to his liking, the movie star tossed the drink into the young man’s face. Jane was horrified at such behavior, but said nothing.
Many sources claim that Raft did not drink, but many of his dates, including Jane, differed, suggesting that he was a binge drinker who could go for weeks without a drink before having a heavy bout with liquor.
Raft had been drinking heavily that night and invited Jane back to his apartment. With reluctance, she accepted the invitation, her decision based to some degree on her hopes of snagging a role in his next picture.