Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series)
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When they met, she was only twenty-one, Reagan six years her senior. But in spite of his frequent seductions of starlets, the twice-married Jane was a decade or so ahead of him in life experience. At the time of her meeting with Reagan, she was emerging from the ruins of her disastrous marriage to Myron Futterman.
Reagan viewed her as markedly different from the archetypal image of an “over-painted, oversexed Hollywood glamour girl.” As he relayed to Keighley. “She is not a brassy blonde like Joan Blondell, or a gal with a scandalous reputation like Carole Landis, so far as I know. She doesn’t seem to have the fire and fury of a Susan Hayward, who is determined to get ahead at any cost.”
In Brother Rat, Reagan breaks the rule, “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,” by wooing the commandant’s daughter (Wyman), seated next to him.
She developed a crush on Reagan before he got around to her. Perhaps it was because she played “a brainy dame” in Brother Rat.
But when the cast and crew went to San Diego for location shooting, they took long walks along the moonlit beach at Coronado, and love, or something like it, blossomed.
As he confessed to Keighley, “When Jane trains those wide-set brown eyes on me, with that easygoing smile, I’m intrigued. It’s not exactly love at first sight. But unlike some of the girls I’m dating, she’s respectable enough to bring home to mother.”
In addition to being attracted to Reagan’s good looks and athletic body, she had other reasons to like him, as she once expressed in an interview with a reporter. “Until I met Ronnie, I viewed all men with suspicion. I felt men were just out to use women. But I was drawn to Ronnie because of his sunny personality. He seemed genuinely and spontaneously nice. He is also very kind, and I wasn’t used to that.”
“Neither of us was a star at the time,” she recalled. “He was not a matinée idol like Errol Flynn, and I was no overdressed glamour girl like Kay Francis. We were just two kids climbing the ladder to what we hoped would be stardom for the both of us. Before I met him, I was the dancing fool, known as ‘the Hey Hey Girl.’ My nights were spent at the Cocoanut Grove or the Troc, wearing a big hat with a long cigarette holder coming out of my face.”
Reagan wanted Jane Wyman to give up smoke-filled nightclubs and devote more time to outdoor sports and to him.
Shown above, in this carefully pre-arranged publicity photo, he teaches her to skate.
“Ronnie asked me why I didn’t do more daytime activities like horseback riding or playing golf,” she said. “He also told me he was an expert swimmer, and invited me to go swimming with him. I needn’t be afraid of the water, he told me, bragging that he had rescued 77 people when he’d been a young lifeguard in Illinois.”
She told how Warners’ publicity had arranged for Reagan to take her, along with Ann Sheridan, ice skating to pose for shots for the newspapers. “Both Ronnie and I already knew Ann, and she was a fine girl. I couldn’t skate worth a damn, and I fell on my ass. He rescued me and stood me up for the photos. After that, we met often at the rink, and he actually taught me figure skating.”
It was years before Jane became aware that Reagan’s friendship with Sheridan extended way beyond a kiss on the cheek.
On his first formal date with Jane, he took her to the premiere of Second Fiddle (1939), starring the Norwegian ice-skating queen, Sonja Henie, and Tyrone Power.
“He was a refreshing change of pace for me,’ Jane told Lane. “I’m accustomed to men putting the make on me the first time out. He seemed like he’s from a more innocent time, a Midwestern boy on a date with his college sweetheart. He never made a pass at me. At the end of the evening, he gave me a kiss on the cheek, and told me he respected me as a nice girl.”
“He lectured me on a whole range of subjects,” she said. “He’s very smart and seems devoted to his parents. He supports them, you know.”
“Because of all the abuse I’ve suffered in my life, I’m filled with resentments toward people. But I found him the very opposite. Mentally, he seems very healthy to me, although I’m sure he’s got a darker side. Perhaps his pleasant façade is merely that. After midnight, he probably becomes a serial killer.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Lane said.
Lane told Keighley, “I think Ronnie is falling for Jane, but he plans to take his time. He’s having too much fun being a much sought-after Hollywood bachelor. There are a lot of starlets at Warners who want him to fuck them. He’s got a few steadies. Susan Hayward is a regular, Ann Sheridan a sometimes thing. I think at this point in his life, he wants to keep his options open. Unless he gets a gal pregnant, I don’t think he’ll want to settle down.”
Once or twice a week, he took Jane dancing at his favorite night spot, the Grace Hayes Lodge. They frequented the place enough to adopt a favorite song, “Deep Purple,” as a symbol of their shared affections. Sometimes, they double dated with Perc Westmore, Warner’s expert makeup artist, and his actress wife, Gloria Dickson.
Morris took notice of the burgeoning relationship between Jane and Reagan. “I got the feeling those two couldn’t wait to make love on camera. They were annoyed that the scriptwriters didn’t have more love scenes for them. I saw an affair developing. I decided to give Reagan a break and cool down my affair with Jane. I didn’t plan to give her up, not by a long shot, but I’d slip around behind his back and see her less frequently. She was just too turned on by me to give me up completely. I have this affect on women.”
In his first memoir, Where’s the Rest of Me?, Reagan mentioned Brother Rat in passing, although he made no mention of Jane. At the time he wrote it, he was married to Nancy Davis, who may have been the book’s censor.
He barely concealed his disappointment that Eddie Albert stole the picture he’d made with Jane from both of them. “There is only one discovery in a picture, and it wasn’t Jane or me,” he claimed.
In its review, The New York Times wrote: “The cast of Brother Rat doesn’t include strong marquee talent, but performances by the various members of the company are adequate.”
After Brother Rat was wrapped, Reagan and Jane continued dating, although not exclusively. Priscilla Lane said, “It appeared to me that she was chasing after him, but that he was running faster than she was. The two of them eventually got married, but before that happened, two big affairs lay in each of their futures, along with some side action with other parties too. I don’t think either of them wanted to retire to a rose-covered cottage to start dumping kids. Both of them hoped to make it big as movie stars. With them, love and marriage had to take second billing to seeing their names on the marquee.”
***
Jane Wyman was surprised when she learned that Ray Enright, not her favorite director, had cast Reagan in Going Places (1938). At the time, he was unaware that it was a recycling of Polo Joe, a film she had made in 1936 opposite comedian Joe E. Brown.
“Jack Warner is certainly getting mileage out of that tired old horse,” she told Reagan.
Originally a play by Victor Mapes and William Collier, Sr., the story was first filmed as a silent in 1923 starring Douglas MacLean. In 1929, it was made into a talkie with the very fluttery Edward Everett Horton in the lead.
In its reincarnated, 1938 version, Reagan once again was playing second fiddle to his friend, Dick Powell. The first day the two actors had lunch together, the veteran crooner lamented, “This is the kind of picture I’ve been trying to avoid.”
Scriptwriters Jerry Wald, along with Sig Herzig and Maurice Leo, had been called in to pump new blood into the tired old script, which was enlivened with songs by Johnny Mercer and Harry Warren. Going Places produced only one memorable song, “Jeepers Creepers.” It was not sung by Powell, but by Louis Armstrong, cast as the groom to the racing horse, Jeepers Creepers. He could race only if he heard that song playing.
In this B-rated flick, the plot was thin, involving a fake identity. Peter Mason (as played by Powell) poses as a famous gentleman jockey as a subterfuge for gaining access to the
lavish estate of horse-breeding Colonel Tithering (Thurston Hall), a rich Maryland landowner. Powell is really after the colonel’s niece, Ellen, as played by Anita Louise, a stunning blonde beauty in spite of her overbite.
Because he’s presumed to be a prize-winning jockey, the colonel demands that Powell ride Jeepers Creepers in a major race. Friends of the colonel plan to shadow the horse in a truck as it races alongside the track, loudly broadcasting the horse’s theme song.
Reagan later said that the only thing he liked about the movie involved working with horses and being attired in natty riding garb. He played the colonel’s none-too-bright son.
Part of the movie was shot at Los Angeles’ Will Rogers State Park, a popular venue for the horsey set in Hollywood during the 1930s. With his belle du jour, Reagan often went to the park on weekends for horseback riding. One weekend, he encountered Walt Disney there. “Stick around, boy,” Disney told him. “I might cast you in one of my movies. No, not as Prince Charming. Some other role.”
It would be the female stars of Going Places that Reagan would remember best.
A pert blonde, the exquisite Anita Louise, born in New York, was one of filmdom’s most beautiful, fashionable, and stylish stars. She was also known in Hollywood as a society hostess. Her parties, whose invitations were coveted, were attended by the Tinseltown elite.
Going Places was a comedown for her, as she’d previously appeared in minor roles in such prestigious productions as A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935); The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935); Marie Antoinette (1938) with Norma Shearer; and The Sisters (1938) with Bette Davis.
When Reagan met her, her once promising career was winding down. By the 1940s, she’d be reduced to appearing in minor B pictures, acting infrequently until the advent of television. She’d marry film producer Buddy Adler in 1940.
Before that, in the late 1930s, she dated Reagan, considering him as potential husband material except for one major flaw. She told Enright, “Ronnie doesn’t have money, and I’m a girl with expensive tastes.”
On one occasion, Reagan met Louise’s mother. “Never again,” he told Enright. “She is the ultimate stage mother from hell. She frankly told me I wasn’t good enough for her daughter.”
Years later, after he was discharged from the Army, Reagan encountered Louise dining at Chasen’s. By then, she’d gone over to Columbia, appearing in such B movies as Dangerous Blondes (1943).
Here’s Reagan, Going Places, torn between two blondes, man-hungry Minna Gombell (left) and social-climbing Anita Louise. Both women chased Reagan offscreen.
“If he weren’t so poor, I might have made something of him,” Louise said at the time.
She told Reagan, “Those dreams of stardom I shared with you were merely to be dreamed. At best, I’ll be a footnote in Hollywood history as one of those pretty ladies from the films of the 1930s.”
She later shared her views on Reagan with her childhood friend, Stanley Mills Haggart, a sometimes actor and “leg man” for Hedda Hopper.
“Had I not married Buddy,” Louise said. “I might have made something of Reagan. He looked great in the tailor-made tux I purchased for him. I asked him to be the host of several of my parties, introducing him to Hollywood bigwigs—Darryl F. Zanuck, Samuel Goldwyn, even Louis B. Mayer. After all, Jack Warner didn’t seem to be doing all that much for him. But Ronnie seemed to prefer low-rent women—Jane Wyman, Susan Hayward, even Ann Sheridan. Had movies not come along, each of those gals would probably be working the truck stops.”
During the making of Going Places, Reagan was also pursued by “the blonde terror,” Minna Gombell, who was nearly two decades his senior.
“I like to chase after women,” he told Enright. “I don’t like it when they aggressively go after me. Gombell’s first movie, Bad Girl (1931), must have been autobiographical. Thank god you don’t have me doing any love scenes with her. I don’t want to turn her on any more than I do. She told me she’d like to taste me, beginning at my earlobes and working her way down to my big toes.”
At one point in his later life, Reagan was asked if he’d ever dated Rosella Towne, an Ohio-born actress who also appeared in Going Places. He had no memory of who she was and did not recall having ever worked with her. That did not signal that he had signs of his oncoming Alzheimer’s disease at the time. He may not have remembered Towne, because her appearances in his films, with one exception, were so minor.
At the time she worked on Going Places, she was hoping for a breakthrough role, which came later during the course of that same year. She had been cast as the lead playing the comic strip character Jane Arden in The Adventures of Jane Arden (1939). Warners was hoping that the picture would lead to a series of adventure films, the way the cartoon character of Blondie did for Penny Singleton.
After Going Places, Towne would appear with Reagan in three more films, all of them in 1939—Dark Victory, Secret Service of the Air, and Code of the Secret Service. Critics touted her as a future star, but in 1943, following her marriage to Harry Kidman, she disappeared from the screen.
Towne was not featured in any future series based on Jane Arden or anyone else. A future series, however, did get awarded to Reagan, beginning with his next picture, in which he was cast as Secret Service agent Bass Bancroft, a character he’d eventually portray in a total of four films.
Jack Warner had predicted that Reagan—as a Secret Service hero—could have flourished through the production of at least a dozen more films if his movie career hadn’t moved in a different direction and had he not entered the Army.
Years later, when Rosella Towne was told that Reagan didn’t remember her, she lamented, “How quickly they forget!”
***
Ila Rhodes, a beautiful blonde beauty contest winner from Pasadena, emerges onto the scene to become a mysterious chapter in Reagan’s love life. All of his previous biographers, if they knew about Rhodes at all, have misstated her links to him.
The actress aided in obscuring the details of her own biography. At one time, she claimed she was the daughter of a Cherokee Indian chief; at other times that she was the daughter of English aristocrats.
She also misrepresented her age, claiming that she was only twenty-one when she met Reagan, defining his age at the time as thirty. Actually, he was born in 1911 and she had been born in 1914, so her math was off. Adding to the confusion was the fact that at various times during the course of her career, Rhodes billed herself as Rae Corncutt, and once as Rae Cornutt.
Rhodes was cast as Reagan’s leading lady in the first of his four serial roles as Brass Bancroft. She would also appear in two more films with him, but in very minor roles.
In 1980, during the course of her marriage to a Brazilian industrialist, she discussed her affair with the press when Reagan was running for president.
She made the claim that she was engaged to him for eight or nine months in 1939. At any rate, it must have given Reagan a busy calendar for romancing, as he was also involved at the time with Ann Sheridan, Jane Wyman, Susan Hayward, and an occasional starlet on the side. As his friend, Pat O’Brien, said. “At Warners, Ronnie was known to have a more fully booked date book than Errol Flynn, if such a thing were possible.”
Many of Reagan’s friends, including Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, O’Brien, and co-stars John Litel and Eddie Foy, Jr., confirm that Rhodes showed them an engagement ring allegedly given to her by Reagan.
He did not meet Rhodes, as was his custom, when she was first announced as his leading lady. Instead, Blondell introduced Rhodes to Reagan when he came to visit O’Brien and herself when they were starring in a movie, Off the Record (1939). Rhodes appeared uncredited as a telephone operator in this film.
“Those two lovebirds really took to each other, and Ronnie was seen leaving the studio with her at five o’clock that afternoon,” Blondell said. “What happened next, they’ll have to tell you.”
The Pride of Pasadena: Ila Rhodes was a pretty blonde actress, but a very minor one.
From the day of their first meeting, Reagan began an affair with the young beauty. But he was never seen in public with her, particularly at places where his romance would be reported to Jane or Hayward. Rhodes admitted that he never took her to Chasen’s, or to any such posh dining venue.
“We ate at hot dog stands or at hamburger joints, and drank at taverns up the coast—you know, the kind with sawdust on the floor,” Rhodes said. “We slipped away for a weekend in Palm Springs. We also went to this little beach house Pat O’Brien rented near Laguna Beach.”
Blondell and others said that Rhodes had a “wild, wild reputation.” One author claimed that she introduced Reagan to “sexual decadence.” Other starlets reported that as a lover, Reagan was strictly “a missionary position type seducer.”
Rhodes was known as a woman “who went all the way.” In an interview, Rhodes said, “Ronnie was tall and attractive, very cute. I didn’t have an antidote to ward off my attraction for him. Of course, he had a hectic schedule.”
She might have been referring to all the B movies he was making, but she could also have been aware of his ongoing affair with Hayward or his “heavy dating” of Jane. How he managed to be engaged to Rhodes while seeing these other women has never been adequately explained.
Noel Smith, who later directed Rhodes and Reagan in Secret Service of the Air, said, “Ila practically lived in Ronnie’s dressing room when they weren’t due on the set. They even took their lunch there instead of going to the commissary.”
It seemed that Reagan fell under her spell. “I don’t know exactly what she was doing to him, but Ronnie just couldn’t get enough of it,” Smith said. “In those days, most men had to go to a whorehouse to get the services she was rumored to be performing on him.”