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

by Darwin Porter

  He knew that a marriage to Rhodes, a woman with a dubious reputation, might jeopardize his standing at the studio. At one point, he went to Jack Warner to see if he would have any objection to his marrying her.

  During the course of their private conversation, as Reagan later revealed to O’Brien, Warner admitted that he, too, had enjoyed the charms of Reagan’s bride-to-be. But then he denounced her, claiming that Reagan’s marriage to her would destroy a promising film career. Allegedly, he told Reagan, “You’re a clean cut American boy. At least that’s how we’re promoting you. Marriage to the whore of Warners will ruin your name. You don’t want to get messed up with a woman like that. Call off that god damn engagement—or else!!

  It appeared that after his meeting with Warner, Reagan broke off his engagement to Rhodes, although he might have held out a promise of marriage at some future date. But he did not abandon her sexually, as he continued to see her on and off when she appeared in other films with him.

  Blondell befriended her and tried to smooth over her rejection from Reagan. “Jack Warner has him by the balls,” Blondell told her. “He controls all contract players.”

  One day after work, Blondell drove her to the Brown Derby for drinks. Over her second cocktail, Rhodes confessed, “I liberated Ronnie sexually. Apparently, he’s never let himself go with a woman before. Even though he’s been screwing Warners starlets, he still is incredibly naïve about sex. Or at least he was. A lot of guys I sleep with like to have me strap on a dildo. When I tried that with Ronnie, he almost went into a panic. He’d never heard of such a thing, although it is a common feature in all the whorehouses of Los Angeles.”

  Five months later, when Blondell ran into Rhodes on the Warners lot, the young beauty seemed depressed. “From leading lady, I’ve dropped down to appearing on the screen uncredited…you know, receptionist, telephone operator. I’ll soon be leaving Hollywood, as I’ve planned another future for myself.”

  “And what might that be?” Blondell asked.

  “While I’m young and beautiful, I’m going to marry some very rich man, preferably one with a private plane, three homes, a bank vault filled with stock certificates and bonds, and a man who has a tendency not to be stingy with diamonds.”

  “Good luck, kid,” Blondell said.

  ***

  In 1939—a year that has been cited as the most glorious, in terms of film production, in the history of entertainment—Reagan pioneered the first in a series of forgettable B films focusing on the adventures of a worker in the Secret Service.

  That same year, other much more notable films were also being produced, and greeted with huge acclaim: Judy Garland was filming The Wizard of Oz; Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were playing Scarlett and Rhett in Gone With the Wind; James Stewart was in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff was suffering through Wuthering Heights; Bette Davis was going blind in Dark Victory; and John Wayne became a big star in Stagecoach.

  Conceived as Warners’ programmers, the Bancroft series of adventure films were snappy, fast-paced, and action packed, complete with car chases, aerial stunts (often from the studio’s stock footage library), train wrecks, and fistfights, some quite violent. The young, virile, clean cut Reagan, in the third year of his Warners contract, played an ex-Navy pilot turned commercial transport aviator, who is recruited by the Secret Service.

  Released in 1939, Secret Service of the Air was the first time Reagan was cast as Brass Bancroft. The scriptwriter, Raymond Schrock, was asked, “Why the name of Brass?”

  He responded. “Men in the audience will get it. Haven’t you heard of brass balls?”

  “I’ll be competing with Flash Gordon and the Lone Ranger for the boys who attend Saturday matinees,” Reagan said. “They don’t want to see romantic mush. They want action, and I’ll give it to them. I’ll do my own stunts.”

  The 61-minute film was based very loosely on the memoirs of W.H. Moran, the former chief of the U.S. Secret Service. Moran had been hired at $250 a week as a consultant, but most of his job involved generating publicity for the film. The scriptwriter had to be inventive, because much of Moran’s work for the government was classified as top secret.

  The original villains in the film were supposed to be Nazis, who, under Hitler in real life, were soon to invade Poland, an act that ignited World War II in September of 1939.

  [Ironically, during the course of the next two years, Joseph Breen of the censorship office ordered American film studios not to identify Nazis as evil or as wrongdoers in their films because of the neutrality policy of the United States in effect at the time. That ruling, however, did not pertain to Asians (read that as “Japanese”) who could, without restriction, be depicted as the bad guys.

  Any attempt on the part of the U.S. censorship office to treat the Nazis deferentially ended abruptly in December of 1941 with the entry of the Americans into World War II, as sparked by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nazis could, and have been, identified as bad guys in the huge majority of American films ever since.]

  In the film, Reagan goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of spies. He poses as a counterfeiter to gain entrance to the illegal cabal. The villains are operating an airborne smuggling ring conceived as a means of bringing hostile aliens into the United States.

  Reagan, the Fighting Irish, as Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft, balls his fists to confront the enemy

  Despite his emotional involvement with the notorious starlet, Ila Rhodes, Warners publicity set out to promote a squeaky clean image of Reagan as a new hero in the movies. A statement claimed, “Ronald Reagan, both in appearance and personality, is the representative of all that is admirable in young American manhood. There is nothing pretty boy about him. Virility is his outstanding characteristic.”

  The mention of “pretty boy” was a veiled dig at Robert Taylor, the resident pretty boy at MGM. Ironically, Taylor was one of Reagan’s closest friends, a relationship so close that his girlfriend, Barbara Stanwyck, once accused her bisexual beau of having a crush on Reagan.

  “I don’t want to be a candidate for glamour roles,” Reagan told the press. “I don’t care to have my hair curled.” To promote his macho image, he was photographed working out with Mushy Callahan, the former junior welterweight boxing champion.

  Warners assigned a Californian, Noel M. Smith, to direct the picture. He had helmed Tooties and Tamales, his first film, back in 1919, and would go on to direct 125 movies between then and 1952.

  On being introduced to Smith, Reagan asked, “When do I fight? And whom?”

  Smith later recalled, “Within an hour, my star had five skinned knuckles, a bruised knee, and a lump half the size of an egg on his head.”

  On the second week of the shoot, an actor in a minor role fired a blank .38 caliber cartridge too close to Reagan’s ear, puncturing his ear drum. The damage couldn’t be repaired, and he suffered a loss of hearing in that ear for the rest of his life.

  Deep into the shoot, Reagan had another accident when, clad in his flying outfit, he stepped in front of a studio wind tunnel. As his parachute became unraveled, he was dragged by the hurricane-force winds across the railroad tracks of the props department and hurled against a wire fence. After the wind machines were shut down, he was rescued by two studio grips. An ambulance arrived and he was rushed to a hospital where he was examined. Doctors found no injuries, but he spent the night there and was released to recover at home that weekend before reporting back to work the following Monday morning.

  Producer Bryan Foy had lined up an impressive supporting cast, including John Litel, James Stephenson, Rosella Towne, and Foy, Jr. “I’ve cast Ila Rhodes as your leading lady, although she’s inexperienced,” Bryan said. “She’s the only one in the cast I’m taking a chance on. If she doesn’t go over in this film, she’s going to be reduced to uncredited role in programmers.”

  The role of Saxby, Reagan’s boss at the Secret Service, was interpreted by veteran actor John Litel. The Wisconsin-born act
or had enlisted in the French Army during World War II and had been decorated for his bravery. Reagan thought he was ideal for the role.

  Robert Taylor (depicted above) was Reagan’s best friend, but his occasional effeminacies were something that Reagan, in the promotion of his own career, wanted desperately to avoid.

  A Warner’s contract player, Litel would appear in 200 films, most often as a hard-nosed cop or as a district attorney. He not only would make another Brass Bancroft films with Reagan, but would also appear in his classic, Knute Rockne—All American.

  Dapper James Stephenson played the villain, Jim Cameron. Born in Yorkshire, England, the son of a chemist, Stephenson had been a stage actor in his native country until coming to the United States in 1937 at the age of 48. Jack Warner thought he’d be ideal cast as either an urbane villain or a disgraced gentleman.

  Eddie Foy, Jr. played Bancroft’s genial side-kick, Gabby. He and Reagan bonded and became close friends for years.

  Eddie was introduced to show business in vaudeville as part of a family act, “The Seven Little Foys.” He later branched out on his own, making his debut on Broadway in 1929 in Show Girl. In the 1940s, he would appear with Judy Canova in four films. She always played a hillbilly yokel, or a country bumpkin. One film had them battling Nazis.

  John Litel (right) played the role of Saxby, Reagan’s tough-as-nails boss at the Secret Service.

  Reagan interpreted Eddie as a genuine trouper, and he served as Reagan’s “lookout” during filming, so he wouldn’t be caught with Rhodes if Jane or Hayward arrived unexpectedly on the set.

  Bancroft’s dialogue, which Reagan was forced to deliver, sounded at times like something that tough-guy Edward G. Robinson might have said on screen. “He’s a number one stool pigeon. Framing me so I’ll get sent to Alcatraz. He called me a squealer. I’m not taking that from anybody.”

  In the film’s most gruesome scene, the pilot, in his cockpit, pushes a stick on his control panel. The floor of the aircraft’s passenger compartment suddenly opens for a view of earth thousands of feet below. The aliens are thus hurled to a squashy death.

  This scene and others brought protests from the censors at the Joseph Breen office. It was suggested that the script be altered so that the captured criminals would be punished but not executed. Breen also wanted all references to opium smuggling eliminated. Additionally, a scene revolving around a café brawl was defined as “too violent a rough and tumble,” and clipped from the final cut.

  At the end of the movie, Reagan battles the villain in the cockpit of the airplane, as it plunges to the ground. This, although extremely violent, was deemed acceptable by the censorship board.

  In response to protests from Jack Warner, Breen exclaimed, “I am the Code! I stand like a man on the seashore, trying to hold back the tides of the ocean with a pitchfork.” He also said that he detested what he called “the whorehouse crap of Hollywood. A tide of immorality is engulfing the world.” Privately, he blamed Hollywood’s sexual indulgences on the Jews who operated most of the Hollywood studios.

  Producer Bryan Foy cast his brother, Eddie Jr., (depicted above) as Gabby, Bancroft’s genial sidekick. “I liked Eddie a lot,” Reagan said. “But he was one of those touchy-feely kind of friends. Couldn’t keep his hands off me.”

  The Breen office had even objected to the plot of Reagan’s relatively harmless comedy, Boy Meets Girl. The censors cited veiled undercurrents of illegitimacy, bigamy, and abortion.

  “The movies of one Ronald Reagan often contain nudity and promote promiscuity,” Breen charged. “I also object to the treatment of marriage in Reagan films, along with rampant sexual innuendo.”

  Privately, he maintained a dim opinion of Reagan. “From what I hear, he’s a horndog screwing every legs-apart starlet at Warners.”

  The pompous, dreaded, very judgmental, and much-despised Joseph Breen, the ferocious overseer of censorship issues associated with the movies.

  Warners publicity played up the claim that Reagan as a reserve officer “made many training jumps from planes.” A picture of Reagan outfitted as an ace pilot was placed in theater lobbies across the country, along with blowups of Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, the Wright Brothers, and Eddie Rickenbacker. In truth, Reagan had an absolute terror of flying.

  The Secret Service of the Air was part of a political campaign to present the U.S. government in a good light long before the December, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Jack Warner enjoyed a fine working relationship with the War Department, and sent many copies of Reagan’s film to officials in Washington.

  In a letter to the War Department, Warner maintained that “with this film, we are trying to alert the American people about the dangers of subversive activities from foreign agents. We are also trying to rekindle some old-fashioned American patriotism.”

  At Warners, Reagan had become used to wearing military duds—a Navy uniform in Submarine D-1, even though his scene was cut from the final version; that of a U.S. Cavalry officer in Sergeant Murphy; and a military cadet’s uniform in Brother Rat.

  Throughout his varied interpretations of Brass Bancroft, Reagan continued his interest in politics. A left winger, Eddie Albert told him that Hollywood’s Communist Party wanted to come the aid of the unemployed, the dispossessed, and the homeless, many of whom had lost their homesteads in the Middle West during the Depression and the Dust Bowl, and had drifted to California.

  To the then-liberal Reagan, these goals sounded admirable, and he asked Albert if he could join the Communist Party. The chairman of the party, however, rejected Reagan’s admission form, defining him as a flake and asserting that his political opinions changed every twenty minutes.

  ***

  At long last, Reagan was cast in an A-list film, a soap opera tearjerker, Dark Victory (1939), a vehicle for Bette Davis. He hated his role of Alec Hamm, a repressed homosexual. He was fifth in billing, earning $1,258 for his work on the film, as opposed to the $35,000 paid to the film’s female star.

  There is evidence from Hal B. Wallis, the film’s producer, that Reagan asked him to play the lead role of the brain surgeon, Dr. Frederick Steele. That role, however, went to George Brent, marking his eighth film with Davis.

  Spencer Tracy was the first choice for the role if MGM would temporarily release him from his contract with them for a short-term stint with Warners. But after reading the script, Tracy turned it down. “This is Bette’s picture,” he wrote, as part of his rejection.

  Basil Rathbone was then tested for the role of the doctor. After watching his own test, Rathbone wrote Jack Warner, “Would you either let me have the test or destroy it yourself?”

  [Once again, Reagan would compete with George Brent for a role in yet another Bette Davis film, In This Our Life (1942), co-starring Olivia de Havilland. Reagan lost the role of Craig Fleming to Brent. Perhaps Reagan enjoyed some revenge by continuing to seduce Brent’s wife at the time, Ann Sheridan.]

  ***

  As associate producer of Dark Victory, Wallis selected David Lewis, the lover of director James Whale, of Frankenstein fame.

  Born in Colorado in 1903 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Lewis later trained under the “Boy Wonder,” of MGM, Irving Thalberg. Originally, Lewis had wanted to be an actor himself, studying in New York under the grande dame, Maria Ouspenskaya.

  He became known for taking any film script and making it better. Unlike others of Hollywood’s closeted homosexuals, Lewis was rather frank about who he was, and did not attempt to camouflage his same-sex cohabitation with Whale. Because of that, Reagan was leary of Lewis’ reputation when they met. Lewis shook his hand, but Reagan later complained to Brent that, “David held it far too long.”

  Although he had never been nominated for an Oscar, the bisexual director, Edmund Goulding, was one of the best directors of so-called women’s pictures, competing with gay director George Cukor. Among many other films, Goulding had directed Greta Garbo and John Barrymore in Grand Hotel (1932). As regards Goulding’s prev
ious exchanges with Bette Davis, he had directed her in a 1937 film, That Certain Woman, and in the same year as Dark Victory, 1939, he’d helm another critical success for her, The Old Maid.

  Born in London during the twilight of the Victorian era, Goulding was the son of a butcher. From a lowly beginning, he rose to become not only a great director, but a virtual Renaissance man too—playwright, novelist, screenwriter, singer, and composer.

  Goulding was very friendly with Reagan during the first week of filming, almost paying him too much attention. It was obvious to Lewis that Goulding was maneuvering to seduce Reagan. Lewis called that fact to Goulding’s attention. “You just want him for yourself, bitch,” Goulding said.

  “How true!” Lewis admitted.

  Dark Victory’s Associate Producer David Lewis (depicted above), lover of James (Frankenstein) Whale, was willing to advance Reagan’s career, providing he lay on his casting couch.

  Jack Warner had allotted only thirty shooting days and a budget of $500,000 for Dark Victory. Principal photography began on October 8, 1938.

  Dark Victory had flopped on Broadway as a star vehicle for the formidable Tallulah Bankhead. As such, Jack Warner was able to purchase it for Kay Francis for $27,500. In a surprise move, Francis not only turned it down, but sued Warners, like Davis had done previously, to break her contract.

  After that, even Bankhead herself was considered for the role. Then, for a brief time, the part belonged to newcomer Gale Page.

  During the time David Selznick controlled the rights to the property, Barbara Stanwyck lobbied him to give her the lead. Selznick turned her down, offering the part to Merle Oberon instead.

  At one point, Selznick even sent the script to Greta Garbo, but she returned it without reading it. Immersed in plans for Gone With the Wind, which was consuming all of his time, Selznick eventually allowed the rights go to Warners.