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

by Darwin Porter

  He obviously needed a subject, and he thought he’d like to write the script for a football picture. He decided to focus on the careers of George Gipp and Knute Rockne. Ever since he’d been a young boy, Reagan had admired the football exploits of George Gipp.

  Michigan-born Gipp (1895-1920) had been a football player for Notre Dame, designated as that university’s first All-American. During his senior season, he died at the age of 25 of a streptococcal throat infection days after leading Notre Dame to a win against Northwestern.

  Of course, as Reagan soon learned, the story of Gipp could not be accurately transmitted without examining the life of his coach, Knute Rockne.

  Born in Norway in 1888, and educated as a chemist, Knute Rockne is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in the history of college football. He popularized the forward pass. During his thirteen years as head coach at Notre Dame, his “Fighting Irish” won 105 victories, including three national championships.

  Rockne’s death in Kansas on March 31, 1931, shocked the nation. His TWA flight 599 crashed while he was en route to participate in the production of the film The Spirit of Notre Dame. President Herbert Hoover referred to Rockne’s death as “a national loss.”

  Left: George Gipp, movie star and college football hero, who died of a streptococcal throat infection in 1920. Right: Ronald Reagan personifying George Gipp in 1940.

  To his surprise, Reagan one morning read that Warners’, his home studio, was coincidentally moving ahead to film the life story of Knute Rockne, which would, of course, include an episode that featured the short, brilliant, and tragic life of Gipp.

  He had never done this before, but Reagan set out to lobby for a role, scheduling an appointment with Hal B. Wallis, the producer of the upcoming film, which would eventually be entitled Knute Rockne—All American, after trying out two other titles, including The Life Of Knute Rockne and Touchdown.

  Before attending the meeting, Reagan talked to the film’s first director, William Howard, who was hoping for a comeback. This talented, once-promising director had fallen on bad days.

  Left: Knute Rockne, revered by sports fans as one of the most inspirational football coaches who ever lived. Right: Pat O’Brien personifying Knute Rockne in the film.

  During the first weeks of the shoot, Howard was drinking heavily, and Wallis fired him, replacing him with Lloyd Bacon. That director had helmed both Reagan and Pat O’Brien in the two films they had made together, Cowboy from Brooklyn and Boy Meets Girl.

  To Reagan’s astonishment, he had learned from Howard that William Holden and John Wayne had each been tested for his role of Gipp, and that each had been rejected by Wallis.

  “Wayne looks better on a horse,” Howard had said, “and Holden is better as a violin player than a boxer, much less a football player.” He was referring to Holden’s role in the recent release of Golden Boy (1939), in which he’d starred with Barbara Stanwyck.

  After a screen test, Robert Young was also rejected. “Put him in a dinner jacket in some parlor,” Wallis said in a memo. “Certainly not on the football field.”

  Robert Cummings was another actor considered. “This Missouri kid might play a dapper playboy, but he can’t play football,” said Wallis in yet another rejection memo.

  Howard had suggested Dennis Morgan, who was making a picture with Jane Wyman, but Wallis wouldn’t even sanction a screen test. “Morgan looks like he just stepped out of a beauty parlor to get his hair waved. He doesn’t belong on a football field. Sports fans would mock him.”

  The Canadian actor, Donald Woods, was given the most serious consideration. Before Reagan claimed the title, Woods was another actor known on the Warners lot as “the King of the Bs.” Woods had a better physique than Reagan, and was taller, standing 6’4”.

  Although Wallis thought Woods would be most convincing as a football player, he had another assignment for him. He and Lupe Velez had stirred up some box office in The Girl from Mexico. Wallis ordered a sort of sequel, Mexican Spitfire, in which he wanted the stars to appear together once again. “By the time Velez gets through fucking Woods, he won’t have the energy to run across a football field,” Wallis claimed.

  In his office, the producer was not impressed with Reagan’s physical presence. “You’re not big enough to play a football player. Those guys are fucking bruisers.”

  Reagan protested. “Gipp weighed five pounds less than I do. He walked with a sort of slouch and a limp. He looked like a football player only when he was on the field.”

  To convince Wallis that he knew his way around a football field, Reagan went home and returned with pictures of himself in a uniform from the years when he played for Eureka College. That seemed to do it for Wallis, but he still wanted Reagan to be tested on camera.

  By the time he got home that day, before Jane returned from the studio, the phone was ringing. It was Wallis’ secretary. “The boss man wants you to show up for an eight o’clock shooting in the morning. You’re to be tested for the role of George Gipp.”

  Reagan was elated. His big chance had come at last.

  For his screen test, Reagan thought he would appear opposite some contract player, as was the custom. To his surprise, when he showed up, Pat O’Brien, in his coach’s uniform and in full makeup, was there to shake his hand. He’d agreed to participate as Knute Rockne, conferring on camera with Reagan playing George Gipp.

  The test went smoothly, and was completed before noon, when O’Brien invited Reagan to the commissary for a hamburger. Over coffee, he told Reagan that Jack Warner had wanted James Cagney to play Knute Rockne, because he was number four in terms of star power at the box office.

  “In terms of star power, I’m not even in the top fifty,” O’Brien said. “But both Bonnie Rockne, Knute’s widow, and the Catholic Church objected to Cagney because he’d appeared in all those gangster films. After that, Warner went after Spencer Tracy, but MGM wouldn’t release him. I was the last resort. I got the role only because Bonnie approved.”

  Two days later, Wallis called Reagan, granting him the role. “You’re going to be on the screen for only ten minutes, but your role is vital to the script.”

  Screenwriter Robert Buckner, an amateur historian who had known Rockne slightly, got advice from Bonnie, as well as from the brass at Notre Dame. He told Reagan, “Bonnie claims there are too many football scenes and not enough scenes relating to her husband’s academic achievements.”

  He also revealed that he was writing a new screenplay, a Western called Santa Fe Trail. There’s a great role in it—that of George Armstrong Custer. You should lobby for it.’

  Despite that advice, Reagan was not intrigued enough to follow it.

  On the set, he had an embarrassing encounter with Gale Page, with whom he had had a notorious three-way with Ann Sheridan. She had been cast as Bonnie Skiles, the sweetheart that Rockne eventually marries. Reagan told O’Brien, “Thank God I have no love scenes with her. One night, things got out of hand between us.”

  O’Brien responded, “All of us adventurous Irishmen take a detour here and there, and no man should be held responsible for mistakes along the way.”

  On the set of Knute Rockne, Reagan was reunited with veteran actor Donald Crisp, with whom he had co-starred in Sergeant Murphy. Crisp had been cast as Father Callahan, who ran the university. Later, some reviewers cattily commented, “Crisp forgot he was playing Father Callahan. He thought he was playing God himself.”

  Reagan also had a reunion on the set with William Hopper, Hedda’s son. In Knute Rockne, Hopper had been cast in an uncredited role as a New York reporter.

  William had continued to call Reagan frequently, but he had always put him off. He wanted to maintain his friendship with William, mainly because he was the son of such a powerful columnist, but knowing about William’s sexual interest in him, he didn’t want to get too close. Reagan complained to O’Brien, “William’s always after me.”

  Over lunch, William told Reagan that married life to Jane Gil
bert “is something to endure. I prefer another kind of action. How is married life with you?”

  “Jane and I are very happy, but unless we’re making a picture together, we don’t see a lot of each other. Two movie stars who get married rarely lead a life of domestic bliss— that is, if both of them are employed.”

  William said that he wished Reagan well, hoping that his portrayal of George Gipp “will put you over the top. As for me, I’m working steadily, but I’m just part of the scenery—a bank cashier who gets murdered, a cowboy in the background, often a reporter, once a Yale tennis player and a society gent in a top hat.”

  Hedda joined them for lunch and sympathized with her son’s career frustration. She had experienced the same problems when she had tried to be a movie star. “When bad days come, all your hard work seems to be waiting to fall on you like a ton of bricks. I remember when I lost my seven-year contract at MGM. I was never a star, always a featured player, letting the spotlight shine on the stars. I was the mean woman who slapped children, made myself a gossipy and annoying guest, or else a matron on the make for someone else’s husband. On the screen, I looked ridiculous. I once asked Mayer why I was always cast as a bitch. He told me, ‘It takes one to play one.’”

  Most of the film’s football scenes were shot at Loyola University. The most difficult scene called for Reagan to run eighty yards for a touchdown. On that hot summer morning, he’d arrived in time for a heavy, high-cholesterol breakfast, consisting of a greasy bacon-and-egg sandwich, a can of pineapple juice, and coffee.

  After his first run, a difficult dolly shot, Bacon ordered Reagan to do the run again. On the second time around, the cameraman still wasn’t pleased with his shot. Bacon yelled out, “Once more, Reagan!”

  On the third try, Reagan, with a lump in his stomach, made the dash. He raced past the goal line and headed for a wooden fence that enclosed the field. There, he vomited up all that bacon fat. “My director’s name would also be Bacon—you figure,” he said, after having soiled his football uniform.

  Gipp’s final words, supposedly uttered to Rockne before his death in 1920, were repeated by Reagan in the film: “Some day when things are tough, maybe you could ask the boys to go in there and win just one for the Gipper.”

  [The American Film Institute ranked the quote “Win one for the Gipper,” as number 89 on its poll of the top 100 most famous quotes ever uttered in a movie. When Reagan ran for president in 1980, he used “Let’s win one for the Gipper” as a political slogan. At that point, he was often referred to as “The Gipper.”]

  Years later, looking back on his role as the Gipper, Reagan recalled, “It was a springboard that bounced me into a wider variety of parts in pictures. It’s true, I got some unmerited criticism from sports writers. One of them wondered why the producers never shoehorned real football players into key roles. But since I practically earned my way through college playing football—that disturbed me. However this criticism was balanced by some unmerited praise from the same general source, because another sports writer said I was so accurate in my portrayal of the Gipper that I even imitated his slight limp. Actually, I wasn’t trying to limp. I just wasn’t used to my new football shoes and my feet hurt.”

  For the gala premiere of Knute Rockne—All American, Warners rented two trains to chug their way from Los Angeles to South Bend, Indiana. Stars were commissioned, not only Jane and Reagan, but Rudy Vallée, Donald Crisp, Gail Patrick, Ricardo Cortez, Gale Page, and even Kate Smith, with the understanding that she’d be belting out frequent renditions of “God Bless America.” Bob Hope also traveled to Indiana to serve as toast-master. Taking time off from his father’s 1940 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. also showed up to read a letter of congratulations from the president.

  Top photo: George Gipp, dying, is interpreted by Ronald Reagan in a screen interpretation that lasted for no more than ten minutes of the film’s total running time.

  Lower photo: During his second bid for the office of President of the U.S. Reagan invoked the role he’d played and the line (“Win one for the Gipper”) he’d delivered in 1940.

  Still suffering from a heart condition, Jack Reagan was invited to go along with the troupe. “He revered fellow Irishman Pat O’Brien, putting him in the special category of Al Smith,” Reagan said. “Dad and Pat became instant friends. Unfortunately, they went out every night boozing, returning in the early morning. I was worried about Dad’s heart.”

  When Jack returned home to Nelle, he told her, “I’ve had everything now. I’ve seen Dutch get to be a star. Oh, I know the studio hasn’t made him one yet, but the folks back there know he’s arrived. I wish you could have heard the welcome they gave him. As far as I’m concerned, nothing will ever top it. I’m ready to go any time now.”

  For the first time, Reagan was acclaimed as an actor. He noticed it when he walked onto the Warners’ lot every day. “Suddenly, people who had never spoken to me before were calling out, ‘Good morning, Mr. Reagan!’”

  [Reagan did not live to see the ghoulish exhumation of the body of his beloved role model, George Gipp, on October 4, 2007. Gipp’s body was dug up for DNA testing to determine if he’d fathered a child out of wedlock with an 18-year-old high school student. His right thighbone was removed from his grave, and the rest of his decaying corpse was re-buried the same day, much to the horror of Gipp’s relatives. The tests showed that Gipp was not the father of the child that was born within days of Gipp’s death way back in 1920.]

  Left to right: Eddie Albert; Olivia de Havilland (who had no musical talent); and Jane (who could sing and dance, but who only mimed at playing the violin) in My Love Came Back.

  ***

  As contract players at Warners, it seemed inevitable that Jane Wyman would end up in a picture (My Love Came Back; 1940) with her nemesis, Olivia de Havilland. She didn’t have anything against Olivia personally, “Other than her being born,” she confided to Reagan and others.

  Perhaps inaccurately, Jane claimed that she would have become a big star on the Warner lot had it not been for Olivia, “who got all those roles with my name on them, beginning with Melanie in Gone With the Wind (1939)”

  “I also should have starred opposite David Niven in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), with Errol again in Dodge City (also 1939), and most definitely with that gorgeous hunk, John Payne, in Wings of the Navy (1939).”

  Jane recalled her first meeting with Olivia. “The bitch had a chip on her shoulder. After Gone With the Wind, and after her suspension, she thought she was entitled to the roles reserved for Bette Davis. We were both cast in this little romantic comedy, My Love Came Back, but Miss Olivia didn’t think the film was worthy of her talents. She actually told me that her part was the kind of role that might normally have been assigned to ‘a little starlet like me.’”

  “My role is such crap that even Priscilla Lane turned it down,” Olivia told Jane.

  Warners’ assigned the German film director, Curtis Bernhardt, to “this little slice of strudel,” as he characterized the film. Bernhardt had been arrested by the Nazis because he was a Jew, but he managed to escape in 1933 and had fled first to France and England, and then to Hollywood. The year Jane met him, he had just come to work for Warners.

  He told Jane that in an upcoming film, based on a script then being written, he was considering casting her husband. “It’s called Million Dollar Baby.”

  In addition to Jane and Olivia, Bernhardt had assembled an all-star cast of supporting players, including Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert, Charles Winninger, Spring Byington, Grant Mitchell, William T. Orr, and S.Z. Sakall.

  In the film, Olivia was cast as a talented, high-strung violin student at a New York academy. She walks out on her music teacher, the cuddlesome S.Z. Sakall.

  Later, she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy and distinguished patron of the arts, as portrayed by Winninger. When he cannot attend a concert with Olivia, he sends his young business manager, the dashingly
handsome Tony Baldwin (Jeffrey Lynn). The two fall in love.

  Jane was cast as a musical friend of Olivia’s. Her boyfriend is played by Eddie Albert, who had made those two Brother Rat movies with her.

  To prepare for their roles, both Jane and Olivia each took violin lessons. [In the final version of the film, the music supposedly emanating from their instruments would be dubbed.] But whereas Jane learned how to handle the fingering and bowing on a dummy instrument, Olivia did not, losing patience and frequently shouting at the director.

  In his cold German accent, Bernhardt told her, “I do not like incompetence. You should have learned how to finger the instrument like Miss Wyman here.”

  That did not endear Jane to Olivia.

  Bernhardt told Jack Warner that Olivia complained about every single thing. “She is imperial and haughty. She dislikes everybody. The only person who can control her is Jimmy Stewart when he comes onto the set to make love to her in her dressing room.”

  On the first day Stewart arrived, he kissed Jane. “I enjoyed our previous time together with Hank (Henry Fonda). But I’d better steer clear of you now that you’re married to my buddy, Ronnie.”

  In the middle of the shoot, Olivia, feigning illness, disappeared for a week. “Curtis was cursing her in German, and life was miserable on the set,” Jane said.

  One day, Bernhardt invited Jane to lunch in the commissary, where he complained at length about Olivia. Jane recalled their meal. “Beer in a large tankard, pretzels, and several slices of Bavarian chocolate cake. Chocolate cake and beer have never been my favorite taste treats.”

  By now, Eddie Albert and Jane were friends. He had worked on pictures with her before, and, amazingly, would also be appearing on TV with her in the 1980s. They always maintained an innocent but flirtatious relationship.