Reagan delivers a few good quips, although some of them come at inappropriate times. The Allied soldiers are being chased by a Nazi patrol intent on killing them. When the pilots’ stolen German car runs out of gas, Reagan says, “This is the first time I ever ran out of gas with a couple of guys.”
There was a certain irony in one of Reagan’s lines. He is awakened by a member of his crew. He complains, “Why do you have to wake me up when I was having a date with Ann Sheridan?” He’d just completed Juke Girl with Sheridan, with whom he had had shared intimacies that went way beyond those of a mere “date.”
When Kennedy, a co-star in Desperate Journey, lunched one day with Reagan, he had just completed They Died With Their Boots On with Flynn.
“I heard on every picture, Flynn has some young actor following him around panting,” Kennedy said. “On this one, it’s not Helmut Dantine, but Ronald Sinclair. In the General Custer movie, it was a young man named William Meade. He was a rich kid set to inherit a fortune and was a great guy, just the kind Flynn likes—handsome, athletic, fabulous body, and a crack polo player. In spite of all his money, he wanted to act. Flynn got him a job as an extra. Then tragedy struck. During the filming of the massacre of Custer and his army at the Little Bighorn, Meade fell from his horse onto his sword, which pierced his heart. Flynn went into mourning, and rightfully so. The whole cast was saddened by the passing of that kid.”
Alan Hale, Sr. was by now a familiar face to Reagan, having worked with him before, most recently on Juke Girl. He usually liked to have lunch with Flynn, but that ritual was put on hold whenever Flynn retreated at noontime to his dressing room with Sinclair.
Hale amused Reagan, telling of his adventures making movies with Flynn. “Once I, along with three other actors, were chatting and having a few nips with Flynn in his dressing room. All of a sudden, Lupe Velez appeared. She just walked right in, ignoring us, and unzipped Errol and went down on him. As she was sword swallowing, she looked up and saw this statuette of the Madonna and Child on his dressing table. She broke off her suction to cross herself and beg for forgiveness from the Madonna, then resumed her work. She’s a complete exhibitionist.”
[On December 14, 1944, Velez, despondent over her latest unsuccessful love affair, took an overdose of sleeping pills and died.]
Flynn kept badgering Reagan to come to his Mulholland Farm, high above Los Angeles on Mulholland Drive, for drinks and dinner. Finally, Reagan agreed, but insisted on bringing Jane, warning Flynn, “My wife is a lady—so cool it.”
Flynn obviously must have found that amusing, as he’d seduced Jane long before her husband ever did.
Later, Jane and Flynn pulled off the charade, never letting Reagan know that, years prior to their get-together, she’d been an overnight visitor.
An article in Photoplay, quoting Reagan, revealed his newest impression of the Aussie: “Here was not a swashbuckler’s eyrie, but the home of a man with quiet culture. Books on philosophy, adventure, the best fiction, copies of bespoke travel in foreign lands, a musical library of the best symphonic records, everywhere the evidence of taste and thoughtful living. I had to revamp my image of Errol. Here was a man with a capacity—and a need—for friendship.”
In Desperate Journey, unlike in most Flynn pictures, romantic entanglements almost didn’t exist, since the cast was mainly male except for Coleman. Nonetheless, Flynn maintained his reputation as an ace seducer, although he ran into trouble with Dantine.
The handsome, gracious Austrian was twenty-five years old.
He told Reagan, “It’s so ironic. Here I am playing a Luftwaffe pilot and also a Nazi pilot in Mrs. Miniver, and I’m one of the most anti-Nazi men around.”
Biographer David Bret summed up Flynn’s sexual dilemma during the filming of Desperate Journey.
“Dantine, like actor Patric Knowles, soon found himself fighting off Errol’s amorous advances—though had Errol been aware that the young man was Jewish, he most definitely would not have been interested. Dantine had long since set his sights on Tyrone Power, and according to a statement given at the time by his friend, Tallulah Bankhead, as Power was away fighting in the war, Dantine was ‘saving himself’ for his lover’s return.”
Back on the set, Flynn turned his sexual attention onto the youngest actor on the set, Ronald Sinclair, who was only “barely legal” at the time. A native New Zealander, he was known as a pretty boy with a baby face.
Flynn confided in Reagan, “Unlike you, this Ronnie is a hell of a lot more cooperative in satisfying my sexual desires. He’s a sodomite’s dream fantasy come true. I think he’s straight, and he complains that I hurt him, but he always gives in to me. He would-n’t dare turn down the star of the picture.”
In the middle of filming, the U.S. government sent word to Reagan that he had only two weeks to finish his work on Desperate Journey. Jack Warner had not succeeded in getting him a more extended deferment. Walsh had to reschedule his shooting, and begin to film scenes out of sequence. There was great pressure. Reagan later wrote: “Long shots of my back were saved for a double after I was gone.”
A minor actor, David Casey, later said, “My claim to fame is that I once played Ronald Reagan in a movie, but only my back.”
To Reagan’s amazement, he learned that Wasserman had renegotiated an even more profitable contract than his recent one, this one authorizing a salary of $3,500 a week for forty-three weeks of work annually.
“But I thought Warner contracts usually called for forty weeks of work, annually. Why the extra three weeks?” Reagan asked.
Wasserman explained, “I knew that Warner wouldn’t go higher than $3,500 a week. That’s more than he’s paid any star, including Flynn. Those forty-three weeks, spread out over seven years, will eventually total more than a million dollars. As you know, you once made a film called Million Dollar Baby,” Wasserman said. “Thanks to this contract, you, Mr. Reagan, are now MCA’s Million Dollar Baby.”
Baby Maureen and Jane tell Reagan goodbye as he heads out early to report for duty at the War Propaganda Department. For a while, at least, Jane’s parting sally to him was, “Win one for the Gipper.”
At long last, success,” Reagan lamented. “The moment it happens, I go into the Army on a soldier’s pay of $250 a month.”
***
Unlike Jane Wyman, Reagan often liked to stay home at night, reading newspapers or listening to the war news. In contrast, she wanted to go dancing almost every night. Before he went into the Army, he made a deal with her, agreeing to take her out as often as possible.
With a nanny looking after Maureen, Reagan and Jane became regulars at the Brown Derby, followed by dancing at the Cocoanut Grove or the Trocadero. Chasen’s became their favorite dining venue, as Reagan considered its chefs the finest in Los Angeles.
Increasingly, they went out with other couples, especially Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. Apparently, neither Stanwyck nor Reagan ever learned that their respective spouses had had a brief fling together during the filming of The Crowd Roars.
Sometimes, particularly at Chasen’s, Jane and Reagan were seen dining with their boss, Jack Warner, and his wife, Ann Page. They were also friendly with agents Lew Wasserman and his wife, the former Edith Beckerman, and with Jules Stein and his wife, the former Doris Jones.
But Jane detested Reagan’s new friend, director Sam Wood, who’d helmed him in Kings Row. Politically, she viewed him as “to the right of Josef Goebbels.” Still a liberal Democrat, Reagan seemed to enjoy endless political debates with the virulently anti-communist Wood. Perhaps this was the beginning of Reagan’s training for his presidential debates of the 1980s.
Finally, Jane told him, “I’ve had it! I’ve got other things to do than sit around listening to you guys go at it. From now on, count me out. I’ll make other plans.”
It was at that time that Jane began to “date” Van Johnson, the strawberry blonde, freckle-faced singer, actor, and dancer, who was being groomed to appear in all those “Boy-Next-Do
or” roles in World War II-era movies.
Her friend, Lucille Ball, had introduced them. Ball had been instrumental in launching Johnson‘s movie career. He’d appeared with her and with Desi Arnaz in the movie, Too Many Girls (1940).
She told Jane, “I just adore Van, and he’d be the perfect escort to take you dancing. Not only is he a good dancer, but he won’t put the make on you…ever! He plays ball for the opposite team.”
“Oh, I see,” she said.
Jane explained the situation to Reagan about her need for an escort, telling him that “Van is harmless, although I doubt if I can trust him around you.”
He told her, “This Johnson boy sounds like a fine choice for you.”
Johnson and Jane became intimate friends on their first date. She later said, “Van is marvelous. He’s dedicated to having a movie career, but he’s also a lot of fun. He’s a fabulous dancer, but I kept up with him. I was flattered when he complimented me on my dancing. In some clubs, we took over the floor, the other couples standing back to watch us go. I felt the years disappear from my age. At the end of the evening, I got a peck on the cheek.”
Over the next few months, Jane was photographed with Johnson many times. Insiders such as Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons knew that Johnson was a “vanilla date,” but much of the public began to believe that Jane was cheating on her husband while he was at home changing Baby Maureen’s diapers. There were rumors that “Hollywood’s Most Ideal Couple,” as they were dubbed in the press, were actually on the dawn of breaking up.
Reagan knew that he would be away from Jane for weeks at a time during his military service, and it seemed that Jane’s arrangement with Johnson would be most suitable.
Johnson was often invited to the Reagan’s house for one of her home-cooked dinners, since he was leading the bachelor life. He jokingly kidded Jane in private, “If you ever decide to dump that handsome hunk of yours, I get first grabs.”
“Oh, Van,” she answered. “How you boys talk.”
Jane and Johnson had reasons other than dancing as motivations for their dating.
Each served as a “beard” for the other. Johnson was carrying on a clandestine affair with the dancer/actor Gene Kelly. On Broadway, Johnson had been Kelly’s under-study during his hit show, My Pal Joey, where he played a womanizing louse. With a Hollywood contract, Kelly had made For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland, in which he’d played another heel trying to avoid the draft.
Reagan gave Jane permission to “date” handsome Van Johnson, with his clean-cut boy-next-door look. Perhaps Van’s gender preference for men reassured everyone that he wouldn’t pose any serious threat to the Reagan marriage.
Jane and Johnson deliberately were seen together in the early part of any given evening. But often, they slipped away and separated before the night was over. Sometimes, Jane didn’t arrive home until two o’clock in the morning. Apparently, Reagan never questioned the lateness of her returns home.
Johnson often disappeared into the arms of Gene Kelly, Jane preferring the arms of Dennis Morgan or John Payne. This arrangement would continue through the war years and beyond.
No one seemed to suspect what was really going on behind the scenes, with the possible exception of Reagan, who had already been alerted to his wife’s dalliances with both Payne and Morgan.
Unlike her own slow rise to fame, Johnson seemed to be “storming through 1942” (Jane’s words) in his movie career. He’d been cast as a cub reporter opposite Faye Emerson in the filming of Murder in the Big House (1942), during which he was asked to dye his eyebrows and hair black. He’d also had a small role in MGM’s Somewhere I’ll Find You, starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner.
“Gable and I played poker a lot,” Johnson later said, “although he told me in the beginning, ‘I don’t like fags.’ Not so Lana. She adores us boys. Problem was, the damn director, Wesley Ruggles, terrified me so much I kept blowing my lines.”
Since Broadway, Gene Kelly had been dancing into the arms of Van Johnson.
On a few nights, Jane was seen with both Johnson and his new friend, Keenan Wynn, who had made his screen debut in Somewhere I’ll Find You.
Wynn had married Eve Lynn Abbott, but in the beginning—for obvious reasons—she was not included in their outings. Kelly was usually involved with actress Betsy Blair (his eventual wife) and wasn’t always free. Johnson admitted, “Keenan is not the prettiest face in the world, but I love him dearly. We’re an item. In spite of his looks, he’s a hot number in bed.”
Keenan Wynn...Van Johnson’s secret love.
Johnson, when not with Jane, was often seen out with “Keenan and Evie,” as he called them. Rumors spread that they were a threesome, as Jane revealed to Reagan one night.
“That’s fine with me,” he said, “providing you don’t make it a foursome.”
Amour and Scandals Royal: Princess O’Rourke (Olivia de Havilland), disguised as a “commoner,” is helped and hosted by the kindly Jane Wyman, who is married, as part of the plot, to Jack Carson.
***
Before heading to Warners to play a supporting role in Olivia de Havilland’s latest movie, Princess O’Rourke, Jane complained to the ever-patient Reagan: “I detest Olivia. I don’t have anything against her personally, but I envy her roles, which I think should have gone to me. On the set, I’m going to be ever so polite to her. After all, I’m an actress and can pull that off. It wouldn’t do me any good to let her know how I feel about her. I’ll have to talk to her sister one day. I hear Joan Fontaine loathes Olivia. Maybe Joan could deliver the real story about her sister.”
“It sounds like you have the same kind of envious relationship with Olivia that I have with Errol Flynn. We don’t want to be them, we want merely to take over their movie roles.”
When Jane reported to work at Warners for the filming of Princess O’Rourke, the first person she encountered was De Havilland, who had arrived early. The star of the picture graciously invited Jane for a morning coffee in her dressing room. To Jane’s astonishment, she discovered that De Havilland envied the choice roles being funneled to Bette Davis, just as much as Jane envied parts going to De Havilland. In spite of her envy, however, De Havilland maintained an uneasy friendship with Davis.
“Jack Warner still thinks of me as an ingénue and doesn’t give me the meaty roles I want.” De Havilland complained. “I wanted to star in The Letter, a role which, of course, went to Bette. I even wanted the role she played in The Man Who Came to Dinner opposite Monty Woolley. I think Ida Lupino often gets better roles than mine. I wanted her part in The Hard Way (1942), but I was turned down.”
After enough Hollywood gossip, De Havilland became very businesslike. “Now, let’s go over this script. It not only will be directed by Norman Krasna, but he wrote its script. That will make it extra difficult for me when I have to tamper with some of his lines.”
Before even going over the script, De Havilland told Jane, “Remember, I’m of royal blood in the movie, and I act regal even when incognita as a princess. You are a commoner—in fact, I want you to act drab and common, married to a slob like Jack Carson. At no point are you to take the spotlight off me. Imagine yourself as a lady-in-waiting in my shadow.”
Originally, Fred MacMurray had been slated for the Robert Cummings lead, and he probably would have been more convincing as an airplane pilot studly enough to produce male heirs, the hope of the princess’ uncle (Charles Coburn). MacMurray, however, dropped out, pleading previous commitments to Paramount.
When she’d first read Krasna’s script, De Havilland rejected the role of the princess, claiming that she would not report to work if she was assigned the part. Confronted with her defiance, Jack Warner ordered that she be suspended. As her replacement, he contacted Alexis Smith, asking her to test for the role and go through a wardrobe fitting. But before a contract could be drawn up with Smith, De Havilland had a change of mind and reported back to work, adhering to an erratic, diva-driven schedule that forced Krasna o
n many a day to shoot around her.
Love, American style: Jack Carson and Jane Wyman set a good example for a lonely, misguided monarch.
Princess O’Rourke was a Cinderella-in-reverse tale, evoking a precursor of a roughly equivalent movie released in 1953, Roman Holiday, that starred Audrey Hepburn as a demure but rebellious princess in Rome.
Princess O’Rourke was a light comedy set in wartime Washington, D.C., with Olivia de Havilland cast as Princess Maria, fleeing from an unnamed European country after being driven out by the Nazis.
She is on a visit to the nation’s capital with her Uncle Holman (Charles Coburn). Claude Rains had lobbied for the role, but lost it to Coburn.
Disappointed with the traditional and tired blood lines of conventional European royalty, Coburn is seeking a fresh, “virile” American as a proper consort prince for Maria.
Traveling incognito, and presumably terrified of flying, she swallows some sleeping pills aboard a flight piloted by Eddie O’Rourke (Robert Cummings). When the flight has to turn back because of bad weather, Cummings can’t arouse Maria from her pill-induced slumber, so he graciously hauls her off to his apartment, where she will presumably recover, unharmed, from the effects of the pills.
From there, the plot thickens. When the Princess awakens, Cummings assumes that she is “Mary Williams,” an impoverished European refugee. “Mary” is subsequently befriended by a very down-to-earth couple, Jean Campbell (Jane), the wife of Dave Campbell (Jack Carson.)
The mistaken identity plot thickens and complications ensue.
Finally, it all ends happily, with a White House wedding presided over by Harry Davenport, playing a Supreme Court Justice. A lookalike for the president’s dog, Fala, makes his screen debut.
Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis (Blood Moon's Babylon Series) Page 52