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

by Darwin Porter

  ***

  Leaving Fort Mason, Reagan reported to work in Hollywood, joining the newly created First Motion Picture Unit (FMPU), created by General Henry H. Arnold, who was nicknamed “Hap.” He commanded the Army Air Corps, which later morphed into the U.S. Army Air Force.

  Reagan would stay at this command post throughout the duration of the war, never leaving the United States, although many of his fans were made to believe that he was fighting with Allied troops in Europe.

  As the months passed, Reagan was amazed at the growth of the Air Corps. In 1939, at the beginning of the armed conflicts in Europe, it had some 25,000 men and fewer than 3,900 planes. By the time of the June, 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy, Arnold commanded some 2.5 million men. American factories were turning out 150,000 planes per year.

  Photoplay carried the news that “Jane Wyman and wee daughter are probably the happiest people in town, since husband and daddy Ronald Reagan has been temporarily sent back to Burbank to make government film shorts.”

  Before Reagan signed on, Warner had already been making propaganda films for the War Department, including such releases as The Tanks are Coming and Service with the Colors, each targeted at young men who had not enlisted.

  When Reagan went into the army, only three percent of men in the movie colony had signed up. Dozens upon dozens of directors, actors, screenwriters, sound engineers, producers, cameramen, and other technicians had not joined.

  Reagan’s first office was at the old Vitagraph Studios in Los Angeles until that location proved too small. At that point, he and the vast crew were transferred to the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City. Because of the undisciplined crew there, and reports of “outrageous behavior” among the former movie people, locals referred to it as “Fort Wacky.” It also became better known as “Fort Roach.”

  Star Power as Hollywood Goes to War: Lieutenant Reagan (who defined himself, facetiously, as “the American Goebbels” after Nazi Germany’s notorious propaganda chief), at the FMPU, organizing propaganda and training films.

  At Fort Roach, Reagan faced 1,000 enlisted men and officers, most of whom had had no military training except for what they’d received working on war pictures at the various studios. As one technician, Ralph Davidson, told Reagan, “We know how to stage a war only if it’s called for in the script.”

  Reagan’s superior officer was Paul Mantz, who had been the most famous stunt pilot in Hollywood. In 1937, he’d helped Amelia Earhart learn navigational skills, but had rejected her offer to fly with her as co-pilot during her ill-fated (final and disastrous) attempt to fly around the world.

  Mantz had once run an air charter service dubbed, “The Honeymoon Express” because it carried so many illicit lovers to secret rendezvous destinations. His clients had included Howard Hughes, Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn. “I should write a tell-all,” Mantz told Reagan. “You won’t believe some of the love duos—even trios—I flew, with genders getting all mixed up.” Mantz had also worked on flight scenes for such pictures as Test Pilot (1938), starring Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy.

  During his tenure at Fort Roach, Reagan constantly appeared on the covers of magazines. He was always in full uniform, always with a smile, and most often with the Stars and Stripes waving behind him. In the history of the Presidency, no man, other than Dwight D. Eisenhower, had ever been photographed so frequently in uniform.

  Hollywood at War: Hollywood’s most celebrated stunt pilot (Paul Mantz) found a huge demand for his services at Reagan’s FMPU. Much of it involved staging aerial dogfights for the Army’s propaganda and training films.

  Reagan met many young recruits who complimented him on his daring aerial exploits as depicted in such films as Murder in the Air and International Squadron. He didn’t tell them that those scenes had been faked, and that any daring aviation feats had been performed by stunt pilots.

  During Reagan’s first week at Fort Roach, Jack Warner arranged for him to meet General Henry Arnold, nicknamed “Hap,” the chief of staff of the Army Air Corps. These two men had jointly developed the idea of the First Motion Picture Unit for the production of Army training and P.R. films. Hap and Reagan blended harmoniously and learned to work well together. Hap told Warner, “The Reagan boy is my kind of soldier, my kind of man, a sharp shooter. I hear he’s a real lady’s man, too.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Warner replied. “During his first three years at Warners, all our starlets lost their virginity.”

  Arnold had several long talks with Reagan, focusing on military issues and convincing him that the future of the United States as a world power depended on its supremacy in the air. Amazingly, Arnold never learned that Reagan, one of his chief protégés, was plagued with an irrational terror of flying.

  He viewed Reagan as one of his most effective propagandists. During his time at Fort Roach, FMPU would produce some 225 films, most of them with a running time of 30 minutes, although some lasted on the screen for only nine minutes. The cheaper ones were completed for less than $5,000, although longer ones cost as much as $15,000. Reagan starred in some of these films and narrated dozens more. Many of them have been lost or destroyed in the years since the war ended.

  During his first months at Fort Roach, Reagan was deeply troubled about moral issues associated with the war and his films. He told Jane and some of his closest friends, such as Dick Powell, “Sometimes I lie awake thinking about these guys: Our films are shown to high school and college students. We glorify flying—just read our press releases. We claim flying is full of inspirational splendor, the roaring engines of bomber formations gliding through the clouds. In reality, as any R.A.F. pilot can tell you, flying is a grim and dangerous business. A man can die—in fact, he usually does.”

  Warner told Reagan that the U.S. government had more or less taken over the direction of his studio, using its facilities, when needed, to make propaganda and training films. The Army also provided outlines for A-list feature movies for them to shoot. “At our peak in 1939, we were turning out about a hundred films a year. In 1943, we were reduced to making only about three or four dozen. Of course, that means less work for Jane. Naturally, the war has really cut into our profits.”

  On most nights at Fort Roach, Reagan was allowed to go home to spend the night with Jane. On many a night, she wrote him a note that she’d be late, leaving Baby Maureen in the care of a nanny. Jane never explained where she was, and he was too polite to ask. Occasionally, she’d mention casually, “Oh, I was out with some friends, and forgot how late it was getting.”

  Reagan had met Oklahoma-born Owen Crump when he was a writer at Warner Brothers. In his new role with FMPU, Reagan found himself taking orders from Crump. A dynamic, rather overpowering personality, Crump was described by Reagan as “terse and tough.”

  At the time Reagan worked with him, Crump had wed Lucile Fairbanks, which made him the nephew-in-law to Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Mary Pickford. In time, that would lead to Reagan being invited to Pickfair, the home of the reclusive Pickford, America’s former sweetheart, and her husband, Buddy Rogers.

  Crump took Reagan to the screening of a picture he’d co-directed with John Huston. Called Winning Your Wings (1941), it starred Jimmy Stewart. “The aim of Jimmy’s film was to inspire young men to forget baseball games, summer romances, football in autumn, and family vacations,” Crump said. “The suggestion was that men should abandon those pursuits and enlist in the Air Force.” Crump then uttered a statement that appeared to be outrageous: “When that film was shown in theaters, it incited 500,000 young men to enlist. I want you to turn out films as powerful as Jimmy’s.”

  It was Jimmy Stewart, who made the most successful American propaganda film, Winning Your Wings.

  Repeatedly honored by the military, he rose to the rank of Brigadier General by 1959.

  “It’s a tough act to follow, but I’ll try,” Reagan said.

  ***

  During the war, magazines were brimming with stories of male
stars who had either been enlisted, been drafted, or somehow managed “to elude Uncle Sam.”

  Reagan came into contact with many of them, and read about those he didn’t encounter. Among Reagan’s closest friends was Robert Taylor, who appeared in war movies such as Bataan (1942), but he was told too old to be drafted. Nonetheless, in 1943, he enlisted in the Naval Air Corps and became a flight instructor. He also narrated the 1944 wartime documentary, The Fighting Lady.

  Too old to enlist, Bob Hope and Reagan’s friend, Pat O’Brien, traveled thousands of miles to entertain the troops.

  James Stewart was one of the actors who became a genuine hero during the war. He joined USAAC in 1940, although initially he was refused entry because he was five pounds under the required weight of 148 pounds. But he talked his recruitment officer into ignoring his weight. He became a colonel and flew combat missions, eventually awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  After seeing some of Reagan’s training films. Stewart told him, “Real war is not like you depicted it. It’s more deadly and insane, at times without reason or any type of morality, nothing but senseless death. It was execution in the air of young men who would never be allowed to finish their lives, either in Germany or in America.”

  Cary Grant and Errol Flynn each avoided military service, but David Niven volunteered and left Hollywood to return to war-torn England where he became a hero, his exact role in the service never fully explained.

  Frank Sinatra avoided the draft and never served in any branch of the military.

  A World War I veteran, Humphrey Bogart was in his 40s and too old to be drafted, although he frequently appeared in war movies, including the classic Casablanca.

  Reagan said, “Bogie was in, the king of Warner Brothers, and I was out. And damn it, I didn’t win the Oscar for Kings Row. Neither did Bogie, but his time would come again. Mine would not.”

  On August 12, 1942, the “King of Hollywood,” Clark Gable, turned down a commission and entered the Army as a private. Perhaps as a swipe at Reagan and others, he said, “I don’t want to entertain. I just want to be sent where the going is tough.”

  In January of 1943, after his involvement in a training program known as one of the Army’s “90-day wonders,” Gable graduated as a second lieutenant and aerial gunner. In England, he became part of a flying squadron, the 351st heavy Bombardment Group, known as “Hatcher’s Chickens,” named in honor of their colonel.

  Gable did not escape the attention of Josef Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine. From Berlin, a broadcast was made: “Welcome to England, Hatcher’s Chickens, among them the famous American cinema star, Clark Gable. We’ll be seeing you soon in Berlin, Clark.”

  Film star Ronald Reagan: Dealing with delicate ideological issues AND looking good while he was doing it. His fear of flying was not visible in this publicity shot for FMPU.

  Lower photo: evidence of the growing military might of the US’s wings of war.

  Before the war, Gable had been Hitler’s favorite male movie star. Der Führer issued a specific order to try, if possible, to capture Gable alive, especially if his plane was shot down behind enemy lines. “If not that, I want his dead body brought to me.”

  While based in England, Gable carried out dangerous missions over Germany, including the bombing attack on the synthetic oil plants at Gelsenkirchen. In that raid alone, twenty-five Allied bombers were lost. Gable’s plane returned safely, but riddled with five bullet holes. He was so daring in combat that many of his crew members felt— perhaps as a reaction to the fatal plane crash of his wife, Carole Lombard, in circumstances not associated with active combat—that he harbored a secret death wish.

  After his military service in England, Gable asked to be transferred to the continuing war in the Pacific against the Japanese. He waited and waited until, as he said himself, “I felt discarded.” After serving for nearly two years, he asked for a discharge from active duty. Ironically, that request was granted by a captain, Ronald Reagan, at Fort Roach.

  An effeminate pic of the director of Germany’s Luftwaffe, the sadist, art collector, and morphine addict, Hermann Göring.

  [In the closing months of the War, Jane and Reagan visited Gable after his return to California. Jane had never mentioned her sexual encounter with Gable so long ago. At Gable’s ranch in Encino, they discovered an aging movie star, graying at the temples and putting on weight. They learned that he consumed a quart of Scotch a day, having purchased an entire truckload of it when war had first erupted in Europe.

  Gable told Reagan, “If Hitler had caught me, the son of a bitch would have put me in a cage like a gorilla and exhibited me throughout Germany. If my plane were going down, I would not have bailed out and allowed my capture by the Nazis for delivery to whatever fate lay in store for me.”

  Hermann Göring of the Luftwaffe had designated Gable as “one of the most wanted of war criminals.”

  ***

  The King of Hollywood enlists! Clark Gable gets inoculated, just like every other guy, during his basic training.

  An upcoming king of Hollywood—at least in terms of box office receipts— was John Wayne.

  Having met during the late 1930s, when both of them were struggling for stardom, Reagan and Wayne knew each other only casually. It wasn’t until the late 1940s and early 50s that they finally bonded in their mutual goal of ferreting out communists who were allegedly “infiltrating” the movie industry.

  But these two men did have a few tense encounters during World War II, when both of them remained in Hollywood. Across the country, boys in their late teens or young men in their early 20s flocked to see Wayne (“The Duke”) in the movies. During the war he made some movies, including The Fighting Seabees (1944); Back to Bataan (1945), and They Were Expendable (1945).

  This military magazine documents how appealing the idea of Clark Gable’s capture would have been to the Nazi propaganda machine. Hitler wanted him tortured and paraded, nude, and in chains, through the streets of Berlin.

  These movies once prompted Reagan to quip, “To judge by his movies, John won the war against the Nazis and the Japs single-handedly.”

  When The Duke heard that, he told Ward Bond, “When you see Reagan again, tell him I’m going to rip out his right eyeball and eat it as an appetizer. I haven’t seen him mowing down any Japs in this man’s war.”

  Owen Crump called Reagan to his office one day to “bounce an idea off your head. “What about setting up recruiting desks in the lobbies of movie theaters, nationwide, that happen to be screening any of Duke’s films?”

  “I think it would work,” Reagan said.

  “John is even more of a hero to young boys than Jimmy Stewart is, and look at all the recruits he enlisted with his propaganda film”

  Reagan rendezvoused with Wayne for dinner one night at the Cock n’ Bull in Hollywood to feel him out on Crump’s idea.

  Over steaks, Wayne became very defensive about not having enlisted. “You know I’m too old for the draft. I’m classified 3-A, which is a family deferment.”

  “I talked to your man John Ford, and he thinks you should do more for the war effort. That led Crump to come up with this idea about the lobby enlistments.”

  “I wish Ford would shut his god damn mouth about my status,” Wayne said, flashing anger. “He’s always urging me to enlist.”

  “That’s what Ford told me, but he claims that you always come up with the excuse that you’ve got two more pictures to complete.”

  “It’s not so easy,” Wayne said. “Over at Republic, Herbert J. Yates is threatening to sue me if I walk out on my contract. He’s even called the War Department seeking a permanent deferment for me.”

  He wasn’t always overweight, pompous and jowly: John Wayne in a studio publicity shot for Back to Bataan (1945).

  Wayne also confessed a personal reason for not wanting to enlist. “I know it’s selfish of me, but I’ve been waiting for years for my big break in films, and it’s finally here. If I walk out now, I m
ay never get this chance again. Don’t you see the gamble I’m taking if I enlist?”

  “I see it clearly,” Reagan said. “I faced the same thing after Kings Row, but the War Department would not grant me any more deferments. I was carted off willingly.”

  “Hooray for you, the American hero,” Wayne said, mockingly. “You’ve got to understand something. Some of the leading men of Hollywood, stars like Robert Taylor and Clark Gable, are in the military. All sorts of roles are opening up for leading men, and I want to take advantage. Hell, I’ve appeared with Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford, even Claudette Colbert. I got to fuck Marlene and Crawford. Not Colbert, of course. She’s as much of a duke as I am.”

  Before the end of Reagan’s dinner with Wayne, Duke had agreed to the theater lobby enlistment campaign and even promised to go on a three-month tour of U.S. bases and Army hospitals in the South Pacific.

  Years later, when Ford talked to Reagan about his dinner with Wayne, the director said, “I think the Duke has become a superpatriot mainly as an attempt to atone for sitting out World War II.”

  Not just Ford, but a lot of men Reagan knew in the movie industry had enlisted, including Robert Montgomery and Fox producer Darryl F. Zanuck.

  In 1942, Jane and Reagan had attended the wedding of Wayne Morris, their Brother Rat co-star and Jane’s former lover, to Patricia O’Rourke, an Olympic swimmer and sister to B-movie actress Peggy Stewart.