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

by Darwin Porter

  That night, Jane complained to Reagan that she hated her role so much she was considering refusing to cooperate, and subsequently being placed on suspension. Up until then, he had hardly paid attention to her concerns, but suddenly, he came alive.

  “You know that Maureen and I are depending on you to bring in a weekly paycheck,” he said. “We can’t live on Army pay!”

  “All right, god damn it,” she told him. “How does it feel to be a kept boy?”

  He stormed out of the house and drove over to spend the night with Ann Sheridan, who surprised him with news that she’d almost gone on suspension herself. “I saw the play on Broadway, and I decided I didn’t want to play any of the three girls.”

  He was very persuasive, and he invited her to come to dinner the following night and talk Jane into going forward with the role of Vivian.

  Sheridan agreed to do that. After about an hour, she convinced Jane to continue struggling through the role, promising her, “We’ll have fun. Alexis is a great gal, and Carson is your pal.”

  Sheridan later told Smith, “What tempted Jane was that once again, Carson can be her beard for any rendezvous she has with Dennis Morgan.”

  On the set, Jane chatted briefly with Regis Toomey, with whom she had shared the longest screen kiss in history. He’d been given only a minor role in Doughgirls as “Agent Walsh.”

  “I still dream of that kiss,” he told her. “I’m ready for a repeat.”

  “Once was enough,” she quipped. “I’m still trying to catch my breath.”

  Cast in a minor role was Irene Manning, with whom Jane had appeared in Make Your Own Bed. She continued to snub Manning, believing that she was conducting a clandestine affair with Dennis Morgan.

  When Jane saw the ads for The Doughgirls, she complained once again to its producer, Mark Hellinger. Publicity included sexy pictures of Smith, Sheridan, and Jane, but what she objected to was the prominent display of Manning, even though her role was small. “My god, you’re showing her tits, a big bosom on display, and that lacy see-through lives up to its purpose.”

  “Sex sells,” Hellinger told her.

  “So that’s how Manning makes her money,” Jane quipped before walking away. During the closing months of the war, Sheridan continued to spend evenings with Jane and Reagan. She recalled one evening as typical.

  She said, “Ronnie was a baseball nut. The day before, he’d heard this game on the radio, and he gave us a play-by-play account, the way he used to do on the air in Des Moines. Jane begged him to stop, claiming that neither of them was interested in baseball. He politely listened to his wife’s complaints, but carried on with a detailed description for all nine innings.”

  In the kitchen, Jane complained to Sheridan, “If it’s not baseball, it’s politics. Christ, he even makes speeches in his sleep.”

  ***

  In 1944, Jane got a reprieve from her marriage when the Air Force sent Reagan, with John Garfield, on a bond-selling tour across America.

  Garfield later recalled, “In any town we landed in, I went out and chased the dames. Because I was John Garfield, I always scored. Once, I took three gals back with me. I invited Reagan to share in my luck. But he stayed in his room reading scripts. I’d heard what a lady-killer he’d been at Warners. That was one serious man.”

  Garfield played a large role in Jane’s life. They both spent three or four nights a week at the USO, entertaining and feeding U.S. servicemen. Bette Davis and others saw Jane leave every one of those nights with Garfield. There were plenty of rumors but no smoking gun. No one was absolutely sure they were having an affair.

  John Garfield with Lana Turner in a defining moment from The Postman Always Rings Twice.

  However, when Garfield, in 1946, made the classic The Postman Always Rings Twice, he gave his version to his co-star, Lana Turner, with whom he was having an affair at the time.

  As related to Turner, Garfield said, “I fucked Jane over a period of six weeks. After traveling on the road with her ‘bookish’ husband, on that war bond tour, I figured the poor gal needed it from some man who knew how to deliver the goods, namely, me.”

  Garfield, as even his friends would admit, was not known for his modesty.

  [At the beginning of World War II, Bette Davis and John Garfield, with help from others, founded the Hollywood Canteen, a morale-booster for military men being shipped off to fight in the Pacific, or else returning after surviving military engagements on land and sea.

  Garfield enlisted Jane’s support, and she appeared regularly at the canteen, entertaining the young men with song, dancing with them, and serving them coffee and doughnuts. “I got a lot of propositions, but the rule was, no dating the servicemen after the canteen closed.”

  Of course that otherwise strict rule didn’t seem to apply to either Garfield or Jane.

  The entertainment center became so popular that Jack Warner ordered director Delmer Daves to make it the subject of a movie with an all-star cast. It was released in 1944 and entitled Hollywood Canteen. The plot was thin, the main stars being Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, and Joan Leslie. Hutton becomes the millionth G.I. to enter the canteen, and consequently, he wins a date with his dream girl, Leslie.

  During the filming, Jane asked her director, Daves, to screen one of his earlier movies, the 1943 wartime adventure, Destination Tokyo, for servicemen. It starred Cary Grant in what had been Daves’ directorial debut. Daves obliged and the men applauded wildly.

  Foreground, left to right; Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, John Garfield, and Bette Davis raising the military’s morale, in Hollywood Canteen.

  A few years later, Jane read a screenplay by Daves entitled Dark Passage, a movie Warners released in 1947. When she heard that Daves was also directing it, and that it would star Humphrey Bogart, she went to Daves and lobbied for the female lead. “Sorry,” Jane,” he said, “but Bogie’s already spoken for his Baby to play Irene in our movie.”

  She knew, of course, that “Baby” meant Lauren Bacall.].

  The tepid “romance” of Hutton and Leslie in Hollywood Canteen was merely a backdrop for the appearances of a star-studded cast that included both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Avowed enemies, they tried to stay in different parts of the canteen. Other stars ranged from film noir’s Ida Lupino to Roy Rogers and Trigger. Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Paul Henreid represented the Casablanca coven. Jane convinced her friend, Barbara Stanwyck, to add her star name to the canteen, both in the movie and at the service counter.

  One night, she whispered to Jane, “I see at least twenty hot guys here who would be Bob’s type.”

  [The reference, of course, was to her bisexual husband, Robert Taylor.]

  Jack Benny was in the movie and often appeared at the canteen to deliver a comedy routine, as did veteran performer Joe E. Brown. Jane still referred to Brown as “My least favorite leading man.”

  When Jane worked at the canteen, singing a song or two, she waited until closing time, when Garfield would volunteer to drive her home. On some nights, Garfield preferred to depart the premises with Joan Crawford on his arm. Their romance would grow hotter when they both co-starred in the 1946 Humoresque.

  When Dennis Morgan made an appearance to entertain the troops, Jane always left the canteen with him.

  Upon the release of Hollywood Canteen, audiences ignored the assault of the critics and flocked to see it. Jack Warner donated 40% of the ticket sales to the canteen itself.

  ***

  Jane visited Van Johnson frequently during his recuperation from his automobile crash, and when he recovered, he asked her to go dancing with him. During the war, she’d kept a low profile and wasn’t seen in clubs. But with victory almost assured, she went back to nightclubbing with Johnson.

  Ironically, the movie magazines had run more pictures of Reagan and Johnson during the war than any other movie stars. Whereas Reagan represented the (married) man in uniform, Johnson had been dubbed “America’s (available) Sweetheart,” and frequently depic
ted with June Allyson.

  “Jane seems to have captured both of these so-called gods,” Sheridan said. “Of course, she and others knew her dates with Johnson were harmless and merely platonic outings.”

  Sometimes, Jane was seen out with both Johnson and a handsome young actor, Tom Drake, who had achieved fame as Judy Garland’s “Boy Next Door” in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). She was a “beard” to their burgeoning relationship, although Johnson also continued his affair with the married Keenan Wynn.

  An idealized portrait of small-town American virtue: Tom Drake, “The Boy Next Door,” with Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.

  One night, Drake told Jane, “I don’t rate the magazine coverage Van and your Ronnie get, but I’m also a favorite. I’m getting tons of mail, real gooey letters from young girls. Van gets even more mail like that.”

  “What would those little girls think if they could see you and Van, intimate and together?” Jane asked.

  ***

  Released in the summer of 1944, The Doughgirls picked up mostly bad reviews, one of them defining it as “More mishmash than smash.” James Kern was attacked for his lack of experience as a director.

  Paper after paper decided to downplay the film’s other female stars and feature Jane—despite the fact that she had been billed below both Smith and Sheridan. The press had continued to define her and Reagan as “The Constant Honeymooners,” and they still graced the cover of magazines. Maureen was, throughout most of the war, the most widely publicized baby in America.

  The New York Times asserted, “Jane Wyman plays a priceless nitwit. The pairing of Wyman with her sidekick, Jack Carson, is threadbare.” Other New York critics attacked how Hollywood had “sanitized” the original stage play, blaming its censure on a “bunch of bluenoses.”

  Despite its reviews, it did a respectable business at the box office, and Jane continued to get roles.

  That led to a bitter row one night when Reagan came home. “You complain that all I talk about is politics. Well, all you talk about is your damn career.”

  “As a star, I’ve caught up with you in the last two years. There are those who say I’ve surpassed you.”

  “What are you trying to do?” he angrily retorted. “Replicate the plot of A Star Is Born?”

  He was referring to the Fredric March/Janet Gaynor film released in 1937. It was the story of a rising young actress who marries a Hollywood super star. As he becomes a has-been, her star rises.

  The argument became so intense that Reagan packed a bag and went to spend the next ten nights in the apartment of William Holden. He kept a small hideaway with a double bed, mainly where he brought his women.

  “Ronnie and I never got off together,” Holden told his friend, Glenn Ford. “We slept together. He’d fall asleep and I’d jerk off if I didn’t get anything that day. When I blast off, I always let out a war whoop. I’m sure he heard me, but pretended to be asleep.”

  During the final months of World War II, Jane’s marriage to Reagan was in serious trouble. His growing interest in politics and her near-obsession with her own career formed a deep void between them.

  When she got a good review, he’d say, “That’s nice, Janie,” and go back to reading his newspaper, or else he’d talk politics. “Did you hear that FDR might appoint Douglas MacArthur to rule over Japan?”

  “Who gives a fuck?” she’d say.

  One evening, he saw her emerging in an evening gown and a mink coat. “I was told not to wear mink during the war years. But the damn war is about over, and I’m back with my mink to show off in front of the photographers.”

  “Where are you heading?” he asked. “You know I have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning.”

  “I can sleep late,” she said. “We operate on different time clocks.”

  “It’s not good for our marriage, your going out late at night like this,” he said.

  “It’s good for my career,” she said. “I’ve got to circulate, go to parties, go dancing, meet directors and producers.”

  “Don’t climb too high,” he cautioned her. “As I’ve told you before, I don’t intend to become known as Mr. Jane Wyman.”

  ***

  Jack Warner told Reagan that throughout the war, his fan mail had continued unabated. Millions had seen him appear in or else narrate Army films. “In some weeks, your mail tops Flynn’s. His fans are still loyal to him, even though he was investigated on charges of statutory rape. Judging by the mail, however, thousands of young American gals want to get raped by Flynn, not to mention the hordes of homo mail he gets from guys who are 4-F.”

  Day after day, Reagan viewed real combat footage sent by his crews in both Europe and the Pacific. “It was a horrible experience to sit through,” he said. “One can only imagine what it was like to be in the middle of it. Plane crashes, poor guys being burned alive, massacred by the Japs or the Nazis. All the horror of war.”

  When at last, the Allies declared victory in Europe, Owen Crump became the first of FMPU’s camera combat units to move into western Germany. Crump even beat Eisenhower in inspections of Hitler’s notorious death camp at Buchenwald. Thousands had suffered and died in this camp. Newspapers made it famous as the former abode of one of her era’s most notorious women, Ilse Koch, the wife of Karl-Otto Koch, commandant of the camp. After the war, this psychotic woman (“The Bitch of Buchenwald”) was accused of having lamp shades crafted from the skins of murdered inmates with distinctive tattoos.

  Crump sent footage of the atrocities back to Reagan and the officers of FMPU. Crump issued a warning. “The scenes depicted in these films are not fit for human viewing.”

  After watching what he called “the most sickening scenes I was ever to witness in my life,” Reagan went outside the screening room and vomited.

  He later said. “Those images are engraved on my brain forever. There will be no escaping them in my nightmares. What ghastly images to have to watch: Inmates so gaunt and emaciated you wondered how they could possibly be alive. I saw ditches being filled with their bodies and then bulldozed by the Nazis as if they could really bury their cruelty and depravity. I never knew how a country with Germany’s rich cultural background could revert to such savagery.”

  Reagan recalled the final bitter battles of Americans fighting the Japanese as they prepared for an invasion of their homeland, where a million U.S. soldiers, it was estimated would lose their lives.

  He was driving along a California highway when he heard on the radio that “a fantastic bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima.”

  “Suddenly, I knew my days in the Army were drawing to a close and I could return to Warners a movie star. It was the end of one aspect of my career. It was also a beginning, but none of us knew that at the time.”

  When he got to a phone, he called Jane.

  “Your Johnny—in this case, Ronnie—will soon be marching home. Kick out all your other boyfriends and make room for Daddy.”

  “You’re joking, of course,” she said, sharply.

  “Of course I am,” he said.

  ***

  To most of his fans, Reagan had shown “great courage under fire” during the war. Actually, he’d never heard one gun fired. His reputation had been based solely on his “daring exploits” as portrayed in some of his movies, especially the wartime propaganda flicks, Jap Zero and Rear Gunner.

  Reagan had served at Fort Roach for more than three years. But on September 10, 1945, he was given his discharge, thereby terminating his active duty.

  After he drove home and entered his house, he secretly anticipated a “Welcome home, Ronnie” surprise party. But even though she was not involved at the time in any film project, Jane was nowhere to be found. There was no note or explanation of any kind.

  Maureen and her nanny, however, were waiting to greet him.

  He immediately placed a telephone call to Jack Warner, perhaps expecting him to react with joy that he was free to resume his movie career at Warners.

  As Reagan later
told Bill Holden, “Jack was friendly enough, and he invited Jane and me over to dinner. He also congratulated me on all those wartime propaganda movies. But his mood changed when I asked him to start sending over scripts.”

  “We don’t have anything for you now,” Warner said. “I’m sure something will turn up. We’ll stay in touch. I’ve got to go.”

  As Reagan confessed to Holden, “So, this was to be my homecoming. I felt both my private life and my movie career had evaporated. I was desolate.”

  ***

  In the summer of 1944, Jane had flown to New York at the request of Jack Warner to promote The Doughgirls. While there, she had received a phone call that changed her life.

  The second day of her arrival, Walter Winchell, in his popular column, had announced her presence in New York. That morning, at around 10AM, a call came in from director Billy Wilder. Since the success of his Double Idemnity (1944), starring Fred MacMurray and Jane’s friend, Barbara Stanwyck, Wilder was the hottest director in Hollywood.

  Throughout the war years, despite the harmonies produced on their piano, tensions were high in the “WyReaMan” household.

  “What a delight to hear from you, Mr. Wilder,” she said.

  “I’m an early riser, and I dropped off a novel for you to read. I left it for you at the Plaza’s reception desk.”

  “I’ll read it right away,” she promised.

  “I’m going to make it into a film,” he announced. “I want you to play the girlfriend of the hero. Perhaps I should say ‘anti-hero.’ He’s an alcoholic.”

  “What is this novel called?” she asked.

  “Read it! It’s The Lost Weekend.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nancy Gets a Reputation as “One of Those Girls Whose Phone Number Gets Handed Around a Lot.”

  At Manhattan’s Stork Club, Clark Gable was seen dating Nancy Davis.

  A columnist wrote: “Has something happened to Clark Gable, something in the form of starlet Nancy Davis, that is, changing the fitful pattern of his romantic life? Has he, in other words, finally found the Gable woman, for whom he is more than willing to give up the Gable women? The answer seems to be yes--even though, if it is love at all, it is, so far, love in hiding.”