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

by Darwin Porter

  Waiters at the Stork Club always served platters of freshly baked rolls. When Nancy thought no one was looking, she slipped two or three rolls into her evening bag—one roll for breakfast, another as an ingredient for sandwiches at lunch, if she could afford a slice of baloney to go with it.

  One night, the club’s savvy owner—celebrity-hunting, eagle-eyed Sherman Billings-ley—sent over a pound of butter, with a note: “I thought you might enjoy some butter on my rolls.”

  One day at lunch, Tracy told her that his son, John, was coming to New York, and he wanted Nancy to go out with him, showing him the sights. Although Tracy maintained a suite at the Waldorf Towers, he asked Nancy if she’d invite his son to sleep on the sofa bed in the living room of her apartment. She agreed, finally deciphering why Tracy didn’t want his son to stay with him. She realized that Katharine Hepburn was a frequent visitor, and he didn’t’ want John to report any news back to his mother, the former Louise Treadwell, who was still a loyal wife to Tracy despite his philandering.

  Before John’s arrival, Tracy told her, “I’m proud of the boy. I don’t like to talk about his deafness, but know that he leads a fairly normal life in spite of it. He went to college, and his classmates were very fond of him. He often went out on dates with the prettiest campus queens. He’s a great dancer—no Fred Astaire—but he can whirl you around a dance floor. He’s making a career as an artist. Walt Disney is my friend, and he’s hired John at his studios.”

  “He has the makings of a great polo player and could have been a champ,” Tracy said. “Too bad polo has gone more or less out of style in Hollywood.”

  He also vowed, “As for his deafness, I will never give up. Somewhere, some place, I’ll find a doctor who can restore his hearing.”

  John had been a polio victim and in addition to his deafness, had poor eyesight.

  Nancy followed Tracy’s guidance and treated John like one of her regular boyfriends. Since they were living together in such close proximity, it was assumed by those who knew her that she was having an affair with Tracy’s son, especially since they were seen out together every night. Huston certainly thought so, and suggested to his friends, “My dear little girl, or so I think, is going to marry Spence’s son. He’s a god damn nice boy, and I believe he’d make a suitable husband for Nancy. Spence always uses John’s having been born deaf as an excuse for his drinking, which is pure bullshit, of course.”

  As Spencer Tracy said about his son, John Tracy, depicted above as a young adult: “But he bravely carried on in spite of his deafness, including dating my little friend, Nancy Davis.”

  “Did they go at it, living together in the same small apartment?” Spencer mused. “I don’t know. Sometimes, the father is the last to find out such things.”

  John and Nancy did the rounds together, strolling along Fifth Avenue and through museums, and visiting the theater. At night, they went dancing, and Tracy didn’t exaggerate the talent of his son on the dance floor. Every day, with Tracy, they took a walk in Central Park. Nancy noticed that he seemed to love his son very much, but seemed incapable of displaying his affection.

  John preferred musicals instead of dramas, as it was hard for him to decipher the plot. As for musicals, he told Nancy he could sense the music through vibrations.

  One night, John and Nancy went to see Tracy perform in a Broadway Play, The Rugged Path, written by Robert E. Sherwood, the dean of American dramatists. The play had opened to critical attacks, most of them directed at Sherwood. Even though Tracy’s acting was praised in most reviews—“a good actor in a bad play,” Hepburn still urged him to drop out.

  Katharine (“La Divinissima”) Hepburn.

  Tracy had showed Nancy a review by John Chapman in the Daily News: “The sooner Spencer Tracy goes back to Hollywood, the better—and he should stay there!”

  The Rugged Path opened on Broadway in November of 1945, closing in January after eighty-one performances. In brief, it was the story of a newspaper editor who becomes a liberal activist after time spent in London as the English were plunged into World War II. He clashes with the paper’s conservative owners, including his brother-in-law, before leaving to fight in the Pacific.

  One night, Hepburn entertained John, Nancy, and Tracy at her own small apartment. Fellow guests included writer/director Garson Kanin and actress Ruth Gordon. It turned out to be John’s farewell dinner.

  The next morning, a driver from MGM, as arranged by Tracy, arrived to take John to the airport. At her door, she reached down to pick up his suitcase. “No, let me do that,” he said. “You are my princess and I am your slave.”

  After kissing him goodbye, she later claimed, “I closed the door and wept.”

  Huston was wrong about any lasting romantic link between John and Nancy, although he insisted they did have an affair. “A hot-to-trot young man and a hot-to-trot young lady living in such close quarters,” he said. “The inevitable must have happened. At least I think it did.”

  ***

  In 1946, with World War II at an end, Broadway experienced its apogee in both drama and musicals. Ethel Merman had a smash hit in Annie Get Your Gun, and Oklahoma! was in its third season; Carousel in its fourth. I Remember Mama was a big hit at the Music Box, and The Magnificent Yankee was being staged at the Royale.

  The year before, Tennessee Williams had premiered The Glass Menagerie. Later, it became a movie that starred Jane Wyman. On Broadway in 1946, The Voice of the Turtle, a play by John Van Druten, was in its third season. A year later, it would be made into a film starring Ronald Reagan.

  In comedy, Judy Holliday scored a hit in Born Yesterday. When she repeated her performance on the screen, she would win an Oscar for it, beating Bette Davis’ performance in All About Eve and Gloria Swanson’s star role in Sunset Blvd.

  Post-war Broadway audiences might have enjoyed Lute Song if they could accept Mary Martin as an abandoned Chinese wife and Nancy Davis as a Chinese flower maiden.

  Into this firestorm of success arrived Mary Martin, opening Lute Song at the Plymouth, a lyrical musical based on a very old Chinese play, PiPa-Ji.

  [Set during the Han Dynasty (206 b.c.–220 a.d.), PiPa-Ji (The Lute), by Gao Ming, tells the story of a loyal wife who is impoverished when her husband is forced to marry another woman. She spends the next 12 years searching for him, earning her living by playing the pipa (lute). In the Broadway adaptation of this ancient Chinese opera, the two are eventually reconciled and live out their lives happily.]

  Martin had scored a big success three years earlier on Broadway in One Touch of Venus.

  The director of Lute Song was John Houseman. Born in Romania, the British-American actor was known for his collaboration with director Orson Welles in projects that included both Citizen Kane and for their launch of New York’s acclaimed Mercury Theatre in 1937.

  Prior to landing a small role on Broadway in Lute Song, Nancy had been hired as an actress in a gig that lasted for only four days. She later wrote that she could not remember the name of the play or its director. “He called me out into the garbage-strewn alley,” she recalled. “He told me that I was wrong for the role and did not understand the character.”

  “I’ve got to let you go,” he said. “Good luck in your theatrical ambitions, but, frankly, your legs are too thick for the theater.”

  She was too embarrassed to go back inside, so she asked him to retrieve her coat and purse, which he did. Nancy later wrote, “It was the first and last time I was ever fired from anything. I found out how painful it is to be rejected.”

  Out of work again, she’d made extra money modeling for the Conover Agency. She was often asked to model hats, because the agency suggested that she didn’t have the physique for a full-figure model, especially if she had to show off her legs.

  For the Broadway stage, Lute Song was adapted by Sidney Howard and Will Irwin, with a score by Raymond Scott and lyrics by Bernard Hanighen. Accessorized with lavish sets and music, it was an avant-garde mood piece, the story of
a young wife, Tchao-Ou-Niang (Martin), who is married to Tsai-Yong (Yul Brynner). He leaves his wife and goes away to become a highly visible magistrate. He marries Princess Nieou-Chi (Helen Craig) and loses contact with his original family.

  His parents, played by Mildred Dunnock and Augustin Duncan, die of starvation, and Martin, as his wife, although abandoned, nonetheless has to sell her hair to pay for her in-laws’ funeral expenses. Ultimately, Brynner’s character is reunited with Martin’s character, and the princess welcomes her into the royal palace as Tsai-Yong’s No. 1 wife.

  [Craig, star of film, TV, and radio, had created the role of the deaf mute in the original Broadway production of Johnny Belinda in 1940. Ironically, the movie version (1948) would bring Jane Wyman an Oscar.]

  Before opening on Broadway, Martin had been a houseguest of Edith and Loyal Davis in Chicago. Edith no doubt gave the star a slight nudge, which led to the casting of Nancy in a minor role as a Chinese handmaiden, Si Tchun (spelled by Nancy in a memoir as Tsi Chun). It marked her first and last appearance on Broadway. She later said, “I looked about as Chinese as Betty Grable.” Oddly enough, even though they remained lifelong friends, Martin didn’t even mention Nancy in her memoir, My Heart Belongs (1976), a strange omission.

  Houseman later claimed in a memoir, “I wanted to fire Nancy, but Martin intervened and prevented me from doing so.”

  His star confronted the director, “I have a very bad back, and Nancy’s father is the greatest neurosurgeon in America. Nancy stays in the play! Or else I walk!”

  He later wrote: “At Mary’s behest, to play the princess’s flower maiden, we engaged a pink-cheeked, attractive but awkward and amateurish virgin by the name of Nancy Davis.” He may have been off his mark with that virgin appraisal.

  In preparation for her role, Nancy dyed her brown hair black and worked her makeup so that her eyebrows were set at an angle. “I hope this would make me look more like a Chinese Princess’s flower maiden, really a lady-in-waiting. In spite of that, I still never won the favor of Houseman.”

  In contrast to his negative critique of Nancy, Houseman almost seemed to be in love with Brynner, describing him as “dynamic and strangely beautiful, and young man of Russian-Chinese origin. He was very sexy, an exotic leading man with an interesting speech and a vaguely Oriental look.” Before the beginning of dress rehearsal, he invited Houseman to his dressing room, where he stood completely nude. “I am yours to do with as you wish. Dress me from my skin outward…or whatever you had in mind.”

  Before signing for Lute Song, Brynner did modeling work, having been photographed in the nude by George Platt Lynes. Nancy confessed in a memoir that “all the girls in the cast had a crush on Brynner,” who had hair then and a magnificent physique. A photograph of him in all his uncut glory was circulated backstage. The original negative was later acquired by gay pop artist Andy Warhol.

  Nancy never admitted that she was among those who had a crush on Brynner. She didn’t have to: Too many others in the cast were already spreading that rumor.

  Sexy, exotic Yul Brynner had hair when he appeared in Lute Song and discovered the charms of Nancy Davis. He’d posed for an infamous nude, half of which is shown above, taken by a photographer depicting Brynner in all his uncut glory.

  In the lower photo, he is seen in his iconic role as the King of Siam in The King and I.

  In later life, Brynner had only compliments for Nancy. “If she’d stuck it out, I think she would have become a first-rate star.”

  He later confided in Houseman, who was not always discreet. He’d told his director that he had not actually seduced Nancy, but that she’d “serviced” him. There is only his word for that. However, throughout his career, he was known for summoning the most beautiful young men and women to his dressing room, where they found him waiting in the nude to be serviced.

  [Once, when he was asked about that custom of his during his star role in The King and I, Brynner said, “I’m the King of Siam, with unlimited power. I am merely taking monarch’s privilege.”

  Regardless of what happened (or didn’t happen) with Nancy, Brynner, as a major star, went on to world class seductions, an impressive array that included Deborah Kerr, who found him “very, very sexy,” and even Tallulah Bankhead. The list is long: Anne Baxter, Ingrid Bergman, Claire Bloom, Joan Crawford, Yvonne De Carlo, Judy Garland, Gina Lollobrigida, Maria Schell, and ultimately, Marilyn Monroe. When he was dying of cancer, Marlene Dietrich said, “Goody, goody— serves him right.” He had abruptly dropped her.

  Brynner also had a number of homosexual affairs, especially with a very young Sal Mineo, when they appeared together in The King and I on Broadway. In France, the author, painter, and designer, Jean Cocteau, often fellated Brynner when they smoked opium together.]

  Immediately adjacent to the theater presenting Lute Song was a competing theater showcasing Three to Make Ready, starring Gordon MacRae, Ray Bolger, and Arthur Godfrey. Nancy had befriended two future stars, Patricia Neal and Jean Hagen. Hagen would one day star in a movie with Nancy called Night Into Morning, and Neal would co-star with Reagan in The Hasty Heart. The three aspiring actresses often visited the theater next door.

  Later, MacCrae boasted that “Nancy and I saw some action in my dressing room.” Hagen said she doubted that, because she felt that MacCrae exaggerated his conquests. “He was always bragging about the women he had. One night, he even forced himself onto me. I resisted, but didn’t put up all that much fight. I figured it was easier to give in. He was so god damn good looking. He later became an old drunk, singing in motel restaurants in Indiana.”

  Many of the cast members of Lute Song were heavy drinkers, but not Nancy. During the run, Richard Davis, her stepbrother, arrived in New York to stay with her. He was accompanied by three Princeton men into heavy boozing. After one all-night binge, Richard came into her apartment and was so sick he threw up in her bathtub. He later said, “It took two years before she would speak to me again.”

  The studly singer/actor Gordon MacCrae, who was appearing in a theater next door to Lute Song, later boasted to Patricia Neal and Jean Hagen that he’d seduced Nancy Davis.

  Hagen wasn’t sure if MacCrae ever accomplished that or not, “But he sure got around to me!”

  Both Edith and Loyal Davis flew in from Chicago to attend the opening night of Lute Song.

  The highlight of the show was Martin singing “Mountain High, Valley Low.” Time magazine defined Lute Song as “The season’s loveliest production and its most charming failure. There should have been either less spectacle or less story.” The play opened on February 6, 1946 and closed on June 8 after 142 performances.

  Lute Song was viewed as only moderately successful, surviving as long as it did because of the box office appeal of Mary Martin. For Brynner, it led to the career breakthrough of his life. Martin eventually recommended him to her friends, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, to play the Siamese despot in the classic musical, The King and I, a role that would be indelibly associated with him.

  In spite of Lute Song’s bad reviews, Brynner won the Donaldson Award as “the most promising new Broadway star of 1946.”

  Later, Nancy would be asked to go with it on tour, but she rejected the offer. An offer for another road tour with a play had come in from her dear friend, ZaSu Pitts.

  ***

  Before Broadway, the cast of Lute Song tried out their musical in both New Haven and Boston. Nancy bonded with its lead dancer, Ron Fletcher, who was also a choreographer. She later described him as “effervescent, high strung, and very, very stylish.”

  As described in Fletcher’s memoirs, “There was a quality Nancy had that drew her to me and I never was that interested in girls. I find her a curious mixture, on the one hand vulnerable yet I sensed a strength and a resolve in her that was iron willed. She seemed very determined.”

  “We went out every night because she made me laugh, and she had this amazing little chortle. Her voice had a touch of whimsy, rather ador
able. I often took her ballroom dancing. We glided across the floor like Vernon and Irene Castle.”

  Fletcher said that during the Boston tryouts, they were virtually penniless. “Both of us were readers, and we pooled our money, five dollars in all, and joined a rental library. One night, we were determined to go ballroom dancing, but had no money to buy tickets. Since we hadn’t rented any books yet, we went back to the rental library and withdrew our deposits. After that, we danced the night away.”

  Fletcher and Nancy were introduced to Dolly Haas, who was married to the famous newspaper caricaturist, Al Hirschfeld. She was a star of both German and American films, and was planning to take over Mary Martin’s role for the road show tour of Lute Song.

  [Martin would later candidly admit, “Dolly was much better in the part than I was.”]

  Haas recalled Fletcher and Nancy showing up one night in her dressing room. “She was an enchantingly beautiful young girl, and I think they were very interested in getting married. They even asked my opinion about what they should do. They seemed so young, so very much in love. I told them to go for it.”

  Many years later, Fletcher admitted he had had a sexual relationship with Nancy. “She was one of only three women that I slept with in my entire life.”

  In later years, Fletcher referred to Nancy as “a delightful creature. She was bright and curious. However, she didn’t seem worldly at all, and I liked that about her. I would tell her tacky, obscene stories, and that wonderful laugh of hers could be heard.”

  “Although we had a little romance on the road, I don’t think she was in love with me, and I was not in love with her. After we came back to New York, we slowly drifted apart. However, when I opened an exercise studio in California, she was a frequent visitor, showing up with her socialite friend, Betsy Bloomingdale, for my special exercises.”