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

by Darwin Porter

  [A former Martha Graham modern dancer, Fletcher was also a disciple of the health and exercise regimes of Joseph and Clara Pilates, the original developers of the Pilates exercise regime, a movement that later attracted millions of devotees. It combined calisthenics and yoga with orthopedically savvy exercise equipment that to one pupil resembled instruments from a medieval torture chamber.

  In 1972, Fletcher opened his health and exercise studio in Los Angeles, and his first customer was the novelist, Judith Krantz, who wrote bestsellers that included Scruples. When he met her, he told her, “I am a gay man recovering from an addiction to alcohol.” Krantz found him charming and soon spread the word among the Hollywood elite. Patrons who began showing up at his studio included Barbra Streisand, Candice Bergen, Ali MacGraw, and, as mentioned, “Nancy and Betsy,” who were Fletcher’s favorite customers.]

  Ron Fletcher, the celebrated dancer and choreographer, was one of many intimate relationships “Broadway Nancy” formed with homosexual men.

  In the lower photo, in Los Angeles, he is seen teaching one of his famous Pilates classes, lessons which attracted A-list stars from the movie community.

  As author Kitty Kelley noted, “Most of Nancy’s closest friends and relationship were with homosexual men, both as friends and lovers. Homosexuality seemed to envelop her world. For the rest of her life, she enjoyed platonic friendships with well-dressed gay men who became her mentors in the arts, fashion, cuisine, and interior design, shaping her tastes and pointing her toward sophistication.”

  When Fletcher drifted out of her life, Nancy took up with Roger Fryer, an aspiring young producer. She went out with him almost every night, accompanied by his lover, a young actor named James Carr. She referred to them as “Bobby and Jimmy.” In summer, the three of them could be seen in her small back garden barbecuing hot dogs on a grill.

  Fryer and Nancy would become lifelong friends, and he went on to achieve great success on both Broadway and in Hollywood. “I make movies to pay the rent,” he told her. “But the stage is my true love.”

  “The theater world and the film world are both strange,” Fryer said, “in that you don’t keep your relationship usually beyond the run of the show or the making of a film. But Nancy was one of the people that kept her friends closely held.”

  In time, Fryer would produce such Broadway hits as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Auntie Mame, and Sweeney Todd, his blockbuster films including Mame, The Boys from Brazil, and The Shining. He brought to the Los Angeles stage such luminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Carol Channing, Angela Lansbury, and Mary Martin. He also presented plays by Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Lillian Hellman.

  Biographer Bob Colacello also noted Nancy’s affinity for homosexual men. “If she had stayed in show business instead of marrying an actor who went into politics, it would hardly have been noteworthy. She was close to a number of lesbian and bisexual women over the years, starting with her godmother, Alla Nazimova, and her circle of friends. But this is not unusual in the world of entertainment. If gay men were attracted to the young Nancy Davis, it was probably for the same reason that straight men were: She was pretty, lively, well-dressed, a good dancer, a good listener, and, like her mother, a natural-born coquette. She knew how to flirt with a man in ways that were flattering and unthreatening, which may explain why gay men felt especially comfortable around her.”

  ***

  Following the success of Ramshackle Inn, George Batson wrote another play, Cordelia, for ZaSu Pitts, who asked Nancy if she’d accept a small part in it and take it on the road with her. Nancy accepted without reading the script, because she trusted Pitts’ judgment completely. The aging actress not only wanted to star in the play, but she believed in it so much, she’d invested a lot of her own money in producing it. Cordelia went on tour in the summer of 1946, hoping for a premiere on Broadway that autumn.

  As the plot unfolds, ZaSu is raising two sisters whose mother walked out on them. She also rents rooms in a shack at the end of a wharf in New England, one of which is occupied by a gambler. Cast as Millicent, Nancy plays an upper-class young woman who falls in love with the street-smart gambling man.

  Once again, she was on tour with Pitts, sharing her hotel rooms and helping organize Pitts’ wardrobe, much of it designed by Edith Head. To the cast, they appeared extremely close, sleeping together, dining together, and going home with each other every night during tryouts in both Boston and New Haven.

  Although it was wild speculation, with no real evidence, many cast members assumed that Pitts and Nancy were engaged in a lesbian affair. It was well known to them that Nancy’s godmother, Alla Nazimova, the Silent Screen goddess, was a lesbian. In reality, Pitts viewed Nancy almost like her own daughter and was very protective of her.

  The reviews were lackluster, critics evaluating the play as “amateurish and hokedup.”

  As a last resort, a play doctor was summoned. He immediately changed the name of the play from Cordelia to Dangerous Woman. Pitts stuck up her nose at that title. “Sounds like a Joan Crawford movie.”

  Ironically, in 1952, Crawford would make a film, This Woman Is Dangerous.

  Jack Kirkland was a “play doctor” and a man of many talents—playwright, producer, director, and screenwriter. At the time, he was best known for adapting Erskine Caldwell’s controversial play, Tobacco Road, to the screen. Nancy met him, remembering that he’d penned one of her favorite movies, Now and Forever (1934), with Gary Cooper, Carole Lombard, and Shirley Temple.

  But even a talented writer such as Kirkland could not rescue Cordelia, and Batson’s play closed on the road, never making it to Broadway.

  ***

  After the failure of Cordelia, Pitts wanted a “surefire guarantee of success,” and with that in mind, she selected a much-reprised comedy workhorse, The Late Christopher Bean, written by Sidney Howard from an original French farce. Many other actresses had already interpreted that play, including Lillian Gish, Edith Evans, and the formidable Marie Dressler.

  ZaSu Pitts in Erich von Stroheim’s silent classic, Greed (1924), her most controversial performance.

  In the summer of 1947, Pitts, along with Nancy, still sharing her hotel room, toured with the play on the summer stock circuit. That autumn, Pitts took the play to major cities that included Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee, and Cleveland. At the opening at Chicago’s Civic Theater on October 20, 1947, Nancy received more congratulatory telegrams than Pitts, with acknowledgments from such established stars as Spencer Tracy, Walter Huston, Mary Martin, and Lillian Gish.

  On opening night, Edith Davis appeared, wearing a mink coat with an orchid pinned to it. On her arm was Loyal Davis, who was now the president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons.

  After the show, Edith threw a gala opening night party, inviting the elite of Chicago, including Dwight Green, the Governor of Illinois.

  The next day, reviews of Nancy’s role were not as enthusiastic as those of her parents. In her role as an ingénue, Nancy was called “a sweet, decorous girl.” Another critic found her “unusually attractive and talented.” She carried a copy of that review in her purse for months, although later admitting, “I wasn’t exactly setting show business on fire, yet I was doing work I really liked.”

  Ingénue Nancy Davis onstage with ZaSu, in a performance of The Late Christopher Bean.

  The producer, Michael Myerberg, had signed screen actor Guy Kibbee as the star of the play. Bald, pot-bellied, and rosy-cheeked, Kibbee was familiar to film-goers of the 1930s, as he’d starred with almost every major performer from Errol Flynn to Shirley Temple. He was cast as a country doctor who takes in roomers, one of whom is Christopher Bean, an artist. During the course of the play, Bean dies, bequeathing the household a number of paintings. Although at first they’re thought to be worthless, as the plot develops, it’s revealed that they’re masterpieces. Nancy was cast asthe country doctor’s older daughter, who is in love with a local paperhanger who turns out to
be an artist himself. By Act Three, we learn that Pitts, the doctor’s housekeeper, had been secretly married to Bean, and that in her capacity as his widow, all those masterpieces belong to her.

  On the road, Kibbee and Pitts got all the critical attention, and Nancy was virtually ignored. One critic, however, called her performance “nicely sweetened without saccharine.”

  When the play opened at the Olney Theater in Olney, Maryland, outside Washington, Nancy received a note backstage, requesting a visit with her after the show. It was from General and Mrs. Omar Bradley, who had recently been entertained at home in Chicago by Edith. Bradley, of course, had commanded the American Army in Normandy, and was slated to become President Harry Truman’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Nancy welcomed them warmly, realizing that her mother still had the kind of allure that attracted famous people.

  The next day, the local paper asserted, “Nancy Davis took the role of a sappy, cloying girl and turned it into a real person.”

  During the play’s run in Olney, James Karen, a young actor, part of the Olney Theater Company, congratulated Pitts on her star role in the con troversial four-hour long Greed (1925), a pet project of the temperamental director, Erich von Stroheim. “That god damn picture,” Pitts muttered to Karen. “Don’t mention that film to me. As far as I’m concerned, Stroheim can shove every single reel of it where the sun don’t shine.” Then she turned and walked away.

  Nancy was shocked, as she’d never heard her mentor use such strong language. “To provoke her like that, Greed must have brought back a lot of painful memories.”

  Two views of the man who at the time was the most dashing romantic lead on Broadway—Alfred Drake, known for “draking” women.

  ***

  After her return New York, Nancy attended a party given by Mary Martin. For a starlet, an invitation to one of Martin’s parties was a great honor, as she knew all the luminaries on Broadway, including Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes, and playwrights such as George Kaufman.

  At the party, she was introduced to actor/singer Alfred Drake, who, with his rich baritone voice, had become the King of Broadway musicals, particularly after his spectacular performance as Curly, male lead in the 1943 production of Oklahoma!. With macho pizzazz, he’d opened each performance with a rousing rendition of “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

  Nancy had first seen him playing Marshall Blackstone in the original production of Babes in Arms (1937), in which he’d sung the title song. She found him very handsome in a virile, masculine way, and it was obvious that he was attracted to her, too. Despite his marriage in 1944 to Esther Harvey Brown, he was still known for his seductions of “songbirds and starlets.” Boastfully, he relayed to his friends the names of the stars or starlets who had been “draked,” and which of them remained for him to “drake.”

  Nancy had heard that in spite of his name, he was actually Italian, having been born Alfred Capurro of parents who had emigrated to New York from Genoa. Somewhere along the way, according to those who knew Drake, he began seeing Nancy on the side. “It had to be a back alley affair,” said Cole Porter, who himself had a crush on Drake, “because Alfred was married, and he didn’t want word to get back to his Esther.”

  From unverified reports, including from Porter, the affair lasted for only a season. “I think the Davis girl objected to the fact that she couldn’t be seen in public with him and especially couldn’t go to A-list parties, where he had to show up with his wife. I also think that she wasn’t convinced that he’d get her a part on Broadway.”

  Suddenly, Drake was out and Max Allentuck was her man of choice, at least for a little while.

  Allentuck was way down the line when it came to Broadway luminaries, but he nevertheless had the power to get an aspiring actress cast in a play. His career had begun in vaudeville. After that, he worked for major producers such as Kermit Bloomgarden, who was currently presenting Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest (1946), and who would later produce The Diary of Anne Frank (1955), and The Music Man (1957).

  Years later, Helen Tiers, the former secretary to Allentuck, was interviewed by reporter Joan Evert. The secretary remembered Nancy’s arrival in Allentuck’s office. “She didn’t look like a young actress seeking a job in the theater,” Tiers claimed. “She was dressed like a movie star. She owned a fur coat and always wore tasteful, well-tailored clothes. She was also beautifully groomed, not a hair out of place. Unlike most show-girls of that day, Davis believed in ‘The Fashion House Style,’ which promoted ‘good lines and quiet, subdued colors.’ Even though very busy, Max always made time for Davis, most often slipping out the back door with her to do whatever they did together. Frankly, I think Nancy Davis was hotter for Max than he was for her…His first marriage to Peggy Phillips had crashed. By 1949, he would wed the actress Maureen Stapleton, no great beauty, but one of the most talented stage actresses on Broadway. She had made her debut in the 1946 Playboy of the Western World.”

  In her column, Dorothy Kilgallen wrote, “Max Allentuck, general manager for producer Kermit Bloomgarden, is often seen after the curtain goes down with rising brunette starlet, Norma (sic) Davis. Do I hear wedding bells?”

  Maureen Stapleton in the urban canyons of NYC’s Theater District, late 1940s.

  “Nancy Davis was screwing around with my husband, Max Allentuck, before I got to him.”

  Wedding bells did not toll. Soon, Nancy, in the opinion of Allentuck, was “pursuing bigger game in the Hollywood jungle.”

  [Although Stapleton divorced Allentuck in 1959, in 1981, she seemed fully aware of her ex-husband’s involvement with Nancy Davis, when Stapleton attended a reception in Washington with Tennessee Williams. She had been one of his favorite actresses since the 1951 production of The Rose Tattoo.

  In the reception line, Nancy Davis Reagan, now First Lady, greeted the actress.

  “Hello, Maureen,” Nancy said. After she had passed on down the line, Tennessee whispered to Stapleton, “I didn’t know you knew Nancy Reagan. Not enough to call her by her first name.”

  “I never met her before. But, like me, she’s an actress, and we always call each other by our first names. Besides, we have something in common: She used to fuck my former husband, Max Allentuck.]

  ***

  In July of 1948, Nancy’s gay friend, Roger Fryer, turned producer, asked her to play the daughter in a stage revival of The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman. The role of the formidable, evil Regina Giddens had originated as a Broadway hit in 1939, starring Tallulah Bankhead. In 1941, producer Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler had cast Bette Davis in the movie version. That film had starred Teresa Wright as Regina’s daughter. In the Chicago stage revival of 1948, Nancy was given that role.

  She accepted the role from her friend, Fryer, although there is evidence that there was tension between them during rehearsals. At one point, an exasperated Nancy said, “Teresa Wright is a hard act to follow.”

  Ruth Chatterton, the former wife of George Brent, was asked to take on an even more daunting challenge and interpret the role of Regina Giddens in the footsteps of Bankhead and Davis, each of whom had stamped powerful images into one of the genuine “bitch roles” of the stage and screen.

  A star during the early Talkies, Chatterton’s career had already peaked by the time she accepted the role of Regina. Her last American movie, William Wyler’s Dodsworth, had been released in 1936.

  Nancy Davis was virtually ignored by reviewers. However, John Davidson wrote: “The role of Regina Giddens, a soulless and sadistic vixen, an unmitigated murderess, is so overpowering that it seems to devour poor little Nancy Davis, who struggled to hold her own in this Southern nest of cottonmouths and rattlers.”

  ***

  In September of 1948, back in New York, pounding the dirty sidewalks of Broadway, Nancy was once again looking for work and finding none, although Roger Fryer told her she might gain experience working in television, then in its pioneering stage. He told her he’d see if he coul
d line up something for her. Spencer Tracy was also looking for a role for her. When he called her apartment, she thought it was to report on a possible role. But it involved something else. He told her that his friend, Clark Gable, was coming into town later that month, and he wondered if she’d be free to date him. “I highly recommended you.”

  Three distinguished actresses, Tallulah Bankhead (left); Bette Davis (center); and Ruth Chatterton appeared either on stage or the screen as the Southern hellion, Regina Giddens, in The Little Foxes.

  Nancy Davis was cast as Chatterton’s daughter.

  Living in a shadowy existential hell with an evil dragon for a mother. Above, left: Teresa Wright and Bette Davis in The Little Foxes.

  In Chicago, Nancy (right) dreaded stepping into Teresa Wright’s shoes in this gothic tale of family anguish and female duplicity. She got tired of hearing, “Teresa Wright did it better.” Her performance went virtually unnoticed.

  “It would be the greatest honor of my life, but I can’t imagine the King of Hollywood walking up three flights of steps to date an unknown starlet. I mean, he could have his pick of any woman in New York.”

  “Great!” he said. “You’ll do it. I’ll give Clark your phone number.”

  After putting down the phone, Nancy immediately called Edith in Chicago. “I’m going to date Clark Gable! The Clark Gable!”

  “Oh, my dear, you’re delusional,” Edith said.

  Nancy often turned to astrology as her guiding light, and subsequently, she consulted an astrologer. The stars were right in the heavens, or so it seemed, for her date with “The King.”