Reagan

by Bob Spitz

  That opportunity came on October 30, 1946. A special mass-membership meeting was called to explain the strike at the Hollywood Legion Stadium, a six-thousand-seat concrete arena on the city’s west side that was outfitted for boxing and wrestling matches. Close to four thousand actors and “interested parties” funneled into the facility on a gorgeous fall night, passing through a gauntlet of eerily silent CSU pickets handing out literature. The place was packed with the kinds of A-listers you’d see at the Oscars ceremony: Kate Hepburn, Bogie, Ingrid Bergman, Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, every movie star from June Allyson to Vera Zorina.

  Ronnie delivered the keynote address. He’d put a lot of thought and effort into it. There are reams of yellow-lined notebook pages in the archives of the Screen Actors Guild that document his speech, neatly handwritten paragraphs crammed with comprehensive ideas that are simply conceived, almost colloquial in their delivery. He clearly wrote it straight out of his head. There are very few revisions. He knew what he wanted to say, and he said it in a way that would speak to such a fractious yet homogenous crowd without alienating any of the thin-skinned factions. The speech had substance; he referenced labor reform going back to the birth of the studio system as a way of comparing previous actions to the present strike. Everything steered the discussion toward his ultimate objective.

  Standing inside the boxing ring, flanked by other board members—Robert Montgomery, George Murphy, and Edward Arnold—he “made the pitch to the membership that we’d learned it was a phony strike,” he recalled, convinced that CSU was infiltrated by communists, “and therefore our recommendation . . . was [that] we honor our contract with the producers and that we go to work.”

  The reception he received was anything but cozy. Plenty of actors supported the strike. Katharine Hepburn and Edward G. Robinson—“the liberal opposition”—spoke in favor of SAG’s remaining neutral, protesting the board’s proposal. As they finished, a general racket broke out, and a squad of so-called bodyguards—bulked-up stuntmen moonlighting for their union—came “down the aisle slapping bicycle chains against the chairs” in an attempt to restore order. It was a thinly disguised exercise in intimidation. In the end, however, the guild members voted 2,748 to 509 not to honor the picket lines.

  According to George H. Dunne, a Jesuit priest and Hollywood labor expert, “If the actors and actresses had simply refused to cross the picket line, the strike would have been settled in twenty-four hours.” They held the power; the studios couldn’t make pictures without them. Now that card was off the table.

  Even without the actors’ support the strike dragged on, but Ronnie made clear where his sympathies lay. “I am no longer neutral,” he declared in a subsequent address to a veterans’ group. “The CSU . . . does not want settlement of the strike. It stands to gain by continued disorder and disruption in Hollywood.”

  It was a key pivot in his outlook away from a purely liberal mind-set to a more centrist, even conservative-leaning stance. He continued to refer to himself as a New Deal Democrat, more out of nostalgia for FDR than as a party-line stalwart. And he still “thought government, not private companies, should own our big public utilities.” The same went for public housing—the “government should build it,” he argued. It was the extreme liberal sector that rankled him. He considered them “fellow travelers.” He had concluded that communists had infiltrated and corrupted every group he’d been involved with—the Hollywood Democratic Committee, HICCASP, the American Veterans Committee, CSU. For all he knew, SAG was crawling with them.

  If there was one irritant that now stirred his blood and arguably blurred his vision, it was the influence of communism. He believed that “America faced no more insidious or evil threat” and that the movie business was especially vulnerable. “Joseph Stalin,” he said, “had set out to make Hollywood an instrument of propaganda for his program of Soviet expansionism aimed at communizing the world.” Liberal sympathizers—as opposed to “well-meaning liberals (like me),” he determined—were playing right into his hands. They had to be stopped. The good guys (like him) had to root out the culprits and “protect the people who were innocent.” This became his mantra—his mission. It rattled George Dunne, who upgraded it to an obsession after a meeting about the strike. He believed that Ronnie, “interpreting everything in terms of the Communist threat,” had a mind-set that made him “a dangerous man.”

  Most friends in the business were willing to cut him some slack, so long as the acting never got too far away from him. He needed to strike a happy balance. But with all that had transpired, he was no longer content to soldier on, playing charming men-about-town or sidekicks. Acting alone didn’t sustain him. He’d had a taste of engagement with something larger.

  Ronald Reagan had found a more meaningful outlet for that charm.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TROUBLE IN PARADISE

  “The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.”

  —DALTON TRUMBO

  During the spring of 1947 Ronnie took a decisive step.

  As soon as Night Unto Night finished shooting, at the end of 1946, he was offered a plum role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his pal John Huston. He and Huston had bonded over their mutual interests in horse breeding, and their wives—Jane and Evelyn Keyes—were friendly. In fact, the Reagans had recently bought a ranch they named Yearling Row (a mash-up of The Yearling and Kings Row) in Northridge, within walking distance of the Hustons’ farm. Ronnie was convinced Sierra Madre would be a smash. It had a crackling good script with Bogie in the lead role and a director whose artistic vision inspired an actor’s best work. And it would be shot on location in the state of Durango with street scenes in, of all places, Tampico, Mexico. Tampico! Could there be a more auspicious sign?

  Jack Warner wouldn’t hear of it. The part wasn’t big enough, he insisted. Ronnie would be “nuts” to take what amounted to a supporting role when the studio continued to groom him as a leading man. Especially now, when it was trying to resuscitate his career. There was too much on the line. Besides, Warner wanted him to step into The Voice of the Turtle, a key picture for the studio, which was to begin shooting at the same time as Sierra Madre, the second week in February. Cary Grant and Tyrone Power had already turned Turtle down, Dana Andrews, too, and the producer, Irving Rapper, lobbied hard for Bob Cummings, to no avail. Jack Warner’s fallback position: it was to be a star vehicle for Ronald Reagan.

  Ronnie was in a bind. He “fussed around trying to get out of it,” but knew he’d tried Warner’s patience with all the “extracurricular activity”—the HICCASP and Screen Actors Guild business—that intruded on his career. As a one-time favor, the studio had held up production on Night Unto Night while Ronnie led a guild delegation to the AF of L convention in Chicago, hoping to get some kind of clarification about the strike. He was also in the midst of renegotiating SAG’s contract with producers. All things considered, Warner wasn’t pleased. The studio had put a lot of promotional effort into relaunching Ronnie as a movie star following his hiatus in the service. How galling that he seemed to have greater visibility on the speech-making circuit than with theater audiences. What’s more, Warner had just seen a finished print of Night Unto Night and hated it, so much so that he ordered it shelved indefinitely.

  Against his better judgment, Ronnie accepted the assignment in The Voice of the Turtle. It was a more-than-adequate enterprise. The script was adapted from John Van Druten’s genial wartime play that had opened on Broadway in 1943 and was still running in 1947. But Ronnie’s part—a charming soldier with a glib repartee—offered no challenge; it wasn’t meaty, like the role of Curtin in Sierra Madre that eventually went to Tim Holt. That movie had Oscars written all over it.*

  Complicating these developments was Jane Wyman’s good fortune: she had been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for The
Yearling. Ronnie was thrilled for her, nevertheless it hit a nerve. He was desperate for the sort of role that Jane now got, one that allowed him to do serious work and to stretch. Even though there had never been competition between them, a shifting could be felt. The Yearling was a smash hit; it was the top-grossing movie of 1947. Ronnie’s career seemed headed in a different direction. Stallion Road languished in postproduction; he had no pictures in release to Jane’s two. He wasn’t out of work, but the work was lame. And Jane’s latest assignment was a starring role in Magic Town opposite Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy Stewart was box-office gold—like Humphrey Bogart. And John Huston. It didn’t help that the Reagans worked in a notoriously cruel town. The Hollywood gossip mills were already trolling for muck. One rag, Screen Album, insinuated that “marriage mourners are wondering if Ronnie’s role in Stallion Road will prevent his becoming Mr. Wyman.”

  Closer to home, he had more to sustain him. Just after New Year’s they learned Jane was pregnant again. They made no secret of the fact they wanted a boy—Jane was telling friends to expect Ronald Reagan Jr. She was excited, felt great physically, and looked forward to extending the family. There were other reasons to be optimistic. The pregnancy would give her some precious time off and hopefully rescue Ronnie from all the union squabbles—and from himself. He was still working at the studio all day and on guild business to all hours of the night. Maybe this, she thought, would change things.

  * * *

  —

  No such luck.

  On March 10, 1947, three days before the Academy Awards ceremony, the board of the Screen Actors Guild met in a hastily called session to resolve a thorny jurisdictional problem. Because of a newly enacted resolution that prohibited members with production interests from serving on the board, Robert Montgomery, its president, announced his resignation, along with Jimmy Cagney, Dick Powell, Franchot Tone, Harpo Marx, and John Garfield. Replacement officers were pressed into immediate service, along with a vote to name Montgomery’s successor. George Murphy and Gene Kelly were nominated from the floor. At the last minute, as paper ballots were being handed out, Gene Kelly rose and placed Ronnie’s name in contention. Ronnie, as it happened, was conspicuously absent. He was attending a gathering of the American Veterans Committee, a group that linked veterans to potential employers, unaware that a consequential summit was taking place. When the vote was tabulated, the outcome was decisive.

  Bill Holden called later that night with the results. Ronald Reagan had been elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. The news delighted Ronnie. Whatever burden SAG had caused him, whatever turmoil in its ranks, deep down he loved the politics. He was as proud of the role he had played in the guild’s evolution as of any movie he had ever made. There was still much to be done about negotiating a new, stronger contract with producers and navigating a wealth of complex labor problems—leveraging the influence he could bring to bear on those issues.

  There were other advantages, namely the added visibility it would give him in Hollywood, the kind of visibility he didn’t have in pictures. This wasn’t a supporting role. The Screen Actors Guild represented every movie actor in Hollywood; their lives and welfare depended on its heft, and he felt an obligation to defend their rights. It was a position of considerable stature.

  Skeptics wondered whether he was up to the job. Many actors knew Ronnie only as a likable but lightweight guy, “not the two-fisted fighter we needed for the position.” Hedda Hopper voiced their concern when Robert Montgomery reported Ronnie’s promotion. “He’s as green as grass!” she squawked. “What does he know?” According to one version of the encounter, Montgomery grinned knowingly and said, “Have you ever heard him talk?” In a few weeks even Hopper had changed her tune. “I was never more wrong,” she admitted after watching him in action.

  At home, Jane was much less enthralled. She was four months pregnant, with two young children on her hands, publicity for The Yearling to do, and an absentee husband. “Let’s face it,” said a friendly industry insider, “he neglected Jane.”

  Three nights later, on March 14, 1947, the spotlight was all Jane’s. With Ronnie on her arm, she strode into the Shrine Auditorium in front of 6,700 colleagues to celebrate the Academy Awards. Her Best Actress nomination was a very big deal. After making fifty-two mostly forgettable movies in fourteen years, she’d demonstrated her versatility in a role of the highest caliber. From now on, producers would not be able to peg her as the ingénue, a ditzy blonde or a gum-snapping, “glamorous little cookie.” She lost the Oscar to Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own, but it didn’t matter. The nomination had given her a new status. She’d become an actress.

  * * *

  —

  No acting was necessary on June 17, an unusually balmy L.A. evening. Jane left a studio premiere at the Carthay Circle Theatre and found her husband on the steps outside, hunched over and gasping for air. Tremendous coughing came in waves, the pain was excruciating. “I was sure someone in the crowd had stabbed me in the chest,” Ronnie recalled. It was all he could do to struggle home to bed.

  Jane, six months pregnant, flew into nurse mode the next morning when his temperature spiked to 102. He was so weak she had him taken by ambulance to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, the medical fortress on Fountain Avenue that tended to the Hollywood elite. His condition was diagnosed as a rare strain of viral pneumonia. The doctors offered no guarantees he’d even pull through. Ronnie was due on the set of a film that morning, and Jane could hear over the phone that the studio suspected malingering. He’d been conscripted into a picture called That Hagen Girl that every instinct advised him to reject. The Hagen girl in question was Shirley Temple, who up to this point had been the most beloved—and adorable—child star in the world. A child no more, she was nineteen and intent on making the leap to more mature, adult movies. Jack Warner was intent on giving her that chance. For too many years he seethed while moppets like Temple, Judy Garland, and Mickey Rooney made bundles of money for MGM and Fox. But That Hagen Girl was terrible, and nobody knew it better than Ronald Reagan. The premise was preposterous, a convoluted soap opera about an illegitimate small-town schoolgirl who falls in love with a returning war hero who, as it turns out, may also be her father. The relationship was downright creepy. Ronnie was twice Shirley Temple’s age and felt ridiculous with her in his arms. He explained this to Jack Warner, to no avail.

  Warner reminded him of how he had tried to wriggle out of The Voice of the Turtle, and it was now turning into an all-out hit. Jack pressed hard: he knew what fared best on the screen, Shirley Temple was cherished by audiences, and Ronnie’s career could use the kind of boost she would give it. Besides, it would be inadvisable for him to drop out with a baby due in four months. Grudgingly, Ronnie agreed to do the picture.

  Production began on June 4, 1947. Twelve days later, Ronnie appeared in a scene in which young Miss Hagen attempts to drown herself in a lake. Who better than Dutch to perform the rescue? Ronnie insisted on doing the stunt himself, jumping off the pier of a river location, which had to be shot six or seven times. The water was cold, the weather muggy. The director ordered up an artificial rainstorm.

  Reagan came down with pneumonia soon afterward. Jane kept a vigil at the foot of Ronnie’s hospital bed. His temperature hit 104, bringing chills and sweats. He lapsed in and out of consciousness and suffered hallucinations, including one with Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role. He was fighting for his life. Doctors prepared the family for the worst.

  Jane was a wreck. Her nerves were shot. And she sensed that something was physically wrong with her. On the morning of June 26, she went into premature labor and was rushed to Queen of Angels Hospital, a few blocks from where Ronnie lay bedridden. According to a press release issued later that day, Jane gave birth to a tiny girl who was “given a good chance of survival.” That was so much Hollywood hokum. In reality, it was touch-and-go. By evening, the baby went into cardiac arrest and died a short time later.<
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  Only when Ronnie was safely out of danger was he given the news. “He tossed and fretted in his hospital bed,” despondent that he’d been unable to support Jane. He was too frail to get up, having lost seventeen pounds. Six days later, when he was eventually released, they named the baby Christine and had her cremated.

  Jane was inconsolable. She became melancholy, withdrawn. It didn’t help matters when Ronnie went back to work on That Hagen Girl and resumed duties at the Screen Actors Guild. “When they were together at Yearling Row,” according to Hedda Hopper, “life at the Reagan ménage became icily polite.” He “tried to coax Jane out,” Hopper claimed. They’d always enjoyed going dancing, but even then, at a supper club or at Chasen’s for dinner, it usually resulted in bouts of despair, and he’d end up having to take her home early.

  “Work is the only answer for her,” producer Jerry Wald, a friend, observed. He’d sent Jane the script for Johnny Belinda, his big-budget follow-up to Mildred Pierce, and persuaded Jack Warner to give her the starring role. She’d play a deaf mute, which meant getting into character—days, weeks, months, spent plugging her ears with wax to block out sound. It became an obsession with her, though it did little to help a struggling marriage.

  Throughout the summer of 1947, Ronnie and Jane kept busy with their separate pursuits. They rarely overlapped in each other’s company. “It was hi, how are things going, coming in, going out, passing in the hall,” Hopper recalled. As June Allyson noted, “They just seemed to pass each other headed in different directions.”

  * * *

  —

  Ronnie had his hands full with SAG’s role in the growing public alarm about Communism. In 1944, Representative John Rankin of Mississippi had announced an investigation into “the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States”—by which he meant Hollywood—pledging to expose “one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of the government.”