by Bob Spitz
But then, on January 2, Nancy got a call from her agent, informing her that “someone from Metro” had seen one of her television appearances and suggested she fly out to Los Angeles for a screen test at the studio. Who that “someone” might be wasn’t a mystery. On and off, she had dated Benny Thau, MGM’s collegial vice president, who not only oversaw casting but was said to have initiated the practice of the casting couch. Though he was short, portly, balding, and, at fifty-one, old enough to be her father, Nancy found Thau an enthusiastic and supportive companion. No doubt his influence in Hollywood lent his countenance an attractive glow. In any case, his most important male star, Spencer Tracy, went to work on Dore Schary, Metro’s head of production. “The girl knows how to look like she’s really thinking when she’s onstage,” Tracy told him.
As they soon discovered, however, it would take more than an intellectual expression to turn Nancy Davis into a star. Despite an embarrassment of riches invested in the test, there was no heat on the screen. Tracy had talked his pal George Cukor into shooting the audition, a favor comparable with an author having F. Scott Fitzgerald edit his manuscript. Cukor was one of Hollywood’s A-list directors—MGM’s top director—the man who drew remarkable performances from his female actors in Little Women, Dinner at Eight, The Women, Camille, The Philadelphia Story, and Gaslight. The scene he chose for Nancy was from East Side, West Side, a high-priority studio project scheduled to shoot later that year. He even recruited hunky Howard Keel to read opposite her. It still didn’t add up to much. Cukor knew what a star looked like when he saw one. After watching a print of the finished test, “he told the studio Nancy had no talent.”
In most cases, if a tastemaker of George Cukor’s esteem delivered such a verdict, the star-making machinery would have ground to a halt. Not this time. Thau and Tracy had the power to veto the director’s opinion, and they exercised it. They convinced Schary that signing her would eventually pay off, and he acquiesced.
On March 2, 1949, MGM announced that the studio had given a seven-year contract to Nancy Davis at a starting salary of $300 a week. She was twenty-eight years old (dropped down to a more marketable twenty-six on the official document). One of her professional goals was snagging an eligible bachelor from among Hollywood’s leading men. Six months later, Ronald Reagan separated himself from the pack.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“RONNIE’S FINEST HOUR”
“Untwisting all the chains that tie,
The hidden soul of harmony.”
—JOHN MILTON
The “How Ronnie Met Nancy” story has gone through many rewrites over the years. In an early draft by a Hollywood historian, a hard-charging Nancy Davis asked Dore Schary to introduce her to Ronald Reagan, preferably in an intimate setting, preferably at Schary’s Brentwood estate, where she could take the measure of this desirable single man. She knew all about his recent divorce, his wounded heart. In a later version, Schary’s wife, Miriam, claims she extended an invitation to both parties. The Scharys’ daughter, Jill, distinctly recalled the pleasant but otherwise unexceptional dinner at their home in early October 1949. “There was a lot of political talk and some arguments. Nancy listened to [Ronnie] attentively . . . and she kept smiling at him in agreement.”
According to Nancy Reagan, it never happened. With unwavering certainty, she insisted their introduction was triggered by an article in the October 28, 1949, edition of the Hollywood Reporter. In a move to out as communist sympathizers the co-signers of a Supreme Court amicus curiae brief filed on behalf of Dalton Trumbo and John Howard Lawson, the far-right-leaning trade paper published all 208 names, one of which was Nancy Davis. Seeing it included there, in black-and-white, unnerved Nancy, who’d never signed the brief. “I knew my name did not belong on that list,” she protested.
The next morning, on the set of East Side, West Side, a melodrama in which she had been cast to fill a small supporting role vacated abruptly by Mary Astor, Nancy cornered her director, Mervyn LeRoy, and asked him how to correct the mistake. LeRoy had the studio arrange for a retraction in a Louella Parsons column, in which the gossip doyenne declared Nancy “100 percent American,” while fingering another Nancy Davis—the wife of agent Jerry Davis—as an actress who supported “leftist theater” and “Henry Wallace’s politics.” This still wasn’t enough to satisfy Nancy, so LeRoy volunteered to call the SAG president. A callback from Ronnie to solve her dilemma prompted a dinner date, which, according to Nancy’s version of the encounter, sparked instant romance: if “not exactly love at first sight . . . it was pretty close.”
Her version is dramatic and satisfying, and Ronnie repeated it in his various autobiographies. But no matter how well they told it, or how often, that didn’t make it true.
* * *
—
When Nancy climbed into Ronnie’s swank green Cadillac for their first date, on November 15, 1949, they’d already met at two previously arranged fix-ups. There is little doubt that they’d dined together at Dore Schary’s home in mid-October; too many of the participants recalled specific details about the evening. (“She was sitting opposite him at the table.” “I don’t recall his saying much to Nancy.”) And sometime after that, later in the same month, another Hollywood couple—Phyllis Lawton, head of the talent department at Paramount, and George Seaton, a screenwriter and actor who originated the role of the Lone Ranger on radio—repeated the gesture. “Phyllis told me they invited Ronnie to dinner to meet Nancy,” recalls Olivia de Havilland. “They thought he was deeply affected by the divorce, in need of companionship—and they knew her.” From all indications, it was another successful get-together, according to de Havilland’s memory. “Phyllis talked to me the night after they had Ronnie and Nancy over, and they felt they had made a match.” And somewhere in between those dinners, Nancy had called Ronnie at the SAG offices and “indicated her willingness and desire to run for the Board” at the guild’s annual election in November. It was as good a ruse as any to signal her interest in him.
In all likelihood, Nancy had been running a shadow campaign to land Ronald Reagan as a lover long before she slid into the front seat of his car. He remained at the top of her “hot prospect” list. She had been trying for some time to meet someone who was more stable and marriage-minded than the other men in her life. Her affair with Benny Thau had certainly helped to jump-start her career, but it wasn’t headed anywhere serious. Already past the age of fifty, Thau polished his reputation as a confirmed bachelor, and Loyal Davis had voiced his strong disapproval, probably because Thau was a Jew. Nancy’s other relationship, with actor Robert Walker, faced different obstacles that were equally as discouraging. The thirty-year-old, perennially boyish actor’s life was a mess. His ten-year marriage to Jennifer Jones had recently fallen apart, as had a five-month marriage to John Ford’s daughter, Barbara. Not long before he began dating Nancy, Walker was jailed for drunk driving and confined for a period to the Menninger Clinic in Kansas, where he was treated for “a psychiatric disorder” that was code for acute alcoholism. There is no written record of Loyal Davis’s opinion of Walker, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine his distaste. Even Nancy, to whom marriage was the highest priority, knew better than to pin her hopes on a prospect like Robert Walker.
She was having plenty of trouble finding the right man. At twenty-eight, without a marriage—or two—under her belt, she was approaching old-maid status in a town like Hollywood. Nancy was not a fabled beauty on the order of Ava Gardner or Rita Hayworth. But she was a handsome woman—“attractive,” in Benny Thau’s estimation, “but not beautiful.” The impression she gave was that of a woman on the make. “Maybe it was because she was so ambitious,” Ann Sothern, a recent co-star of hers, surmised. Nancy’s routine table-hopping in the MGM commissary was considered déclassé, too aggressive for a minor contract player. You might be a personal friend of Spencer Tracy’s, Walter Huston’s, and Clark Gable’s, but studio policy demanded a certain so
cial formality, especially in the commissary, where stars were segregated from the proletariat. Most actors were wary of women who came on too strong, but Ronald Reagan, in his rather vulnerable state, was the perfect candidate for Nancy’s forward approach.
When he arrived to pick her up, she was dressed in a sedate black sheath dress with a white collar that emphasized her figure without giving too much away. Ronnie was still leaning heavily on a pair of canes, a holdover from his charity-baseball-game injury. He insisted that “bells didn’t ring or skyrockets explode,” but there was an instant attraction. Mutual, Nancy admitted, thinking, “He looks as good in person as he does on the screen.”
Ironically, they headed to La Rue, the upscale French restaurant on Sunset Boulevard owned by Billy Wilkerson, the ultra-right-wing publisher of the Hollywood Reporter responsible for the “Nancy Davis” mess. There, seated in one of the tacky gold leather banquettes, Ronnie suggested that if she wanted to resolve the business with her name she should subscribe to the time-honored Hollywood practice and simply change it to something else. Nancy wouldn’t hear of it. It had taken her years to become Nancy Davis; there was no way she was giving it up. There had to be something Ronnie could do to help.
After dinner, they rode farther down the Strip and caught the midnight show at Ciro’s, where Sophie Tucker was in residence. This was one of Ronnie’s mainstays on the dating circuit, the same place he’d taken Doris Lilly and Monica Lewis. But with Nancy it was different. There was enchantment in hearing each other laugh at La Tucker, discovering they shared the same sense of humor. They drank copious amounts of champagne. When the comedienne segued from stand-up to song, lapsing into “If I had my life to live over / I’d still fall in love with you,” Ronnie struggled to his feet and half-danced, half-stumbled to the music, holding Nancy, who felt just right, in his arms.
Nancy was drawn to his easy conversation. She saw his legendary effusiveness as exuberance, enjoyed how he shifted from discussing his love of ranching to his work for the Screen Actors Guild to his infatuation with Civil War history to his interest in wine. Where these digressions might have sent Jane Wyman running for an exit, Nancy found them enchanting. “I loved to listen to him talk,” she later admitted. “I loved his sense of humor. I saw it clearly that very first night. He was everything that I wanted.”
Ronnie wasn’t as certain. For the first time in his life, he was playing the field, and the field, he discovered, was very fertile ground. Nancy Davis was a fine occasional date, but there was an ample stream of fine dates in the Ronald Reagan queue. His uncharacteristic conduct warranted a caution about conspicuous consumption. An extraordinary editorial in the May 1950 edition of Silver Screen posited, “Never thought we’d come right out and call Ronnie Reagan a ‘wolf,’ but leave us face it. Suddenly every glamour gal considers him a super-sexy escort for an evening.” For a man needing two canes for support, he had no trouble legging it around town. There were pictures of him in practically every local paper and fan magazine—at the Mocambo or Ciro’s or the Cocoanut Grove or the Trocadero or King’s or Slapsy Maxie’s—with a different starlet on his arm. In between the outings, there were other, more intimate liaisons. Piper Laurie, the eighteen-year-old co-star of Louisa, Ronnie’s first film at Universal, lost her virginity on their first and only date. (He was twenty-one years her senior.) His relationship with ingénue Jacqueline Park ended abruptly after she informed him she was pregnant by him. There is no record available documenting whether she gave birth to a child. And a romance with actress Christine Larson, a ravishingly beautiful young woman, sparked an outright proposal and an engagement gift.
Nancy Davis had become a regular presence in his life; she’d been introduced to Neil and Nelle (as had Christine Larson); spent weekends with Ronnie’s children, Maureen and Michael, on a new 290-acre ranch he’d recently bought in Malibu Canyon; had joined the board of the Screen Actors Guild; occupied his booth at Chasen’s. Photos of them together began popping up often in gossip columns and magazines. Hedda Hopper reported that “Ronnie Reagan is a happy man these days. . . . It’s very obvious that he’s in love with Nancy Davis.” Even Neil Reagan had taken notice. “Looks like this one’s got her hooks in him,” Moon observed. Ronnie’s social life seemed to be closing in around him. He admitted as much to colleagues at the studio. He needed to get a grip on things, he said, before they got too out of hand.
Or his hand got forced.
One evening in February 1952, while having dinner at Chasen’s, Nancy dropped a bombshell: she was pregnant. He was caught off guard, staggered. This wasn’t a woman to be easily dismissed, sent packing, like Jacqueline Park. But—marriage? He’d been ducking the issue with her for some time. And there was Christine Larson to deal with. Their so-called engagement flew under the Hollywood radar. Neither Hedda nor Louella had gotten wind of it yet. He’d given Christine a diamond wristwatch to pledge his troth, not a ring, which would have been difficult to explain. He’d have to wriggle free of that situation. In any case, time had run out on Ronald Reagan’s amorous exploits. It had been three and a half years since his marriage to Jane Wyman ended. Marrying Nancy Davis now seemed—appropriate. Not exactly the way he had planned things, but—appropriate. They shared a lot of interests, his kids liked her well enough, and she was compliant beyond any expectation, seconding every proposal he put forward at the SAG board meetings, staring raptly at him, nodding agreement at each of his innumerable opinions. Now she was pregnant. Marriage began seeming less like something appropriate and more like a fait accompli.
Once Ronnie agreed, they moved swiftly to lock in his commitment. On February 20, 1951, he called Loyal Davis and Edith Luckett at their winter home in Scottsdale, Arizona, to formally request their daughter’s hand in marriage. On February 21, Louella Parsons’s column appeared below the headline “Davis Reagan Nuptials Set.” Six days later, MGM issued a press release announcing the couple’s wedding, which would occur on Tuesday, March 4, at “some small church in Southern California.”
There was one blessing they still required. For the past five years, Ronnie had religiously consulted astrologer Carroll Righter, the self-styled “guru to the stars,” whose weekly horoscopes guided the careers of Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich, Lana Turner, Ann Sothern, Bob Cummings, and Susan Hayward. Arlene Dahl, another acolyte, revealed that “Carroll was helpful in choosing dates [on which to hold important meetings] for Ronnie when he was president of SAG,” among other essential matters. According to an associate of Righter’s, even the Reagan-Wyman divorce date was charted to assure that the heavens smiled favorably on the lawsuit. Nancy understood that astrology offered a key to Ronnie’s affections. Shortly after their first date, she showed up at one of the invitation-only monthly gatherings at Carroll Righter’s mansion and became an instant convert. She tapped into all kinds of gainful wisdom—that “Aquarians are capable of love, but their version is somewhat impersonal.” More aptly, “Aquarian men are often slow to get married.” Now they sought the astrologer’s sanction that their wedding plans were aligned with the stars.
The wedding itself was more down-to-earth. They chose an innocuous, out-of-the-way chapel in the Valley—the Little Brown Church, associated with the Disciples of Christ. Ronnie dreaded a typical Hollywood affair attended by studio suits and especially the press. It had hounded him mercilessly since his divorce from Jane Wyman, souring him to public scrutiny. This time around he mandated that things be kept low-key. As a result, Nancy missed out on wearing the kind of wedding gown she’d always dreamed of, substituting an off-the-rack gray wool suit with white collar and cuffs that she found at I. Magnin, with a flowered, veiled hat and a strand of pearls her parents had given her at her debutante party. “We didn’t invite anybody,” Nancy recalled, “no press, no family, no fuss.” Aside from the preacher who officiated, the only witnesses were Bill Holden and his wife, Ardis (known on the screen as Brenda Marshall), who threw them a priv
ate party afterward at their home in Toluca Lake.
The post-wedding plan was to spend a few days at the Mission Inn in Riverside before driving to Phoenix for some extended downtime at the Arizona Biltmore, where they’d visit with Edith and Loyal, who lived just next door. The newlyweds had plenty of time on their hands. After a string of forgettable movies that included Night into Morning, It’s a Big Country, Shadow in the Sky, and Talk About a Stranger, Nancy had been notified in November 1951 that her option at Metro would not be picked up in March, when it came up for renewal.
Ronnie’s movie career was spiraling along a similar trajectory. His relationship with Warner Bros. had deteriorated steadily, beginning with an ill-considered interview he’d given to Bob Thomas of the Associated Press in January 1950. Smarting from losing Ghost Mountain to Errol Flynn, Ronnie complained that the parts the studio gave him were beyond awful. “I could telephone my lines in and it wouldn’t make any difference,” he said. After reading that comment, Jack Warner went ballistic. He dashed off a letter to Ronnie suggesting that if this was indicative of his attitude toward the studio, perhaps they should go their separate ways. “I would greatly appreciate your sending me a letter cancelling our mutual contract obligations with respect to the two remaining pictures you are about to do with this company,” Warner wrote. Once he cooled down, Warner put the letter in a drawer rather than a mailbox; instead, he dispatched his hatchet man, Roy Obringer, to read Ronnie the riot act. As a result, more grievances filtered back to Warner. It rankled Ronnie that he played in Richard Todd’s shadow in The Hasty Heart; he was blamed for That Hagen Girl tanking at the box office; no one from the studio visited him during the six weeks he lay in the hospital with a broken leg; and “he was being double-crossed in not getting Ghost Mountain.” He also felt that his high-profile post at SAG put a target on his chest, though no studio official would admit as much. If Ronnie’s pictures had fared better, the squabble might have blown over. But Storm Warning, about a small-town Ku Klux Klan skirmish, proved a box-office disappointment, and no less a critic than Bosley Crowther called Ronnie’s performance “pat and pedestrian.” The reviews weren’t much better for She’s Working Her Way Through College, a threadbare musical showcasing Virginia Mayo that floundered and quietly sank from view. An actor could carp all he liked if his movies made money, but Jack Warner had just about run out of patience with his fading star.
