Nancy Robbins, left, with her stepfather Dr. Loyal Davis and cousin Charlotte Galbraith. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Nancy’s senior year photo in the Girls Latin yearbook, 1939. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)
Nancy Davis as Princess Lilia in the play Ivory Door, 1938. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)
In her senior class play, Nancy portrays the conniving wife of a presidential candidate. The title of the play: First Lady. (Courtesy of the Latin School of Chicago)
Smith College senior Nancy Davis hangs a poster for Make with the Maximum: A Factory Follies. She was part of a troupe that performed in 1943 at war production plants. (College Archives, Smith College)
Nancy Davis, atop a piano, in Make With the Maximum, 1943. (College Archives, Smith College)
Nancy Davis plays the sophisticated “Glamour Gal,” a shirker on the factory line who laments that she misses her prewar life of luxury, 1943. (College Archives, Smith College)
James Whitmore with Nancy Davis in a scene from the film The Next Voice You Hear, 1950. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images)
Nancy and Ronald Reagan, with Marilyn Monroe, 1953. (Everett Collection)
Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis Reagan costar in Hellcats of the Navy, 1957. Ronnie later said: “That picture ended movies for me.” (Everett Collection)
Newlyweds Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan cutting their wedding cake at the home of their friends William and Ardis Holden in Toluca Lake, California, March 4, 1952. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Ronald Reagan, son Ron, Nancy Reagan, and daughter Patti outside their Pacific Palisades home in California, 1960. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Portrait of a blended family, left to right: Patti Davis, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan, Maureen Reagan, Ron Reagan, 1976. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
At the 1968 Republican convention in Miami Beach, Nancy beams during a demonstration after her husband’s name was put into nomination for president, August 7, 1968. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
Nancy Reagan catches a nap on Ronnie’s lap during his grueling—and unsuccessful—campaign for the GOP nomination against President Gerald Ford, August 11, 1976. She would later call her husband’s loss “a glorious defeat” that stood out more than Ronnie’s victories in her memory. (Bettmann/Getty Images)
Ronald Reagan with his family, including Michael and wife Colleen with their son, Cameron, Nancy, Patti, and Ron at the Republican National Convention, July 1, 1980. (Diana Walker)
The new president and first lady at Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration. Nancy holds a worn Bible that belonged to Ronnie’s mother, Nelle. January 20, 1981. (Diana Walker)
Official family portrait in the Red Room, January 20, 1981. (Ronald Reagan Presidential Library)
Entertainer Frank Sinatra with First Lady Nancy Reagan at a National Italian American Foundation Dinner honoring Sinatra, October 1985. (Diana Walker)
First Lady Nancy Reagan at a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, where the president gave Michael Jackson, the “King of Pop,” an award for allowing his song “Beat It” to be used in a public service campaign against drunk driving, May 14, 1984. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan congratulates her son, Ron, after his performance with the Joffrey Ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, March 16, 1981. (Diana Walker)
A tense introduction: Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbachev and Nancy have tea in Geneva during their husbands’ first summit, November 19, 1985. (Diana Walker)
Four days after an arms-for-hostages scandal has begun to unravel, President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, flank released hostage David Jacobsen at a welcoming ceremony at the White House, November 7, 1986. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan, with a couple of young visitors, waving from the crown of the Statue of Liberty after it was reopened, July 5, 1986. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan at a “Just Say No” rally at the White House, May 22, 1986. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan places flowers on graves of American soldiers killed in the invasion of Normandy. The commemoration took place at the U.S. cemetery at Omaha Beach, France, on the anniversary of D-day, June 6, 1982. (Diana Walker)
The Reagans aboard the battleship USS Iowa during Independence Day celebrations, New York City, July 4, 1986. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan waves to photographer Diana Walker after the inauguration of George H. W. Bush, January 20, 1989. (Diana Walker)
President Bill Clinton (left) and First Lady Hillary Clinton (second from left) are joined by four former presidents and their wives during Richard Nixon’s funeral in Yorba Linda, California, April 27, 1994. (Left to right) George H. W. and Barbara Bush, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Jerry and Betty Ford. (Diana Walker)
Nancy Reagan kisses her husband’s casket during the interment ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, June 11, 2004. (Kevork Djansezian/Pool/Getty Images)
Guardian of the legacy: Nancy Reagan at the unveiling of a commemorative postage stamp honoring her late husband, November 9, 2004. (David McNew/Getty Images)
On what would be her last visit to the White House, Nancy Reagan joins President Barack Obama for the June 2, 2009, signing of the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission Act. The law set up a panel to plan and carry out activities to mark the hundredth anniversary of Ronnie’s birth in 2011. (Lawrence Jackson/The White House)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As I have plugged away on this book for the past four and a half years, people have often asked how I came up with the idea of writing a biography of Nancy Reagan.
The answer is simple: I didn’t.
This project was conceived by Simon & Schuster editorial director Priscilla Painton, who is a dear friend going back decades. In the months after Nancy Reagan died in 2016, Priscilla had seized upon this idea and was trying to figure out who might be the person to write it. She mentioned it to Gail Ross, the wonderful agent with whom I had discussed, although not all that seriously, the idea that I might want to do a book some day. Gail said, “What about your friend Karen Tumulty?”
So this is how it happened. Both Priscilla and Gail have been extraordinary in steering me throughout, calming my anxieties about what I had taken on, sharpening my writing and my thinking, and trying to turn me into an author. Philip Bashe did so much more than the title of copy editor would imply. I also had the blessing of a terrific team at Simon & Schuster, including Hana Park, Lisa Healy, Elizabeth Herman, and Angela Ching. The great Jonathan Karp, now its CEO, came up with the title, which captured so much.
From the outset, I benefitted from the support of Washington Post publisher (and Reagan Foundation chairman) Fred Ryan. A former White House aide and then chief of staff to the ex-president, Fred respected and encouraged this as an endeavor of independent journalism. He and his assistant, Stefanie Prelesnik, were unfailingly generous in sharing contact information of hard-to-find sources, as well as a place to check when details of events were sketchy or contradictory. At no point did Fred attempt to shade or influence the conclusions I reached. If I have missed the mark anywhere, the fault is purely my own.
Nor would this book have come to be without the support of my bosses at the Washington Post—both on the news side, which is where I was when I started, and later in my new family-within-a-family in the Post Opinions section. Among those in the paper’s leadership who made this possible were Steven Ginsberg, Tracy Grant, Marty Baron, Fred Hiatt, Ruth Marcus, and Michael Larabee. Then there are the many colleagues who make the Post such a special place to work and thrive. They include Dan Balz; Amy Gardner; Philip Rucker; Rosalind Helderman; David Fahrenthold; Ann Gerhart; Roxanne Roberts; Michele Norris; Robin Givhan; Robert Costa; Carol Leonnig; Kate Woodsome; Nancy Szokan; Autumn Brewington; Rob Gebelhoff; James Downie; Mary Jordan; and Kevin Sullivan.
Nancy Reagan proved an elusive, complex subject—and one way overdue for a reassessment. She and Rona
ld Reagan were a love match for the ages, but their marriage was so much more than that. She was an excellent wife, but, as she acknowledged, fell short as a mother. The more I learned about her demons, her frailties, her instincts, her determination, and her strength, the more I grew in gratitude that Reagan picked the life partner that he did. I believe the country owes her more than a few debts.
I am grateful for the insights and recollections of people who knew and/or worked with her. You have seen many of their names in these pages: Stuart Spencer, James Kuhn, George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III, Landon Parvin, the late Robert Higdon, Annelise Anderson, Ken Khachigian, Ken Duberstein, Mark Weinberg, the late John Sears, Nancy Reynolds, Stuart Kenworthy, Thomas C. Reed, Tom and Karen Ellick, Douglas Wick, Ed Rollins, Joe Petro, Douglas Brinkley, Edwin Meese III, Joseph Califano, Sheila Tate, Carol McCain, Peter Wallison, Pam Stevens, the late T. Boone Pickens, James Rosebush, Kathy Osborne, Jane Erkenbeck, Selwa Roosevelt, Lynne Wasserman, Jill Schary Robinson, George Steffe, Carlton Turner, William Henkel, William Novak, and Karen Spencer. By trying to list them, I know I will be kicking myself at some point over who I left out. Some people cooperated on the proviso that I not use their names, which I have respected. Others, who are no longer with us, left behind rich memoirs for me to plumb. The oral histories at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center were invaluable. So, too, were newspaper, magazine, and television archives, including the ones provided by Caitlin Conant at CBS and the Public Broadcasting Service through Judy Woodruff.
I could not have done this without the assistance and cooperation of members of the Reagan family, especially Ron Reagan, Dennis Revell, and Richard Davis. Patti Davis and Michael Reagan chose not to speak with me, but both told their stories in their own books, which allowed me to give them voice in mine.
Along the way, I spent more hours than I can count in the research room of the Reagan Library, going through both public and private records. I appreciate the support and openness of Reagan Foundation chief administrative officer Joanne M. Drake and its president, John Heubusch. No one has ever had a better tour guide back into history than archivist Jennifer Mandel. One of those who shared that chilly research room while I was there was Max Boot; neither of us knew at the time that we would soon be colleagues in the Opinions section at the Washington Post. I look forward to his Reagan biography. In California, I also got to reconnect with the wonderful journalist and writer Todd Purdum, who, typically, knew more about my subject than I did. (Who else would have a biography of Alla Nazimova at hand on his bookshelf?)
My sojourns in California were some of my happiest memories of this project. While I was doing research at the library, Steven Galson and Jessie Wolfe Galson allowed me to move into their house in Agoura Hills for many weeks. Has there ever been better proof of friendship? In Northern California, one of my bases of operation was the home of my former business school classmate and forever friend Carol Mills and her husband, John Eichhorn. They always gave the impression they were glad to see me when I arrived on their doorstep with my suitcases. I also stayed at one point in Annelise Anderson’s pool house; she had photocopies of the Hollywood scrapbooks of young starlet Nancy Davis, which she shared with me, though it took quite a feat to reproduce them at the downtown FedEx office in Palo Alto.
Having never covered Nancy Reagan as a journalist while she was alive, I was indebted to so many who did. Among them were brilliant photojournalist Diana Walker, with whom I spent so many weeks on the road back when we both worked for Time and whose images also grace these pages; Chris Wallace; the aforementioned Judy Woodruff; Andrea Mitchell; Linda Douglass; Al Hunt; Johanna Neuman; and Mike Putzel and Ann Blackman, who are dear friends of many years and who also read chapters as I was writing them.
When I was stymied for a fact, brilliant researcher Alice Crites at the Post and Melissa August at Time could always tell me where to look. Lissa also helpfully let me know whenever an old Nancy Davis film was playing on Turner Classic Movies. Photo editor Crary Pullen did an amazing job finding images and pulling them together for the inserts in the book.
It was fitting that I began this book not with my own words, but those of pre-eminent Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, who steered me at every step along the way. The late Edmund Morris, in an astonishingly generous act, opened his files to me; his lovely wife, Sylvia Jukes Morris, also now gone, ran cups of tea down to me while I pored through those records in their Connecticut basement. Del Quentin Wilber shared notes taken while he was reporting his own book, which is the authoritative account of the day that Reagan was nearly assassinated. Authors James Mann and Meryl Gordon also provided unpublished material (and Meryl’s always hilarious husband, Walter Shapiro, never failed to give me a new jolt of enthusiasm when I was flagging).
Having never written a book before, I sought and received the advice of people who make it look easy. Among them are David Maraniss; John A. Farrell; Michael Duffy (especially Michael Duffy!); Nancy Gibbs; Carl Cannon; Susan Page; and Eileen McNamara. Others whose friendship has both supported this endeavor and enriched my life are Viveca Novak; Elaine Shannon; Jackie Calmes; Kit Seelye; and Lea Donosky.
During my fall 2017 fellowship at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, I was afforded an opportunity to dig into Nancy Reagan’s formative years in that city. But an even more valuable experience was seeing the inspiration to public service that people there—including David Axelrod, Alicia Sams, Gretchen Crosby Sims, Christine Hurley, and Ashley Jorn—are instilling in the generation to come. Among the students I got to know was Dylan Wells, whom I enlisted for research; she is now a journalist, which is more reason to feel hopeful about the future. In Chicago, my old friends Dorothy Collin and Bob Secter, as well as new acquaintance Leslie Hindman, helped me find clues to the world that Nancy Davis inhabited there. Latin School historian Teresa Sutter opened their records, which were incredibly revealing. I was guided at Smith College by Stacey Schmeidel, and at Sidwell Friends School by Loren Hardenbergh.
Saved for last are the people who matter the most: the three men who bring love and meaning to everything in my life. They are my sons, Nick and Jack, and my husband, Paul. Over the course of this project, Jack graduated from college and discovered a love of political campaigns. (Where did THAT come from?) Nick obtained his master’s degree in public policy and married, finally giving me a daughter, Molly.
Paul, a fine journalist, wrote his own excellent book, and took with mostly good humor the fact that the other author in the house had laid siege to our living room with seemingly permanent piles of dog-eared, out-of-print books and messy files.
It has been quite a journey, guys, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© MARVIN JOSEPH
Karen Tumulty is a columnist who writes about politics for the Washington Post. She previously worked for Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Antonio Light. Though she will always consider herself a proud Texan, she and her husband, journalist Paul Richter, live in Chevy Chase, Maryland. They have two sons, Nick and Jack.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Karen-Tumulty
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abshire, David M. Saving the Reagan Presidency: Trust Is the Coin of the Realm. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
Baker, James A., III, with Steve Fiffer. “Work Hard, Study… and Keep Out of Politics!” Adventures and Lessons from an Unexpected Public Life. E
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Barletta, John R., with Rochelle Schweizer. Riding with Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch. New York: Citadel Press, 2005.
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Cannon, Lou. Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power. New York: Public Affairs, 2003.
———. President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. New York: Public Affairs, 1991, 2000.
———. Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey. New York: Doubleday, 1969.
Colacello, Bob. Ronnie & Nancy: Their Path to the White House—1911 to 1980. New York: Warner Books, 2004.
Davis, Loyal. A Surgeon’s Odyssey. New York: Doubleday, 1973.
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