“Word about me spread to producers and directors,” Morris continued, “especially the homos. I’ll get roles through stints on the casting couch. A lot of actors—not just female starlets—put out from a prone position on that casting couch. Ask your agent, Henry Willson. He knows all about that, and so does his brigade of young, handsome studs.”
“Doesn’t that make you feel like a whore?” she asked.
“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I first hit town, a director told me that in Hollywood, a pretty boy doesn’t have to go hungry. I followed his advice.”
***
Although at first he’d resisted, Jack Warner no longer opposed his publicity department’s policy of posing Ronald Reagan with the most beautiful women on the Warners lot for cheesecake photographs. At that time in Reagan’s film career, Warner felt that it enhanced the sex appeal of the clean-cut Midwesterner, and he ordered that the focus on Reagan as beefcake vs. cheesecake continue..
It was around this time that Warner began promoting the sexual allure of the future President, defining him as “a better swordsman on the Warners lot than Errol Flynn.”
He specifically ordered Reagan to regularly escort Warners starlets to movie premieres, events where they’d be widely photographed. When Susan Hayward, who was enamored with him at the time, heard that he’d be escorting other women on studio-arranged “dates,” she warned him: “Make sure you escort them and nothing else.”
Ironically, she, too, was ordered to participate in photo ops with rising young male stars, so she came to realize it was strictly business.
Soon, the publicity department instructed Reagan to configure himself as Lana Turner’s date at the next Warners gala—in this case, the world premiere of Jezebel (1938), a Deep South plantation saga co-starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda.
Wearing a dinner jacket borrowed from the studio’s wardrobe department, Reagan, with his hair slicked back, took a taxi to retrieve the starlet Lana at her home. The date was March 7, 1938.
In pursuit of his date (Lana) for Jezebel’s premiere, Reagan arrived at a modest little apartment on Highland Avenue, above Hollywood Boulevard. It was a neighborhood filled with low-rent apartments, catering mostly to transients who had flocked to Hollywood to break into the movie business.
When he knocked on Lana’s door, it was opened by Mervyn LeRoy.
Reagan congratulated LeRoy on his casting of Turner in They Won’t Forget.
“Lana signed a contract just four days after she turned sixteen,” LeRoy claimed.
For some reason, perhaps because he was overstocked at the time with beautiful young women, Reagan had been somewhat reluctant to date Lana. He asked a publicist at Warners, “Do I have to go to the premiere of Jezebel?”
“No, but you’ll be hanging out a lot longer at Warners if you do,” the publicist had responded.
From the bedroom of her apartment, Lana emerged looking dazzling in a white gown borrowed from the wardrobe department. Reagan looked stunned when introduced. He finally said, “You’re the most beautiful gal I’ve ever seen.”
“You’re not bad yourself, buster,” she replied.
In his early days at Warner Brothers, Ronald Reagan was always willing to pose for what is now known as “beef-cake photos,” as opposed to cheese-cake.
His lean, thin chest would not be considered developed by the “gym rat” standards of today, but he was flattered when a female reporter gushed, “the beautiful long legs of Ronald Reagan make him the male equivalent of the celebrated legs of Betty Grable.”
After she kissed LeRoy goodbye, she headed out the door with Reagan.
Years later, in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, Lana recalled her first date with Reagan to author Darwin Porter. “He said I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, but he was not the best looking man I’d ever seen. I mean, he was handsome but not a beauty contest winner. I found him very appealing, with the most wonderful manners, and he knew how to treat a lady. He made me feel grown up even though I was only a teenager.”
He complimented her on They Won’t Forget.
“Oh, please,” she said. “Don’t bring that up. I’m still embarrassed. My mother, Mildred Turner, told me I move with coltish grace, sinuously, undulating. But all I saw on that screen was those jiggling jugs of mine.”
Reagan had hailed a taxi to take her to the theater, because he felt that his own car was too battered to show up at a premiere with such a glamorous star.
“I hear that Jezebel is an unashamed rip-off of Gone With the Wind, even though Selznick’s movie hasn’t yet been released,” he said.
“Like everyone else, I read Gone With the Wind, but I know I could never play Scarlett,” she said to him. “It isn’t right for me.”
Before arriving at the premiere, she turned to Reagan and gripped his hand. “I’m afraid! All eyes will be on us. Deep down, I’m still a frightened little girl. But when that car door opens, I’ll try to camouflage my insecurities by throwing my head up high in the air and walking along the red carpet like I own Tinseltown.”
At the theater, a pedestrian walkway had been built above the roaring traffic of the boulevard in front. A reporter for The New York Times later wrote that “Lana Turner on the arm of Ronald Reagan made a dazzling appearance crossing the bridge of stars, even though they aren’t stars yet. Klieg lights brightened the night sky over Hollywood, as hundreds of fans showed up.”
After the premiere, where the night and most of its credits belonged to Bette Davis, Reagan invited Lana to dinner. He was happily surprised that she enjoyed the same type of food that he did: Hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, barbecued ribs, and spaghetti with meatballs.
When their food was served, she removed a bottle of chili peppers from her purse. She sprinkled it over the ribs, telling him that she was convinced that it removed toxins from one’s body.
What happened after dinner has grown hazy in Hollywood lore, with various versions repeated, most of them inaccurate.
On the golf course the following Sunday, Reagan confided to Dick Powell that, “Lana is just as oversexed as I am. I spent the night with her after seeing Jezebel, and I hope it’ll be the beginning of many more nights to come. I’ve got to slip around, though, because I don’t want Susan Hayward to find out.”
Edmund Morris, Reagan’s official biographer, noted, “Dutch was not yet a one-girl guy. He was soon seen squiring dishy Lana Turner around town, joking that he ‘wasn’t acting’ in her company.”
His pursuit of Lana was made easier when Warners publicity department asked them to pose for pictures together for distribution nationwide.
“Lana and I did whatever the studio wanted us to do,” Reagan later said. “Put on our clothes, take off our clothes. Susan would kill me if she ever heard me say this, but Lana looks hotter in a bathing suit than she does.”
Late one morning, Reagan, in his battered car, drove Lana to the Warners ranch outside Los Angeles, where they would be photographed together in riding costumes. An expert horseman, he taught her how to ride.
That night, back at her apartment, she cooked a meal for him, filet mignon coated with cracked peppercorns, lots of salt, and mustard. He was no longer surprised when she sprinkled hot sauce over it. “Too much sauce gives me the runs,” he said. “You must have a cast-iron stomach.” He also noted that she was “the world’s slowest eater, chomping down on a piece of steak for at least fifteen minutes before swallowing it.”
News of the Reagan/Turner affair eventually reached Wayne Morris at Warners. One afternoon, he confronted Reagan in the commissary. “What is this shit about you moving in on Lana? Before you, I was taking advantage of the big crush she had on me.”
“Isn’t Priscilla Lane enough for you?” Reagan said.
“Isn’t Susan Hayward enough for you?” Morris asked.
“Touché,” Reagan answered.
In her memoirs, Lana—The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, she was discreet. She did recall posing for pictures
with Reagan, defining him as “a nice young man,” but provided no other insights.
In his memoirs, Reagan didn’t even mention her.
***
A friendly young reporter from Des Moines visited Reagan at Warners. He had seen pictures of him posing with Lana, and he asked what it was like for a local boy to find himself dating glamour queens.
“Miss Turner is an actress of natural beauty that gets worked over by the studio makeup department that creates a make-believe character for her. She is very down to earth, kind and considerate. Young girls across America, so I’m told, are trying to imitate her. Of course, Hollywood publicists like to rewrite her story. If a girl gets a high school diploma, it suddenly appears in print that she’s got a doctorate. If she spends all Saturday afternoon in the beauty parlor, that isn’t talked about. Magazines and newspapers print that she spends all her spare time helping homeless refugees from Europe.”
Reagan would have more or less agreed with Patrick Agan’s conclusion in The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses. “To millions, the Love Goddesses were surrogate mistresses, ladies of incredible beauty who afford at least a visual satisfaction that men were able to indulge in even in the company of their wives. The Love Goddesses were an inspiration, Everests of glamour for both men and women.”
In the 1980s, after Reagan had been elected to the Oval Office, author Darwin Porter met with Lana in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. “Now that Ronnie is President, the press is always asking me about my former relationship with him,” she said. “Somebody wrote that I didn’t even remember dating him—that is pure crap! Of course, I remembered him. I’ve even been asked to describe what kind of lover he is. I’ll never tell, but I’ll give you a hint. He’s a man who likes to take his time, unlike another future President of the United States I used to know.”
“I liked Ronnie right from the beginning, and we became friends. Later, I got to know Nancy Davis when she was a starlet at MGM. After she married Ronnie, I visited their home on many occasions.”
“I recall one very formal party I attended with Ronnie in the mid-50s,” she said. “I was still trying to hold onto my beauty, but for the first time, I realized that he’d lost his looks. His face had aged a lot. That Midwestern farm boy appeal of his had faded with my romance with Artie Shaw. He still had that beautiful head of hair, perhaps dyed, but he had begun to look the way he did when he was governor of California.”
“I liked Nancy, but detested Jane Wyman,” Lana continued. “I first met her when we were both starlets at Warners. Later, for the 1982-83 season, I appeared with her on TV in Falcon Crest. After an initial introduction and a chat, she didn’t even speak to me. She always resented my beauty. Not only that, but she learned that I had dated Reagan before she did. She was one icy cold bitch.”
***
Lana’s biggest disappointment was the loss of a role in the 1939 MGM comedy-drama, Idiot’s Delight, starring Clark Gable and Norma Shearer, the reigning King and Queen at Metro. The film was released the same year that Gable portrayed Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939).
Even though she was no great dancer, Lana was to play one of the girls traveling with Harry Van’s Les Blondes Troupe of Dancers. Gable was cast as Harry Van, and he even dances himself in one of the scenes.
Three days before she was to report for filming, Lana collapsed at her home, complaining of excruciating pain. Mildred immediately called an ambulance, which rushed her to the nearest hospital. After extensive examinations, doctors determined that she needed surgery for the removal of scar tissue from her ovaries and colon. The scars had resulted from a botched appendectomy she had endured when she was fourteen.
A rumor was spread that Carole Lombard had been the force behind getting Lana fired from Idiot’s Delight because she’d come on seductively to Gable.
She was surprised when a studio delivery boy arrived with a note from Gable himself. “Too bad, kid. A bad break. But chin up. I’ve got this gut feeling that one day, sooner than later, you are going to be my leading lady.”
The King of Hollywood turned out to be a prophet.
***
Olivia de Havilland introduced Lana to Errol Flynn right before lunch in the Warner commissary. A romantic adventurer both on and off the screen, he was known in Hollywood as a “swordsman,” the ultimate sexual athlete and the seducer of countless women. He was a handsome, devilish, demi-god, a survivor of bar room brawls, exotic drugs, sex orgies, and scandal.
He invited her to his dressing room after rather gallantly kissing her hand. Once inside, he kissed more than her hand.
“Suddenly, I had two feet of tongue down my throat, and something like steel pressing hard against me,” she later confided to Carole Landis.
“Been there, done that,”
Flynn had urgently wanted to continue, but there was a knock on the door. It was Michael Curtiz, who demanded an emergency conference with Flynn. He broke away from Lana, but only after she’d accepted an invitation to go swimming that Saturday afternoon in his pool.
Right before she left, he took her arm. “Just how old are you?” he asked.
“Fifteen.”
Actually, she was sixteen, but she’d been told that Flynn liked to seduce fifteen-year-old girls.
She would recall that afternoon, not only to Ann Rutherford and Bonita Granville, but to other girlfriends of the future, including Ava Gardner.
“I had changed into this peach-colored, one-piece bathing suit,” she said. “My feet were dangling in the water. But I didn’t want to go in and get my hair all messed up. I thought he’d gone to change into his suit, but when he came onto the patio, he was completely nude. I didn’t at that time have much basis of comparison, but his manhood looked impressive to me.”
“Before I knew it, he pushed me in the water and was kissing me and feeling north, south, east, and west. He could really arouse passion, even in the water. Before long, we were out of the pool, and I was getting seduced by the world’s expert. Before the night ended, he’d made love to me three times. Hell with Greg Bautzer!”
On their second date, he invited her to go to Mexico for a long weekend. He spoke of the bullfights, the endless rounds of tequila in the cantinas, the fishing, the boating, the swimming, the love-making. She turned him down, but agreed to go away with him the following weekend, sailing to the island of Catalina when she heard that other men and women would be on board.
On her next visit to his dressing room, on the set of Four’s a Crowd, he offered her some bourbon for lunch, but she said no. “You’re just like Ronald Reagan,” he said. “He was in here yesterday. He accepted some bourbon from me, but dumped it in my cuspidor when I went to take a piss.”
He gently touched her arm. “At the feel of a girl’s arm, I get all fired up, old girl. I know I have to go as far as she’ll let me. Please let me. I don’t want to have to force you, since I’m so much bigger than you are.”
“That you are,” she said. “I might as well say yes, because you’d overpower me if I didn’t.”
Errol Flynn and Lana Turner never got to make a movie together, although all their friends said that as a pair, they would “sizzle” on the screen. However, in 1942, CBS hired them for the radio dramatization of Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the Screen Guild Players.
“How right you are, old girl!” he answered.
“And you can dispense with the old girl thing,” she chastised him.
As she later told Landis, “As you know, Errol is a demon in bed. I’d never had oral sex performed on me until he came along. He also told me that he hated being a phallic symbol for the world. Most men I’ve dated want to feel my breasts. Not Errol. He’s different. He told me he’s a leg man. He said, ‘How can you make love to a breast?’”
“Hell with that!” Landis said. “Men can make lots of love to a woman’s breasts. Do a lot of things.”
***
The sail to Catalina aboard Errol Flynn’s luxurious yacht, Sirocco, ma
rked Lana’s introduction at a tender age into the world of Hollywood decadence.
For the cruise, he’d gathered together several members of his private club, the Olympiads, a society of heavy drinkers who included his co-star and sometimes lover, Patric Knowles, along with actor William Lundigan (another sometimes lover), Bruce Cabot, and Alan Hale, who had appeared with Lana in The Adventures of Marco Polo.
The group was anti-Semitic, and had turned down a membership bid from Edward G. Robinson. On rare occasions, Errol’s close friend, John Barrymore, was a member of the Olympiads; also Alan Mowbray and W.C. Fields.
Errol Flynn, looking macho and virile in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and, below, in The Perfect Specimen (1937). “He was a devil-may-care ladykiller both on and off the screen,” Lana claimed.
Other founding members included Grant Mitchell and the author, Gene Fowler, who would later write Good Night, Sweet Prince, the biography of Barrymore.
Aboard the Sirocco, there were six other young aspirant actresses in addition to Lana. Each of the female guests shared a large communal cabin filled with bunk beds, with the understanding that they’d be housed there until they were summoned to the various cabins of the male passengers.
There was a seemingly endless supply of cocaine and booze. In her dialogues with the other young women, Lana surmised that each of them knew what was expected of them. As captain, Errol had first choice, but for this trip, he seduced only Lana among the girls, and only Knowles and Lundigan among the men.
On one moonlit night, Flynn opened up to Lana about his adventures as a young man, referring to the months he lived in New Guineau, where he’d cut an imposing figure in a pith helmet and walking cane. “I had so many adventures. Of course, there were poisoned arrows to deal with, along with malaria, leeches, and cannibals. Inevitably, my buddies and I got gonorrhea. Those bordellos were wretched hellholes.”
He also spoke about the years he’d spent in England, where he became interested in acting. “It was tough going. I arrived with two shillings in my pocket. I was on the stage in Northampton, where the boots are made. In Jack and the Beanstalk, I played the wicked prince.”
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