Ronnie and Nancy (47 page)

Meanwhile, Ronnie took Nancy to meet his mother. The Disciples of Christ lay missionary and the Chicago Gold Coast princess would seem to have had little in common, but Nelle approved of Nancy’s sedate style and earnest personality. According to Nancy, Nelle “very quickly sized up the situation” between Ronnie and her. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Nelle asked Nancy, who admitted she was. “I thought so,” said Nelle.163

Nancy introduced Ronnie to Edith and Loyal “over the telephone; I called my parents every Sunday, and Ronnie would get on and say hello.”164

On one of his trips to the East Coast he met Edith when he changed trains in Chicago. She brought Colleen Moore Hargrave and Lillian Gish along to look him over. Both of them had shared her concern that Nancy, at thirty, was in danger of never marrying. Colleen declared that Reagan reminded her of Loyal, which Edith saw as a good sign, given Nancy’s adoration of her stepfather. “It will take,” Gish reportedly predicted.165

Still, two years after they had met and a year after they started going steady, Reagan needed more time. Or maybe he was waiting for an auspi-cious alignment of the stars.

At some point during their extended courtship, Nancy began accompanying Ronnie to the sign-of-the-month parties given by Carroll Righter, 2 5 6

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Hollywood’s reigning astrologer. These parties, attended by everyone from such old-time divas as Marlene Dietrich to young sophisticates like Lauren Bacall, were famous for their decor: a baby lion greeted guests at the Leo party, the swimming pool was filled with fish for the Pisces party, sets of twins formed a receiving line at the Gemini party.166 “Ronnie went to all of Carroll’s parties,” I was told by Arlene Dahl, who had met both men shortly after she was signed by Warners in 1947. “They were very good friends. Carroll was helpful in choosing dates for Ronnie when he was president of SAG, and he told him early on that he would amount to much more than just an actor.”167

According to Ed Helin, a longtime associate of Righter’s, Reagan started consulting the “guru to the stars” when he was still married to Wyman, who was also a client. “They even picked the date astrologically to get a good clean divorce without any problems,” Helin disclosed. “Whenever an occupation is kind of iffy, like show business, real estate, politics, the stock market,” he added, “you’re going to get a lot of people going to either psychics or astrologers.”168

Righter’s movie star clients depended on him to set the dates for signing contracts, starting films, taking trips, even conceiving children. “I don’t ask Carroll when I should go to the bathroom,” Van Johnson’s wife, Evie, told
Time
magazine, “[but] some of our friends do.”169 Among those for whom Righter did monthly, weekly, or daily charts were Bette Davis, Clark Gable, Dick Powell, Bob Cummings, Lana Turner, Adolphe Menjou, Ann Sothern, Susan Hayward, Rhonda Fleming, and Peter Lawford, as well as the writer Erich Maria Remarque and Goodwin Knight, who would become governor of California in 1953. Buff Chandler, the wife of the publisher of the
Los Angeles Times
, sat on the board of the Carrroll Righter Foundation, which ran an astrology institute at his Hollywood mansion.170

With his patrician air and gold-buttoned blazers, Righter reeked respectability. A confirmed bachelor from a Main Line family, he had obtained a law degree and chaired the Philadelphia Opera before moving to Los Angeles in 1939. As a practicing Episcopalian, he assured his clients that astrology did not conflict with traditional religion. “If God works through other mediums,” he told
Life
in 1954, “why not also through the planets?”171

He virtually invented the syndicated daily horoscope column, and by the 1960s, when astrology had became gospel for the hippie generation, his prognostications could be read in more than three hundred newspapers.

The actor Cesar Romero took Nancy to her first Righter party, in Jan-Ronnie and Nancy in Hollywood: 1949–1952

2 5 7

uary 1950, a month or so after her first date with Ronnie.172 About the same time, Nancy befriended Arlene Dahl, who had moved from Warners to Metro in 1948 and was something of a fanatic about astrology. The earliest reference to Nancy’s interest in the zodiac can be found in a Walter Huston biography and dates back to 1933, when she was twelve. In describing a dinner party hosted by Nan and Walter and attended by Edith and Loyal, author John Weld notes, “The conversation turned to astrology. Edith Davis’s daughter Nancy had recently had her horoscope charted by Nan’s friend Deborah Lewis, a professional astrologer and writer for
American Astrology
. She prophesied that Nancy would be a great success, no matter what she chose to do.”173

That’s not the way it looked as 1951 drew to a close. Nancy’s film career was all but over, and the man of her dreams still had not proposed. In September she was told that MGM would terminate her contract when her next option came up, in March.174 It was clear by then that while her talent was substantial, her star appeal was limited. Earlier in the year she had made her last two films for Metro, turning in her usual solid but un-charismatic performances as James Whitmore’s wife (again) in
Shadow in
the Sky
, and George Murphy’s wife in
Talk About a Stranger
. “After reading the script of that frightful picture,” Murphy later said, “Nancy and I both realized the studio wanted to get rid of us.”175

Nancy decided not to go home for the holidays that year, preferring to stay close to Ronnie. “Ronnie brought over a small tree for my apartment,” she recalled, “and on Christmas Eve I finally got up the courage to ask him what was, for me, a very bold question: ‘Do you want me to wait for you?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I do.’ ”176

What was holding him back? According to Kitty Kelley, he was secretly seeing an actress named Christine Larson at the time.177 He was also mired in his own career crisis and worried about his financial situation. On January 15, 1952, Universal cut his five-picture deal back to three after he had rejected two scripts that he considered beneath him.178 Two weeks later he completed his forty-second and last movie for Warners. For a change it was a picture he wanted to make—
The Winning Team
, in which he played Grover Cleveland Alexander, the troubled baseball great—but that was the end of his guaranteed annual income.

Both Ronnie and Nancy were now on their own, at a time when the studio system was collapsing all around them. The major film companies, 2 5 8

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House battered on one side by the 1948 Supreme Court ruling forcing them to sell their lucrative theater chains and on the other by the ever-rising popularity of television, were in a state of upheaval. Weekly movie attendance had plummeted from a postwar high of 100 million to half that by the early 1950s, and the studios were dropping contracts, slashing budgets, and cutting back production to stem their losses. The King of Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, who more than anyone had created and upheld the old order, had finally been toppled by Dore Schary in June 1951.

According to Nancy, sometime in January 1952 she told Ronnie that she was thinking of calling her agent to “see about getting a play in New York.”

“I decided to give things a push” is how she later put it. “As I recall, he didn’t say anything, but he looked surprised. Not long afterward, while we were having dinner in our usual booth at Chasen’s, he said, ‘I think we ought to get married.’”

She quietly answered, “I think so too.”179

A few nights later, during an MPIC meeting, Ronnie asked Bill Holden to be his best man. “It’s about time,” Holden blurted out.180

On February 20, MGM issued a face-saving press release stating that Nancy had asked to be let out of her contract.181 That same evening Ronnie called Loyal from Nancy’s apartment and asked for her hand in marriage. “Davis-Reagan Nuptials Set,” Louella Parsons announced the next day, saying the wedding was scheduled for early March. “Ronnie stands for all that’s good in the industry,” added Louella about her favorite from Dixon. She also reminded her readers, “It was at my home that Jane and Ronnie held their wedding reception, so I have always felt very close to him through the years.” (In her scrapbook, Nancy blacked out references to Ronnie’s first marriage in the deluge of press items that followed Louella’s scoop.)182

On February 27, MGM announced that the wedding would take place the following Tuesday at “some small church in Southern California.” The day after that, Nancy and Ronnie were photographed at Santa Monica City Hall getting their marriage license: Ronnie looked a little pale in a turtleneck and trench coat; Nancy radiant in a white-collared black dress, just like the one she wore on their first date.183

There was one sad note leading up to the wedding: Nancy’s grandmother, Nannee Robbins, whom she hadn’t seen in years, heard about the upcoming marriage and decided to make the trip from New Jersey to meet her only grandchild’s betrothed. “The three of us were having din-Ronnie and Nancy in Hollywood: 1949–1952

2 5 9

ner at Chasen’s,” Nancy later wrote, “when she suffered a stroke. We rushed her to the hospital, and although she recovered, she died not too long afterward.”184

Otherwise, the planets seemed to be aligned in their favor. According to Ed Helin, the couple consulted with Carroll Righter, and he gave their union his blessing.185 For those who believe in such things, the combination of an Aquarius II (Ronnie) and a Cancer II (Nancy) is said to be extremely potent. As Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers write in
The
Secret Language of Relationships
:

This relationship seems easygoing but conceals a tremendous thirst for power. Hidden beneath an amiable exterior is a core that no one who mistakes these two for an easy touch will quickly forget. Although Cancer is a water sign and Aquarius air, their relationship is ruled by earth and fire, here connoting smoldering desire and ambition. These volcanic seethings may cause tremendous frustration if not vented, but Cancer II–Aquarius II couples often have the patience and foresight to wait until they are called. Part of this pair’s power lies in their popularity. Lovers, friends and mates in this combination may be in high demand in their social circle. Their charisma, often of the charming and light variety, is a kind of hook with which they can snag the hearts of their admirers. The process need not be at all unpleasant, and in fact a good time is often had by all in the long run.186

The couple themselves seemed to realize how perfectly suited they were.

By then they had even chosen “their song”—George Gershwin’s “Our Love Is Here to Stay.”

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

PACIFIC PALISADES

1952–1958

Nancy’s marriage paralleled her mother’s exactly. You had two men—got them on the rebound. They were lucky men. Very, very lucky.

Richard Davis to author, May 30, 2003

THE LITTLE BROWN CHURCH IN THE VALLEY, A DISCIPLES OF CHRIST OUT-post on the southern fringe of the San Fernando Valley, is everything its name suggests: small, simple, picturesque. A rose-covered white picket fence frames the church’s neatly trimmed lawn, and the dark brown clap-board structure is topped by a squared-off steeple bearing a plain white wooden cross. Another unadorned wooden cross stands in the center of the altar: a bare table with the words “In Remembrance of Me” carved along its front edge. The walls are knotty pine, except for the one behind the altar, which is draped in red velveteen. There are only nine rows of pews, and the center aisle is just three feet wide. This is where Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis were married on Tuesday, March 4, 1952, at five o’clock in the afternoon. He was forty-one, she was thirty.

The only attendants were the couple’s witnesses, Bill and Ardis Holden.

When I asked Nancy Reagan why the wedding was so small, she answered,

“That was the way we wanted it.”1 Tellingly, the woman who had waited nearly a decade to be a bride had convinced herself that her groom’s wishes were her own. “Came our wedding day,” Reagan wrote in his autobiography, “and not one protest from Nancy over the fact that I cheated her out of the ceremony every girl deserves.” Clearly referring to his resentment of the press’s intrusive coverage of his breakup with Jane Wyman, he continues, “I can only confess that at the time to even contemplate facing reporters and flashbulbs made me break out in a cold sweat.”2

2 6 0

Pacific Palisades: 1952–1958

2 6 1

Instead of a wedding gown, Nancy wore a smart gray wool suit with white collar and cuffs from I. Magnin—“I was so disappointed that Amelia [Gray] didn’t have anything for me”3—and the single strand of pearls her parents had given her for her debutante party. Her dark hair was brushed back high off her forehead and crowned with a chic white-flowered hat and veil. Ronnie presented her with a bouquet of white tulips and orange blossoms when he picked her up at her apartment, where her German housekeeper, Frieda, had helped her dress. The brief nuptial service was performed by the Reverend John H. Wells, and Nancy was “so excited” that she “went through the ceremony in a daze” and had no memory of saying “I do.”4

If Ardis hadn’t arranged for a photographer to meet the newlyweds at the Holdens’ house a few miles away, there would be no visual record of the historic event. Ardis had also ordered a three-tiered wedding cake, and in the photograph of Ronnie and Nancy cutting it, they both look truly content. From the Holdens’, they drove to Ann Straus’s house in Beverly Hills, where the MGM publicist helped them prepare the press release announcing their wedding. “It was seven o’clock when they stopped by,” recalled Bill Fine, who was taking Straus out to dinner that night, “and they were very bubbly.”5

At some point they called Edith and Loyal in Chicago, Nelle at home in West Hollywood, and the children at Chadwick to say, “OK, it’s official,” as Maureen later put it, adding, “I think Michael and I both felt a little weird

. . . waiting for a phone call like that, but Dad felt strongly that we should be a part of things in at least this small way.”6