It’s a Great Feeling: Ronald Reagan & Jane Wyman, Dick Powell & June Allyson

"Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him." —French novelist and filmmaker Romain Gary

During her filming of Stage Struck, Jane Wyman told Joan Blondell, “I’ve stood in the chorus line watching women of lesser talent get ahead. Everybody says I’m taking over the ‘Resident Tough Gal Blonde’ roles at Warners from you and Glenda Farrell. Hell, I’ve been living that Tough Gal role for the past decade.” When Jane saw her latest part, she complained to her agent, William Demarest, “I think I’ll be typecast as a gum-chewing chorine until I’m thirty-eight.” Her complaints to Demarest continued. “I don’t like being billed as ‘The Hey-Hey Girl.’” “That’s because you’re so lively,” he said. “You continue dancing in night clubs until dawn breaks.” In her one scene with Dick Powell in Stage Struck, he was impressed with her, telling Busby Berkeley, “Jane can sing, she can dance, and she can act. You should give her more to do. We have a budding Ginger Rogers here.” When he saw the rushes of their scene, Powell was amused. POWELL: “What’s your name? WYMAN: “My name is Bessie Fufnick. I swim, I dive, I imitate wild birds, and play the trombone.”

Jane Wyman even had thought to make a play for Dick Powell, although she was hesitant. She told her friend Frank McHugh, who had fourth billing in Stage Struck, “Blondell’s already got him. They’re going to get married.” In Stage Struck, Joan Blondell was interpreting her role in an outrageous “camp” style, years before the word was coined. Her character seemed to be based on Peggy Hopkins Joyce, who drew attention for a $1 million shopping spree over the course of a week. With a pencil-thin mustache, Dick Powell was not cast in Stage Struck as a singer but as the show manager. Jane Wyman had wanted the role of the ingénue, but Busby Berkeley had cast newcomer Jeanne Madden in that part instead. “Her role should have gone to me,” Jane complained to Berkeley. “Jeanne can’t act, but I needed a singer, a Ruby Keeler type, and I thought she’d do well,” Berkeley said. “But after directing her in her first two scenes with Powell, I think I’ve made a horrible mistake.” When he saw the rushes, Berkeley said, “Warner has put me in a financial strait-jacket on this movie. 

Powell is solid in his role, but Madden delivers her lines with such flatness, she makes Ruby Keeler sound like Bette Davis. As for Blondell, she flashes her pearly whites, bats her eyelashes, and flaps about like an over-the-top Carole Lombard.” Jane need not have worried that Madden would be much competition for her. “I ceased to be jealous of her when her star flickered out so fast, she wouldn’t even merit a footnote in the history of Tinseltown. As for me, I was going places, except it would take a few more years to climb up that ladder.” Jack Warner had decided to give Joan Blondell the ultimate star treatment, and as such, Jane was awed by Blondell’s dressing room. It incorporated a large living room, a fireplace, two bedrooms, a fully stocked kitchen, and a separate room for wardrobe and makeup. Once Dick Powell emerged from the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Giving Jane a quick hello, he dressed hurriedly and left to shoot a scene, still complaining of his sore throat. Dick Powell would in time become one of Ronald Reagan’s best friends, and the two married couples—Powell and Blondell, Reagan and Wyman—became a social fixture on the Hollywood scene until 1944, when the Powells divorced. 

Jane received a copy of the script of Gold Diggers of 1937, wondering what was in it for her. Character actor Victor Moore was cast in it as an aging hypochondriac who thinks he’s dying. He plans to back a Broadway show, but finds that his partners have lost his capital in bad stock market investments. Cast as one of the chorus girls, Jane soon discovered that the script granted her only one line of dialogue: “Girls, we’re saved!” shouted to her fellow chorines when the money for the show is finally raised. One of the movie’s best theme songs was “With Plenty of Money and You,” sung by Dick Powell. The film’s finale, an elaborate chorus-line-dance-number, quickly evolved into a major-league Busby Berkeley spectacular number. Jane appeared in it as one of 104 women wearing white military uniforms, tapping in military formations and geometric patterns, singing “All’s Fair in Love and War.” Jane Wyman was anxious for her next assignment. “I got you a part in Mervyn LeRoy's The King and the Chorus Girl,” her agent William Demarest told her. “I hope I get to play the chorus girl,” Jane said. “No such luck,” he said. “That role goes to Joan Blondell.” 

In her next picture, The Singing Marine (1937), Jane Wyman was cast once again in a movie starring Dick Powell. The film marked the third movie in a row in which she’d been directed by Ray Enright. Powell played a marine from Arkansas who becomes a popular radio singer. Jane had a small role playing a “cutie” called Joan. The Singing Marine was intended to make another showcase for Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, with Warners hoping to repeat the success of 42nd Street. But Keeler was not available to play in The Singing Marine. Jane Wyman hoped to be summoned to take the role intended for Keeler. Jane reminded Enright, “I sing and dance, too, and rather well, if I must say so myself.” Enright rejected her in favor of Doris Weston, a Chicago-born actress, radio performer, and nightclub singer. 

Jane, at one point, chatted briefly with Doris Weston, who told her, “I was chosen because of my physical resemblance to Ruby Keeler. Frankly, I’m a much better singer than Miss Ruby.” Blondell invited Jane to join Powell and herself for a weekend at her “love nest,” on North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills. Powell was away at the studio when Jane arrived. Blondell told her that she’d been considered to star in The Singing Marine when Keeler became unavailable. Over Sunday dinner, Powell complained to Jane that at the age of thirty-two, “I’m still playing a juvenile. I can’t keep this up much longer. I hear Jack Warner is grooming my replacement, Kenny Baker. You’ve worked with him before. I’ve just heard that you are going to star with him in Mr. Dodd Takes the Air.” Director Alfred E. Green welcomed Jane to the set of Mr. Dodd Takes the Air (1937). She had been told that her latest movie was a remake of the 1932 release of The Crooner, a cautionary tale about the dangers of stardom, a vehicle for the message that fame can be a terrible curse. Kenny Baker, in a similar fashion than Jeanne Madden, was referred to as a third-rate pale imitation of Dick Powell, with none of Powell's talent or sex appeal. 

On April 17, 1938, Bogart signed with the Lux Radio Theater to broadcast a one-hour radio play of Bullets or Ballots (1936). Both Bogie and Edward G Robinson reprised their roles, but Mary Astor stood in for Joan Blondell. With Bogart's second wife Mary Philips still in New York, Bogie resumed his on-again, off-again affair with Blondell. She told him she was tired of her wise-cracking roles and wanted to make more drama. Bogart had worked closely with her and helped her through her scenes in Bullets or Ballots. She'd played a shady Harlem nightclub owner and gave an admirable performance when stacked against Bogie and Robinson. “Joan was at the peak of her beauty, during the making of this film,” Bogie recalled. “I liked her very much, in spite of Dick Powell always beating down her door.” In later years, perhaps to cover her affair, Blondell claimed in her memoir that, “I did not warm to Mr. Bogart. He wasn’t a man one ever felt close to—nobody did. But I really liked him.” In many scenes from Stand-In (1937), Blondell stole the picture from Bogart and Leslie Howard, especially when she performed a savage travesty of Shirley Temple singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop.” Blondell had snappy dialogue, as when she told Howard, cast as a visitor to the studio, that the star must never be “fatigued or mussed and above all she must never be so vulgar as to perspire. Her stand-in does her sweating for her.”

Through her husband, the well-connected Dick Powell, Joan Blondell was alerted early to what films Warners planned to produce and who would star in them. In a call to Ronald Reagan, Joan announced, “Bryan Foy is giving you the lead role in your next picture, Accidents Will Happen (1938)” “I hope that film won’t be just another accident,” he said. “I’m sure it will be a big hit,” she said. “I have a personal interest in it. The female role will be played by none other than my sister, Gloria.” When director Lloyd Bacon called Reagan with his next film assignment, Cowboy from Brooklyn (1938), the actor was disappointed when he learned of his small role. After starring parts, he’d been demoted to seventh billing. “You wouldn’t exactly call this climbing the ladder to success, now would you?” Reagan asked Bacon, who answered him saying that stardom isn’t achieved overnight. 

The stars of Cowboy from Brooklyn were Dick Powell, Priscilla Lane, Pat O’Brien, and Dick Foran, with Ann Sheridan and Johnnie Davis in supporting roles. Pat O’Brien and Ronald Reagan bonded so well that Reagan was invited to become a member of the main clique in the commissary. “If you got invited to their table, you’d arrived,” Reagan said. “On any given day, you could dine with Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Dick Powell, and Frank McHugh. Edward G. Robinson wanted to join us, but Pat O’Brien rejected him for being ‘too Jewish.’” 

Dick Powell was instrumental in securing Ronald Reagan a seat on the board of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). During the course of filming Cowboy from Brooklyn, Reagan resumed his liaison with Priscilla Lane. Once, Reagan noticed Priscilla Lane emerging from Dick Powell’s dressing room after a long visit. Reagan was pleased to be working with Powell but worried about his standing with Priscilla. Powell assured Reagan they only were rehearsing their scenes. Allegedly, Powell's romantic interest had focused on Priscilla's older sister Rosemary Lane, his co-star in Hollywood Hotel. Ronald Reagan later wote in his memoirs about Dick Powell, “I was one of the thousands who were drawn to this very kind man, and who would think of him as a best friend. Sometimes, our paths took us in different directions, and months would pass without either of us seeing the other. When we did meet again, it would be as if no interruption had occurred. I cannot recall Dick Powell ever saying an unkind word about anyone.”

In Naughty But Nice (1939), Reagan also played a distant second fiddle to his friend Dick Powell. As the woman who falls for John Payne in Kid Nightingale (1939), Jane Wyman was cast as Judy Craig, a lounge singer. Wyman and Payne get to perform a musical duet. In the film Payne sings operatic arias and Tin Pan Alley songs. Because of his studly physique, he attracts hordes of screaming females to his boxing matches. His manager even hires an orchestra to accompany him, musically, after each of his knockouts. “I got the role only because your friend, Dick Powell, turned it down as he was making his exit from Warners,” John Payne told Jane Wyman. Before their marriage, Joan Blondell and her husband, Dick Powell, took the Reagans to the Cocoanut Grove where Powell was invited to sing a song for the guests. One day, after Reagan had angered co-star Howard Da Silva, he struck back. “When I made Bad Men of Missouri with your wife, she spent more time with Dennis Morgan than before the camera. You’d better check what’s going on. Sometimes, a husband is the last to know.” 

Coming so soon after the rumors about Jane Wyman and John Payne, Reagan became deeply depressed, trying to convince himself that Da Silva was a liar. Alleged communist Da Silva kept needling Reagan: “I’m worried for you. Payne is a tough act to follow.” In the middle of the shoot of Kid Nightingale, Jane had invited Joan Blondell and Dick Powell for dinner. They were obviously having their own marital difficulties. Back from her War Bond tour of the Southeast, Jane Wyman welcomed Reagan home, but he later expressed concern about her dark mood. “She was polite and loving on the surface, but seemed strangely distant as if her interests were elsewhere,” he recalled. “Something was on her mind, and I didn’t know what. It seemed that without my presence, she had done just fine on her own. On the train back to San Francisco, I was left feeling rather empty about my homecoming.” Reagan confided these concerns to his agents Lew Wasserman and Jules Stein, and to Dick Powell, who may or may not have known that Jane had fallen deeply in love with John Payne. 

Adele Jergens and Ronald Reagan, 1948.

Composer Fred Karger (From Here to Eternity, The Caine Mutiny) had dated Marilyn Monroe in 1948. Monroe would soon find out that Karger had another woman competing for him: Jane Wyman. Actually, Karger married Wyman in 1952. Marilyn Monroe also met Ronald Reagan in 1948 when she was filming Ladies of the Chorus in Columbia with Adele Jergens (who had dated Reagan occasionally). During her chats with Reagan, Marilyn hid some details of her life, such as her lesbian affair with Natasha Lytess, her drama coach at Columbia. As Michael John Sullivan wrote in his book Presidential Passions: The Love Affairs of America's Presidents (1991): “Reagan’s understanding of sexuality was exceedingly simplistic. For him, sex was either black or white so that sexual feelings of a highly complex nature were threatening and incomprehensible. The inflexibility of his narrow sexual sensibilities is perhaps best seen in his unchanging attitude toward homosexuality. Reagan remained intimidated by the prospect of sexual diversity.” It was through Reagan that Marilyn met William Holden, who was scheduled to appear in Born Yesterday at Columbia.

After his marital reshuffling, instead of showing up at the Reagans home for dinner with Joan Blondell, Dick Powell appeared there with his new wife June Allyson on his arm. Jane Wyman remembered her first meeting with the perky MGM star. As she later told Blondell, “Right in front of Dick and me, June flirted outrageously with Ronnie.” “I’m not surprised,” Blondell said to Jane. “I think she’s a nympho, in spite of that syrupy personality of hers. June lived for a time at one apartment in New York near mine when she was trying to break into show business. I know all about her. She was known as ‘Miss Hot to Trot.’” An older, more mature man, Dick Powell had begun to look out for his wife’s indiscretions, including her love affair with Alan Ladd and her off-the-record weekends in Las Vegas with Dean Martin. On her part, June Allyson predicted that the Wyman/Reagan marriage would end in the divorce courts: “Her career is on the rise. His is going to hell.” A special election awarded Ronald Reagan with the SAG's organization’s presidency. Later, he was formally elected as SAG’s full-time president, serving terms from 1947 to 1952, and again in 1959 to 1960, eventually serving an unprecedented six terms.

Director John Huston delivered a harsh appraisal of Reagan’s presidency of SAG. “I think he hooked up with SAG for purely selfish reasons. He used it as a road to power and political influence. He only went into politics because he was washed up as an actor, appearing in horrible B pictures.” Reagan paid special attention to members Edward Arnold, Walter Pidgeon, Pat O’Brien, and Dick Powell. “They made a lot of sense, but James Cagney, Henry Fonda, and John Garfield were leaning too far to the left,” Reagan wrote. “Of course, I always listened to old friends, Robert Taylor and George Murphy, who were very conservative Republicans, as was Dick Powell.” 

As her biographer, Michael Hodgson, noted in Patricia Roc: the Goddess of the Odeons (2010): “In real life, Patricia Roc’s effect on men was to prove devastating. Had things gone differently, Nancy Davis might never have become Reagan’s wife, and he might not have survived to enter the White House.” Reagan had told Dick Powell, “I don’t know what it is with Patricia Roc. This stunning, blue-eyed brunette has put a spell over me. At least she can make me forget about Jane for a while.” “The whole studio fell in love with Patricia Roc when she was working at Universal Studios,” said David Niven. It was during his affair with Roc that Reagan suffered a nervous breakdown, which led to thoughts of suicide. Reagan conveyed to Roc that at times in the middle of the night, he thought about killing himself, leaving Jane Wyman and his mother Nelle Wilson Reagan to take care of Maureen and Michael. “I found him just wretched and miserable,” Roc claimed. 

“He adored Jane Wyman and his family, and just couldn’t understand why or how she had completely lost interest in him. She was bored with his political interests and his intense involvement in the Screen Actors Guild. She resented what she called ‘his obsession with the threat of communism.’ If I had been older and more experienced, I would have realized how deeply he was suffering and would have urged him to seek psychiatric help. He told me, ‘Life just isn’t worth living anymore. I don’t see the point of going on.’ Night after night, I tried to talk him out of suicide. His depression affected our love life. On many a night, he was unable to perform like a man should.” Roc also told her biographer: “I hate to say this, but when Ronnie is in love, he looks like a sick parrot. Sometimes, after he left my place, Ronnie would drive over to Lew Ayres’ home, park his car across the street from his doorway, and just sit there until three or four o’clock in the morning. Just waiting and looking, either watching the lights go on or off in the house, or Jane and Lew Ayres returning home late from some nightclub. When I left him in Hollywood, he seemed heartbroken.” 

“He begged me to stay. He had taken up heavy drinking, often in the company of his friend William Holden. I don’t know how good a friend Bill was. He was very charming, very sexy. Once, when Ronnie was called away for a night shoot, he asked Bill to pick me up and escort me to a premiere. Behind Ronnie’s back, he propositioned me after taking me to dinner and the show. Did I go to bed with Bill Holden? I’ll never tell!” For the premiere of the British film Scott of the Antarctic (1948), Reagan had a reunion with Patricia Roc at the film’s Royal Command Film Performance at the Odeon on London’s Leicester Square in November of 1948. Both he and Roc appeared on the stage. Reagan was in London at the time filming The Hasty Heart (1949) with Patricia Neal, whom he was informally dating. Even though he apparently never made his intentions known to Doris Day, Reagan talked about the possibility of proposing marriage to Doris to such good friends as George Murphy, Dick Powell and June Allyson.

Reagan even went so far as to discuss with George Murphy the business angle of such a liaison. “I didn’t want to become Mr. Jane Wyman, but I’m thinking over being Mr. Doris Day. That might be a career goal, as I move into middle age. The roles are already drying up. I could be very aggressive, get the best movie deals for her, the best recording contracts. I’d make a great manager for her.” On the set of It’s a Great Feeling (1949), Reagan shook the hand of the director, David Butler, who welcomed him. Butler had been a former actor himself on the stage, and later in the Silents, but he became better known for second-rate musicals. Reagan soon learned that Butler had developed an unreciprocated crush on Doris Day. Reagan learned that he and Jane Wyman were not alone in making a cameo appearance in Butler’s film. They were joined by Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Sydney Greenstreet, Danny Kaye, Patricia Neal, Eleanor Parker, and Edward G. Robinson, along with directors Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, and King Vidor. Butler even had cast himself in a cameo. Reagan had only one scene, set in a barbershop, not with Jane, but with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson. There was an undercurrent of sexual rivalry in that scene. 

Either known or unknown to Reagan, Jane had continued her long affair with Dennis Morgan. Complicating matters, Doris Day had broken off with Jack Carson before landing in Reagan’s arms. As Reagan entered the 1950s, he faced the dilemma of many actors confronting the middle age. He had long talks with Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Dick Powell, and George Murphy. Hollywood was a great burial ground for young romantic leads turning middle-aged. Some of them, including James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Cary Grant, could thrive in the right roles, but most of the others were cast aside in favor of new stars. Reagan’s actual relationship with Rhonda Fleming has been one of the most misunderstood in his repertoire. George Murphy claimed Reagan “fell in love with Rhonda during the making of The Last Outpost.” June Allyson said that one night, when she invited Reagan to dine with her husband Dick Powell, and herself, “All he did was talk about Rhonda. He may have been the first guy who called her the ‘Queen of Technicolor.’ He went on and on, praising how ‘incredibly beautiful’ she appeared before the color cameras with that porcelain skin and flaming red hair.’” In Reagan’s tell-nothing memoir, Where’s the Rest of Me? (1981) he merely mentions Rhonda Fleming. 

Irving Kupcinet, a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, in his autobiography Kup: A Man, an Era (1988), included a curious passage claiming that Reagan, “the handsome bachelor, was mad about the girl” (Rhonda Fleming). Years later, Fleming called Kupcinet’s story “awful” and “crazy,” as she claimed: “Reagan and I weren’t social on or off the set. We certainly didn’t have a romance.” In Edmund Morris’ book, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (2000), he wrote: “My research cards show Reagan stepping out with at least sixteen young and beautiful actresses from Doris Day and Rhonda Fleming to the peachy and not-yet-legal Piper Laurie. He was always shy about speaking of such matters when I interviewed him as an old man.” When Reagan became Governor of California  in 1967, he said once, “Perhaps the only place in government that can employ homosexuals is the Department of Parks and Recreation.” In the media, that remark was widely denounced and defined as “vulgar, crude, ignorant, and tasteless.” There were calls for “impeachment of the bigot.” 

In Make-Believe: The Story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan (1983), biographer Laurence Leamer wrote: “For a woman who sought a courtly Spenserian romance like Nancy Davis, Ronald Reagan might seem a strange choice indeed. He was a man too scared by past romantic failures to fall easily into an impassioned union typical of youthful first love. But Ronnie was the first man Nancy had ever met who measured up to Dr. Loyal Davis. Nancy loved Ronnie, a man whom she could admire uncompromisingly, the way she'd admired Dr. Davis. Nancy listened to Ronnie's endless political talk, as Jane Wyman had not. Nancy thought his most banal political remarks rang with profound meaning. She looked at Ronnie with pure adoration.” Near the conclusion of his first autobiography, Where’s the Rest of Me?, Reagan was in a nostalgic mood. He remembered many of the people he had known, specifically acknowledging “May Robson, Alan Hale, Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Zasu Pitts, Eddy Arnold of the booming laugh, kindly Paul Harvey, roistering Wallace Beery, Charles Coburn, Adolphe Menjou, and the great Walter Huston.” 

Demurely, Reagan went on to label some of his favorite actors he had known, specifically defining Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Wayne Morris, Tyrone Power, and Jack Carson, as members of “a special breed.” Reagan ended his opaque first memoir on a reassuring, feel-good note, citing the usually rather blunt Clark Gable as saying, “The most important thing a man can know is, as he approaches his own door, that someone on the other side is listening for the sound of his footsteps.” Referencing the happiness he’d found in married life with Nancy Davis, and the wisdom he had found after the termination of his film career in Hollywood, he concluded, “At last, I have found the rest of me.” —Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, and Nancy Davis  (Blood Moon's Babylon Series, 2015)