Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [128]
Six-year-old Maureen was sent off to summer boarding school for several weeks, and upon her return learned a bit of sign language to communicate with her mother. Two-year-old Michael was left in the hands of Nanny Banner. On Saturday nights Ronnie dropped the children off at his mother’s, and he picked them up on Sunday after Nelle had taken them to church.
Whether the children were home or not, Ronnie now slept in his study.51
For the Warners publicity department, the perfect couple still had the perfect marriage. The day after Ronnie came home from the hospital, Louella Parsons quoted him extolling his wife for being by his side until she herself was hospitalized. In the August issue of Movies, Jane printed an open love letter to her husband celebrating their seven years of marital bliss: You and I have been married seven years, Mr. Reagan. During this period, at least once a week you’ve reminded me (kiddingly) how lucky I am to have you for a husband. I think I am lucky. . . .
I don’t think I have ever seen you really angry—but I’d hate to cause you to lose your temper. There was that one time: I was wrong and we both knew it. You believe there’s a reason for everything, so as usual, you were tolerant and took an objective view-2 0 8
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House point. I think your understanding is your greatest of many sweet qualities.
. . . there isn’t a single thing about you I’d want to change. You’ve been wonderful for me in many ways. You know how easily I blow up and have to get things off my chest. You’re just the opposite, and it has a soothing effect. Actually, you are a serious person, but you use a humorous approach. It’s a great gift, Ronnie. Calmly and quietly, with that keen analytical mind, you get the most amazing results. . . .
Your love of sports has given you a clean mind, to say nothing of a clean body. How well I know! Two baths and two bath towels a day. Remind me to tell you a bedtime story about the laundry situation. Your room is always neat, everything you own in immaculate order. You never even put away a pair of shoes without first buffing them. You’re a sentimentalist: you remember holidays; you’ve never forgotten an anniversary. On these occasions you buy me presents, and a card always comes with them. I love these cards and I save them. They’re witty and tender. You write as well as you act—and jump horses.
If you promise to do something you never go back on your word. . . . I guess the only thing we heartily disagree on is dancing—
together. We get along so beautifully with other partners but I suspect that I unconsciously do the leading. You never say anything.52
The week after Labor Day, Ronnie drove Jane to Mendocino, a hundred miles up the coast from San Francisco, where she would spend the next six weeks filming Johnny Belinda. Jane had wanted this part since she saw the original play by Elmer Harris on Broadway in 1939, while she and Reagan were touring with Louella Parsons. Producer Jerry Wald, who had first worked with Jane as the screenwriter on Brother Rat, pushed hard for the studio to buy the rights and give her the lead.53 Lew Ayres was cast as the compassionate doctor who teaches Wyman’s character to speak.
Charles Bickford played her father, Agnes Moorehead her spinster aunt, and Stephen McNally the rapist she kills when he tries to kidnap their baby. This was high Hollywood melodrama, but filmed with such spare artistry and directed with such subtle intelligence that the finished product transcended the genre.
Away from home, the thirty-year-old actress seemed to blossom. The cast and crew lived in an old lumber camp outside town and spent their Divorce: 1947–1948
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evenings singing songs around a campfire. After getting over their mutual wariness—he assumed she was an insipid chorus girl, she had hoped Joseph Cotten would get the part—Jane and her leading man became nearly