Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [144]
The film’s plot revolved around a six-year-old girl who has witnessed her mother’s murder but blocked out all memory of it. The role of Dr. Caroline Canford was a good fit for Nancy, requiring her to be caring, patient, and inquisitive as she coaxed the truth out of the child through play ther-apy and free association. “There is a fine line in acting, and I’ve never heard of a textbook that can define that line,” Nancy later remarked. “You play the character the writer has created, but you also play the role partly the way you yourself would react in a given situation.”35
Ronnie and Nancy in Hollywood: 1949–1952
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She barely had a day off before starting The Doctor and the Girl, in which she was typecast as the daughter of a prominent Park Avenue neurosurgeon.
Once again Nancy’s role called for her to be patient, understanding, and smart as she tries to make peace between her domineering father, played by Charles Coburn, and her rebellious younger siblings, played by Glenn Ford and Gloria DeHaven. Apparently her diplomatic skills came in handy off the set when Coburn, who was in his seventies and wore a monocle, asked her to dinner. “It seems he was a lecherous old fellow,” said her Chicago friend Bruce McFarland, who called Nancy once a week during her first year in Hollywood. “She indicated that she spent the entire evening keeping him away from her. She thought it was hysterical.”36
Life seemed to fall into place fairly easily for Nancy in her newly adopted city. She found a nicely furnished two-bedroom bungalow with a flower-filled garden in Santa Monica. Nancy told Inez Wallace she had “a girl who comes in three days a week, cleans up the place and cooks my dinner. At night I study my script for the next day, or read or listen to the radio. I’m never lonely.”37
Van Johnson, who had become one of MGM’s top leading men during the war, and his wife, Evie, lived next door, and kept an eye on her. Clark Gable took her to lunch at the studio, and John Huston, at his father’s behest, gave a dinner party at Chasen’s to welcome her to town. “That was the first time I met Nancy,” recalled Leonora Hornblow. “She was very nice.
Un-actressy. Very simple, very good manners, cheerful, bright, charming.”38
“It was a very clubby feeling at Metro,” recalled Armand “Ardie”
Deutsch, who met Nancy soon after she signed with the studio. “I don’t believe I ever took Nancy out on a quote-unquote date. But hosts would call and see if I could pick her up to come to dinner. And we got to be good friends. I developed an ability to make her laugh by just looking at her. One day we were going into a big soundstage—L. B. Mayer was going to lecture us on the evils of Communism or something of that sort—
and Nancy and I happened to meet at the entrance. I said, ‘Nancy, don’t laugh. We could get fired.’ She said, ‘Why would I laugh?’ Well, she sat a few seats from me, and I called, ‘Nancy, Nancy.’ And she looked at me and I said, ‘Don’t laugh.’ Well, she was gone. She had to take out her handkerchief and hide her laughter.”39
Ardie Deutsch had come to Hollywood the same way Nancy had: via the social route. A grandson of Julius Rosenwald, an early partner in Sears, Roebuck, he had gone from private schools in Chicago and New York to 2 3 4
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Dartmouth and the University of Chicago, and from radio to the Navy to Wall Street, never quite sure what he really wanted to do. He met Dore Schary at a dinner party in New York in 1946 and formed a fast friendship that led to a job as Schary’s assistant at RKO and a brief marriage to nightclub singer Benay Venuta. When Schary jumped to MGM two years later, Deutsch jumped with him and became a producer; he was producing his first film, Ambush, a Western starring Robert Taylor, when he and Nancy met. Within three years’ time, Ardie would marry a stylish young widow named Harriet Simon, Nancy would marry Ronald Reagan, and the Deutsches would become charter