Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [155]
“Norman Krasna, alter ego of producer Jerry Wald, is so currazy about Nancy Davis that he’s already popped the all-important question,” Hollywood columnist Edith Gwynn reported on October 13. “Nancy and her whole family are thinking it over at the moment.”123 Maybe the Davises were just being practical: Krasna and Wald had recently signed a $50 mil-2 5 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House lion deal with Howard Hughes to produce twelve movies a year for five years at RKO.124 Or maybe Nancy was trying to make Ronnie jealous. By mid-December, she had turned Krasna down, and for Christmas Ronnie gave her a gold key from Ruser Jewelers in Beverly Hills to congratulate her on getting her own dressing room at MGM.125
Nancy worked to get closer to Ronnie in other ways as well. She took a few riding lessons from Peter Lawford, the handsome British-born Metro actor and future brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy. She put aside her distaste for alcohol and let herself have a weak cocktail or two when Ronnie took her out to dinner. “I’d drink a little,” she told me. “Nothing very strong like a martini—that would taste like gasoline to me. But some orange juice and vodka I would drink.”126
Perhaps the most important factor in drawing Ronnie and Nancy together was her appointment to fill a vacancy on the SAG board, a goal she had been pursuing for almost a year. The minutes for October 9, 1950, open with, “President Reagan welcomed Nancy Davis to her first Board meeting.” The following November she was elected to a full three-year term.127 Although the SAG board was deeply involved in such controversial issues as loyalty oaths, Nancy Reagan told me, “I don’t remember any tension. Maybe it’s my memory, or maybe it’s that I was falling in love.”128
Going on the board meant that Nancy now saw Ronnie every Monday night. “After the meetings,” she said, “we’d all go—Ronnie and I and whoever else—to this little place nearby and sit and visit.”129 It also meant that Nancy witnessed firsthand and over an extended period of time how Reagan functioned as a leader: how he took advice, how he could be influenced, how he dealt with opposition, how he achieved a consensus, how he reached a decision. She may have ended up with a clearer understanding of Reagan’s decision-making process and leadership style than he had.
For Reagan, the SAG presidency, which he held until 1952, was half of
“my double life.”130 Yet he clearly relished every moment, from traveling to New York for meetings with the American Federation of Radio Artists about which union would represent the growing numbers of television performers to wrangling with the studio bosses to get actors a five-day week. (“Thanks to Ronnie, we had Saturdays off,” exclaimed Ann Rutherford. “We could go away for a weekend.”)131 On nights when he didn’t have a date, Reagan worked late at SAG headquarters, and was often seen din-Ronnie and Nancy in Hollywood: 1949–1952
2 5 1
ing alone at Chasen’s, sipping a glass of wine while reviewing Guild papers.132 At a time when his movie career was faltering, running the Guild kept his profile high and boosted the ego he hid so well.
Closely related to Reagan’s SAG duties were his activities as “a leader in the industry drive against Communists and their sympathizers,” in Nancy’s words.133 Although his term as chairman of MPIC had expired in July, he remained on its executive board and met with State Department officials that fall to discuss ways in which the industry could help the government fight Communism overseas.134 He had also become heavily involved in the Crusade for Freedom, a new national organization supported by the recently created CIA and headed by General Lucius Clay, the Army commander who had organized the 1948–49 Berlin Airlift.135
In September 1950, the Crusade held mass rallies at every major Hollywood studio, at which speakers ranging from liberal producer Walter Wanger to the ultra-right-wing John Wayne called for the liberation of the Soviet-dominated nations of Eastern Europe. Reagan