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Hornblow, then married to Wayne Morris and a frequent visitor to the set, told me that she and Reagan often discussed politics. “That’s why we became such friends. Ronnie was devoted to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. So was I. So we would talk. The studio bosses were all Republicans. And they’d say things like, ‘that cripple in the White House,’ which would make me crazy, and Ronnie too.” Was Reagan critical of these rich Republicans? “Not at all. Ronnie was never against rich people. There was no such talk.” Hornblow noted that her own husband and Jane Wyman were “apolitical.”52

Reagan went out with three other co-stars during 1938—Anita Louise, Susan Hayward, and Ila Rhodes—some say for real, others for publicity purposes. He was even reported to have been “briefly engaged” to the obscure but apparently voluptuous Rhodes. None of these relationships seems to have been intimate, and some have suggested that Reagan may have been a virgin when he met Wyman.53 His description of a studio-Warner Bros.: 1937–1941

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arranged date indicates his innocence at that time: “A publicity man asked me to escort a young girl under contract to the studio, who had recently done a great deal for sweaters in a Mervyn LeRoy picture. She was very young and very beautiful and we were both very scared—she in a gown borrowed from wardrobe, and I in a dinner jacket from the same place.

Lana Turner and I went to the premiere in a taxi because I was afraid to drive my old convertible. I hadn’t learned how easy it was to rent a limousine and play big shot.”54

Jack Warner’s right-hand man, Richard Gully, described Reagan when he got to know him in the late 1930s. “There was always an aloofness about him. He was warm, but he had the extraordinary ability to stop any familiarity. He would be horrified if you went up and slapped him on the back. He was not that kind of man, but he was never disagreeable.” Gully added, “He was not a womanizer or oversexed, believe me. He was not interested in women in the way Errol Flynn or Clark Gable was interested.

He and Jane were just a great fun couple when I knew them as kids.”55

Wyman filed her divorce petition on November 10, 1938, alleging that Futterman was obsessively jealous and refused to have a child with her. The divorce was granted on December 5, 1938. She got $1,000 in cash, her legal expenses, the car that Futterman had bought her, and the furnishings of their apartment, which she continued to occupy.56 It was a big two-bedroom with a private entrance and a fabulous view at 1326

Londonderry Terrace, directly above the Sunset Strip and less than a mile from Reagan’s place on Cory Avenue. By the spring of 1939 he had moved into her building (though it’s not clear whether to her apartment or an adjacent studio). “We all knew he was living with her,” was how Leonora Hornblow put it.57 But Reagan and Wyman would later primly claim they had their first date at about that time. She said he took her to dinner and the premiere of Second Fiddle, starring Sonja Henie, the Norwegian ice-skating star.58

In all versions, the courtship reads a bit like a campaign, waged by Wyman, rather than Reagan, with persistence, guile, and some emotional blackmail. She wooed everyone around him that mattered: the Drake College friends, Nelle Reagan, Louella Parsons. The girl who had loved making entrances in nightclubs wearing fancy clothes and big hats suddenly became

“a bug for outdoors” and “a swell scout,”59 playing volleyball on the beach with Reagan and the guys, going to Disciples services with Nelle, signing up for committee assignments at the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and taking 1 0 6

Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Reagan with her to meetings. It was an amazing performance, though perhaps not entirely convincing.

“Jane and Ronnie really made a strange combination,” observed her friend Jerry Asher, a fan magazine writer. “She was so experienced, hard-boiled, intense, and passionate, and he was so pragmatic, down-to-earth, not overly imaginative. Sure everyone respected