And the Rest Is History by Marlene Wagman-Geller

Author:Marlene Wagman-Geller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

23

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis

1950

First Ladies have at times achieved renown apart from their famous husbands: Abigail Adams for promoting the rights of women, Eleanor Roosevelt for creating the March of Dimes, Jacqueline Kennedy for imbuing Camelot with elegance. Nancy Reagan’s legacy, however, is the love affair she enacted against the backdrop of the White House, wherein she walked, hand in hand, with her life’s leading man.

Anne Frances Robbins was born in New York, the daughter of an actress and a car salesman. When the marriage disintegrated, Edith Luckett, unable to care for her infant, whom she called Nancy, left her in the care of her sister. Six years later Edith married Loyal Davis, a prominent Chicago neurosurgeon, who formally adopted her daughter.

In her Smith College yearbook, Nancy wrote, “My greatest ambition is to have a successful, happy marriage”; however, still not having met Mr. Right, Nancy followed in her mother’s footsteps and began her Hollywood career. She did not become a star; however, through serendipity, she became the North Star to a Hollywood leading man.

Nancy’s destiny, Ronald Wilson Reagan, was born in Illinois and lived over the H. C. Pitney Variety Store. After attending Eureka College, because of his compelling voice he was hired as an announcer for the Chicago Cubs until a screen test led to Warner Brothers Studios. He spent the majority of his Hollywood years in B movies, where, he joked, the producers “didn’t want them good, they wanted them Thursday.” His career was derailed by his stint in the army; when he returned, he was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. It was through this position that he was to meet his forever First Lady, to whom he would later say, “God must think a lot of me to have given me you.” However, their first encounter had less to do with divine intervention than with Nancy’s own machinations.

As a twenty-six-year-old starlet, Nancy was aghast to discover her name on a list of Communist sympathizers. MGM promptly placed an item in a gossip column noting that she was not that Nancy Davis; however, she saw opportunity in the mix-up. She had seen Ronald Reagan on the silver screen and she had liked what she saw. Deciding to kill two birds with the one stone, she cajoled her friend into persuading Reagan into inviting her to dinner, ostensibly to discuss her situation. Ronald agreed, but as protection from a bad blind date, warned her that it would have to be an early evening as he had a predawn call the next day. Nancy responded with a similar early-exit line.

The first time Nancy met Ronald was on November 15, when they had dinner at LaRue’s, a glamorous restaurant on the Sunset Strip. After their meal, Ronald asked her to a Sophie Tucker performance, where they would take in the first act. They stayed for the second show, which ended at three a.m. The following evening they met once more at an Oceanside restaurant. Nancy later remarked, “I don’t know if it was exactly love at first sight.

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