Ronald Regan and Jane Wyman
Chris Hallam explores the turbulent story of Ronald Reagan’s first marriage to Hollywood legend Jane Wyman…
In November 1990, nearly two years after he and his First Lady Nancy left the White House, the former actor and 40th US president, Ronald Reagan published his memoirs. The book was 700 pages long but anyone looking for revelations into Reagan’s first marriage to the Oscarwinning actress Jane Wyman would be disappointed. The subject was dispensed with in just two sentences. “That same year I made the Knute Rockne movie (1940), I married Jane Wyman, another contract player at Warners,” Reagan’s ghost writer wrote. “Our marriage produced two wonderful children, Maureen and Michael, but it didn’t work out, and in 1948 we were divorced.”
But, in truth, there was rather more to the marriage of Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman than that.
THE ERROL FLYNN OF THE B-MOVIES
Reagan had been born in 1911, in the state of Illinois. Despite coming from a poor background and having an alcoholic father, the young Reagan quickly established a heroic reputation by saving 77 lives during a stint as a teenage lifeguard. The man who would one day be dubbed “the great communicator” was also already being recognised for his rich and resonant voice and soon found work as a radio sports announcer. But Reagan wanted more. In his mid-20s, he embarked for Hollywood and quickly found success as a film star. Reagan would later be much derided for his acting, a common joke being that he was out-acted by his chimpanzee co-star in the comedy film Bedtime For Bonzo (1951). In fact, though sometimes a rather stiff performer, he proved popular in early films such as Kings Row (1942) in which he played a double amputee. “As an actor I guess I spent some of my finest moments in bed,” Reagan later joked, in what was presumed to be a cheeky reference to his surprisingly high number of roles playing bed-ridden invalids. Recent biographies have suggested, however, that the young, handsome Reagan was romantically involved with a large number of actresses including Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Doris Day, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe at this time, so it’s quite possible Reagan’s joke had another meaning! In 1938, however, the man who described himself as “the Errol Flynn of the Bs” turned his attentions towards his costar on the film Brother Rat: Jane Wyman. In 1940, they were married.
ME: REAGAN YOU: JANE
Jane was younger than Reagan but had already been married twice, establishing a Hollywood career after an unhappy and unsettled childhood. Throughout the Forties, the two continued to enjoy successful film careers, yet a number of factors conspired to destroy their marriage from the outset.
One, was personal tragedy. The Reagans had two children Maureen and Michael (the boy was adopted) but a third child born in 1947, died at less than a day old, something that understandably put a severe strain on the marriage. Much later, tragedy would strike again when Maureen was struck down by skin cancer aged just 60. Her parents had long since divorced, but both were then still alive. Jane was also a victim of her own success, scaling heights as a film star which her husband would never enjoy, at least as an actor. In 1945, she co-starred in Billy Wilder’s classic tale of alcoholism, The Lost Weekend. Her later film Johnny Belinda (1948) was to prove an even bigger triumph. Producer Jack Warner initially wasn’t impressed. “We invented talking pictures, and you make a picture about a deaf-and-dumb girl!” he ranted to the director. But the film was a hit and Jane soon received Hollywood’s ultimate accolade: an Oscar. Jane accepted the award with brevity and wit. “I accept this award very gratefully for keeping my mouth shut once. I think I’ll do it again,” she said. But her marriage was already on the rocks. Politics was a problem. Reagan, then a Democrat, campaigned hard for President Truman in the 1948 election. Jane was a Republican. “Politics built a barrier between us,” she said during their divorce. “I tried to make his interests mine, but finally there was nothing to sustain our marriage.” Despite this, during the anti-communist witch-hunts, both secretly passed on names of other actors who they suspected of communist leanings to the FBI. Reagan was now President of the American Screen Actors’ Guild returning home to discover Wyman in the throes of an affair with one of her co-stars, Lew Ayres. The marriage was all but over. “We're through. We're finished. And it's all my fault,” said Jane to the press. But Reagan was devastated and slow to accept it "I love Jane,” said Reagan, “and I know she loves me. I don't know what this is all about and I don't know why Jane has done it."
Reagan remained confident in the face of all the evidence, that the affair would fizzle out and Jane would come back to him, but that never happened.
The next 60 years would see Reagan and Wyman’s lives go in very different directions. Jane and Lew Ayres never wed but she did marry music director Fred Karger, not once but twice. After their final divorce in 1965, she would never marry again. Between 1981 and 1990, her career received a late boost with an acclaimed role as the scheming Angela Channing in TV soap Falcon Crest. Producers were excited by her casting. Not only was Wyman great in the role but she was the ex-wife of the new US president.
Right up until her death in 2007, Jane Wyman maintained a dignified silence about her third husband and his second marriage to B-movie actress Nancy Davis, his subsequent conversion to the Republican Party politics and his political career culminating in two terms as the 40th president of the United States between 1981 and 1989.
In a newspaper interview conducted when Reagan was Governor of California in 1968, Wyman explained the reason: “It’s not because I’m bitter or because I don’t agree with him politically,” she said. “I’ve always been a registered Republican. But it’s bad taste to talk about ex-husbands and ex-wives, that’s all. “Also,” she added: “I don’t know a damn thing about politics.”