The Triumph of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty (best books under 200 pages .txt) 📗

Maureen sang duets until he told them enough already. Six-year-old Michael sat in Nancy’s lap, craving her touch as she massaged and tickled his back. “Those back rubs were bonding me to Nancy so much that, although I wanted to be with Dad at the ranch, I looked forward most of all to being in the front seat of the car and having Nancy love me. I never told her that, however, because I didn’t want to be disloyal to my mom,” Michael wrote later. Jane, by her son’s account, was a volatile, stern disciplinarian who gave him ten whacks on each leg with a riding crop when he was naughty.

It was clear from the start that the former Mrs. Reagan and the future Mrs. Reagan despised each other and were never going to get along. But the other woman in Ronnie’s life—Nelle—very much approved of Nancy. By then, her husband, Jack, had been dead a decade, felled at the age of fifty-seven by a series of heart attacks. In the darkest days after Ronnie’s divorce, he had spent every Sunday morning at Nelle’s little house, filling his stomach with her brunch and his soul with her comfort. Nelle counseled her son that everything—even a failed marriage—happens for a reason, and that someday, he would figure out what the purpose of his own torment was. Nancy seemed so different from Jane, and Nelle could see that she was in love. But Ronnie’s mother also knew that her son was not. Not yet, at least. So, she offered some advice. “You’re going to have to wait, Nancy. You are just going to have to wait,” Nelle told her. “Nancy, you will know when he loves you.”

Judging by the clippings in Nancy’s scrapbook, she and Ronnie had become an exclusive item by the middle of 1951. The pages are filled with pictures of the two of them at movie premieres and parties. Nancy also pasted in news items charting the progress of her career, and her emergence as a minor celebrity. At a time when sexy bombshells ruled the screen, the MGM publicity machine seemed to have been doing its best to counterprogram Nancy as a classy, cerebral type. Her byline appeared on a magazine feature headlined “Brains Can’t Hurt You.” Neither the name of the publication nor the date is noted in her scrapbook, but its placement suggests it ran some time in 1951. The article touted Nancy as “one of Hollywood’s brainiest lassies.”

She counseled teen girls not to hide their intelligence out of fear that being smart would make them unpopular with the male of the species. But she also cautioned young ladies not to flaunt it. “Personally, I cannot believe that boys are captivated by a vacuous girl, and that’s exactly what a brainless ‘dumb’ girl is. A girl is short-circuiting herself, in my estimation, if she is afraid of brains,” Nancy advised. “But there is, of course, a great difference between having brains and being ‘The Great Brain’ who is objectionable by showing off her knowledge, who parades her mental powers to the discomfiture of her associates.

“… Use your brains and you stand to gain, not just in the matter of catching a fella, but to make your life fuller and richer. If your life is full and interesting to you, then you are interesting to other people.” A photo shows Nancy gazing devotedly at her own beau, as he beams back at her. The caption: “It’s pretty obvious that Ronald Reagan likes his girls smart as well as beautiful. Guess that’s why he’s been dating Nancy so much.”

By the end of 1951, reporters were asking Nancy whether there would be a wedding with Ronnie in the near future. “He hasn’t asked me yet,” she told one. But she was getting impatient. Her thirtieth birthday was behind her, and her movie career was in neutral. So, she decided to give things a nudge. In January 1952 Nancy told Ronnie that she was considering asking her agent to find her a play in New York. It was a none-too-subtle hint that if he didn’t move, she would move on. This was more than a ploy on Nancy’s part. She was not exactly setting movie box offices on fire and knew that the studio most likely would terminate her contract when it came up for renewal in March.

There was another problem: Jane. Ronnie’s ex-wife still had an emotional hold on him. They often crossed paths at social occasions, and, of course, were involved together in raising their two children. The gossip columnists were constantly hinting of the potential for a reconciliation. But Ronnie finally came to accept that there would be no second act with Jane. One night when Nancy was at his apartment, he got a telephone call. “I’ve got to go,” Ronnie told Nancy. “That was Jane.” Panicked, Nancy surreptitiously followed him in her own car over to Jane’s big house on Beverly Glen and sat outside. After fifteen minutes, he left, and Nancy raced back to her apartment. Soon Ronnie showed up and told her things were finally over with his ex-wife; this time, for good.

What might have precipitated this final break? In her memoir, Nancy claimed Jane had convinced Ronnie that he shouldn’t get married again unless and until she did, so one possibility is that Jane told him that night she’d found someone else. A week after Ronnie and Nancy were married, Jane announced what turned out to be a brief engagement to a wealthy real estate development heir twelve years her junior. But it is also possible that, seeing her ex-husband get serious about someone new, Jane had reconsidered, made one last play for Ronnie, and he was the one who cut it off. At any rate, things with Nancy and Ronnie moved along quickly after that. Ronnie proposed over dinner in their usual booth at Chasen’s. He said only three words: “Let’s get married.” To which Nancy replied, suppressing her jubilation: “Let’s.”

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