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

also incurred a big fine for back taxes he had deferred during World War II. A separate error made by his studio in reporting his income added another $21,000 to the amount Uncle Sam was owed. There was also his obligation to pay $500 a month in child support. The Reagans employed an English nanny, and someone to cook and clean, but they could not afford to buy furniture for the living room of their small house.

Five months after Patti was born, their financial circumstances forced Nancy to accept the female lead in a turkey of a film, Donovan’s Brain. She played the wife of a mad scientist who preserves the brain of a dead tycoon alive in a jar. Not exactly Oscar-worthy material. “Quite simply, we needed the money. This was a blow to Ronnie, but we had to face facts and face them together. I could get work, but his movie career was at a standstill,” Nancy recalled. Ronnie went for more than a year without doing a picture, turning down a few scripts that were embarrassingly bad. He scraped by accepting some guest spots on television shows. A regular TV series, however, was something he considered “a professional kiss of death to a movie actor: The people who owned movie theaters thought nobody would buy a ticket to see someone they could see at home in their living room for nothing.”

But moviemaking was changing, and even when Ronnie got a decent part, he no longer loved it as he once had. In one letter to Nancy from the set of 1954’s Cattle Queen of Montana in Glacier National Park, he vented about the chaos of the operation, the imperiousness of his costar, Barbara Stanwyck, and his frustrations with director Allan Dwan and scriptwriter Robert Blees. Ronnie referred to all of them by initials: “I don’t know how the picture is going. We started in confusion and have managed to develop that characteristic to an unusual degree. B.B. is still defending his script. I’m still feeding suggestions to A.D. and those two huddle and argue. Right now I’m waiting to go to work and the scheduled scene is one of those that needs changing the most. I’m quite interested to see what happens. In the meantime what the h—l do I learn. B.S. just continues to go her merry way in the exclusive company of two hairdressers and her maid. I wonder what picture she’s making.”

He added, “This, incidentally, is my first crack at picture making since the big switch to TV film work in Hollywood, and it bears out everything we’ve ever said. First of all—getting a crew was a case of rounding up who you could find. The industry as we have so often said literally forced our technicians to seek work in TV, and now we reap the harvest.”

The Reagans grasped at other ideas, at one point trying to sell a radio series to be called Yearling Row, based on the idea of an actor and actress who go into ranching. Then came the most humbling proposition of all: a Las Vegas nightclub act. When an agent at MCA first suggested that he consider it, Ronnie’s initial answer to such a tacky proposal was “You must be kidding!” But the money was good. Better than good. It paid nearly as much for a two-week gig as the $30,000 he had made for his previous picture, yet another disappointment called Prisoner of War, which was set during the Korean War.

On the morning he had reluctantly agreed to discuss the Las Vegas project with his agents, Ronnie decided to consult his horoscope. Nancy’s reliance on astrology would one day cause a national sensation. But back in those days, many people in Hollywood turned to their star charts for guidance. Entertainers have always been a superstitious tribe. Some considered it prudent to check the alignment of the heavens for the right date to sign a contract for a movie, commence filming, conceive a child, or get a divorce. Astrologer Carroll Righter’s column in the paper that morning advised Aquarians like Ronnie: “This is a day to listen to the advice of experts.” So, he marched into the meeting and began it by asking: “Are you guys experts?” When his agents assured him they were, he said, “Well, let’s get on with it, then.”

Ronnie was to tell jokes and stories and introduce the other performers. He backed out when the owner of the first club they talked to, El Rancho Vegas, insisted that one of those acts be a stripper. But his agents managed to scrounge up another offer at the Last Frontier, also on the Vegas Strip. There, Ronnie would be on the bill with a male quartet called the Continentals, a song-and-dance duo, comedians, and showgirls in feathered headdresses. The ninety-minute show ran for two weeks in February 1954 and sold out.

Nancy saw a role for herself as well: as the guardian of her husband’s reputation and well-being, as well as his emotional support at a rock-bottom moment. Her duties as a wife meant neglecting her ones as a mother, and it would not be the last time she made the choice she did. “Ronnie could have gone to Las Vegas alone, but if there ever was a time my husband needed me, it was then,” she recalled. “It almost killed me, but I left three-month-old Patti at home with our housekeeper.” Nancy went to every rehearsal, taking notes and fretting over whether Ronnie had his comedic timing down. Once the show opened, she sat through two performances a night in the Ramona Room, her laugh greeting every punchline as though she had never heard it before. “I never got bored,” she said gamely. Late each evening, after the show was over, the Reagans headed back to their hotel room and read themselves to sleep. Not until their final night did they spend any time in the casino, where they lost $20. “I hope I never have