PorterDarwin - Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman, & Nancy Davis

Jane Wyman, Nancy Davis, and Ronald Reagan (despite the latter twos reveal nothing memoirs) chose not to tell us very much about what used to be called their salad days. Perhaps they were just being discreet, preferring to emphasize their triumphs rather than their compromises and indiscretions.

We at Blood Moon subscribe to Oscar Wildes adage that theres nothing else to do with gossip but spread it around. So consequently, we have decided to do it for them.

It took some effort, actually decades of it, to assemble this portrait of the Reagans Love Triangle.

We were aided in our research by a vast array of collaborators in the film colony. Virtually everyone who ever worked with the Reagans had opinions and insights about them, both good and bad. If we listed all of themsome of them wanted anonymityit would fill many dozens of pages.

Those people quoted in this book were viewed as newsworthy enough to have been the subject of individual interviews over the course of many years. As the Reagans became increasingly famous, many lesser souls wanted to talk about their involvements with Nancy, Jane, and Ronald.

The list is long and convoluted, but here is a sampling of some of the contributors:

Jack Carson (who was especially insightful about his best friend, Dennis Morgan); John Payne (from a hospital bed in New York, following an accident); Susan Hayward (when she was semi-retired and my neighbor in Fort Lauderdale).

There were so many others: Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Eddie Albert, Wayne Morris, Pat OBrien, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Allen Jenkins, Mervyn LeRoy, Priscilla Lane, Adele Jergens, Virginia Mayo, Ida Lupino, Phillip Terry, Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Audrey Totter, Rock Hudson, Raoul Walsh, Bruce Bennett, John Litel, Ray Enright, Tom Drake, Peter Lawford, Milton Berle, Bryan Foy, William Clemens, Lloyd Bacon, Anita Louise, Eddie Foy, Jr., Gale Page, Lewis Seiler, Michael Curtiz, Merv Griffin, Richard Thorpe, Alan Hale, Sr., Curtis Bernhardt, David Lewis, Jerry Wald, Viveca Lindfors, Alexis Smith, Peter Godfrey, Shirley Temple, Eve Arden, David Butler, Lewis R. Foster, Andrew Marton, Allan Dwan, and Nathan Juran.

As everyone in the business knows, the Hollywood Hills and the canyons of Manhattan are filled with (sometimes embittered) unpublished memoirs. It seems that everyone who was anybody, along with those who wanted to be, view their lives as worthy of a memoir. Year after year, most of these go unpublished

Blood Moon, however, receives some of these at regular intervals. Some representative titles have included: I Was Tyrone Powers Secret Male Lover, Liberaces Secret Life, and My Affair with Oprah Winfrey. Fear of libel often prevents the publication of many of these revelations.

Although many of their manuscripts never saw the light of publication, we are nonetheless grateful to the literary agencies operated by Bertha Klausner, Jay Garon-Brooke, and Ilsa Lahn for letting us wade through their slush piles.

Manuscripts on Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, and especially Paulette Goddard (written by her former secretary) were most helpful, as were portraits of Dick Powell, Dennis Morgan, George Murphy, Betty Grable, Lucille Ball, and William Holden. Long before us, other authors attempted separate manuscripts on the subjects of this booki.e., tell-alls about Nancy, Jane, and Ronald.

One of our greatest contributors was Joan Blondell, a dear friend and house guest. She was very helpful about the early career of her fellow chorine, Jane Wyman, and filled with wonderful stories about backdoor intrigue at Warner Brothers in the 30s.

Another close friend, Van Johnson, on whose Manhattan terrace I spent many hours in the company of our mutual friend, songstress Greta Keller, had known and co-starred with Jane Wyman and (to a lesser degree) Reagan since World War II.

June Allyson was filled with revelations about the Reagans, especially in her later years, after she broke with Jane over a disagreement.

No one was more helpful than Stanley Mills Haggart, my former boss. He arrived in Hollywood during the Silent era and began writing about the film colonys fun and foibles in his voluminous diary. (It was never submitted for publication, and for good reason!) In the late 30s and early 40s, he had been Hedda Hoppers leg man. In that much-envied and highly competitive position, he was often aided by his long-time companion, William Hopper (Heddas son). William was a close personal friend of Reagans, and appeared in bit parts in many of his early films.

Although Hedda couldnt print many of the indiscretions that Stanley and her son uncovered, confirmed, and delivered to her, she wanted to be keenly aware of what was happening after dark and during the pre-dawn hours of the industry that employed and fascinated her.

The publisher and co-author of Love Triangle, Danforth Prince is one of the Young Turks of the post-millennium publishing industry. Hes president and founder of Blood Moon Productions, a firm devoted to researching, salvaging, compiling, and marketing the oral histories of Americas entertainment industry.

One of Princes famous predecessors, the late Lyle Stuart (self-described as the last publisher in America with guts) once defined Prince as one of my natural successors. In 1956, that then-novice maverick launched himself with $8,000 hed won in a libel judgment against gossip columnist Walter Winchell. It was Stuart who published Linda Lovelaces two authentic memoirsOrdeal and Out of Bondage.

I like to see someone following in my footsteps in the 21st Century, Stuart told Prince. You publish scandalous biographies. I did, too. My books on J. Edgar Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Barbara Hutton stirred up the natives. You do, too.

Prince launched his career in journalism in the 1970s at the Paris Bureau of The New York Times. In the early 80s, he resigned to join Darwin Porter in researching, developing and publishing various titles within The Frommer Guides, jointly reviewing the travel scenes of more than 50 nations for Simon & Schuster. Authoritative and comprehensive, they were perceived as best-selling travel bibles for millions of readers, with recommendations and travel advice about the major nations of Western Europe, the Caribbean, Bermuda, The Bahamas, Georgia and the Carolinas, and California.

Prince, along with Porter, is also the co-author of several award-winning celebrity biographies, each configured as a title within Blood Moons Babylon series. These have included Hollywood BabylonIts Back!; Hollywood Babylon Strikes Again; The Kennedys: All the Gossip Unfit to Print; and Frank Sinatra, The Boudoir Singer.

Prince, with Porter, has co-authored such provocative biographies as Elizabeth Taylor: There is Nothing Like a Dame.

With respect and a sense of irony about When Divas Clash, Prince and Porter also co-authored Pink Triangle: The Feuds and Private Lives of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Members of their Entourages, as well as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Life Beyond Her Wildest Dreams.

Prince is also the co-author, with Darwin Porter, of four books on film criticism, three of which won honors at regional bookfests across America, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. Special features within these guides included the cinematic legacy of Tennessee Wiliams; the implications associated with strolling down Sunset Blvd., that Boulevard of Broken Dreams; behind-the-scenes revelations about the making of