NANCY REAGAN (née Davis)
(6 July 1921 - 6 March 2016)
Many actors have had political ambitions (George Murphy, Shirley Temple, Glenda Jackson, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger et al) but none ever went as far as becoming Prime Minister or President of the United States until, that is, Ronald Reagan, a minor Warner Bros star, came along to achieve just that, the best role of his life. Reagan was first married to actress and major star Jane Wyman from 1940 to 1948, but it was his second wife, Nancy Davis, herself but a minor Hollywood and TV player, who saw her husband through to the most significant post in America society. They married in 1952 and stayed together until his death in 2004. Reagan entered Hollywood politics in 1947 when he became President of the Screen Actors Guild at the time of the Communist witch hunts by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Reagan’s film roles subsequently deteriorated and he made several B-films before attracting a good deal with General Electric as host of their General Electric Theater TV show.
Although a Democrat at the time, Reagan later began to support the Republicans in the 1960s, by which time his movie and TV career was virtually over. With Nancy’s aid from her charity work and fundraising campaigns he was able to give up acting and enter US politics. His wife was even more reactionary than Reagan himself but with her support he became a popular figure again with the voting public and the rest is US election history. Whether he deserved the post or not, Reagan became ostensibly the most powerful man in the world. Nancy herself abandoned acting to devote her life to her husband and to become the First Lady of the USA in 1981. She made more public appearances as herself on television than she ever did performing in films.
Her initial acting career involved some modelling and theatre work, including the musical Lute Song with Mary Martin and Yul Brynner. However, in making just a dozen feature films and some ten TV series, her career as an actress was nothing extraordinary, although early on she appeared in a few reasonable roles. Her first credited film part was in The Doctor and the Girl (1949), a medical drama with Glenn Ford. East Side, West Side (1949) starred Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner and Cyd Charisse. The Next Voice You Hear (1950) was apparently that of God with Nancy as average housewife Mary Smith. Night Into Morning (1951) had Ray Milland as an alcoholic – again. In Talk About a Stranger (1952) Nancy appeared with that other would-be politico George Murphy. Shadow in the Sky (1952) dealt with post-war trauma, with Nancy as the hero’s sister. Donovan’s Brain (1953) was a sci-fi horror subject with Lew Ayres, while Hellcats of the Navy (1957), the only film in which Ronald and Nancy appeared together, was a war film with he as a naval commander and she as a nurse.
After that it was mostly TV series for Davis – Zane Grey Theater, General Electric Theater, Dick Powell Theatre, Wagon Train etc. Ronald Reagan’s last film, actually made for TV, was a remake of The Killers (1964), a Hemingway story about contract assassins, co-starring Lee Marvin and here directed by Don Siegel. It was released theatrically in the UK. The meeting between Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis was the making of both of them, although looking back in the light of what happened subsequently it all seems like some kind of fairy tale straight out of the Hollywood Dream Factory.
MICHAEL DARVELL