Higher society to higher office

From Abigail Adams through Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Rodham Clinton, strong-minded and politically ambitious presidential wives have been fascinating figures in American politics, objects of continual speculation about their influence on their husbands and even on national policy. Nancy Reagan is a worthy addition to this gallery of power spouses, as Bob Colacello shows in “Ronnie & Nancy: Their Path to the White House, 1911 to 1980.”

A writer for Vanity Fair and former executive editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, Colacello is a longtime chronicler -- and clearly an admirer -- of celebrity and wealth. His book is filled with rare interviews of Los Angeles’ Republican socialites who thought all reporters were too low in status to be worthy of their conversation. By crossing this huge cultural and social gap, Colacello, a Republican, was able to mine unexplored territory, wheedling stories from the press-hating socialites.

Six years of work have produced a huge amount of information, gleaned from books, oral histories and his many interviews. The detail may be daunting to all but the most intense students of Reagan’s life. Some of the interviews are as tedious as actually talking to the socialites, who seem unaware of a world outside their tight circle. Who needs to know Betsy Bloomingdale’s guest lists or the stories of Marion Jorgensen’s three marriages?

Me, I guess. Having spent some years as a dedicated Reagan student, I tunneled through the material and emerged impressed by the manner in which Colacello has documented an interesting and fundamental fact of Reagan’s life: Without Nancy, he never would have made it out of Hollywood. Moreover, Colacello explains the parallel between Nancy and her mother, Edie Davis. Just as Ronald never would have been president without Nancy, her stepfather, Dr. Loyal Davis, never would have climbed from the modest fame of a respected Chicago neurosurgeon to national professional and social heights without Edie.

Like mother, like daughter.

“In many ways, their [the Davises’] marriage, which endured for 53 years, until Loyal Davis’ death in 1982, was the model for the marriage of Ronald and Nancy Reagan,” writes Colacello. He shows how the Davis couple shared ambitions and filled the roles of “star husband” and “helpmate wife”: While he pursued leadership in professional organizations, she made powerful friends. They were as devoted to each other as they were attracted to the world of glamour. “All this and more would be repeated and magnified when Nancy married Ronnie,” Colacello declares. “These were both marriages in which one plus one added up to much more than two.... “

“My mother always said, ‘You’re known by the company you keep,’ ” Nancy told Colacello. “And it’s true.”

When Nancy married her Ronnie, his film career had stalled but he was the well-known president of the Screen Actors Guild. He also remained shaken by the breakup of his marriage to Jane Wyman, an actress whose career had surpassed his own. Nancy had played on Broadway and in movies, but it was clear she was never going to be a star. On their first date, she said, “I saw ... he was everything that I wanted.”

When Edith Luckett met her Loyal Davis, his marriage to his wife, Pearl, was breaking up: It was a split hastened, apparently, according to Colacello, by Pearl’s affair with Loyal’s best friend. Davis, 31, was a promising young physician, Chicago’s first full-time neurological surgeon, on his way to London on the SS New York for a professional conference. Edie, 39, was on the same ship, headed for work in England. They met on the ship, and by the time it docked, Colacello says, Edie “had evidently set her sights on marrying Loyal.”

Though Edie never became a great star, she was an accomplished actress and, more important, she made friends with the best, including Spencer Tracy, Walter Huston and Alla Nazimova, the famed interpreter of Ibsen. Nazimova was Nancy’s godmother. Tracy and Huston helped launch her acting career. Settling in Chicago with Loyal, Edie made friends like Mayor Ed Kelly, the Chicago Democratic boss. Her husband was conservative, but Edie knew Chicago.

Similarly, Nancy, married to Ronald, expanded their circle of friends beyond Hollywood. She understood that her husband had great potential -- but needed a push. A first step was a phone call to Harriet Deutsch, wife of Armand Deutsch, a producer, grandson of a Sears Roebuck founder and friend of such non-Hollywood hostesses as Mrs. Norman Chandler. Nancy had known Armand at MGM. “Nancy called me one day and said, ‘Couldn’t the four of us just have dinner alone?’ ” Deutsch told Colacello. “We went to Trader Vic’s. And from then on we became very close friends.” By 1962, Nancy was admitted to the Colleagues, a society women’s charity group, an event “signifying her full acceptance into Los Angeles’ hardest-to-crack social clique,” writes Colacello.

The women loved her, and their husbands -- powers in the Republican Party -- were entranced by Reagan’s monologues against big government. Some of them became the “Kitchen Cabinet,” a driving force behind Reagan’s election as governor and president.

Thus, as Colacello explains, a political career was born in Holmby Hills, Hancock Park and Bel-Air. *