Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly Read Free Book Online Page A

Republican for the first time in his life. 5

 
    4
    S TUDIO C ITY , C ALIFORNIA
    M ARCH 4, 1952
    5:00 P . M .
    â€œI do,” says Ronald Reagan, looking into the large brown eyes of a pregnant Nancy Davis. He is dressed in a black wedding suit with narrow matching tie. Davis, who clutches a fragrant bouquet of orange blossoms and white tulips, does not wear a wedding gown. Instead, she has chosen to wear a gray woolen suit bought off the rack at the I. Magnin department store in Beverly Hills. A single strand of pearls is draped around her neck.
    The Rev. John Wells, a Disciples of Christ minister, stands before the small, bare table that represents the altar here at the Little Brown Church. He asks Davis if she, too, agrees to be wed “till death do you part.”
    â€œI do,” she replies. Nancy Davis has campaigned hard for this moment since setting her sights on Ronald Reagan three years ago. She is undaunted by his flings with other women, accepting his indiscretions while enjoying a few brief affairs of her own. 1 Davis knows that there are two keys to Reagan’s heart: politics and horses. So she has spent hours whitewashing fences at the actor’s Malibu ranch and attending the Monday night SAG board meetings to watch him lead the proceedings. “I loved to listen to him talk,” Davis will write of their courtship, “and I let him know it.”
    Standing in the chapel to Reagan’s right is his best man, the hard-drinking actor William Holden. The thirty-three-year-old Academy Award nominee for Sunset Boulevard has taken a break from filming the World War II drama Stalag 17 to be at the ceremony. His wife, Ardis, is serving as Davis’s matron of honor. The Holdens have been fighting today and are not on speaking terms. That is not an unusual situation in their eleven-year marriage. The main issue between them is infidelity. Holden underwent a vasectomy after the birth of their second son and is fond of bedding his costars without fear of getting them pregnant, thus leaving his wife in a constant state of jealousy and torment. 2
    Even as Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis recite their vows, awash in apparent marital bliss, the Holdens sit on opposite sides of the tiny church.
    Other than these four, and the gray-haired Reverend Wells, who presides wearing a flowing black robe, there is no one else in attendance for the Reagan-Davis wedding, which makes the Holdens’ feud glaringly obvious. The Reagan children, Maureen and Michael, are away at school.
    Even though a formal wedding announcement was made on February 21, and gossip writer Louella Parsons spread the word to twenty million people worldwide through her syndicated newspaper column, the ceremony is stunningly casual. There was no limousine to ferry the couple to the church. Instead, Reagan picked Nancy up at her apartment in the Cadillac convertible purchased for him by Jane Wyman.
    In addition, there is no formal reception. The group will adjourn to the Holdens’ ranch-style home 3 in nearby Toluca Lake for a quick bite of cake and a splash of champagne before Reagan and Davis drive two hours to Riverside’s Mission Inn for their wedding night.
    Reagan’s initial wedding proposal fell far short of romance. Davis had longed “that Ronnie would take me out in a canoe as the sun was setting and would strum a ukulele as I lay back, trailing my fingers in the water, the way they used to do in the old movies I saw as a little girl.”
    Instead, Reagan simply pronounced, “Let’s get married,” over dinner at a Hollywood nightclub shortly after Davis told him she was pregnant. To which she replied, after gazing into his eyes and placing her small hands atop his: “Let’s.”
    Nancy Davis was so eager to marry Ronald Reagan that she willingly accommodated his every wish. If that meant a small ceremony, lacking fanfare or even a hint of the media flashbulbs that might provide a modicum of