What was Jane Wyman’s reaction to Reagan’s politics?
Eliot: She wasn’t politically oriented. She was kind of a good-time girl. She liked Reagan because he was good-looking, strong, and she was desperate to be remarried after getting divorced. She thought Reagan was a good choice, but he became so one-note politics, she got bored. She couldn’t get him to leave politics at the office. He’d walk around the house making speeches. It left her ice cold, and she made him pay publicly by humiliating him with an affair. But the great thing about Reagan and Wyman is they are a real-life version of “A Star is Born,” where, after “Kings Row,” Reagan’s star goes down, partly because he was in the Army for five years, while her career takes off and she wins an Academy Award. Newsmax: Regarding some labor unions back then, you write that, “The only immediate relief from the foul odor of corruption came in the form of communism.” Was that Reagan’s opinion? Eliot: That was the general feeling in the union movement because IATSE — the biggest union of off
