The President’s Ladies: Jane Wyman and Nancy Davis

Chapter 1

The Abandoned Child

DURING HOLLYWOOD’S HEYDAY, THE STAR MACHINE PROCESSED FODDER for the fan magazines, ingested by readers who believed what they read. To say that an actor was adopted posed questions that studios preferred not to answer and certainly would not include in their hagiographic bios. Mention of adoption meant disclosing a star’s past, which could include implications of illegitimacy or abandonment, neither of which was good copy. And so, Jane Wyman was not adopted. But she was.

On 27 May 1916, Manning Jeffries Mayfield and Gladys Hope Christian were married by a justice of the peace in Kansas City, Missouri. The bride and groom were the same age, twenty-one, although Gladys was five months younger. They returned to the groom’s birth place, St. Joseph, Missouri, about sixty miles from St. Louis, moving into the home of his parents, Pulaski and Mamie Mayfield, at 3121 Mitchell Avenue. Manning’s two sisters, Martha and Sarah—the latter, a public school teacher—also resided there. Living with in-laws was not the most auspicious beginning for a marriage, and four years later, the marriage was over.

The Mitchell Avenue house was spacious enough. It was a large, two-story house on a residential street. There were only seven homes on the block, with neighbors ranging from an Aunt Jemima Mills employee, a carpenter, and a contractor, to a chauffeur and the deputy county treasurer. Residents had their choice of grocers and were within walking distance of an auto repair shop, a lumber and coal company, a doctor, an engine house, and Barlett Park with its distinctive pavilion. This was small-town America, not much different from the rotogravure Indianapolis of Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen.

For Gladys, the problem was not St. Joseph, it was living in a house with her husband’s parents and sisters—a house in which she felt like an intruder. Gladys’s father-in-law, Pulaski Mayfield, then in his sixties, had held positions in various mercantile companies. Unlike his own father, Manning finished high school at St. Joseph Central and spent his brief life working for the railroad. Gladys, a former secretary, was a homemaker—except that she was in her in-laws’ home when she gave birth to her and Manning’s only child. Sarah Jane, the future Jane Wyman, was born on 5 January 1917, less than eight months after her parents’ marriage.

Sarah Jane was either premature or the result of premarital sex. If the latter—given his short-lived marriage—Manning may have had second thoughts about doing the honorable thing. Gladys, for her part, may have wondered about ever becoming involved with Manning in the first place.

Names had special significance for the Mayfields, who were originally Southerners. Pulaski was born in Georgia; his father, Manning, in Alabama. Jane’s birth father, Manning Jeffries Mayfield, was given his grandfather’s first name, Manning, and Jeffries, his mother’s maiden name. Mayfield’s sister and grandmother were both christened Sarah. His great-great-great-grandmother was named Jane. The idea of inclusion seemed alien to the Mayfields. That Gladys was not consulted about her own daughter’s name may also have contributed to the brevity of her marriage to Manning. But there were other reasons, too. In addition to Gladys’s sense of being an outsider, Manning seemed indifferent to fatherhood and was more devoted to his job than to his wife and daughter. Gladys realized that their marriage was based more on expediency than love—particularly if conception occurred prior to marriage. But once Gladys gave birth, expediency was no longer an issue.

The marriage ended in 1920, followed by divorce a year later. In 1920, Manning Jeffries Mayfield left St. Joseph to become secretary of the shipping company, the Southern Pacific Westbound Conference. He had no qualms about relocating in California, eventually settling in San Francisco, where he died unexpectedly of pneumonia on 21 January 1922 at the age of twenty-seven. His body was shipped to St. Joseph, where he was buried on 28 January. Obituaries stated that Manning was unmarried, mentioning only his parents and sisters as survivors.

Gladys may not have had a husband, but she did have a five-year-old daughter. However, Sarah Jane did not figure in Gladys’s plans, sketchy though they were. One thing, however, was certain: Gladys did not want the responsibility of taking care of a five-year-old. She put her daughter up for adoption. Mother and daughter may have reconnected in the summer of 1933, but for all practical purposes, Gladys had disappeared from Sarah Jane’s life, ending her days in New York, where she died in 1960 at sixty-five, outliving her former husband by almost forty years. Pulaski Mayfield outlived his son by seven.

Sarah Jane was adopted unofficially by Richard and Emma Fulks, both then in their sixties (Emma was sixty, Richard, sixty-five) and living at 1209 North 38th Street in a quiet, upper-middle class neighborhood that was a slight improvement over 3121 Mitchell Avenue. There were the usual businesses: grocers, tailor, cleaner, druggist, post office, gas station, and hospital. A block and a half away was Frederick Street, where trolleys ran downtown to the shopping district. Lake Contrary, with its amusement park, was accessible by trolley, as was Krug Park. It was the kind of neighborhood that was ideal for raising children, and, between them, the Fulkses had already raised four before Sarah Jane came into their lives.

Emma, born in Saarbrucken, Germany, had three children by her first marriage to Dr. Morris F. Weyman: a son, also named Morris, and two daughters, Elsie and Mora. Richard Fulks, a widower, had a son, Ray, by a previous marriage. Emma was also on her second marriage, having divorced Weyman before emigrating from Germany. By 1922, when Sarah Jane joined the Fulks household, Morris and Elsie, then in their twenties, had already relocated in Los Angeles, where Morris followed in his father’s profession, specializing in eye and throat disorders. Ray, the oldest, had moved to Texas. Mora, twenty-two, was probably not living at home, but even if she were, she would not have been much of a companion to the five-year-old Sarah Jane.

The adoption was Emma’s idea. At sixty, with grown children, Emma yearned to experience motherhood again, however vicariously. She had no children by her second marriage, and, despite its idyllic location, 1209 North 38th Street, was a lonely place—in part because her husband did little to make Sarah Jane feel welcome.

Studio bios usually described Richard Fulks as a local politician—sometimes even a major one. Actually, he started as a law enforcement officer with the St. Joseph police force, graduated to chief detective, and resigned in 1909 at the age of forty-six. Seven years later, Fulks was elected county collector, a position he held until 1918. A picture of Fulks as chief detective reveals a dour, semi-bald man with a bushy moustache and the half-closed eyes of someone either bored or sleep-deprived. It was not a friendly face.

Emma was quite the opposite. She wanted the best for Sarah Jane. In 1923, she enrolled the little girl in the first grade at the Noyes School, which was within walking distance of the Fulks home. Emma was a devotee of the performing arts, particularly theatre and ballet. Since she never pursued her dream of becoming an actress, she prepared Sarah Jane for the profession that might have been hers, taking her downtown for plays and movies. It was the movies that captivated Sarah Jane. Emma, believing that dance lessons would not hurt, enrolled her at the Edward A. Prinz Dancing Academy, at Tenth and Robidoux, where Sarah Jane was introduced to a world that offered a refuge from everyday life—particularly school, which held little interest for her. But Emma had already determined Sarah Jane’s future.

According to Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Anne Edwards, Emma brought Sarah Jane to Los Angeles in 1922, presumably to visit her children—but, more importantly, to continue on to San Francisco, where she hoped to persuade Mayfield to legalize Sarah Jane’s adoption. There is no way of knowing when Emma and Sarah Jane left for the West Coast. Supposedly, they did so after Sarah Jane’s fifth birthday. But that was less than a week before Mayfield died.

What took precedence over a visit with her children was Emma’s obsession with making Sarah Jane into a star. If Baby Peggy could become a star at five, why not Sarah Jane? It was not to happen in 1922, but Emma tried again seven years later. In 1929, Baby Peggy’s reign was over; Shirley Temple was not even on the cusp of stardom; Richard Fulks was dead; and Sarah Jane was twelve. There might be a market for tweens who could dance and act. Perhaps this time it would work out. But it didn’t. Hollywood was not interested. To Emma, this rejection was a setback but not a defeat. Sarah Jane’s time would come in a few years—as it did. Meanwhile, it was back to St. Joseph, where she finished grade school and perhaps received a diploma from the Edward A. Prinz Dancing Academy.

Sarah Jane’s second exposure to Hollywood made her determined to succeed in the only profession that appealed to her. Prinz understood his student’s desire to excel. Once Emma learned that his son, LeRoy, was working in Hollywood as a choreographer, she and Sarah Jane headed for Los Angeles. LeRoy proved an invaluable contact. He managed to get Sarah Jane into the chorus of The Kid from Spain (1932), a Samuel Goldwyn production starring Eddie Cantor, with Jane as one of the Goldwyn Girls, the producer’s name for a chorus line that included future stars Betty Grable and Paulette Goddard. They were both older than Jane, but not by much—Goddard by six years, Grable by one. But none of this mattered. They were all Goldwyn, and eventually golden, girls.

Sarah Jane languished in extras’ limbo for four years until she finally received billing as Jane Wyman. Then she was fed into the star machine.

…

MYTH: Jane Wyman was born in 1914.

FACT: January 5, 1914 is often given as Sarah Jane’s birthday, but there is enough documentation at the Northwest Missouri Genealogical Society to prove that this date is off by three years. Anne Edwards, one of the first to solve the mystery of Jane’s birth, found it odd that Jane would add three years to her age, since subtraction is more common with movie stars. Once Sarah Jane Fulks became Jane Wyman, Jane and the studios may have preferred the earlier date, since it would have meant that she entered the movies at eighteen, rather than fifteen, when she should have been in school. She was fifteen when she made her first (unbilled) appearance in The Kid from Spain (1932). By 1935, when she turned eighteen, she had been an extra in at least eight pictures.

MYTH: Emma envisioned Sarah Jane as the next Shirley Temple.

FACT: Hardly. In 1929, when Emma and Sarah Jane made their second trip to Los Angeles, Temple was one year old and Sarah Jane twelve.

MYTH: Sara Jane Fulks reinvented herself as Jane Durrell, an "itinerant radio singer," working the Middle West-South circuit and performing in such cities as Denver, Chicago, and New Orleans.

FACT: Jane had an attractive singing voice, as she revealed in such films as Kid Nightingale, Hollywood Canteen, Night and Day, Here Comes the Groom, Just for You, and Let’s Do It Again. After the Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of Nobody Lives Forever (17 November 1947), in which she costarred with her then husband Ronald Reagan, Jane admitted that she was no stranger to the microphone, having sung on local radio as a teenager, but not specifying where. Jane Durrell was a wise choice, evoking the image of a chanteuse rather than a kid in gingham.

MYTH: Jane’s mother was an actress, who appeared under the surname Pechelle in Paris.

FACT: The press kit for The Kid from Kokomo (1939) contained more than the usual amount of fabrication, as did the kit for Torchy Plays with Dynamite (1939), which described Jane as part French, her mother having been an actress in Paris. Gladys Hope Christian was a doctor’s secretary who never set foot on a stage. The Kid from Kokomo press kit included a news release, She’s from Missouri, which had Jane playing soccer, tennis, basketball, and volleyball in school—and nicknamed Just Folks because of her real name, Sarah Jane Folks [sic].

MYTH: In summer 1933, Jane returned to St. Joseph and enrolled at the University of Missouri.

FACT: In summer 1933, Jane did return to St. Joseph, where she "shared a house on 913 North Second Street with Mrs. Gladys H. and Myrtle Johnson." Actually, it was the home of Gladys and Myrle Johnson, and the address was 913 1/2 North Second Street, which was owned by a bookkeeper, Charles Hauck. North Second Street was not that different from the other places Jane had lived, except that it was more working class, a mix of residences and businesses such as milling, packing, and glassworks. It was a neighborhood of accountants, salespersons, candy company workers, carpenters, teamsters, and grocers—the simple folk with whom Jane had lost touch.

The Johnsons seem to have been husband and wife, although they were not married in Buchanan Country. Most likely, Gladys H. was Gladys Hope Christian, Jane’s birth mother—which would explain Jane’s decision to spend the summer at the Johnson home. It is tempting to invoke the Stella Dallas/White Banners/To Each His Own syndrome: birth mother desiring some contact, even visual, with child—or the reverse: child seeking contact with birth mother either physically (Our Very Own) or preternaturally (The Uninvited). But at sixteen, Jane was hardly a romantic. It is one thing to visit Hollywood, another to work there as a bit player along with countless others dreaming of stardom. Jane needed time to reflect, and Hollywood was no place for introspection. Perhaps she believed St. Joseph held the answers for personal roots, personal happiness, [and] the right man. But it didn’t, and Jane returned to Los Angeles and the only life she knew: that of an extra.

There is no record of Jane having studied at the University of Missouri. Given her antipathy to the classroom, it is hard to imagine her embracing higher ed.

MYTH: While Sarah Jane Fulks (not yet Jane Wyman) was lunching at Sardi’s with the wife of character actor Vince Barnett, William Demarest, "then in the agency business," joined them. Convinced that she had movie potential, Demarest handed her his card, offering to represent her.

FACT: The venerable Sardi’s is on West 44th Street in the heart of New York’s theatre district. Sarah Jane in New York at the age of seventeen or eighteen and lunching at Sardi’s?

It is true that William Demarest had been an agent, but he had also worked in the theatre, coming to Hollywood in 1926 when the silent era was waning, and the following year appearing in ten Warner Bros. releases, the most important of which was The Jazz Singer (1927). Demarest took time off to appear on Broadway in Earl Carroll’s Vanities, which ended an eight-month run in April 1932. When The Kid from Spain was released that November, he was back in Hollywood, where Sarah Jane Fulks was adjusting to the lot of the unbilled. Since she was shuttling from one film to another, it is hard to imagine her having the time or money to visit New York.

Demarest was, however, instrumental in Jane Wyman’s career. He was then represented by a minor agency, Small and Landow, at 8272 Sunset Boulevard. Through some fast talking (at which he excelled), Demarest convinced the agency to take on Jane. Jane received billing in Smart Blonde (1936). The part was inconsequential, but she made the credits. Small and Landow was just the beginning. Soon Jane would switch to a more powerful agency.

LeRoy Prinz, a St. Joseph native like Jane and a friend of Demarest, was equally instrumental. In 1929, Prinz choreographed Earl Carroll’s Sketch Book (1929), which enjoyed a run of 392 performances, and in which Demarest appeared as a member of the ensemble. That same year, Prinz made his film debut as the choreographer for Paramount’s Innocents of Paris.

Prinz found Jane work as an extra in Paramount’s All the King’s Horses and College Rhythm (both 1934), which he choreographed. She appeared as a chorine in a number of films, two of which were Warner Bros. releases, Gold Diggers of 1933 and Cain and Mabel (1936). Warners seemed the perfect studio for Jane: Demarest had connections there, and Prinz was a rising choreographer. Knowing that a Warners contract was a distinct possibility, Jane affected the look—or what she thought was the look—of a movie star: not too flashy, but with eyelashes applied individually to add a touch of glamour meant for close-ups. There was a method to her madness: She did not have to remove her eyelashes at night. Demarest and Prinz prescribed a less theatrical look, and Warners signed her up on 6 May 1936 at a salary of sixty-five dollars a week. Initially, Jane Wyman was another Hollywood brunette who could easily go blonde. But she was not star material, not in 1936. Yet in the coming years, Jane Wyman, in the words of the powerful gossip columnist Louella Parsons, blossomed into a charming, sophisticated woman. Charming the studios understood, sophisticated, they did not.

MYTH OR FACT? Wyman derives from Jane’s short-lived marriage to Eugene Wyman, whom she met at Los Angeles High School in the early 1930s.

FACT: Once she was hired as a contract player at Warners, her name became Jane Wyman, which she herself may have suggested. Marriage gave her the surname by which she will always be known.

Her marriage to Eugene Wyman was neither a myth nor a secret. Reliable Hollywood insiders, including Ruth Waterbury, who wrote for Photoplay, the most popular of the fan magazines, insisted the marriage was fact. Others have noted the similarity between the names of Jane’s stepbrother, Dr. Morris Weyman, and Eugene Wyman. The similarity, however, is purely coincidental. Each man had his own identity. Eugene was the son of Ernest F. and Mayme L. Wyman. His mother died in May 1933 at fifty-six; his father died on 28 October 1938 at sixty-one. The latter date is significant.

At the time of Ernest’s death, Jane was on loan to Twentieth-Century Fox for Tail Spin (1939), a film about women flyers in which she had a minor role. Tail Spin began shooting in October 1938. After Ernest’s death, Fox issued a press release stating that "in the tradition of the theatre that the show must go one, blonde Jane Wyman reported for work yesterday morning on the set of Tail Spin at 20th Century-Fox while funeral arrangements were being completed for her father at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, and that in spite of her personal tragedy and in a state of near collapse," the magnanimous Jane did not want to deprive the extras of a day’s wages.

The press release was churned out of the star machine. Ernest was not Jane’s father, but Eugene’s. Ernest Wyman, a Los Angeles native and sales manager at Ducommun, an aerospace company with several locations in Southern California, died suddenly of pneumonia. At least the burial site is correct. The Wymans—Ernest, his wife, and son—are interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Glendale, in lot 246 of the Vesperland section. Jane and Eugene were indeed married, presumably on 8 April 1933. Wherever they met, it was not at Los Angeles High School, where, if Jane ever was a student, she was probably enrolled under the name of Sarah Jane Fulks. (Attempts to verify name and dates of attendance proved fruitless.) When Eugene died in November 1970 at sixty-four, he was eleven years older than Jane; in April 1933, he would have been twenty-seven, while she was sixteen. Jane may have attended Los Angeles High School for a short time, but given that she began working as an extra in 1932, explaining how she ever could have graduated requires the imagination of a novelist—or what in Hollywood passes for one, a studio publicist. Jane could, understandably, have been attracted to an older man like Wyman, perhaps because he served as a father figure—or at least someone who could alleviate the burden of having to go it alone in a business where competition for secondary roles was as intense as campaigning for leads. Stars had to worry about maintaining their places in the firmament; the others had to fight to get there.

The news release was an attempt to generate advance publicity for Tail Spin, Darryl F. Zanuck’s title, changed from the alliterative Women with Wings. Since Jane had an insignificant role in a forgettable movie, the publicity—such as it was—did nothing for her or for Tail Spin, which opened to tepid reviews.

Jane Wyman’s early life is a skein of fact and speculation, an enigma within a matrix of mysteries—some admitting of clarification, others enshrouded in darkness. Jane disclosed only what she wanted known. If the star machine mythologized her otherwise mundane life, why take out the blue pencil? At the end of John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a newspaper editor refuses to print the truth about the title character, delivering instead the director’s credo: This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. The star machine had been doing that long before 1962, although no one in the business would have expressed this practice so epigrammatically.

Chapter 2

The Name below the Title

THE 1932–36 MOVIES IN WHICH JANE APPEARED FLEETINGLY VARIED IN quality, but they at least paid the rent for her South Normandie apartment. For her uncredited role in My Man Godfrey (1936), Jane received either twenty-five dollars a day for three days if she was a bit woman, or fifteen dollars a day for one to three days if she was a dress extra. Jane was probably the latter. She could have appeared in any or all of the four crowd scenes in the film: the scavenger hunt party, a cocktail party at the Bullocks’ mansion, a cocktail lounge, or the nightclub known as The Dump on the site of a former Hooverville. For Cain and Mabel, there were three categories of girls. If Jane was one of the thirty-two in the Coney Island Number, the pay was fifty dollars a week; if she was one of the forty in 1000 Love Songs, it was either fifty dollars a week for four weeks, or fifty dollars for one week. For additional income, Jane resorted to modeling, which taught her poise and helped rid her of self consciousness.

Until Jane was signed by Warners, she was the chorus girl or the extra without a close up, working at various studios and waiting for her big break. But at least she was in some prestigious movies, like Fox’s King of Burlesque (1936), in which a successful burlesque producer becomes infatuated with a socialite who persuades him to go legit. The result is a fiasco, prompting him to leave his trophy wife, return to his roots, and resume his former career with his star and true love. Fox, which excelled at recycling, refitted the plot for Nob Hill (1945), in which a Barbary Coast impresario is seduced into branching out into opera.

Although King of Burlesque had a stellar cast (Warner Baxter as the producer, Alice Faye as his star, Jack Oakie as his sidekick, Mona Barrie as the socialite), director Sidney Lanfield was no Busby Berkeley. Lanfield’s camera never panned the ladies of the chorus so as to permit the viewer to make out their faces. One can only speculate as to which numbers Jane appeared in—probably the early ones, Alabama Bound and Whose Big Baby Are You?, but not the one that only required an extra to soar over the audience on a swing, looking perfectly composed. Jane had no intention of being another girl on a red velvet swing.

Billing came with Smart Blonde (1936), the first of the nine-part Torchy Blane series, most of which starred Glenda Farrell as the reporter sleuth. The series was Warners’ attempt to cash in on the private citizen-as-private-eye movie, the most famous of which was MGM’s The Thin Man (1934). Warners’ approach was the reverse of MGM’s: Instead of a married couple like Nick and Nora Charles, there was Torchy Blane and her lieutenant detective (played in all but two films by the blustery Barton MacLane). She had the brains, he had the badge.

The inspiration for Torchy Blane was Kennedy (no first name), a hard-drinking reporter in the MacBride and Kennedy stories by Black Mask writer Frederick Nebel. Warners changed Kennedy’s gender, but kept MacBride—minus the a. In Smart Blonde, Jane, billed eighth, was Dixie, a hat check girl, and appeared in three scenes, only one of which indicated she had a flair for comedy. After a wild party, Dixie is lolling around in bed with an ice pack on her head and a St. Bernard at her feet. When she cannot remember how she wound up with the dog, Torchy reminds her that St. Bernards are rescue dogs that carry small barrels of whiskey around their necks. Jane did not go unnoticed. The Variety reviewer (18 November 1936) was impressed: Jane Wyman is particularly vivid in a sparkling comedy role. Warners must have thought so, too. Her name appeared in 40 percent size type in the credits.

As a contract player, Jane learned that the supporting cast was aptly named. She provided support wherever she was needed, appearing in seven films in 1937, six in 1938, five in 1939. Although the roles varied—some were better (and bigger) than others—she faced the dilemma that confronted every contract player: how to convince audiences that her character was important, even if she was scurrying from one set to another, mastering lines on the run, and entrusting coherence to the director and editor.

After Smart Blonde, Jane was pegged as a light comedienne—sassy, fast-talking, quick-witted, but unsophisticated, non-drawing room, dumb when necessary, but always the reliable good sport or gal pal who pays her own way. Jane was a mere nineteen when she made Public Wedding (1937), which revealed an actress who had mastered the art of rapid-fire line readings that muted the witless dialogue. Jane did not so much toss off the lines as discard them like soiled linen—and fast enough to keep anyone from seeing the stains. After Flip (Jane) and a struggling artist (William Hopper, son of actress-columnist Hedda Hopper) agreed to pose as a young couple for a publicity stunt, they expected to go their respective ways. Then they learn that a real justice of the peace officiated at the ceremony. The marriage triggers a series of adventures, partly engineered by Flip, who turns the artist into a society painter until her con man stepfather attempts another scam that nearly gets all of them thrown in jail. Flip comes to the rescue, shooting off her lines like bullets, saving everyone’s skin (including her own), and rewarding the audience with a happy ending.

This was the kind of farce that Jane could handle. Four years of extra work made wisecracks and sassiness natural. Occasionally, Jane would have a chance to display her brassy side, which as she knew was only one facet of her persona. Like so many comics, Jane wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, but this reevaluation would not take place until the middle of the next decade.

Jane also learned that the movie business did not observe the traditional working day. Despite her billing, the Mr. Dodd Takes the Air shoot, which lasted from 26 April–5 June 1937, required Jane to be at the studio for twelve days:

• 1 May, 9:00 a.m.–5:25 p.m.

• 3 May, 9:00 a.m.–6:25 p.m.

• 4 May, 9:00 a.m.–6:03 p.m.

• 5 May, 9:00 a.m.–6:30 p.m.

• 6 May, 10:00 a.m.–8:20 p.m.

• 21 May, 9:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

• 24 May, 7:00 p.m.–9:10 p.m.

• 27 May, 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

• 28 May, 9:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.

• 2 June, 9:00 a.m.–6:05 p.m.

• 3 June, 10:00 a.m.–6:20 p.m.

• 4 June, 9:00 a.m.–3:45 p.m.

It made no difference that she only had to be on the set for a few scenes. The schedule went with the job.

This schedule also resulted in her hospitalization. JANE WYMAN HOSPITALIZED FOR NERVOUS BREAKDOWN read a Variety headline (23 June 1937) that was printed on page sixty-seven. Clearly a starlet’s breakdown was not front-page news. Jane’s was more of a nervous collapse resulting from a schedule that had her going from one movie to another, something she had never experienced when she was an extra. Her condition was not serious. In less than a week, Jane was ready to say I do to Myron Futterman in New Orleans on 29 June.

Two of Jane’s 1937 films have some significance: Ready, Willing and Able and Mr. Dodd Takes the Air. The former was a Ruby Keeler vehicle, memorable if only for the Johnny Mercer-Richard Whiting classic Too Marvelous for Words, and Keeler’s dancing on typewriter keys. Jane was ignored in the publicity material and the studio’s campaign plan, as indicated by the print size in which her name appeared (20 percent as opposed to Keeler’s 80) and her billing (eighth). In the latter, Jane was billed fifth, despite her plot-resolving role. The star was Kenny Baker, whom Warners was grooming as Dick Powell’s successor. Powell’s career as a crooner was waning, and Baker had the kind of crystalline voice that used to be called dulcet or honeyed. You could experience synesthesia, tasting and hearing his rendition of Al Dubin and Harry Warren’s Here Comes the Sandman, which could put the most heavily caffeinated moviegoer to sleep. Baker played a small-town electrician whose voice brought him to New York and a short-lived radio career. His invention of a device to improve radio transmission makes him prey for swindlers, who would have succeeded had it not been for Jane’s quick thinking. Baker and Jane were the reasons the film worked, even though they were nearly blown away by Alice Brady’s whirlwind of a performance as a self-dramatizing opera diva. The couple—Baker with his small-town wholesomeness, and Jane with her merrymaking eyes—looked as if original sin had passed them by. Her eyes could register other emotions, but until she went dramatic, all she had to do was get them to sparkle.

Mervyn LeRoy directed both Mr. Dodd and The King and the Chorus Girl (also 1937), in which Jane was another chorine, this time a member of the Follies Bergère. In his notoriously flawed autobiography, LeRoy takes credit for Jane’s stardom, claiming that one day he spotted her on the Warners lot in a yellow polo coat. Sensing a star in the making, he cast her in Elmer the Great (1933) with Joe E. Brown: "She did a beautiful job and her career was launched." Not really. Hers was a bit part that went uncredited. Strangely, LeRoy does not mention Mr. Dodd Takes the Air.

The Singing Marine (1937) was the companion piece to Mr. Dodd. The title character is an Arkansas marine (Dick Powell), whose sudden fame as a radio singer turns him into an insufferable snob. The entire cast, including Jane (eleventh billed in a superfluous role), was eclipsed by the brilliant harmonica solos of Larry Adler. In Slim (1937), which starred Henry Fonda and Margaret Lindsay, Jane’s character didn’t have a name, only Stumpty’s Girl. Still, her name was in 40 percent size print.

Although Jane was first billed in Public Wedding, this honor occurred only because she had no competition; by then, she was better known than her leading man, William Hopper. Public Wedding was a brainless farce. Still, it made Jane realize that she could land a lead—even if it was in a B movie. At least she was half way up the pyramid.

Hers was not an unbroken ascent. There was no rubric at Warners for the billing of contract players, no vertical progression from unbilled to billed, from B movie to A movie, from name below the title to name above it. The year 1937 was characteristic: Jane appeared in seven movies, with star billing in one, but fifth—and lower—billing in the others. Jane had no guarantee 1938 would be any better, but she could at least adjust to the routine. She knew that Kenny Baker had failed to live up to the studio’s expectations, although he fared better on radio (The Jack Benny Program and The Texaco Star Theater) and played opposite Mary Martin on Broadway in the Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash musical, One Touch of Venus (1943). He at least had radio and the theatre, neither of which held any appeal for Jane. Movies were her medium.

But she also was familiar with the Hollywood revolving door scenario. Scene 1: Studio head reacting to news about X. Who is X? Scene 2: Bring me X. Scene 3: Bring me the new X. Scene 4: Who is X? Or in short, "You’re only as