Let me open this piece with a confession. I probably should have headlined this story, “Just Say Yes? Did Nancy Reagan Give the Best Blow Job in Hollywood?”
Why?
Why what?
Why should I have headlined this story, “Just Say Yes? Did Nancy Reagan Give the Best Blow Job in Hollywood?”
Oh, right. Because I was unable to prove or disprove that the former First Lady of the United States [Note: FELLATUS? Or FLOTUS?], when known as Nancy Davis before marrying “Horndog” Ronald Reagan in 1952, gave the best blow jobs in Hollywood, as I was determined to do when this investigation started three days ago.
So why did I go with the headline above the story you’re reading? I’m not sure, to be honest. In part, it just felt right. Also, and this was possibly the key factor, I couldn’t figure out whether I needed a colon after “Just Say Yes?” Whatever the reason, it was not a sleazy “sex-for-clicks” scheme to drive up traffic to the WashingtonBabylon.com website.
Indeed, I embarked on this probe with the most serious reservations. Why? Because I knew some cynics might falsely accuse me of seeking to boost readership off the corpses of our nation’s beloved former HORNDOG and FELLATUS. [Note: Or FLOTUS? Confirm before publishing.] That was hardly the case, you’ll just have to trust me on that.
So what prompted this story? After all, both Reagans have been dead for decades [Note: Wow. Nancy only died in 2016, according to Wikipedia, and Ronald in 2004. It seems like decades ago anyway] and what possible evidence could I turn up in a couple of days before I would be compelled to publish my findings, if only for fear of being scooped?
Well, I had heard serious rumors that Nancy Reagan did indeed give the best blow jobs (BJs) in Hollywood years ago, when skimming through Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized biography of Nancy, born Anne Frances Robbins. Nancy, the book had alleged, “was renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex.” Furthermore, she was reportedly known to perform said oral sex “not only in the evening but in offices. That was one of the reasons that she was very popular on the MGM lot.”
“It must have made her very popular with Ronnie as well,” one commenter at datalounge.com, in discussing the book, astutely noted. To be sure, there were skeptics and haters who opined at the site as well. “Does anyone really believe that tight-assed Nancy Reagan was any good at oral sex?” asked one. “I would bet it is safer to say that she never even did it once.” Another added, “Nancy is one of those people I just don’t want to picture giving a bj.”
I also recalled that Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn had broached the topic some years back in a story at CounterPunch. “Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford, who frequently appeared on Ronald Reagan’s General Electric Theatre, wrote in his memoir that Nancy gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood,” the story said. On a side note, I must confess that I was deeply troubled by the snide, unkind remark about FELLATUS that followed: “It’s one of the most benign things you could say about the woman who saw herself as a kind of Catherine the Great for the American Imperium.”
My friend Doug Henwood added fuel to my investigative fire by informing me — on Facebook, where, along with Twitter, I announced this investigation yesterday — “I believe the original report of her excellence in BJs came from Peter Lawford’s memoir. My late friend John Liscio saw a copy of the galleys when he was at Barron’s and I got the intelligence from him. Then the book disappeared.” Well, I thought, “That’s seriously intriguing.”
Furthermore, and this is the key point in returning to the issue of what prompted this investigation in the first place, I had every reason to believe I could definitively answer the two questions in the should-have-been headline because on Sunday, my friend and colleague Daniel Brito loaned me a copy of Love Triangle: Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman & Nancy Davis (2014). This was clearly a trustworthy source because the authors, Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, had vouched for the book’s accuracy just inside the cover page.
True, the book’s front and backs covers didn’t promise to answer the two questions — indeed, there was no mention at all of Nancy’s reported skill in performing BJs — but the table of contents and chapter titles all but guaranteed answers.
So imagine my disappointment after perusing the book for a full 30 minutes and not coming across any relevant evidence. Still, the book was chock full of information I was previously unaware of. For example, I did not know that Ronald Reagan had been known as “a greater swordsman than Errol Flynn.” In fact, I hadn’t known he was a fencer at all. Nor had I known, and I confess I’m not sure who is being quoted here, that Nancy was “One of those girls whose phone numbers gets handed around a lot.”
And there was more. In the “Horndog” chapter, the authors reveal that Reagan had once starred in a “luridly titled” movie named “Girls on Probation.”
Further revelations came in the chapter that alleged that Nancy was “One of those girls whose phone numbers gets handed around a lot.”
For example, did you know that Nancy once had an affair with a man named Dr. Daniel Ruge — Rogue is more like it — and that one of Ruge’s friends once remarked, “I don’t think he was in love with her, but found her a reliable sex outlet. He was too much of a gentleman to go into clinical details, but he always came in with a smile on his face after a night out” with Nancy? Neither did I. But in any event, this unsubstantiated piece of gossip clearly suggests that if Nancy did not give the best BJs in Hollywood, she gave very good ones.
Nor did I know that Nancy had once dated Clark Gable, and that while other starlets “had complained about his bad breath, because of the false teeth he wore,” Nancy “had no complaints, and accepted his offer to be booked during every night of his stay in Manhattan.” I feel queasy about even saying this, but if Nancy didn’t gag at Clark’s bad breath, that would have steeled her to perform certain services relevant to this story. But that’s just cheap speculation and I won’t indulge in it.
In any case, I didn’t find any other direct evidence in the book that would help answer the questions posed in the should-have-been title to this story, but I can assure you that if I find any reason to write a follow-up to this piece — and I literally mean “any reason” — I will. So why don’t we just label this as “Part I of an ongoing series”?
