Nancy Davis Reagan is one of four former First Ladies of the United States who lived in Illinois for more than ten years. The other three were Mary Todd Lincoln, Julia Dent Grant, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Betty Ford was born in Chicago in 1918 but she was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Nancy Davis Reagan was born on July 6, 1921 in New York. Her actual birth name was Anne Francis Robbins but her mother gave her the nick name of Nancy. Nancy's mother was an actress, Edith Luckett, who was married at the time to Kenneth Robbins, a shoe salesman and World War I veteran from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. One of Edith's closest friends and Nancy's godmother was the flamboyant Russian-born silent film star Alla Nazimova. Alla had studied under the Russian producer Konstantin Stanislavsky who invented the Stanislavsky method of acting. Edith Luckett also made three silent films listed here.
Edith's husband Kenneth Robbins had great difficulty keeping a job or making enough money to support Edith even before Nancy was born. Robbins returned to Massachusetts while Edith and Nancy stayed in New York and the couple divorced in 1922.
To make money, Edith had to go on the road as an actress once again with touring companies. Edith took Nancy to live with her sister Virginia Galbraith in Bethesda, Maryland for most of the next six years. Nancy was well cared for by the Galbraith family but she later recalled that this early time in her childhood was a period of very painful separation from her mother. Nancy had only short visits over the next few years with her mother who lived much of each year in residential hotels while on the road with touring companies.
In 1928, Edith met a successful and rich Chicago neurosurgeon, Dr. Loyal Davis, during a cruise to England where Davis was attending a medical convention. Nancy finished her school year in Maryland and at age 7 was her mother's only bridesmaid when Edith married Dr. Davis in Chicago on May 21, 1929. Nancy and Edith moved into his home on Lake Shore Drive.
Dr. Davis, who also had a son from a previous marriage, formally adopted Nancy when she was 14 and she then legally changed her name to Nancy Davis. Nancy was enrolled in the elite Girl's Latin School of Chicago which was then located in the exclusive Gold Coast neighborhood. Founded in 1888, The Latin School was one of the top private elementary, middle, and high schools in the nation. The Girls Latin School merged with the Boys Latin School in 1953 to be called The Latin School of Chicago.
In contrast to her hard times as a very young child in the 1920s when America was prosperous, Nancy now enjoyed a life of privilege as a future debutante when most of the country was going through the Depression. For Nancy, the 1930s were a happy time filled with friends at school, tennis, summer camp, swimming parties, dances, and the upscale Chicago social scene. Nancy graduated from the high school division of Girls Latin in 1939 and enrolled at Smith College, a private liberal arts college for women in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Nancy majored in theater and became a professional actress soon after her graduation in from Smith in 1943. After a few years of stage work, Nancy was signed to a contract with MGM in 1949. About this time, her mother and Dr. Davis moved to a home in Arizona. Nancy had supporting roles in films such as East Side, West Side (1949), Shadow on the Wall (1950), and starred in The Next Voice You Hear (1950). For a complete list of the films and TV shows of Nancy Davis Reagan, click here for the Nancy Davis page on the Internet Movie Database.
In 1951, Nancy's name appeared in a political ad in the Hollywood Reporter without her permission. She was very concerned about the possibility that she might be confused with another actress also with the name of Nancy Davis who may or may not have had some Communist affiliations at a time when Hollywood was under scrutiny from Congress for alleged subversive networks among writers, directors, and actors.
Nancy took her concerns and a correct chronology of her life to the President of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan. Reagan had been divorced a few years before and it was the first time he met Nancy. They had never met when both lived in different parts of Illinois. Reagan helped Nancy sort out whatever SAG records were causing her professional name confusion.
Ronald and Nancy started to date and the couple married on March 4, 1952 in a small ceremony near Los Angeles in the Little Brown Church in the Valley. Ronald's close friend actor William Holden was the Best Man. Nancy was 30 and Ronald was 41 at the time of their wedding. Nancy continued to act under the name Nacy Davis in movies and TV roles until her last part in 1962 on the TV series Wagon Train. The Reagans had two children during their marriage, Patty Davis Reagan born in 1952 and Ron Reagan, Jr. born in 1958.
After 1962, Nancy retired from acting to play the then traditional "role" of mother and wife to Ronald Reagan and seemed to embrace that part. She became First Lady of California in 1967 and First Lady of the United States in 1981.
The rest of her public life is well known. She earned the admiration of many people for her stoic care of her husband in his declining years with Alzheimer's Disease from 1995 to 2004. She had one more important part to play in the public ceremonies surrounding her husband's funeral in June 2004 and most people think she conducted herself on that occasion with grace and style. Mrs. Reagan is now 85 and continues to live in California.
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