Jane Wyman & Ronald Reagan

Jane Wyman and Ronald Reagan were married in January 1940, not yet two weeks following the theatrical release of their second film together Brother Rat and Baby. They play sweethearts and are reprising the roles they perform in the original Brother Rat (1938). By the end of 1940, theater audiences saw this duo play themselves as husband and wife and/or sweethearts in three other productions: 1) the short Alice in Movieland, in which they make cameo appearances as themselves; 2) the third and final installment of the Brother Rat series, An Angel from Texas; 3) and another sequel (this time to the Tugboat Annie franchise) Tugboat Annie Sails Again. Not until 1949 do they again (and for the last time) appear in a theatrical release. They portray, only briefly and separately, themselves in It’s a Great Feeling. In the year prior to the release of this movie, they had divorced. Ms. Wyman’s film career was on the ascendance, she having just won the Academy Award for her portrayal of Belinda McDonald in the 1948 Johnny Belinda. Mr. Reagan’s career (in the movies, that is) was at this point on the wane.

It is perhaps mistaken to claim that only a movie first brought these two together and, as Ronald Reagan is famously (and perhaps apocryphally) quoted, it was at last a movie that caused their divorce (a reference to the loss of a daughter in 1947 in tandem with Ms. Wyman’s moving portrayal in Johnny Belinda of a mother feeling quite irreconcilable to the prospect of losing a child). But there can be no mistaking that it is a movie or, more accurately, movies that forever keep this charming and endearing couple together.