Nancy Reagan, former first lady, who as an aspiring actress married leading man Ronald Reagan, and then offered her support and Hollywood style as his political career took them to the White House, has died. She was 94.
A family spokesperson told CBS that Reagan died Sunday in her Los Angeles home of congestive heart failure.
Reagan had a reputation as her husband’s greatest protector, in both publicity or public policy, but she won admiration as she took on the role of caregiver as he faced the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in the last 10 years of his life.
“I don’t think he would’ve gotten to where he got to without her,” son Ron Reagan told an interviewer in 2008. “Because I think she has more ambition than he does. I think if left to his own devices, he might’ve ended up hosting ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ on TV or something … I think that she saw in him the stuff that could be president, and she kept pushing.”
They did in 1952, and she gave birth to a daughter, Patricia (Patti), later that year and six years later to a son, Ron. She continued acting, as her husband’s career declined, and they “needed the money.”
She took a part in the low-budget “Donovan’s Brain,” “Crash Landing” and “Hellcats of the Navy,” in which she appeared with her husband.
By 1957, Ronald Reagan had taken on a lucrative gig as celebrity spokesman for General Electric and host of its weekly “G.E. True Theater,” in which he occasionally acted with Nancy. This turn would form the basis for his future political career.
Although Reagan had initially resisted running for office, he changed his mind after his GE experience required him to interact with the public.
Having switched party affiliation in the early 1960s, Reagan campaigned for Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid, and the actor made a mark with a nationally televised address for the candidate before the election. It set the stage for Reagan’s California gubernatorial bid in 1966, and Nancy agreed to trek across the state as a surrogate and grew accustomed to the idea of being a political spouse.
In Sacramento, facing criticism of her husband, especially during the student protests of the late 1960s, proved jarring for Nancy. Later, she recalled that when a negative story was written, she would take a bath and hold imaginary conversations with his critics.
Though Nancy often said her influence was overblown, she did remark that she made “no apologies for telling Ronnie what I thought,” and the press began to see her as her husband’s “chief protector.”
That was apparent by the time that Reagan entered presidential politics, first waging a campaign in 1968 to snag the GOP nomination over Richard Nixon, and then in 1976, when he led a conservative revolt that meant to defeat incumbent President Gerald Ford. Nancy Reagan gave him her full support, serving as a check on the campaign staff as they put him on a rigorous schedule. Her influence grew by the time he ran again in 1980, and she helped arrange meetings to try to deal with staff infighting, including on the day of the New Hampshire primary when campaign manager John Sears resigned. Later, as her husband secured the nomination and was weighing vice presidential, she told her husband that the idea of a “dream ticket” with Ford in the No. 2 spot “just won’t work.”
The joy of her husband’s landslide victory in 1980, followed by the exuberance of the inauguration.vvThe press almost immediately focused on her move to restore pomp to the White House, and she even wrote later that on her first visit she found it “run-down and a bit shabby.” Before she even moved in, rumors flew that she wanted the Carters to move out early for renovations, something she steadfastly denied. But her efforts to restore the White House and buy expensive new china, plus her expensive clothes, earned her negative press as the nation slid into recession. Although many of her efforts to upgrade the Executive Mansion were funded with private donations, the image stuck.
In her autobiography, published in 1989, she acknowledged that she “served as a lightning rod,” and that something about her “just seemed to rub them the wrong way.” She recounted meeting Robert Strauss, a Democratic party elder statesman, who told her, “When you first came to town, Nancy, I didn’t like you at all. But after I got to know you, I changed my mind and said, ‘She’s some broad!’” She replied, “Bob, based on the press reports I read then, I wouldn’t have liked me either.”
The strength she showed during two traumatic points in her husband’s presidency, first when he survived an assassination attempt early in his term, and later after he had cancer surgery to remove a mass from his colon, softened her image. She had a health scare in 1987, when doctors discovered she had breast cancer and she opted for a mastectomy.
More than many other first ladies, Nancy had success in getting one of her signature concerns into the cultural discourse. Her anti-drug campaign Just Say No was somewhat kitschy in a culture of cool, but the catchphrase stuck as she tapped into pop culture to promote her initiative; she even did a cameo on the popular sitcom “Diff’rent Strokes” and in a rock video. She became the first first lady invited to address the U.N. General Assembly when she addressed the forum on drug trafficking in 1988.
Reagan defended her husband’s policies. Most famously, when Raisa Gorbachev visited the White House in 1987 and launched into lectures on Soviet policy, Nancy remarked, “Who does that dame think she is?”
As Soviet-American relations thawed toward the end of her husband’s term, with a type of diplomacy that Nancy encouraged, she was at the center of snother controversy. As the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in 1987, she sparred with White House chief of staff Donald Regan and encouraged her husband to fire him. Regan was forced to resign but returned the favor by writing a 1988 memoir in which he revealed that Nancy relied on astrologer to determine the president’s schedule. Nancy said that Regan’s account was overblown, but it was enough to create a sensation.
Nancy Reagan was born Anne Frances Robbins to an actress mother, Edith Luckett, who had been separated from her father, a car salesman; she was nicknamed Nancy from an early age). Show business was a big part of her childhood, as she lived with her aunt and uncle as her mother traveled the country. Even though she was separated from her mother, years later she wrote that her fondest memories were of seeing her mother perform, and meeting Spencer Tracy.
She pursued an acting career after college, landing parts in a tour of “Ramshackle Inn” and later a Broadway musical, “Lute Song.” A screen test led to a seven-year contract with MGM, with a minor role in “The Doctor and the Girl” in 1949. Her parts soon expanded, including 1951’s “Night Into Morning,” in which she co-starred with Ray Milland. The studio released her from her contract in 1952, and though she starred in more movies and did TV guest roles in the 1950s, her main goal was the family. Her last role was on “Wagon Train” in 1962.
Ronald Reagan died in 2004, a decade after he revealed in a letter that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. By then, Nancy earned respect for her care-giving and for her strength as she directed her husband’s funeral.
Nancy Reagan is survived by children Ron and Patti, and Michael Reagan, a stepchild from Ronald Reagan’s marriage to Wyman. Another stepchild, Maureen Reagan, died in 2001.
