Nicholson’s revenge for my indifference to his political acumen was to answer each of my subsequent questions with just a “yes” or a “no.”
My resulting interview with Nicholson which was headlined “In the Lair of the Cagey Iconoclast” was horrible with a big “H,” but at least it got printed. However, my interview with Nancy Reagan – which I did in January, 1980 after her autobiographical book “My Turn” came out – was so bad that it couldn’t even get it printed. I botched this interview in the same way that I destroyed my conversation with Nicholson. In both cases, I said something at the very outset that shut down their trust for me the whole rest of our meeting.
When you are a celebrity journalist, you learn down the road that celebrities are a little like domestic animals. If you don’t earn their trust, they will not show their good side to you. So doing an interview with a celebrity is like stroking the head of a dog or a horse before you ask them to do something. But with a celebrity, it isn’t physical stroking that you do. You use the flattery they are used to in your introductory remarks and stroke, stroke, stroke until they are comfortable with you.
To be nervous – or even to pretend to be nervous – is also helpful, as the typical celebrity will accept your nervousness as a form of homage.
What happened then was really dumb
My mistake with Nancy Reagan is that immediately I got her mixed up with Dale Evans, the wife of Roy Rogers. I think that one of my problems was mixing up Roy Rogers with Ronald Reagan. After all, both men initially made their alliterative names famous by getting in front of movie cameras in cowboy outfits, and they both chased after the bad guys in black hats. Also, both Mr. Rogers and Mr. Reagan were inseparable with their wives.
What was even more confusing was that I had received a review copy of the autobiography of Dale Evans at the same time that I had received Nancy Reagan’s book. I then got the books of Nancy Reagan and Dale Evans all mixed up in my head.
The strongest idea I gleaned from the book by Dale Evans was that she felt on the rebound of a divorce when she met Roy Rogers. So believe it for not, the first thing I asked Nancy Reagan was how long it takes for a rebound from a divorce to take its course.
“I was never divorced,” she told me, shaking her head.
It was very different for her to speak with me in complete sentences after that. In fact, I think the strongest sentence I gathered from her for my story was “I was never divorced.”
So the interview went downhill after she uttered the word “divorced.” The only way I had earned the meeting in the first place was that I had written a rather average but harmless front-page interview with Ronald Reagan the year before. The piece was okay but it really didn’t discover anything about Reagan except his very arcane knowledge of economists.
Another reason I got this interview was that in 1980 Reagan had gotten off to a very slow start in that year’s presidential election. He had just been decisively defeated by George H. W. Bush in the Iowa Caucuses, and he really needed some press, even if it came from his wife’s book and me interviewing her.
But the relentless Reagan momentum soon took charge, and of course he was the president of the United States the next year. Reagan and his wife proved to be a true team in the White House, with the two of them collaborating on many important presidential decisions.
And when the day was over, that was what Ronnie and Nancy were – a team of all teams.
So when Nancy registered that I couldn’t tell the difference between her and Dale Evans, she started talking to me like Jack Nicholson, but even less. Instead of saying “yes” and “no,” she shook or nodded her head.
In desperation, I brought out the latest big news I had heard about Mrs. Reagan. She had recently admitted in another interview that she carried a “little gun” to protect herself.
“How about that gun you said you carried?” I asked her, smiling. “Can I see it?”
She finally spoke to change the subject. “New York is so beautiful in the winter time,” she said. I think this was the second complete-sentence quote she allowed me.
She stepped up to her hotel suite window to look at the city from several floors high.
“Yes, the city is beautiful now,” stepping up to her.
We both stood for a minute to look at wintery Manhattan. It may have even been two minutes, while I could feel the rim of her bouffant on my ear. I felt that in a non-verbal way she was now trying to say she had no reason to dislike me. She just didn’t feel safe about telling me anything.
Nancy Reagan was born July 6, 1921 in New York City. She had a good, Ivy League style education and in 1943 graduated from Smith College — the same school that graduated Barbara Bush and Sylvia Plath — majoring in English and Drama. Then she enjoyed a successful career in Hollywood as a starring actress in several movies before she married Screen Actor Guild President Ronald Reagan in 1952.
Happy Birthday, Mrs. Reagan.
Chris Sharp- Commentary
Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. He has recently published a new book titled “Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California.” His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.