TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/042291/0422470.000

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                                                                                BOOKS, Page 64

COVER STORIES

The First Lady And the Slasher


A merciless new biography sparks a furious debate. Was Nancy
Reagan really a witch? And has author Kitty Kelley gone too
far?

By RICHARD ZOGLIN -- Reported by Ann Blackman/Washington, Wendy
Cole/New York and Edwin M. Reingold/Los Angeles


    Nancy Reagan watchers used to refer to it as "the gaze."
It was that look of rapt attention she fixed on people, a look
that implied the recipient was the most important person in the
world. Classmates at Smith College may have been the first to
notice it; she developed it further in Hollywood while wooing
Ronald Reagan. But the gaze became most famous during Nancy
Reagan's days in the White House: the frozen, doe-eyed stare of
adoration that the First Lady would fix on the President
whenever she watched him speak.

    The American public has lately become accustomed to
another sort of gaze: the all-embracing, unflinching stare of
the pop biographer. Unlike Nancy's, this gaze is without mercy
or letup. It can go on for hundreds of pages, unearthing
skeletons, resurrecting old grudges, exposing big faults and
magnifying little blemishes. Few can survive it with reputation
intact.

    That pitiless gaze was focused on Nancy Reagan last week
by Kitty Kelley, America's premier slash biographer. The
resulting furor caused even some die-hard Nancy haters to feel
a sympathetic twinge or two for the former First Lady. Nancy
Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography (Simon & Schuster) went on
sale across the nation just as newspapers and TV newscasts began
to revel in the book's most sensational allegations. Many
bookstores sold out their copies within hours. Aggrieved parties
cried foul, Johnny Carson made jokes and guardians of
journalistic integrity shook their heads. The New York Times,
which trumpeted the book's revelations in a long, uncritical
front-page piece on Sunday, sobered up three days later with a
condemning editorial. "Lightning rods have had it better than
Nancy Reagan," it said. ". . . But truly, nobody deserves this."

    In more than 600 pages the book digs up seemingly every
tawdry anecdote, unflattering recollection or catty comment ever
uttered about Nancy Reagan. The former First Lady was, in
Kelley's account, a cold and uncaring parent, a manipulative
social climber and an acquisitive arriviste -- who was
nonetheless so cheap that she would recycle old gifts and send
them to friends. In her Hollywood days, the book contends, Nancy
Davis got parts because she was sleeping with MGM's head of
casting. In Washington she was a ruthless Marie Antoinette who
was the real power behind the President. She rejected her
natural father, spied on her kids and lied about her age. In
short, she was the Wicked Witch of the West and East coasts.
"Believe it or not," says a fashion industry executive who
helped outfit Nancy in Adolfo clothes, "Leona Helmsley was
nicer."

    The image of the Reagans' wholesome, all-American marriage
takes a thorough beating. Before marrying Nancy, Kelley claims,
Reagan was one of Hollywood's busiest woman chasers; one former
starlet even claims Reagan forced himself on her one night in
her apartment. "They call it date rape today," the actress is
quoted as saying. When Reagan married Nancy in 1952, it was only
after his proposal to another actress, Christine Larson, had
been rejected. On the day Nancy was in the hospital giving birth
to daughter Patti, Kelley says, Reagan was at Christine's,
sobbing that his life was ruined. In perhaps the book's most
sensational allegation, Kelley asserts that Nancy had an
extramarital fling of her own: with Frank Sinatra, who used to
come up to the White House for private "lunches" -- winkingly
placed in quotes by Kelley -- that lasted three or more hours.

    The stories go on. When her grandmother died, a cousin
relates, Nancy pleaded that she couldn't help pay for a
gravestone, even though no one else in the family could afford
one. In the White House Nancy was such a perfectionist that she
could spend "an entire day deliberating on the amount of nutmeg
to be shaved into a chicken veloute sauce." Her much vaunted
anti-drug crusade, Kelley suggests, was little more than a
public relations ploy.

    And that's not all. Or maybe it's quite enough. The
portrait of Nancy Reagan in Kelley's book is so lavishly,
unrelentingly negative that it has set off a pair of fierce
debates. The first centers on the former First Lady herself.
Criticizing Nancy Reagan -- a First Lady America never really
warmed to -- has become something of a cottage industry, and
many of Kelley's charges merely reinforce and embellish those
in earlier memoirs such as For the Record: From Wall Street to
Washington by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan.
"Had people liked Nancy Reagan in the first place they wouldn't
be susceptible to all this dirt," says James Rosebush, the First
Lady's former chief of staff. The question is whether Kelley's
savage portrayal is gross overkill. Could Nancy Reagan -- could
anyone -- have been such a monster?

    But a growing part of the debate has focused on Kelley and
her research tactics. A former Washington Post researcher who
has written titillating bios of Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth
Taylor and Sinatra, Kelley claims more than 1,000 people were
interviewed for the book, and she flaunts a monstrous list of
"acknowledgments" of people she alleges helped her (many of whom
say they never spoke with her). But as readers inside and
outside the Washington Beltway pored over the book last week,
Kelley's journalistic methods were coming under sharp scrutiny.
Did she write a responsible work of journalism or a sleazy
hatchet job?

    Four years in the making, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized
Biography burst onto the scene after a deftly orchestrated
public relations buildup. Unlike most major books, which are
released to reviewers weeks or months in advance of publication,
Kelley's manuscript was carefully withheld from the press.
During editing, only five copies of the manuscript were printed;
each was numbered and kept track of at all times. Simon &
Schuster staff members even took copies home at night to guard
against leaks. One special reader got the book a month in
advance: cartoonist Garry Trudeau was allowed an early peek so
he could prepare a week's worth of Doonesbury strips to coincide
with the book's release.

    The crowds rushing to buy the book were bigger than anyone
could have anticipated. In one day the entire first printing of
600,000 had been shipped; by week's end 925,000 copies were in
print. Said Simon & Schuster publisher Jack McKeown:
"Booksellers are telling us it's the fastest-selling book
they've ever experienced." Enthused Matthew Goldberg,
merchandise manager for the Doubleday chain: "It's not only hot,
it's supernova hot."

    The reaction from the book's subjects has been just as
hot. Nancy Reagan has thus far refused any comment, though
friends described her as "profoundly upset" at Kelley's attack.
Ronald Reagan put out a statement seething with outrage: "The
flagrant and absurd falsehoods . . . clearly exceed the bounds
of decency." A phalanx of Reagan friends and former advisers
lashed out at the book, both in whole and in parts. Sheila Tate,
Nancy Reagan's former press secretary, charged that there are
20 factual errors in the passages involving her alone. She
described the purported Nancy Reagan-Frank Sinatra tryst in the
White House as "pure horse manure." Michael Reagan, Nancy's
stepson, also jumped to her defense. "Gossip is one thing, and
smut is another," he said. "This is smut."

    Even Barbara Bush, whose relations with Nancy Reagan have
been distant at best, attacked the book as "trash and fiction."
She specifically disputed one episode: Barbara Bush did not, as
the book relates, give Nancy Reagan a white vine wreath one
Christmas -- a wreath Nancy supposedly had gift-wrapped and sent
to a friend in California. Every window at the White House, the
current First Lady pointed out, already has a wreath at
Christmastime. "If you're going to make up a story," she said,
"you can make up a better one than that." Nancy called Barbara
Bush last week to thank her for the comments.

    Kelley weathered the weeklong storm by fielding
increasingly aggressive questions in TV interviews. "You just
spend your time digging up ugliness about people," one audience
member scolded on Sally Jessy Raphael. "I don't know how you
sleep at night." Kelley's perky, predigested reply: "I didn't
live the life. She did." Pressed about the Sinatra/Nancy
encounters at the White House, Kelley let the innuendos speak
for themselves: "I only take you up to the bedroom door." To the
growing chorus of denials from principals in the book, she
professed unconcern: "People are going to step forward and try
to deny things I have said." Yet by the end of the week the heat
seemed to have worn her down: Kelley's publicists abruptly
called off a planned seven-city publicity tour, announcing that
their "publishing objectives have been accomplished."

    And what is a reader to make of the book at the center of
this tornado? First, while Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized
Biography may be mean-spirited, it is no mean achievement. The
book is exhaustively researched, packed with quotes (a
surprising number of them with names attached), anecdotes and
detail. To be sure, much of this is not new: Kelley mixes
original quotes indiscriminately with recycled material from
other books and articles, and fudges the notes at the end so the
reader often cannot tell which is which. Still, much of the
portrait -- Nancy's difficult relationship with her children,
her obsessive attention to detail as a White House hostess --
rings true. Treated simply as a compendium of all the scraps a
team of diligent researchers could gather about Nancy Reagan,
it serves at least one historical function. It reveals that
many, many people didn't like her.

    The problem is that in marshaling her case against the
former First Lady, Kelley's book is so slanted that its
credibility is called into question at every turn. She uses a
variety of techniques that would not pass muster with most
reputable news organizations. Some examples:

    Print the quote, whatever the source. For Kelley, all
sources are treated as equal. The recollections of an unnamed
secretary repeating thirdhand gossip are given the same weight
as on-the-record comments from actual witnesses. (And sometimes
more weight.) This ascribes far too much authority to what may
be nothing more than idle gossip or office chitchat. It also
fails to account for sources who may have their own axes to
grind.

    For example, Kelley quotes at length Shirley Watkins --
identified as "one of Mrs. Reagan's secretaries" -- describing
the cynical way in which Nancy Reagan and her advisers tried to
mold her public image. When it was suggested that Mrs. Reagan
meet with a little boy dying of muscular dystrophy, Watkins
recalls that a top aide replied, "Absolutely not. The First Lady
doesn't want her picture taken with some drooly kid on a
respirator. It's too disgusting."

    According to Gahl Hodges Burt, White House social
secretary during the Reagan years, Shirley Watkins was a
computer technician whose job was to answer phones and record
visitors' names. "She never saw Nancy Reagan and never saw me,"
says Burt. "If those are the kinds of sources being used, it's
really shocking."

    Highlight the charges; never mind the corroboration. One
of the book's more sensational, if most trivial, allegations is
that the Reagans took puffs on a marijuana cigarette at a
dinner party hosted by Alfred and Betsy Bloomingdale during
Reagan's tenure as California Governor. Supposedly Alfred
Bloomingdale went upstairs after dessert, brought down the joint
and passed it around to the guests, who included the George
Burnses and the Jack Bennys. "Within five minutes they all
started giggling," writes Kelley, "but claimed they didn't feel
a thing and said they couldn't see what the big deal was."

    The anecdote comes from Sheldon Davis, Bloomingdale's
former executive assistant, who claims Bloomingdale related the
incident in the office the following Monday. Only in the notes
at the end of the book does Kelley admit she tried in vain to
corroborate the story. Three friends of the Bloomingdales are
quoted; all say they never heard the story. Few newspapers would
print a charge on such flimsy evidence. (Betsy Bloomingdale last
week called the story "unbelievable. It of course never
happened.")

    Use quotes selectively. Kelley frequently rehashes
material that has been published elsewhere -- in itself no
crime. But her selection of which parts to quote and which to
leave out reveal her motives. For example, she describes an
episode in which Nancy, after an angry encounter with her
stepson Michael, then 16, callously told him he had been born
out of wedlock to an army sergeant who had gone overseas and
never returned. Writes Kelley: "Michael said he was rocked by
the heartless way he received the news . . . `I guess I expected
Nancy to be more sympathetic,' he said years later."

    The account is taken entirely from Michael Reagan's own
memoir, On the Outside Looking In. Yet Kelley leaves out the
sentences that show his more complex feelings about the
incident. "For years I resented Nancy for telling me the truth
about my blood parents," Reagan wrote. "Looking back, I really
can't blame her. I had provoked and pushed her to the breaking
point." Michael Reagan considers Kelley's account distorted:
"She shows just one side of the story and doesn't tie it all in
to what else was happening back then."

    Exaggerate and oversimplify. Kelley hammers home the
widespread view that Nancy Reagan wielded great power behind the
scenes at the White House. Yet she damages her credibility as
a political observer with hyperbole and distortions. At one
point she provides a list of "Nancy-inspired firings and forced
resignations" among top Reagan officials. Along with a few Nancy
Reagan did indeed play a role in removing (like former chief of
staff Donald Regan) are a number she had little or nothing to
do with, such as former Secretary of State Alexander Haig.
What's more, Kelley fails to note that much of Nancy's advice
had little effect on her husband. She started pushing for the
ouster of Edwin Meese as early as 1982, for example, but Reagan
stubbornly held on to his longtime adviser until Meese resigned
in 1988.

    Kelley shows little grasp of Nancy Reagan's real
contributions to the Administration. The First Lady was an
astute political adviser on many matters. She played an
important role, for instance, in getting Reagan to realize the
severity of the trouble his presidency was in over the
Iran-contra scandal.

    Yet Kelley wrongly implies Nancy Reagan had a major hand
in shaping foreign policy. In one encounter described in the
book, President Reagan's aides showed him an agenda for his
Geneva summit with Mikhail Gorba chev in 1985. The President
asked whether the agenda had been shown to Nancy yet. No, he was
told. "Get back to me after she's passed on it," he said. The
reason for his concern was almost certainly Nancy's obsession
with coordinating his schedule with the astrological charts --
a revelation that came out years ago. But Kelley uses the
incident to imply, misleadingly, that the First Lady was
involved in substantive planning of the summit's agenda.

    Even if the end product were more balanced and
authoritative, Kelley's reporting techniques would raise serious
ethical problems. Many supposed sources for the book have denied
ever having spoken with Kelley. In many cases interviews for the
book were done by researchers working for Kelley but hiding that
fact. Others who admit they talked with Kelley were startled to
see the way their remarks were embellished and given more weight
than they deserved. Gene Nelson, the former actor and dancer who
lived with Maureen Reagan for three years, is quoted at length,
talking about Nancy's estrangement from her stepdaughter. Nelson
remembers being interviewed by Kelley but calls her a "master
of embroidery." One of her techniques: "She sets up some of my
`quotes' with `Nancy told me . . .' But Nancy rarely told me
anything directly."

    A reporter at People, assigned to ensure the correctness
of the facts in a 1988 story by Kelley about Judith Exner and
John F. Kennedy, said working with the author was "an absolute
nightmare. Kitty did not care about accuracy." Others have said
the same thing, but lawyers have found it difficult to nail her
on libel grounds. No libel suit, for example, was ever brought
over her sensational biography of Sinatra in which she described
the singer as a boor who ate ham and eggs off the chest of a
prostitute and slammed a woman through a plate-glass window.
Says a former Sinatra lawyer: "She has read all the defamation
cases very carefully and operates right on the edge."

    For all the denials and disclaimers that have greeted the
Nancy Reagan book, a number of insiders contend that the overall
portrait is surprisingly accurate. Though Patti Davis denied one
of Kelley's major allegations -- that Davis had several
abortions -- she remarked that "Kitty got a lot of things right,
from what I have heard." A former Nancy Reagan aide, after
reading the passages in which he was involved, expressed
surprise at their accuracy: "I must admit I have more respect
for ((Kelley)) now." Jody Jacobs, a former editor for Women's
Wear Daily and the Los Angeles Times who is quoted several times
in the book, called Kelley a thorough and conscientious reporter
and the book "a realistic picture of Nancy."

    To be sure, disputes over quotes, anecdotes and
interpretations are to be expected when a biography takes a
strong point of view on a controversial figure. The question is
whether Kelley has done the essential job of the biographer: to
weigh all the evidence responsibly, place it in some kind of
perspective and attempt to reach a psychological understanding
of the subject. And that Kelley certainly has not done. "She
will quote anybody who says anything against Nancy Reagan," said
historian Garry Wills, author of Reagan's America: The Innocents
at Home. "She doesn't put Nancy's actions in context, so you
can't tell what's important from what's unimportant. She offers
no framework of understanding." Commented Robert Caro, who has
written two volumes of a biography of Lyndon Johnson: "A
biography is not merely the recording and regurgitating of
interviews. It's important to try to assess the impact of
someone's life on political and social history."

    Others point out, however, that Kelley's approach is
becoming increasingly common in today's gossip-obsessed press.
Gay Talese, author of The Kingdom and the Power, attacked the
"holier-than-thou" attitude of many journalists over Kelley's
work. "What Kitty Kelley represents is what most newspaper and
magazine reporting is all about," he said. "Anyone in journalism
who criticizes Kitty Kelley should examine themselves first."

    The problem here may be one of definition. Kelley's book
falls short of the standards of serious biography: it is too
sloppy in its scholarship, too uncritical of its sources, too
single-minded in its pursuit of the sensational and salacious.
In a sense, the book is a compilation of the sort of
speculation, freewheeling opinions and water-cooler gossip that
journalists hear every day but that rarely make it into the news
pages. As such, it has an understandable fascination -- and
possibly some historical validity. Water-cooler gossip, after
all, is not only entertaining. Sometimes it contains pieces of
the truth.