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Nancy Reagan
and the
Ark of the Covenant
24.
According to the binder, Nick Koenig lived in Peace, California. Now, I’ve lived in California for most of my life, but I’d never heard of a Peace. Neither had the concierge at my hotel. He pulled out his atlas of the state, but it wasn’t there either. Eventually, the concierge called 411 and, once that person went and asked their boss, we all found out that Peace was an unincorporated community in the Covington Valley. This was tragic news. Covington Valley meant that Peace was at least a two hour drive away. Even worse, the name reeked of hippies.
Then it hit me. What former FBI agent would be caught dead in Peace, California? Most of those guys complain when they have to go to San Francisco. And San Francisco isn’t even filled with hippies anymore. The Grateful Dead went on tour and led the dope heads out onto the open road. San Francisco in the 80’s is waking up to Morning in America like the rest of the country, just with more hills and sour bread.
I’d already been burned once before, so I called up Roy Cohn. I told him that I had the address, but if he wanted me to go over there, he better prove that he has the right guy. Because if I am going to drive up to certified hippie haven Peace, California and risk getting caught in some homosexual citrus harvest festival, I need to know he is taking this seriously.
Roy tried to pretend I was being unreasonable, but we both knew that the last place he’d sent me had been an empty nightmare house. If the address was wrong, why couldn’t the name be wrong, too? I told him that I wouldn’t go until he had talked to Nick Koenig on the phone. Roy went ballistic, which frankly wasn’t too far a walk from how he’d been the rest of the call. He started making silly veiled threats, so I hung up.
He called back almost immediately, and I knew that if I stayed in my hotel, he was just going to keep calling.
I decided to drive up to Malibu.
25.
I was a little uneasy driving up to Malibu because it is full of Hollywood folks who still see Ronnie and I as “failed actors” and not the First Family of the United States. I usually prefer to spend my visits in Pasadena, but I knew that I had a friend in Malibu who would help me hide out.
Darren Davet had been one of the hot shots at the MCA talent agency back when Ronnie was the President of the Screen Actors Guild. Ronnie had helped them get special permission to work as both producers and agents, something that was considered a “conflict of interest” for the other talent agencies. Within ten years, they used this unique position to get a thumb in nearly every pie, Hollywood-wide. As a sort of thank you, after Ronnie’s Vegas show failed, Darren and MCA helped land him a job hosting a show for General Electric. Not to tell tales out of school, but at that point, Ronnie really needed a win. His ex-wife’s Oscar had gotten under his skin and was starting to burn a hole through it. It wasn’t acting, but he got to host the show and be on TV playing a star.
Eventually, Robert Kennedy decided to make a federal monopoly case out of Ronnie’s MCA deal and the General Electric show got cancelled. Then Darren swooped in and helped convince General Electric to hire Ronnie directly. They filled our home with GE gadgets and sent Ronnie around on a speaking tour where he got to practice playing a politician. Somewhere along the line, we all became close friends.
I knew that Darren could help me hide because he has the sort of power where you never even have to leave your house. Ronnie and I had just spent the last two years traveling around the country asking people to consider us winners. And Ronnie’s the perfect person for that job. No one is waving a victory flag higher than the guy who worries he never actually deserved it. But when you have the kind of money Darren has, you don’t have to win anyone over. It doesn’t matter what people think about you. It’s probably easiest if most people don’t know you exist at all.
26.
It turns out I didn’t show up at the most convenient time. Darren was on a long phone call when I arrived and his wonderful wife Debra was hosting a fundraiser that night for the Californian Coalition to Recolonize the Panama Canal. The CCRPC are a conservative off-shoot of the Dave Williams Society who wanted to find a way to advance the organization’s America First political attitude without having to talk to middle class church-goers. I’ve been to a handful of CCRPC events and, while they tend to be quite elegant functions, I can’t understand why these folks are still wincing and whining over some Central American river. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person in the room who knows about airplanes.
While Debra walked me through the house, her hired help were sprinting around the place raising a racket setting up. I am always shocked by what a noisy, difficult time some people have setting up a party. I mean, it’s 1981. We’ve put a man on the moon. Why can’t the help figure out how to set up 200 folding chairs without making more noise than a blender in a washing machine?
Debra took me out to the pool and had one of the girls grab us a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. I got the distinct suspicion that Debra was feeling me out to see if Ronnie and I were mad at her. The last time we’d had dinner together, one of our mutual friends drunkenly let it slip that Darren had donated the same amount to Ronnie’s and Carter’s presidential campaigns. We may have acted a little queer on the night, but I wasn’t really upset. I assumed that that is what they were doing anyway. That’s how politics works.
People complain about politicians playing both sides of an issue, but I don’t understand why. You season both sides of a steak. You paint both sides of a door. Why should politics be any different? The more sides of an issue you cover, the harder you are to attack. I remember back in the 1950s, when people would ask Ronnie what he thought about the Blacklist, he would insist that no one was being put out of work for their political beliefs, that the Blacklist was a myth. Then, in the same breath, he would say that if it did exist, maybe that would be a good thing. Of course, he knew that it existed. He was informing to the FBI. He helped make the Blacklist. But it is dangerous to say what you truly believe. That’s why smart people don’t do it.
All that to say, I knew better than to expect Darren to stick his neck out for Ronnie.
Debra and I had about fifteen minutes together out by the pool before a little gang of caterers showed up with a list of problems they needed Debra to solve. I told her to go back to her party planning. All I’d wanted on this vacation was the chance to lay down for a little while with no stresses or obligations. A pool in Malibu fit the bill perfectly.
Debra had only been inside for five minutes before she came back out with a sour look on her face.
“We’ve got a call for you,” Debra snapped.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Roy Cohn.”
“Can you tell him I’ve left?”
With that, Debra’s mood took a cheerful turn. She picked up the phone and went, “Sorry Roy, she just left…What do you mean you just heard her?...If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re calling me a liar…You can’t sue me, Roy. They disbarred you.”
Before she hung up, we were already dying with laughter. The great thing about having terrible friends is that you don’t have to worry about treating them well.
27.
I hid away in an upstairs bedroom to avoid the party. As the wife of a politician, political fundraisers are a nightmare. When I’m with Ronnie, I don’t mind. He can carry the heavy political topics and I can carry the conversation. When I’m caught out alone, though, the dogs start baring their teeth. It’s like the whole world becomes a sea of used car salesmen and they're all trying to get me to leave the lot with their pet political project.
I understand what these people want to happen. They want to explain just how important it is that we disband the Department of Education or arrest Tom O’Neill as a communist spy and then have me say, “You know, I never thought about it that way. We’ll do it tomorrow!” But I don’t get to decide what’s happening in the country. Hell, Ronnie doesn’t even get to decide. If they want to make something a national priority, they’re better off talking to Darren.
Even though I wasn’t attending the party, I still snuck a few peaks to see who was downstairs. I was relieved to see that Darren and Debra were still able to round up some of the biggest names and biggest pocketbooks in Los Angeles. To talk to Debra, you’d think that no one in California was willing to even look at a Republican anymore. She still blames Ronnie because the troops he sent to handle protests at the University of California killed a kid. Honestly, Debra took the whole thing so personally just because her daughter’s high school beau was going there at the time. When Ronnie said, “If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement,” she almost had a conniption. Luckily, Darren understood the severity of the situation. You can’t just have kids running around saying whatever they want. And I was glad to see that Debra wasn’t the social outcast she pretended to be. If you have enough money, you can always make plenty of good friends.
Towards the end of the party, I heard steps approaching my door. Looking through the peep-hole, I recognized the face of James Ford.
Then he knocked on my door.
28.
I had first become a fan of James Ford the year before when he starred as a young whippersnapper challenging Paul Newman in Eyes of Gold. Handsome. Charming. Twenty-seven. James wasn’t the sort of star you’d want to mention around your husband. He’s the sort of guy you only ever whisper about.
I have been to multiple dinners now where men start complaining about James Ford and nervously turn to their wives for confirmation that women don’t even find him that sexy. To be clear, women do find him that sexy. And how! But I watch my friends–who I know would leave their husbands, homes, and fortunes behind for three months in a Los Angeles flophouse with that dreamboat–make up silly reasons he’s not actually very sexy at all: too young, too thin, too angular, too full of himself. That’s how sexy he is. It’s too dangerous to even acknowledge. I never had to lie to Ronnie about fancying Johnny Carson. He’s a handsome, well-dressed man who is funny when he needs to be. But James Ford? If I told Ronnie half the thoughts I had about James Ford, he’d send in the Air Force to knock California off the map.
Now James Ford was knocking at my door.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had opened the door and brought James inside. He made a big deal about introducing himself and pretending that it was some big honor to meet me. No wonder he’s doing so well in Hollywood. Even when you know he’s acting, you want to believe him.
Introductions done, he took off his blazer and threw it across the bed. “I’m glad I have a chance to talk to you,” he started. “Because there’s something I wanted to get a second opinion about and you seem like just the lady to help me out.”
I couldn’t imagine what he would need my advice on, but my skepticism was stunted by my excitement. Even as a small part of me was trying to figure out exactly what game James was trying to play, the rest of me was eagerly nodding, asking him to continue.
“Well…” he said, “I’ve started seeing a woman. She’s trying to get her start as an actress. Me? I’m almost thirty. I’m getting ready to settle down. I want a family, kids, the works. My girl, she’s fresh out of high school and still sees the whole world like an oyster waiting to be pried open. I want to be with her, but she doesn’t want to settle down. She wants adventure. I keep telling her and telling her that there'll be plenty of adventure raising a family. I mean, I grew up in a big family and I’d like one myself. You put nine kids in a house, every day’s an adventure. I know that first hand. When we visit my family, though, she doesn’t seem interested in kids at all. She doesn't even know how to talk to my nephews and nieces. I mean, she shakes their hands and asks, ‘How are you doing today?’ I see my family laughing behind her back. Hell, even I know that it’s darn peculiar. I know that you acted before you had kids. Do you think she can still be a good mother? Is it something she’ll grow into? Or do I need to look for someone more motherly to spend my life with?”
The question sat between us. I could almost swear he looked me up and down when he said “someone more motherly,” which I had mixed feelings about. I couldn’t deny that there was something a little suspicious about how quickly James had opened up. On the campaign trail, I was used to people opening conversations by telling me the worst thing that had ever happened to them. But those folks are nobodies. Shouldn’t a movie star know better than to spread his personal business around town?
I told him, “You know, I really can’t say. I don’t know the woman. What I promise you, though, is that if she doesn’t want to settle down, there are plenty of wonderful women who do.”
James shook his head. “I know you’re right. I just can’t shake this girl, Nancy. She’s got me going crazy.”
As he sat down on the bed, I took a step towards the door and said, “I believe that these things have a way of working out. I’d just say be honest about what you want and see what happens.”
James just kept shaking his head. He looked just like his character in The Californian Concern after his fiance was kidnapped by political radicals. I felt for him. I know what it feels like to love someone and feel completely out of control.
He looked up with tears in his eyes and said, “Maybe you could talk to her. Explain to her how much fun she’ll have as a mom.”
I should have said no. If I had more time, I think I would have. Before I even understood what he had asked, James was dialing the phone. After a couple pleasantries, he handed me the receiver. Unsure of how to start, I just said, “Hi, there.”
“Hello Nancy,” Roy Cohn responded.
29.
When we last saw Indiana Jones and Marion, they were getting onto a boat with the Ark of the Covenant. Indiana’s friend in Cairo promised them safe passage, but, if you’d believe it, the Nazi’s caught up to the ship.
At first, Jones and Marion just know that the boat has stopped. They don’t know that it is because of the Nazis. Though, if they thought about it for two seconds, it seems like it wouldn’t be that hard for them to guess.
When Jones hears that the boat’s engines have stopped, he grabs his gun and gets ready to investigate. As he inconsiderately bumbles around, his clanky gun-loading wakes Marion from her much needed beauty sleep. She sits up in bed and holds the sheets up to cover her naked body. Which, to me, is absolutely crazy.
To be clear, I don’t think it is crazy that she is holding up the sheets. I hate nudity as much as the next guy. I just don’t understand why she is naked in the first place!
The last time we saw these two together, the night before, Marion and Jones were in their quaint cabin while Marion tended to the professor’s wounds from the big car chase. They flirted a little before kissing passionately. As Marion pulled back, she saw that Jones had fallen asleep. What a pity! Usually men can at least hold out until they bust.
So if Marion is waking up naked, that means that she slipped into her birthday suit to hop in bed with the snoozing professor. Brunettes!?
But, again, I’m getting distracted.
Indiana tells her that he is going to go ask the captain what is going on. Why not go together? I mean, what is he thinking? Doesn’t he know that the Nazis are chasing them? And that they are obsessed with kidnapping his girlfriend?
I remember this one time, pretty early in my marriage, Ronnie and I were woken up by this big crash in the middle of the night. Ronnie jumped up and announced, “Stay here, Ma! I’ll go see what that was.” And Ronnie did his fair share of summer stock, so when he’s announcing something, he’s projecting to the back row of the theater. I’m telling you, if he had a megaphone, it would have been the same volume.
I told Ronnie that I was coming with him and he looked at me like he’d just seen a ham come to life. But I wasn’t fooling around. I said, “You just told whoever’s here that I’m alone in this bedroom. So I’d rather be with you somewhere else.”
Ronnie got so mad. “No Nancy! Will you just stay in the bedroom and let me handle this?”
And I’m shouting, “Why not say it a little louder? Let the neighbors know that I’m in here alone in case anyone wants to come in through the window!”
“If you’d just stay quiet and let me handle this, it’d be over already.”
“You keep saying you’ll ‘handle it.’ What’s your plan Ronnie? Scare them out of the house with your acting?”
That really set him off. Some men are so uncomfortable being actors.
Eventually, Ronnie grabbed his gun and I secretly followed him downstairs. Turned out it was some problem with our fish tank. The glass had cracked and then shattered. By the time we got down there, it was too late. But, you know, you can’t solve every problem.
30.
There is something almost silly about the way that the Ark of the Covenant and Marion keep getting passed back and forth between Jones and the Nazis like an aggressive game of Hot Potato. I mean, everyone is fighting over the ark because it can unleash God’s power to crush their enemies. And yet, when it comes to Indiana Jones vs. The Nazis, everyone is more or less happy to leave the world’s most powerful weapon locked in a big wooden box while they take turns punching each other.
The way that they treat Marion is even worse. Personally, I think it’s strange that the Nazis are so obsessed with her. Sure, at the beginning of the story, they needed Marion to find the Ark. Now they know where it is. On this ship! I understand why the Pepe le Pew archeologist wants her, but why do the Nazis give a single shit? Don’t they know there’s a war on?
But one of the first things they do as soon as they get on the ship is send a gaggle of soldiers to grab Marion. Indiana Jones hears her fighting with the soldiers and decides to run off and hide. Again! How is this the hero of our story?
Then the Nazis drag Marion onto the deck and fight about which one of them gets to keep her. The whole time that they are bickering over her like the last turkey in the store before Thanksgiving, do you know what Indiana Jones is doing? He’s hiding! This time in a foghorn. Like he’s auditioning to be Bugs Bunny’s stunt double. What a chump!
I do feel a bit jealous of the actress playing Marion in this scene. Acting out on the high seas with soldiers, sailors, and Frenchies all fighting over you? Sounds like a dream come true! If I have one note, it is that there is a moment where Marion almost punches one of the main Nazi commandants. She winds up to hit him, but the captain of the boat grabs her before she can. If it were me, I’d do it all differently. I’d give her a gun. She’d still get captured. Nothing major in the movie would change. She just shoots a guy. He doesn’t even have to die. I think it’d be great character development for Marion. The only problem is deciding who to shoot. Too many qualified candidates!
At the end of the scene, Indiana Jones swims out to the Nazi submarine that stopped his boat and climbs aboard. When the crew of his old ship see this, they cheer. Maybe because they don’t know that submarines go underwater.
When we next see Jones, he’s soaking wet, hiding in some secret Nazi submarine depot. This really pissed me off. Why is he soaking wet? Are we supposed to believe he made it halfway across the Mediterranean pulled by the submarine like a skateboarding child holding onto a cartoon bus on his way to school?
Sometimes I hate this movie.
According to the binder, Nick Koenig lived in Peace, California. Now, I’ve lived in California for most of my life, but I’d never heard of a Peace. Neither had the concierge at my hotel. He pulled out his atlas of the state, but it wasn’t there either. Eventually, the concierge called 411 and, once that person went and asked their boss, we all found out that Peace was an unincorporated community in the Covington Valley. This was tragic news. Covington Valley meant that Peace was at least a two hour drive away. Even worse, the name reeked of hippies.
Then it hit me. What former FBI agent would be caught dead in Peace, California? Most of those guys complain when they have to go to San Francisco. And San Francisco isn’t even filled with hippies anymore. The Grateful Dead went on tour and led the dope heads out onto the open road. San Francisco in the 80’s is waking up to Morning in America like the rest of the country, just with more hills and sour bread.
I’d already been burned once before, so I called up Roy Cohn. I told him that I had the address, but if he wanted me to go over there, he better prove that he has the right guy. Because if I am going to drive up to certified hippie haven Peace, California and risk getting caught in some homosexual citrus harvest festival, I need to know he is taking this seriously.
Roy tried to pretend I was being unreasonable, but we both knew that the last place he’d sent me had been an empty nightmare house. If the address was wrong, why couldn’t the name be wrong, too? I told him that I wouldn’t go until he had talked to Nick Koenig on the phone. Roy went ballistic, which frankly wasn’t too far a walk from how he’d been the rest of the call. He started making silly veiled threats, so I hung up.
He called back almost immediately, and I knew that if I stayed in my hotel, he was just going to keep calling.
I decided to drive up to Malibu.
25.
I was a little uneasy driving up to Malibu because it is full of Hollywood folks who still see Ronnie and I as “failed actors” and not the First Family of the United States. I usually prefer to spend my visits in Pasadena, but I knew that I had a friend in Malibu who would help me hide out.
Darren Davet had been one of the hot shots at the MCA talent agency back when Ronnie was the President of the Screen Actors Guild. Ronnie had helped them get special permission to work as both producers and agents, something that was considered a “conflict of interest” for the other talent agencies. Within ten years, they used this unique position to get a thumb in nearly every pie, Hollywood-wide. As a sort of thank you, after Ronnie’s Vegas show failed, Darren and MCA helped land him a job hosting a show for General Electric. Not to tell tales out of school, but at that point, Ronnie really needed a win. His ex-wife’s Oscar had gotten under his skin and was starting to burn a hole through it. It wasn’t acting, but he got to host the show and be on TV playing a star.
Eventually, Robert Kennedy decided to make a federal monopoly case out of Ronnie’s MCA deal and the General Electric show got cancelled. Then Darren swooped in and helped convince General Electric to hire Ronnie directly. They filled our home with GE gadgets and sent Ronnie around on a speaking tour where he got to practice playing a politician. Somewhere along the line, we all became close friends.
I knew that Darren could help me hide because he has the sort of power where you never even have to leave your house. Ronnie and I had just spent the last two years traveling around the country asking people to consider us winners. And Ronnie’s the perfect person for that job. No one is waving a victory flag higher than the guy who worries he never actually deserved it. But when you have the kind of money Darren has, you don’t have to win anyone over. It doesn’t matter what people think about you. It’s probably easiest if most people don’t know you exist at all.
26.
It turns out I didn’t show up at the most convenient time. Darren was on a long phone call when I arrived and his wonderful wife Debra was hosting a fundraiser that night for the Californian Coalition to Recolonize the Panama Canal. The CCRPC are a conservative off-shoot of the Dave Williams Society who wanted to find a way to advance the organization’s America First political attitude without having to talk to middle class church-goers. I’ve been to a handful of CCRPC events and, while they tend to be quite elegant functions, I can’t understand why these folks are still wincing and whining over some Central American river. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only person in the room who knows about airplanes.
While Debra walked me through the house, her hired help were sprinting around the place raising a racket setting up. I am always shocked by what a noisy, difficult time some people have setting up a party. I mean, it’s 1981. We’ve put a man on the moon. Why can’t the help figure out how to set up 200 folding chairs without making more noise than a blender in a washing machine?
Debra took me out to the pool and had one of the girls grab us a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice. I got the distinct suspicion that Debra was feeling me out to see if Ronnie and I were mad at her. The last time we’d had dinner together, one of our mutual friends drunkenly let it slip that Darren had donated the same amount to Ronnie’s and Carter’s presidential campaigns. We may have acted a little queer on the night, but I wasn’t really upset. I assumed that that is what they were doing anyway. That’s how politics works.
People complain about politicians playing both sides of an issue, but I don’t understand why. You season both sides of a steak. You paint both sides of a door. Why should politics be any different? The more sides of an issue you cover, the harder you are to attack. I remember back in the 1950s, when people would ask Ronnie what he thought about the Blacklist, he would insist that no one was being put out of work for their political beliefs, that the Blacklist was a myth. Then, in the same breath, he would say that if it did exist, maybe that would be a good thing. Of course, he knew that it existed. He was informing to the FBI. He helped make the Blacklist. But it is dangerous to say what you truly believe. That’s why smart people don’t do it.
All that to say, I knew better than to expect Darren to stick his neck out for Ronnie.
Debra and I had about fifteen minutes together out by the pool before a little gang of caterers showed up with a list of problems they needed Debra to solve. I told her to go back to her party planning. All I’d wanted on this vacation was the chance to lay down for a little while with no stresses or obligations. A pool in Malibu fit the bill perfectly.
Debra had only been inside for five minutes before she came back out with a sour look on her face.
“We’ve got a call for you,” Debra snapped.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Roy Cohn.”
“Can you tell him I’ve left?”
With that, Debra’s mood took a cheerful turn. She picked up the phone and went, “Sorry Roy, she just left…What do you mean you just heard her?...If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re calling me a liar…You can’t sue me, Roy. They disbarred you.”
Before she hung up, we were already dying with laughter. The great thing about having terrible friends is that you don’t have to worry about treating them well.
27.
I hid away in an upstairs bedroom to avoid the party. As the wife of a politician, political fundraisers are a nightmare. When I’m with Ronnie, I don’t mind. He can carry the heavy political topics and I can carry the conversation. When I’m caught out alone, though, the dogs start baring their teeth. It’s like the whole world becomes a sea of used car salesmen and they're all trying to get me to leave the lot with their pet political project.
I understand what these people want to happen. They want to explain just how important it is that we disband the Department of Education or arrest Tom O’Neill as a communist spy and then have me say, “You know, I never thought about it that way. We’ll do it tomorrow!” But I don’t get to decide what’s happening in the country. Hell, Ronnie doesn’t even get to decide. If they want to make something a national priority, they’re better off talking to Darren.
Even though I wasn’t attending the party, I still snuck a few peaks to see who was downstairs. I was relieved to see that Darren and Debra were still able to round up some of the biggest names and biggest pocketbooks in Los Angeles. To talk to Debra, you’d think that no one in California was willing to even look at a Republican anymore. She still blames Ronnie because the troops he sent to handle protests at the University of California killed a kid. Honestly, Debra took the whole thing so personally just because her daughter’s high school beau was going there at the time. When Ronnie said, “If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more appeasement,” she almost had a conniption. Luckily, Darren understood the severity of the situation. You can’t just have kids running around saying whatever they want. And I was glad to see that Debra wasn’t the social outcast she pretended to be. If you have enough money, you can always make plenty of good friends.
Towards the end of the party, I heard steps approaching my door. Looking through the peep-hole, I recognized the face of James Ford.
Then he knocked on my door.
28.
I had first become a fan of James Ford the year before when he starred as a young whippersnapper challenging Paul Newman in Eyes of Gold. Handsome. Charming. Twenty-seven. James wasn’t the sort of star you’d want to mention around your husband. He’s the sort of guy you only ever whisper about.
I have been to multiple dinners now where men start complaining about James Ford and nervously turn to their wives for confirmation that women don’t even find him that sexy. To be clear, women do find him that sexy. And how! But I watch my friends–who I know would leave their husbands, homes, and fortunes behind for three months in a Los Angeles flophouse with that dreamboat–make up silly reasons he’s not actually very sexy at all: too young, too thin, too angular, too full of himself. That’s how sexy he is. It’s too dangerous to even acknowledge. I never had to lie to Ronnie about fancying Johnny Carson. He’s a handsome, well-dressed man who is funny when he needs to be. But James Ford? If I told Ronnie half the thoughts I had about James Ford, he’d send in the Air Force to knock California off the map.
Now James Ford was knocking at my door.
Before I knew what I was doing, I had opened the door and brought James inside. He made a big deal about introducing himself and pretending that it was some big honor to meet me. No wonder he’s doing so well in Hollywood. Even when you know he’s acting, you want to believe him.
Introductions done, he took off his blazer and threw it across the bed. “I’m glad I have a chance to talk to you,” he started. “Because there’s something I wanted to get a second opinion about and you seem like just the lady to help me out.”
I couldn’t imagine what he would need my advice on, but my skepticism was stunted by my excitement. Even as a small part of me was trying to figure out exactly what game James was trying to play, the rest of me was eagerly nodding, asking him to continue.
“Well…” he said, “I’ve started seeing a woman. She’s trying to get her start as an actress. Me? I’m almost thirty. I’m getting ready to settle down. I want a family, kids, the works. My girl, she’s fresh out of high school and still sees the whole world like an oyster waiting to be pried open. I want to be with her, but she doesn’t want to settle down. She wants adventure. I keep telling her and telling her that there'll be plenty of adventure raising a family. I mean, I grew up in a big family and I’d like one myself. You put nine kids in a house, every day’s an adventure. I know that first hand. When we visit my family, though, she doesn’t seem interested in kids at all. She doesn't even know how to talk to my nephews and nieces. I mean, she shakes their hands and asks, ‘How are you doing today?’ I see my family laughing behind her back. Hell, even I know that it’s darn peculiar. I know that you acted before you had kids. Do you think she can still be a good mother? Is it something she’ll grow into? Or do I need to look for someone more motherly to spend my life with?”
The question sat between us. I could almost swear he looked me up and down when he said “someone more motherly,” which I had mixed feelings about. I couldn’t deny that there was something a little suspicious about how quickly James had opened up. On the campaign trail, I was used to people opening conversations by telling me the worst thing that had ever happened to them. But those folks are nobodies. Shouldn’t a movie star know better than to spread his personal business around town?
I told him, “You know, I really can’t say. I don’t know the woman. What I promise you, though, is that if she doesn’t want to settle down, there are plenty of wonderful women who do.”
James shook his head. “I know you’re right. I just can’t shake this girl, Nancy. She’s got me going crazy.”
As he sat down on the bed, I took a step towards the door and said, “I believe that these things have a way of working out. I’d just say be honest about what you want and see what happens.”
James just kept shaking his head. He looked just like his character in The Californian Concern after his fiance was kidnapped by political radicals. I felt for him. I know what it feels like to love someone and feel completely out of control.
He looked up with tears in his eyes and said, “Maybe you could talk to her. Explain to her how much fun she’ll have as a mom.”
I should have said no. If I had more time, I think I would have. Before I even understood what he had asked, James was dialing the phone. After a couple pleasantries, he handed me the receiver. Unsure of how to start, I just said, “Hi, there.”
“Hello Nancy,” Roy Cohn responded.
29.
When we last saw Indiana Jones and Marion, they were getting onto a boat with the Ark of the Covenant. Indiana’s friend in Cairo promised them safe passage, but, if you’d believe it, the Nazi’s caught up to the ship.
At first, Jones and Marion just know that the boat has stopped. They don’t know that it is because of the Nazis. Though, if they thought about it for two seconds, it seems like it wouldn’t be that hard for them to guess.
When Jones hears that the boat’s engines have stopped, he grabs his gun and gets ready to investigate. As he inconsiderately bumbles around, his clanky gun-loading wakes Marion from her much needed beauty sleep. She sits up in bed and holds the sheets up to cover her naked body. Which, to me, is absolutely crazy.
To be clear, I don’t think it is crazy that she is holding up the sheets. I hate nudity as much as the next guy. I just don’t understand why she is naked in the first place!
The last time we saw these two together, the night before, Marion and Jones were in their quaint cabin while Marion tended to the professor’s wounds from the big car chase. They flirted a little before kissing passionately. As Marion pulled back, she saw that Jones had fallen asleep. What a pity! Usually men can at least hold out until they bust.
So if Marion is waking up naked, that means that she slipped into her birthday suit to hop in bed with the snoozing professor. Brunettes!?
But, again, I’m getting distracted.
Indiana tells her that he is going to go ask the captain what is going on. Why not go together? I mean, what is he thinking? Doesn’t he know that the Nazis are chasing them? And that they are obsessed with kidnapping his girlfriend?
I remember this one time, pretty early in my marriage, Ronnie and I were woken up by this big crash in the middle of the night. Ronnie jumped up and announced, “Stay here, Ma! I’ll go see what that was.” And Ronnie did his fair share of summer stock, so when he’s announcing something, he’s projecting to the back row of the theater. I’m telling you, if he had a megaphone, it would have been the same volume.
I told Ronnie that I was coming with him and he looked at me like he’d just seen a ham come to life. But I wasn’t fooling around. I said, “You just told whoever’s here that I’m alone in this bedroom. So I’d rather be with you somewhere else.”
Ronnie got so mad. “No Nancy! Will you just stay in the bedroom and let me handle this?”
And I’m shouting, “Why not say it a little louder? Let the neighbors know that I’m in here alone in case anyone wants to come in through the window!”
“If you’d just stay quiet and let me handle this, it’d be over already.”
“You keep saying you’ll ‘handle it.’ What’s your plan Ronnie? Scare them out of the house with your acting?”
That really set him off. Some men are so uncomfortable being actors.
Eventually, Ronnie grabbed his gun and I secretly followed him downstairs. Turned out it was some problem with our fish tank. The glass had cracked and then shattered. By the time we got down there, it was too late. But, you know, you can’t solve every problem.
30.
There is something almost silly about the way that the Ark of the Covenant and Marion keep getting passed back and forth between Jones and the Nazis like an aggressive game of Hot Potato. I mean, everyone is fighting over the ark because it can unleash God’s power to crush their enemies. And yet, when it comes to Indiana Jones vs. The Nazis, everyone is more or less happy to leave the world’s most powerful weapon locked in a big wooden box while they take turns punching each other.
The way that they treat Marion is even worse. Personally, I think it’s strange that the Nazis are so obsessed with her. Sure, at the beginning of the story, they needed Marion to find the Ark. Now they know where it is. On this ship! I understand why the Pepe le Pew archeologist wants her, but why do the Nazis give a single shit? Don’t they know there’s a war on?
But one of the first things they do as soon as they get on the ship is send a gaggle of soldiers to grab Marion. Indiana Jones hears her fighting with the soldiers and decides to run off and hide. Again! How is this the hero of our story?
Then the Nazis drag Marion onto the deck and fight about which one of them gets to keep her. The whole time that they are bickering over her like the last turkey in the store before Thanksgiving, do you know what Indiana Jones is doing? He’s hiding! This time in a foghorn. Like he’s auditioning to be Bugs Bunny’s stunt double. What a chump!
I do feel a bit jealous of the actress playing Marion in this scene. Acting out on the high seas with soldiers, sailors, and Frenchies all fighting over you? Sounds like a dream come true! If I have one note, it is that there is a moment where Marion almost punches one of the main Nazi commandants. She winds up to hit him, but the captain of the boat grabs her before she can. If it were me, I’d do it all differently. I’d give her a gun. She’d still get captured. Nothing major in the movie would change. She just shoots a guy. He doesn’t even have to die. I think it’d be great character development for Marion. The only problem is deciding who to shoot. Too many qualified candidates!
At the end of the scene, Indiana Jones swims out to the Nazi submarine that stopped his boat and climbs aboard. When the crew of his old ship see this, they cheer. Maybe because they don’t know that submarines go underwater.
When we next see Jones, he’s soaking wet, hiding in some secret Nazi submarine depot. This really pissed me off. Why is he soaking wet? Are we supposed to believe he made it halfway across the Mediterranean pulled by the submarine like a skateboarding child holding onto a cartoon bus on his way to school?
Sometimes I hate this movie.
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