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Authors: Bob Colacello
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lackluster Ken and the starstruck Edith was nearing its end. The last straw may have been Edith’s decision to make Nazimova Nancy’s godmother, which stunned her proper New England mother-in-law.29 In 1922 the couple split for good. Edith took her baby on the road.
Ken went home to Nannee Robbins, and for reasons unknown they soon moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
At first Edith found it comforting to take little Nancy with her wherever she went. Colleen Moore, the silent screen star who would become one of Edith’s closest friends, never forgot meeting her at a party at the Long Island home of First National Studios head Richard Rowland: “One of the women caught my eye. She was a beautiful blonde, and she had the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. And she was carrying a tiny baby in her arms.” Fascinated, Moore asked her host who she was and if she always brought a baby to parties. Rowland explained that the baby was Edith’s, and that she had just been divorced and didn’t have a penny.30 Moore, only twenty-one Early Nancy: 1921–1932
3 9
and soon to be hailed as the spirit of the Flapper Generation for her starring role in Flaming Youth, was impressed by the spunky Edith (who was already thirty-three, but telling people she was twenty-five). The two actresses struck up a friendship that would prove to be durable and mutually advantageous.
The following year, when Nancy was two, Edith decided to leave her with her sister and brother-in-law, Virginia and C. Audley Galbraith, in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington. Edith rented a one-room apartment on West 49th Street in Manhattan’s theater district, the first in a series of temporary quarters in converted brownstones and residential hotels that she would use as a base between extended stays as a leading lady in regional theater companies in Atlanta, Dallas, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The scrapbook she kept is filled with favorable reviews and flowery interviews, in which she goes on about her devotion to the Presbyterian Church and love of gardening, but never mentions she has been married or has a daughter. In 1924, Montague Salmon, a columnist for one of the Atlanta papers, subjected her to a “Theatrical Confession.”
Asked to name her favorite cigarette, she answered, “Lucky Strike.” Her lucky day? “Pay day.” Her greatest ambition? “To be loved by the public.”
What would she do if she were President for a day? “Have a party at the White House.”31
Among the many friends she made on the road, one of her favorites was a struggling young unknown named Spencer Tracy. “Spencer was a darling,” she later recalled. “And I liked his wife, Louise. We played anywhere that anyone wanted anything. Spencer and I would always be there.
We’d always play because we got paid for it, you see. So we didn’t care where we went. I had Nancy to take care of, and he had Louise, and then their son, John.”32
“My favorite times were when Mother had a job in New York,” Nancy later wrote, “and Aunt Virgie would take me by train to stay with her. Although I saw her productions over and over, I was never bored.”33 Other early memories she recorded include having a stagehand build a dollhouse for her one Christmas, seeing her mother being killed on the stage and thinking she was really dead, and having double pneumonia when she was four or five and her mother not being able to visit her in Bethesda. “My aunt and uncle took care of me as well as anyone could, but I wanted my mother with me and she was somewhere out on the road away from me.
No matter how kind someone is to you, it is just not the same as when it is 4 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House your mother. I can remember crying at this time and saying, ‘If I had a child and she got sick, I’d be with her.’ Now that I have children myself, I realize how much it must have hurt my mother, especially since she had no choice. She had to work.”34
Although
Ken went home to Nannee Robbins, and for reasons unknown they soon moved to Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
At first Edith found it comforting to take little Nancy with her wherever she went. Colleen Moore, the silent screen star who would become one of Edith’s closest friends, never forgot meeting her at a party at the Long Island home of First National Studios head Richard Rowland: “One of the women caught my eye. She was a beautiful blonde, and she had the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. And she was carrying a tiny baby in her arms.” Fascinated, Moore asked her host who she was and if she always brought a baby to parties. Rowland explained that the baby was Edith’s, and that she had just been divorced and didn’t have a penny.30 Moore, only twenty-one Early Nancy: 1921–1932
3 9
and soon to be hailed as the spirit of the Flapper Generation for her starring role in Flaming Youth, was impressed by the spunky Edith (who was already thirty-three, but telling people she was twenty-five). The two actresses struck up a friendship that would prove to be durable and mutually advantageous.
The following year, when Nancy was two, Edith decided to leave her with her sister and brother-in-law, Virginia and C. Audley Galbraith, in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington. Edith rented a one-room apartment on West 49th Street in Manhattan’s theater district, the first in a series of temporary quarters in converted brownstones and residential hotels that she would use as a base between extended stays as a leading lady in regional theater companies in Atlanta, Dallas, and New Brunswick, New Jersey. The scrapbook she kept is filled with favorable reviews and flowery interviews, in which she goes on about her devotion to the Presbyterian Church and love of gardening, but never mentions she has been married or has a daughter. In 1924, Montague Salmon, a columnist for one of the Atlanta papers, subjected her to a “Theatrical Confession.”
Asked to name her favorite cigarette, she answered, “Lucky Strike.” Her lucky day? “Pay day.” Her greatest ambition? “To be loved by the public.”
What would she do if she were President for a day? “Have a party at the White House.”31
Among the many friends she made on the road, one of her favorites was a struggling young unknown named Spencer Tracy. “Spencer was a darling,” she later recalled. “And I liked his wife, Louise. We played anywhere that anyone wanted anything. Spencer and I would always be there.
We’d always play because we got paid for it, you see. So we didn’t care where we went. I had Nancy to take care of, and he had Louise, and then their son, John.”32
“My favorite times were when Mother had a job in New York,” Nancy later wrote, “and Aunt Virgie would take me by train to stay with her. Although I saw her productions over and over, I was never bored.”33 Other early memories she recorded include having a stagehand build a dollhouse for her one Christmas, seeing her mother being killed on the stage and thinking she was really dead, and having double pneumonia when she was four or five and her mother not being able to visit her in Bethesda. “My aunt and uncle took care of me as well as anyone could, but I wanted my mother with me and she was somewhere out on the road away from me.
No matter how kind someone is to you, it is just not the same as when it is 4 0
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House your mother. I can remember crying at this time and saying, ‘If I had a child and she got sick, I’d be with her.’ Now that I have children myself, I realize how much it must have hurt my mother, especially since she had no choice. She had to work.”34
Although
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