1921-07-06 ( 103 years old ) in New York City, New York, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016) was an American film actress and the wife of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. She served as the First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Davis' film career began with small supporting roles in two films that were released in 1949, The Doctor and the Girl with Glenn Ford and East Side, West Side starring Barbara Stanwyck. She played a child psychiatrist in the film noir Shadow on the Wall (1950) with Ann Sothern and Zachary Scott; her performance was called "beautiful and convincing" by New York Times critic A. H. Weiler. She co-starred in 1950's The Next Voice You Hear..., playing a pregnant housewife who hears the voice of God from her radio. Influential reviewer Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that "Nancy Davis [is] delightful as [a] gentle, plain, and understanding wife." In 1951, Davis appeared in Night into Morning, her favorite screen role, a study of bereavement starring Ray Milland. Crowther said that Davis "does nicely as the fiancée who is widowed herself and knows the loneliness of grief," while another noted critic, The Washington Post's Richard L. Coe, said Davis "is splendid as the understanding widow." MGM released Davis from her contract in 1952; she sought a broader range of parts, but also married Reagan, keeping her professional name as Davis, and had her first child that year. She soon starred in the science fiction film Donovan's Brain (1953); Crowther said that Davis, playing the role of a possessed scientist's "sadly baffled wife," "walked through it all in stark confusion" in an "utterly silly" film. In her next-to-last movie, Hellcats of the Navy (1957), she played nurse Lieutenant Helen Blair, and appeared in a film for the only time with her husband, playing what one critic called "a housewife who came along for the ride." Another reviewer, however, stated that Davis plays her part satisfactorily, and "does well with what she has to work with."
Author Garry Wills has said that Davis was generally underrated as an actress because her constrained part in Hellcats was her most widely seen performance. In addition, Davis downplayed her Hollywood goals: promotional material from MGM in 1949 said that her "greatest ambition" was to have a "successful happy marriage"; decades later, in 1975, she would say, "I was never really a career woman but [became one] only because I hadn't found the man I wanted to marry. I couldn't sit around and do nothing, so I became an actress." Ronald Reagan biographer Lou Cannon nevertheless characterized her as a "reliable" and "solid" performer who held her own in performances with better-known actors. After her final film, Crash Landing (1958), Davis appeared for a brief time as a guest star in television dramas, such as the Zane Grey Theatre episode "The Long Shadow" (1961), where she played opposite Ronald Reagan, as well as Wagon Train and The Tall Man, until she retired as an actress in 1962.
Movies
Joan Rivers at the BBC
2024-09-08
The New Air Force One: Flying Fortress
2021-02-16
Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
2021-01-11
Zappa
2020-11-27
The Way I See It
2020-09-18
Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn
2019-09-29
Reversing Roe
2018-09-01
The Road to Mass Incarceration
2018-06-13
Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web
2017-08-21
American Made
2017-08-18
Get Me Roger Stone
2017-04-23
The Reagan Show
2017-04-22
HyperNormalisation
2016-10-25
13th
2016-10-07
How to Win the US Presidency
2016-08-01
The Making of Trump
2015-11-30
Kill the Messenger
2014-10-09
The Presidents' Gatekeepers
2013-09-12
Our Nixon
2013-01-23
The House I Live In
2012-10-05
Reagan
2011-02-07
Ronald Reagan: An American Journey
2011-02-01
Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics
2010-11-09
Casino Jack and the United States of Money
2010-05-09
How to Win the TV Debate
2010-04-12
Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime
2010-02-06
All the Presidents' Wives
2008-06-24
La Coupe Stanley à Montréal en 1993
2008-01-01
Le Cirque: A Table in Heaven
2007-04-11
Stand-up Reagan
2004-09-07
Remembering Reagan at His Ranch
2004-06-22
Tupac: Resurrection
2003-11-14
Family Fundamentals
2002-05-26
Grass
1999-09-15
Reagan
1998-02-23
Inside the White House
1996-01-01
Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol
1990-07-18
Myrna Loy: So Nice to Come Home To
1990-06-04
James Stewart: A Wonderful Life
1988-11-22
The Flintstone Kids' "Just Say No" Special
1988-09-15
Anxiety. Thoughts of an Old Man
1984-01-01
Tyranny of the Status Quo: Bureaucrats
1984-01-01
Tyranny of the Status Quo: Politicians
1984-01-01
Tyranny of the Status Quo: Beneficiaries
1984-01-01
The Chemical People
1983-11-02
The Killing of America
1981-09-05
Crash Landing
1958-07-01
Hellcats of the Navy
1957-05-01
The Dark Wave
1956-06-01
Donovan's Brain
1953-09-30
Shadow in the Sky
1952-07-18
Talk About a Stranger
1952-04-18
It's a Big Country
1951-11-20
Night Into Morning
1951-06-08
The Next Voice You Hear...
1950-06-29
Shadow on the Wall
1950-05-19
East Side, West Side
1949-12-22
The Doctor and the Girl
1949-09-29
Portrait of Jennie
1948-12-25
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