It seems counterintuitive and yet it’s true. Ronald Reagan, future 40th president of the United States, was a longtime resident of the Sunset Strip. Reagan moved to the Strip in 1938 and remained there throughout his nine-year marriage to Jane Wyman and then for five years after their divorce, until 1952 when he married Nancy Davis.

Reagan met Wyman on the set of the film “Brother Rat” in 1938, when he was a B-list actor with a promising career and she was a relative unknown. They started dating even though Wyman was very much married at the time, to Martin Futterman, a dress manufacturer, her second husband. Late that year, he moved from an apartment in Hollywood to a house at 1128 Cory Ave., which is still standing [map].

Wyman lived a few blocks west in an apartment at 1326 Londonderry View, which is also still standing [map]. Reagan soon moved into a studio apartment in the same building. Reagan and Wyman were married in January 1940. The couple soon built a home above the Strip at 9137 Cordell Drive [map]. (The house is standing but has been significantly altered.) Reagan lived there with Wyman until their divorce in 1948.

He briefly lived at the Garden of Allah Hotel before returning to live in the Londonderry View apartment, and was living there when he met Nancy Davis — the goddaughter, as it happened, of Broadway superstar, Alla Nazimova, whose estate the Garden of Allah once had been. After Ronnie and Nancy were married, on March 4, 1952, they moved west to the Palisades.