Into the late 1940s, the Garden of Allah remained a movie-star refuge. It was especially popular as a retreat for actors in marital limbo. Humphrey Bogart did it in 1945 – and so did future president Ronald Reagan when his marriage to Jane Wyman fell apart in 1948.
Reagan drowned his sorrows in the hotel bar, chatting up young actresses, “playing the field,” as he put it. It impressed them to learn that he was president of the actors’ union, SAG, the Screen Actors Guild.
“A series of women passed through Ronald Reagan’s bedroom in those years,” celebrity biographer Kitty Kelley wrote, “so many, in fact, that he later told Joe Santley, a publicist, that he once found himself in the Garden of Allah Hotel with a woman he didn’t know. ‘I woke up one morning and I couldn’t remember the name of the gal I was in bed with. I said, ‘Hey, I gotta get a grip here.’”
Reagan eventually moved into an apartment down the Strip at 1326B Londonderry View Drive. He continued to play the field, dating a series of Nordic blondes, including Doris Day. He lived in the apartment until he met his second wife, Nancy Davis – the goddaughter of Garden of Allah founder Alla Nazimova.
Ronnie and Nancy were married on March 4, 1952. They moved from the Strip to the Westside. Reagan’s film career went into a slide. He found work in television, which was considered a fatal blow to a movie career. In the mid-1960s, he abandoned acting for politics, serving two terms as governor of California before being elected president in 1980.