#42: If Aleta Freel Hadn't Committed Suicide in 1935, Chances Are That Ronald Reagan Would Never have Been Elected President in 1980

          Aleta Freel (1907-1935)

Yes, I know it’s a pretty bizarre title for a “Tales From Hollywood & Vine” essay . . . but hopefully, it’s an attention grabber. If you got beyond the title, you likely have at least a couple of questions, such as: who in the Hell was Aleta Freel, why and how did she commit suicide (at age 28) in 1935, and what in the world does she have to do with “The Gipper” being elected POTUS 45 years later? To make matters even more mysterious, Reagan never met - or likely had ever heard of - Aleta (Mrs. Ross Alexander); the future POTUS didn’t even reach Hollywood until 1937 . . . the year her husband, movie star Ross Alexander also committed suicide at age 29. And to make things even more mysterious, how in the hell does movie star Henry Fonda fit this true tale?

I know, it reads like the initial plotline of what’s going to turn out to be an historic cinematic stinker. . . but believe me, it’s not.

And so, let’s begin with Aleta. Born Aleta Friele (for purposes of acting she changed the spelling to “Freel”) in Jersey City on June 17, 1907, she was the daughter of a physician, attended the Bergen School for Girls in Jersey City, and graduated from Smith College in 1928. Having had the yen to act since early youth, she wound up spending her summers learning her craft at a summer stock theater company on Cape Cod called the “University Players.” Although the company (which was made up largely of Ivy League and “Seven Sisters” graduates and undergraduates) would only last for 4 years (1928-1932), it became an incubator for future talent - both on stage and in film. Among its members who would go on to achieve fame in the theatre and film industry were Joshua Logan, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan (whom Fonda would be married to from Dec. 1931 to Mar. 1933) Mildred Natwick, and Burgess Meredith.  Its founders included Harvard’s Kent Smith and John Swope (son of G.E. President Gerard Swope), and Bartlett Quigley, the father of actor Jane Alexander. 

        Henry Fonda, Broadway Star

From 1931 to 1933 Aleta appeared in 4 Broadway plays: two melodramas, one drama, and one a comedy. The most "successful” of the four, a melodrama entitled  “Double Door,” ran for not quite three months; her name appeared third on the cast list. During that time, Aleta’s University Players friend and colleague, Henry Fonda, had made his way to Broadway, appearing in such long-forgotten plays as The Game of Love and Death in late 1929 and I Loved You Wednesday  which ran for 63 performances in late 1932. 

The Grand Island (Nebraska)-born, Omaha-raised Fonda’s earliest acting coach in Ohama was Dorothy "Do” Brando, whose son, Marlon "Bud” Brando would become one of the most acclaimed movie stars of the 20th century.  Where Aleta never became a Broadway notable, Fonda rang the bell in early 1934 when he became one of the stars of a musical called New Faces of 1934 which ran for more than a year on Broadway and then went out on tour. Despite being neither a singer nor dancer, Hank Fonda quickly became an audience favorite, along with the 25-year old Imogene Coca (1908-2001), best known for the 4 years she spent playing opposite Sid Caesar on the megahit Your Show of Shows (1950-1954).     

            Ross Alexander (1907-1937)

One day, during the time Fonda was learning his craft with the University Players, a shy twenty-four year-old named Ross Alexander wandered in and charmed the entire company, particularly Aleta.  Alexander had done some acting on Broadway, but the powers-that-be at the University Players wouldn’t allow him to join the group: he’d never attended college (Fonda himself had spent two years studying journalism at the University of Minnesota). The young Alexander didn’t seem to mind this slight; he participated in skits at the University Players tearoom and slept in the men’s house when he wasn’t making time with Aleta.  Ross Alexander (Alexander Ross Smith, Jr.), was the son of Maude Adele Cohen. He had had his first taste of Broadway in a three-act play called Enter Madame, a comedy about an opera singer. Its star was Blanche Yurka (1887-1974), and would have  a highly-respectable 350 performance run from August 1920 to April 1922 at Broadway’s famed Garrick Theatre. (In 1934 Enter Madame would be made into a motion picture starring Elissa Landi and the up-and-coming Cary Grant.

             Ross Alexander in “Captain Blood”

During his years on Broadway, Alexander appeared in  nearly a dozen plays including “The Ladder” (1926), “Let Us Be Gay” (1929) and “That’s Gratitude” (1930).  In the early years of talking motion pictures, Hollywood studios looked to Broadway for new faces with good voices; many of their silent stars simply couldn’t cut it; their voices didn’t fit their image.  Alexander possessed both a handsome face and a good voice.  He was signed by Paramount, sent out to Hollywood in 1932 appeared in his first picture, The Wiser Sex . . . but nothing came of it.  So, he returned to New York appeared in more four plays, got noticed by Warner Brothers, and before going back to Hollywood, married Aleta Freel.  Hank Fonda was his best man. Quickly, Warner Brothers began casting him in their popular “backstage” Depression-era musicals and college-caper films. After appearing as second leads in such musicals as Social Register and Flirtation Walk, Ross Alexander hit the bigtime, appearing as Demetrius in Warner’s all-star A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1935), Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn (also 1935) and China Clipper, starring Humphrey Bogart (1936).  By then he was making big bucks, purchased a large home in Laurel Canyon and looked to be on top of the world.  But things were about to go horribly awry . . .

          “The Farmer Takes a Wife” (1935)

Before we get to Alexander’s downward spiral in Hollywood, let’s return for a moment to Henry Fonda’s life on Broadway.  Almost immediately after closing in New Faces of 1934, Hank starred in a comedy-drama called The Farmer Takes a Wife.  In it, Hank played Dan Harrow, a man who works on the Erie Canal in order to earn enough money to buy a farm.  Along the way Fonda’s character meets cook Molly Larkins, falls in love with her, and asks her to marry him; the only problem (and here a bit of comedy enters the play) is that she can’t consider leaving the “exciting life” of the canal for a banal existence on a farm.  On Broadway, Molly was played by June Walker, a noted stage actor.  (Also appearing in her third play was Margaret  Hamilton, who just 5 years later would become immortalized as Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.)  Fonda received stellar reviews for The Farmer Takes a Wife,  and within a few days, signed a “run of the play” contract for $250.00 per week.  When the rights to the play were purchased by the Fox Film Corporation, they decided to sign the then 28-year old Henry Fonda to reprise his role as Dan Harrow.  But instead of similarly hiring June Walker to play Molly, they decided that Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor would make for a better box office draw.  Also appearing in Fonda’s film debut was Charles Bickford, who played Molly’s boyfriend.  (Ironically, Fonda would only appear in one more movie with Bickford: 1967’s A Big Hand For the Little Lady, which was Bickford’s last film.)

Upon arriving in Hollywood, Hank moved in with Aleta and Ross. From that point on Fonda’s Hollywood career was assured.  And, he was smart enough to get a clause written into his contract that would permit him to perform on stage at least once a year . . . which he would do for the next 45 years.  Soon, he purchased a place in Beverly Hills, where his first roommate was his best friend from the University Players,  Princeton College grad James Stewart. . . 

Even as Ross Alexander’s career was gaining him fame and fortune, there were problems at home for both husband and wife.  Aleta, having made the rounds of studio casting offices and even being filmed to see how she would look and sound on the screen, had not a single nibble or offer . . . which made her terribly depressed.  There is an old saying on both Broadway and in Hollywood that one of the most essential traits a potential star must possess is an ability to withstand rejection . . . and keep “a-going.”  Aleta simply could not not accept rejection.  And, to make matters worse, her husband Ross turned out to be a not-so-closeted gay man whose dalliances were becoming well-known in Hollywood, that smallest of small towns.  Despite the fact that the film capital was the original “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” community in America, Ross could not - or would not - exercise the discretion expected of a star-in-the-making.  Things became so bad for Aleta that she wound up shooting herself in the temple with a .22 rifle outside their Laurel Canyon home.  The date was December 7, 1935. Less than two weeks later after her tragic death, Captain Blood had its world premiere.  Ross, despite his wonderful reviews, was a mess.    

Although he was still getting parts, his placement in film credits started inching precipitously downward.  After Arleta died, he began drinking heavily and spending money like a drunken sailor. He quickly sold his home in Laurel Canyon and moved in with Hank Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. By September 1936, he remarried up-and-coming star Anne Nagel (1915-1966), a woman whose life could be summed up in two words: “pretty miserable.”  Ross and Anne, who quickly bought a ranch at 17221 Ventura Blvd, in Encino (just a few acres away from Spencer Tracy’s ranch),  fed off each’s others pain, insecurity and serious drinking problems; on January 2, 1936, Ross, like Aleta 13 months earlier, shot himself in the temple with a .22 target pistol.  His body was found by his gardener in a pile of grain sacks in the loft of his barn.

(It should be noted that Aleta and Ross’s dear friend Henry Fonda would be surrounded by suicide throughout his life.  His first wife, Margaret Sullavan [with whom he made one film: 1936’s The Moon’s Our Home] died of a drug overdose on January 1, 1960.  Despite having been divorced for nearly 30 years, Fonda and “Peggy” had remained friends ever since and often lived within a few houses of each other in both California and Connecticut.  Fonda once described his first wife as "cream and sugar on a dish of hot ashes."  Fonda’s second wife, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw Fonda - the mother of Lady Jane and Peter Fonda - killed herself by slashing her throat while she was a patient a the Craig House Sanitarium in New York.  Additionally, Thomas Heggen, author of Fonda’s greatest stage success, “Mr. Roberts”, drowned himself in his bathtub at age 30.  At the time of his death he was suffering from a crippling case of writer’s block.  Towards the end of his brief life, Heggen said “I don’t know how I wrote Mr. Roberts . . . It must have been spirit writing”).

          Ronald Reagan at Age 25

Arleta Freel’s suicide led directly to Ross Alexander taking his own life. Alexander’s death ultimately resulted in a young radio announcer, hailing from Tampico, Illinois by way of Iowa, receiving a Hollywood Break. The story goes that a Warner Brothers casting director placed a young Ronald Reagan in a western role meant for Ross Alexander, feeling the actors’ voices were similar. The western was never made. However, after being groomed and prepped by Warners, “Dutch” appeared (uncredited) in a crowd scene in the 1937 film They Won’t Forget, a courtroom drama based loosely on the notorious murder trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. If the film is remembered 88 years later, it is more for the debut of another future star: Lana Turner, who played the murder victim, rather than for a future POTUS (President of the United States).  Later that year (1937) Reagan would get his first credited role: “ace radio crime reporter” Andy McCaine in the long-forgotten Love Is on the Air, costarring the equally long-forgotten June Travis, the daughter of Harry Grabiner, vice president of both the Cleveland Indians and (later) Chicago White Sox. 

After his inauspicious start, Reagan would, within 3 years play the ill-fated George Gipp (hence one of Reagan’s nicknames, “The Gipper”) in Knute Rockne All American (staring Pat O’Brien), and 2 years later scoring a major triumph costarring with Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings in the coming-of-age period drama Kings Row. It would unquestionably be the very best of his 81 films. One of his lines in that film (“Where’s the rest of me?”) became the title of his 1965 autobiography  The Gipper, well-liked in the Hollywood community, would go on to serve two terms (1947-1960) as president of the Screen Actor’s Guild (thereby becoming the only POTUS to run a labor union),  two four-year terms (1966-74) as California Governor, and, of course, two terms (1980-88) as POTUS. (Ironically, up until he became president of SAG, he was a rabid New Dealer, who was accustomed to calling FDR “my other daddy.”)

One wonders: if Aleta Freel hadn’t committed suicide, would Ross Alexander have had a long film career?  And if he had lived a long, happy and successful active life, would Ronald Reagan have ever been noticed by some Warner Brothers talent scout?  And if Reagan hadn’t become a movie star would he ever have become a labor leader, a governor and then POTUS? 

If it sounds like a play or film, you are absolutely correct.  It’s called Six Degrees of Separation.

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone

#41: This Land is Mine

This week I am trying something new: publishing two interconnecting blog essays on my two different websites.  It is my hope and plan that you, loyal reader, will digest this essay first . . . then watch the movie I am writing about in the essay below . . . and then, next week,  go on to an essay with the same title on my K.F. Stone Weekly site.  

Thanks, and now on with part 1.
K.F. In the history of Hollywood, there was but one “master of the malaprop” - Samuel Goldwyn. And whether or not he he was the actual creator of the many verbal corruptions known collectively as “Goldwynisms” is of no importance. Some claim that the best of them were really written by such world-class cinematic scriveners as Dorothy Parker, Budd Schulberg and Garson Kanin. Whatever the case, I thank the nameless Muse for Uncle Sammy’s many bits of wit, among my favorites being:

“A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.”
”Give me a couple of years and I'll make that actress an overnight success.”
”Anybody who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.”
”He's living beyond his means, but he can afford it” and, one of my favorites, dealing with certain screenplays:
”If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”

Indeed, films are created in order to be - pick your poison - fun, entertaining, sometimes dramatic, other times melodramatic, filled with belly laughs and as frightening as hell and - despite the Goldwynism - capable of delivering a sometimes unsettling message. And of course, all of these cinematic genotypes are made in the hopes of turning a profit. I guess Uncle Sammy (or his ghostwriter) was down on films which “send a message” because they rarely put many bucks in the bank.

For my money, one of the greatest of all “message” films was the 1943 gem This Land is Mine, directed Jean Renoir from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols, and starring Charles Laughton (one of the two or three greatest character actors of all time), the luminous 23-year old Maureen O’Hara,  George Sanders, Walter Slezak - both of whom, eerily would end their lives via suicide - and perhaps the greatest cinematic scene-stealer of all time, Una O’Connor.  This Land is Mine was produced by RKO and shot  on a limited budget and mostly on patently artificial studio sets. Although the title card read, simply “somewhere in Europe,” it doesn’t take too long to understand that director Renoir and screenwriter Nichols clearly meant that “somewhere” to be Renoir’s beloved France.  In 1943, it was referred to as “Vichy” (a town in central France, which was the seat of the infamous collaborationist government headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain.) 

This is My Land tells the story of the painfully meek, socially awkward Albert Lory (Laughton), who teaches  boys at the local school. His students have no respect for him; whenever his back is turned they hurl paper airplanes and spit-wads at him. Albert lives with his tiny, emotionally overbearing elderly mother (O’Connor), and is secretly in love with the beautiful Louise Martin (a very young Maureen O’Hara) who teaches the girls. Louise is a fiery patriot who hates the Nazis. Her brother Paul (played by the underrated Kent Smith) is an underground resistance fighter who carries out acts of sabotage against the occupation. Louise is also but she’s also engaged to George Lambert (George Sanders), a local factory owner and fascist collaborator.

Director Jean Renoir (the son of the great impressionist painter Pierre-August) was a solid anti-fascist. Joseph Goebbels declared Renoir’s flawless 1937 masterpiece La Grande Illusion (“The Grand Illusion”) “Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1,” and destroyed every European print he could find. But what makes This Land is Mine so fascinating and compelling after more than 80 years is how Lambert, Manville (Thurston Hall), the collaborationist Mayor, and the Nazi military commander Major Erich von Keller (Walter Slezak) are complex, three dimensional human beings, not cartoon villains. Von Keller is an evil, manipulative political mastermind, but he’s not stupid. He knows that being appointed military governor over a resentful, sullen, occupied people is no easy job. This is Vichy, not Poland. Von Keller not only has to rule with an iron hand. He has to keep up the charade that the local civilian government is still in charge, that Mayor Manville is more than just a puppet. Manville is just the typical politician who bends with the prevailing wind. Lambert (George Sanders) is the most interesting character of all; he embodies the inner conflicts of the bourgeoisie, of the French capitalist who depends on the German occupier to put down a revolutionary proletariat he can’t control himself.

           Chas. Laughton and Maureen O’Hara

When Louise’s brother Paul hurls a grenade from a second-floor building, killing several Nazis, von Keller declares that unless and until the perpetrator is identified, he will round up ten men at random and put them before a firing squad.  One of these men will be Professor Sorel (Phillip Merivale) the headmaster of the school where Albert and Louise teach.  Albert considers the professor to be the ideal father figure: cultured, literate and oh so kind.  When the ten men are led into a courtyard opposite the school, Albert sees Sorel and yells out his name; putting on his spectacles and spotting Albert, the professor smiles and waves.  Suddenly the camera moves back to Albert as we hear the horrifying sound of automatic weapon fire.  Albert is heartbroken. 

(n.b.If this film were made today [G-d forbid!] we would see the men fall and the blood flow.  Not so in 1943 . . . and especially at the hands of Dudley Nichols and Jean Renoir.  They knew that the imagination  of the movie-goer creates far more gore than his or her eyes could ever provide.) 

After seeing the professor - along with the other townsmen - gunned down, Albert remembers one of the last things his mentor told him: that there would come a time when he would have to be a decision.  Would he have the courage to die like a man?  After being visited by Major von Keller, George Lambert, beset with guilt, commits suicide.  At precisely that moment, Albert enters Lambert’s office, sees him lying dead, a pistol close to his body.  Albert picks it up just as a clerk enters, and flees, assuming that the cowardly teacher has murdered the railroad yard’s boss.  

Albert, who is put on trial, is transformed from coward to a heroic man with a conscience.  At his trial - for which he has refused to accept legal representation - he gives a stunning speech . . . given with all the passion and power that Charles Laughton can give.  In part, he says:

“It’s very hard for people like you and me to understand what is evil and what is good. It’s easy for the working people to understand who the enemy is because the aim of this occupation and invasion is to make them slaves. But middle-class people like us can easily believe as George Lambert did that a German victory is not such a bad thing. We hear people say that too much liberty brings chaos and disorder. And that’s why I was tempted last night by Major Von Keller when he came to my cell. But this morning I looked out through bars and I saw this beautiful new world working. I saw ten men die because they still believed in freedom.”

In his speech, he even publicly admits his great love for Louise.  Found innocent of Lambert’s murder, Albert knows that he nonetheless will be shot . . . for speaking so bluntly against the Nazis.  He returns to his classroom.  This time, the boys all rise from their seats, respect and admiration in their eyes.  Albert tells them that this will be the last time he can teach them.  He has chosen to read from Lafayette’s 1789 work (composed with the assistance of Thomas Jefferson) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a fundamental document of the French Revolution.  Albert Lory then reads aloud:

"A Declaration of the Rights of Man.
ARTICLE I: All men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
ARTICLE II: The purpose of all political parties is the safeguarding of the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights are liberty, property security, and resistance to tyranny.
ARTICLE III: The principle of all government resides in the nation itself. No group, no individual can exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from the people.
ARTICLE IV: Liberty consists in freedom to do all that does not harm others.
ARTICLE V: The law has the right to forbid only those things which are harmful to society.
ARTICLE VI: The law is the expression of the will of the people. All citizens have the right to assist personally or through their elected representatives In its formation. It ought to be the same for all whether it protects or whether it punishes. All citizens being equal in the eyes of the law have equal rights to all dignities, places and public positions according to their capacity and without any other distinctions than those of their virtues and talents."

This is, of course, the movie’s emotional and intellectual climax.  Before Albert can complete reading the text, the Nazis come to take him away.  Before leaving, he tells his charges that although this book (given to him by Professor Sorrel many years ago) may be burned, it will always remain in their heads and hearts.  As he is taken away, he gives the text to Louise, who continues reading to the class . . . fini. 

This Land is Mine opened simultaneously at 72 theaters in 50 key cities on May 7, 1943. It set a box office record for gross receipts on an opening day. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound .

This is a film which needs to be seen in 2025. It delivers a message as timely and powerful as anything we could - and should - experience.

I urge you to watch it and let it sink in. Then, next week, go to my other blog, The K.F. Stone Weekly and read yet another take . . . not about Nazis. and French collaborators in 1943, but about the meaning of heroism in 2025.

LINK TO THIS LAND IS MINE

Copyright©2025 Kurt Franklin Stone, a.k.a. “The Hollywood Brat”