Among the Davises’ closest friends were Walter Huston and his actress wife Nan Sunderland, who had been the witnesses to Edie and Loyal’s secret wedding in 1928. Huston, a one-time vaudevillian, was among the greatest character actors of the era and the patriarch of four generations of performers, including his granddaughter Anjelica Huston. The year Nancy arrived in Hollywood, the man she grew up calling “Uncle Walter” won a 1949 Academy Award for his portrayal of a talkative old prospector in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. His son, John, won the Best Director Oscar for that same movie. (Ronald Reagan, to his everlasting regret, turned down a part in that picture because he was already committed to another one, a modestly successful romantic comedy called The Voice of the Turtle.)
Loyal became Huston’s doctor and his friend. Nancy’s father would jokingly admit to being perplexed that the actor could get $75,000 for doing a movie, while he earned only $500 for a life-saving operation, “and all my care was exceptional.” During a couple of summers, the Davises vacationed at Huston’s getaway in Running Springs near Lake Arrowhead, California. The actor had a magnificent three-story lodge on the edge of a mountain overlooking the San Bernardino National Forest. After dinner, everyone would sit on a couch that went around the fireplace and listen to him read. Among those who dropped by were the director Joshua Logan and a boyish actor named James Stewart, who played his accordion and sang to Nancy under the stars. She was thrilled when Jimmy Stewart invited her to come dancing with him at the Palladium in Hollywood. Loyal said no.
Nancy was captivated by these earthbound gods and goddesses, who possessed a magical ability to transport the masses into their world of make-believe. As she wrote in her memoir: “One summer we wrote and produced our own little home movie. There I was, acting—and with real professionals like Mother, Uncle Walter, and Nan (who had played Desdemona to Uncle Walter’s Othello on Broadway). My brother, Dick, was behind the camera, and Uncle Walter and I were the stars.”
Huston saw that Nancy had show business ambitions and gently advised Edie to discourage them. While the girl was attractive, her looks—that “soft, dreamy quality” that so captivated Nazimova—were not going to stand out among the busty, blonde sweater girls and dark, smoky beauties who were in favor in Hollywood at the time. “She has a little talent, but she’s demure,” Huston told Edie, according to Nancy’s brother. Dick’s own assessment of his stepsister concurred with Huston’s: “Socially, she was outgoing, but not in front of an audience. She liked to sing, but did not have a good voice.” Katharine Hepburn also told Nancy not to set her heart on making it as an entertainer. “She sent me a long letter warning that acting was a very difficult profession and that I had seen only the glamorous parts,” Nancy said. “Mother’s friends were stars, she reminded me, but most would-be actresses ended up as waitresses and receptionists. It was sobering advice, but I wasn’t put off.”
Politics was another world to which Edie introduced her daughter during those formative years in Chicago. Urban political machines, such as the one that ran Nancy’s hometown, were practical, businesslike endeavors: knowing how to get things done was more important than party labels or ideological purity. The Davises were close friends with legendary—and legendarily corrupt—Democratic mayor Edward J. Kelly and his wife, Margaret, who were their neighbors on East Lake Shore Drive.
Loyal and Edie sat in Margaret Kelly’s box at the 1944 Democratic convention in Chicago, where Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term in the White House, despite the open secret among party insiders that the president’s health was in serious decline. Mayor Kelly’s maneuvering during that convention was instrumental in securing the second spot on the ticket for Missouri senator Harry Truman over sitting vice president Henry A. Wallace, whom Kelly and his allies regarded as too progressive. It would turn out to be a move of historic significance when Roosevelt died less than three months after his 1945 inauguration.
Edie’s political connection to the mayor had also put her in a less welcome spotlight. This was back on June 4, 1943, when a headline on the second page of the Chicago Tribune blared: “Mystery Veils Identity of a Policewoman.” Below it in smaller type was a subhead: “Mrs. Loyal Davis Denies Pay Roll Name Is Hers.” The sardonically written story told of an intrigue that arose when city records revealed that a woman by the name of Mrs. Edith Davis, who lived at 199 Lake Shore Drive, was working as a temporary policewoman on the municipal payroll. This Edith Davis—whom city records indicated had the same birthdate and birthplace as Edie claimed—was getting a city salary of $2,141 a year, or northward of $30,000 in today’s dollars. The newspaper then hilariously described Edie’s reaction when a reporter confronted her:
“Mrs. Loyal Davis, whose first name coincidentally is Edith and who lives at 199 Lake Shore Drive, last evening raised her eyebrows at this bit of news and vehemently denied that she was, or ever has been, a policewoman. Mrs. Loyal Davis is the wife of a prominent neurologist and surgeon serving in the army medical corps overseas as a
