PBS doc: How Nancy Reagan’s Chicago roots defined first lady

Before Michelle Obama from South Shore and before Hillary Clinton from Park Ridge, there was an even more controversial and influential first lady in the White House whose values were shaped growing up in Chicago.

Though born in New York as Anne Frances Robbins, the woman who would become known as Nancy Reagan was raised in the lap of luxury on the Gold Coast during the Great Depression and attended the Girls’ Latin School of Chicago.

Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, PBS will present Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, a one-hour documentary from MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Narrated by Judy Woodruff, the flattering but revealing portrait of the actress-turned-political-wife will air at 9pm on Super Bowl Sunday on WTTW-Channel 11.

Much is made of 7-year-old Nancy’s move to Chicago in 1929 when her actress mother married Dr. Loyal Davis, a wealthy and socially prominent neurosurgeon. “Growing up in Chicago, Nancy was really surrounded by women who believed in marriage and put their marriages and their husbands before everything else and seemed to realize that the more they enhanced their husbands, the more they enhanced themselves,” says biographer Bob Colacello.

“Her whole life took place within about 12 very prosperous blocks,” he says of her upbringing. “The only time she would have seen poor people was when they would go downtown to the Loop to see a movie.”

By age 16, she was adopted by the step-father she adored, and she changed her name to Nancy Davis. Her “role of a lifetime,” of course, refers to her marriage to actor Ronald Reagan in 1952 and the amazing political career she helped him pursue from Hollywood and General Electric to the governorship of California and the White House.

Though dismissed by many at the time as an extravagant, superficial first lady more concerned with high fashion, interior decorating and astrology, the documentary argues that her influence over Reagan administration policies and personnel cannot be overstated. It makes the case that she functioned as her husband’s de facto chief of staff, pushing him to improve relations with the Soviet Union and helping rescue his presidency from the Iran-contra scandal that nearly wrecked it.

“For Nancy Reagan to have this type of power, she had to deny it,” says historian Allida Black. “Not only because Americans would be uncomfortable with it, but because she didn’t want to make her husband look weak.”

Credited for research on Nancy Reagan’s Chicago years was Lisa Holton, a former business editor of the Sun-Times and free-lance researcher for the Chicago History Museum.