This is John Batchett, continuing my conversation with Max Boot, the author of the new Reagan,

The Life and Legend. Jane Wyman, his wife, left him. He was a movie actress, and she went on to a very,

very big career. Ronald Reagan, a movie actor who had seen his best years behind him after the war,

was in despair and became a libertine for the only time in his life. Max describes what that was

like and how he got out of it, how he was rescued.

Max Boone, Reagan, The Life and Legend.

No, I don't think he ever drank heavily.

He was always afraid of alcohol based on his father's experience,

and his typical pattern would be to nurse a single cocktail through the evening.

But this was the one period of his life where he was womanizing.

And you don't think of Ronald Reagan, the ultimate family man or the ultimate husband as being

a womanizer. But he was after Jane Wyman divorced him. And it was really Jane's initiative

to divorce him. He was shocked by that and kind of left a drift and went through know went through a series of hookups with various

Hollywood actresses before Nancy Davis finally appeared in his life.