Claim: George W. Romney's wife was an American actress and politician.

George Wilcken Romney -LRB- July 8 , 1907 -- July 26 , 1995 -RRB- was an American businessman and Republican Party politician . He was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962 , the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969 , and the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973 . He was the father of former Governor of Massachusetts and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the husband of former Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Lenore Romney .   Romney was born to American parents living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico ; events during the Mexican Revolution forced his family to flee back to the United States when he was a child . The family lived in several states and ended up in Salt Lake City , Utah , where they struggled during the Great Depression . Romney worked in a number of jobs , served as a Mormon missionary in the United Kingdom , and attended several colleges in the U.S. but did not graduate from any of them . In 1939 he moved to Detroit and joined the American Automobile Manufacturers Association , where he served as the chief spokesman for the automobile industry during World War II and headed a cooperative arrangement in which companies could share production improvements . He joined Nash-Kelvinator in 1948 , and became the chief executive of its successor , American Motors Corporation , in 1954 . There he turned around the struggling firm by focusing all efforts on the compact Rambler car . Romney mocked the products of the `` Big Three '' automakers as `` gas-guzzling dinosaurs '' and became one of the first high-profile , media-savvy business executives . Devoutly religious , he presided over the Detroit Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .   Having entered politics by participating in a state constitutional convention to rewrite the Michigan Constitution during 1961 -- 1962 , Romney was elected Governor of Michigan in 1962 . Re-elected by increasingly large margins in 1964 and 1966 , he worked to overhaul the state 's financial and revenue structure , greatly expanding the size of state government and introducing Michigan 's first state income tax . Romney was a strong supporter of the American Civil Rights Movement . He briefly represented moderate Republicans against conservative Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 U.S. presidential election . He requested the intervention of federal troops during the 1967 Detroit riot .   Initially a front runner for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 1968 election , he proved an ineffective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in polls . After a mid-1967 remark that his earlier support for the Vietnam War had been due to a `` brainwashing '' by U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Vietnam , his campaign faltered even more and he withdrew from the contest in early 1968 . After Nixon 's election as president , he appointed Romney as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development . Romney 's ambitious plans for housing production increases for the poor , and for open housing to desegregate suburbs , were modestly successful but often thwarted by Nixon . Romney left the administration at the start of Nixon 's second term in 1973 . Returning to private life , he advocated volunteerism and public service , and headed the National Center for Voluntary Action and its successor organizations from 1973 through 1991 . He also served as a regional representative of the Twelve within his church .