In Remembrance: Ronald Reagan

     Former President Ronald Reagan, the actor-turned-politician whose deep sincerity helped change a nation, died Saturday afternoon June 5, 2004, after a decade long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 93.

     Born to a poor family in Tampico, Illinois on February 6^th, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan grew up in Dixon, Ill. and was an outgoing and overachieving youth, finding success at anything he tried. As a young man, he held a job as a pool lifeguard and succeeded in his schooling, studying economics and playing football, graduating from Eureka College in 1932. A sports enthusiast, he went on to sports broadcasting for Iowa radio, earning the nickname “Dutch Reagan”, eventually becoming the regular announcer for the Chicago Cubs in the mid-30’s.  His work took him to NBC In 1937 when he headed to Hollywood to cover the Cub’s training camp; he nabbed a contract for Warner Bros. Studios.

Reagan with Bette Davis and Geraldine Fitzgerald in Dark Victory

     Reagan debuted onscreen as a radio announcer, the lead role in 1937’s Love Is On The Air. Warner Bros. nearly type-cast him as he appeared as an uncredited radio announcer in Hollywood Hotel and as an announcer again in 1938’s James Cagney flick, Boy Meets Girl. But Reagan proved to be a good actor, landing roles in Warner’s “B” pictures. He portrayed a lawyer in love opposite Jane Bryan in the lightweight Girls on Probation (1938) and met his first wife, Jane Wyman, when they were both cast in 1938’s military comedy, Brother Rat. It was Reagan’s first big role in a major picture and soon after, he also starred opposite Dick Powell in the romantic musical, Going Places. At the end of the decade, audiences saw him as the carefree playboy Alec Hamm in the splendid 1939 Bette Davis tearjerker, Dark Victory as well as two films in the “Dead End Kids” series Hell’s Kitchen and Angels Wash Their Faces.

     As the 1940’s began, Ronald Reagan starred in one the crowning jewels of sports films, Knute Rockne, All American (1940) as Notre Dame powerhouse George “The Gipper” Gipp. The film featured a much quoted line as his dying character requests, "Someday when things are tough, maybe you can ask the boys to go in there and win just one for the Gipper." He made headlines by marrying Wyman, and his acting career seemed to be taking off as he was seen later that year as George Custer in the Michael Curtiz directed historical picture Santa Fe Trail (1940), opposite Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. It is worth mentioning that Reagan was considered to play in the 1942 immortal film classic Casablanca with Ann Sheridan, but historians regard this as a simple media ploy. Yet, Reagan had notably his best performance in King’s Row (1942), a small town picture in which Reagan is a man whose legs are amputated by a twisted surgeon hell-bent on revenge. His anguished cry, “Where’s the rest of me?” was a highlight of the Oscar nominated film which also starred Ann Sheridan and Claude Rains.

In Bedtime For Bonzo (1951)

     Although he was 30 when World War II began, Reagan volunteered for military service, entering the Army Air Corps. Though never involved in combat due to bad eyesight, he made numerous training films. Reagan returned to his film career after his military term, but he never had the same success as King’s Row. He starred in That Hagen Girl (1947), opposite a teenaged Shirley Temple, but the film didn’t fare well. Reagan did have some good films left in him, like 1949’s critically acclaimed The Hasty Heart, co-starring opposite Patricia Neal and the Oscar nominated Richard Todd, and the gritty drama Storm Warning (1951). Reagan also starred in the light-hearted 1951 family comedy, Bedtime for Bonzo as a professor arguing environment is key to raising children and featuring a chimpanzee who outplayed him. The movie later proved to be a vehicle of ridicule for Reagan’s political endeavors. Reagan, however, did not appear in the follow-up, 1952’s Bonzo Goes to College. 

     Reagan began his tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, a seat he would have until 1952. Shortly after, his marriage to Wyman fizzled out. He met second wife Nancy Davis, then working at MGM, when she asked the Guild to straighten out a problem of leftist organizations wrongly using her name. Reagan became entangled in the disputes over Communism in Hollywood and his views became more conservative. Reagan spent much time with Nancy and they married in March 1952.

     As his screen time was soon waning, he still hadn’t worked much in the one genre Reagan was desperate to try,  the Western. Once his contract with Warner Brothers was officially over, Reagan did star in a few stale Westerns, like Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) starring Barbara Stanwyck, and few post-war movies. One such Hollywood picture was in the campy submarine drama, Hellcats of the Navy (1957), with wife Davis. His last onscreen appearance happened by lucky accident. The Killers (1964) had been intended as made for TV, but its content was considered too violent for small screen, thus its theatrical release. In the movie he plays a scary heavy who slaps his mistress, Angie Dickinson, in what is probably Reagan’s toughest role in his quarter-century film career.

     As Reagan’s acting career faded on the silver screen, he sought out work on television. He hosted and occasionally starred in General Electric Theatre from 1954-61 and hosted the Western show Death Valley Days from 1964-1966. He was always active in Hollywood, but his career never reached the heights of friend James Stewart. Still, Reagan served as President for the Screen Actors Guild once again from 1959-60, and this return may have acted as the springboard to further his political aspirations. He later acted as a spokesperson against Hollywood’s frankness over sexually motivated themes.

-John Gibbon