Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  The Reagans’ home life was chaotic during the fall of 1941. Both husband and wife were under a great deal of work pressure. In addition to the five films she made in 1941, Wyman had to engineer the moving of the household to their new home in September, when Reagan was filming Juke Girl and putting in extremely long hours. On October 10, he received another army deferment, this time until January 1, 1942. He had a respite in November and he and Jane began to settle in and enjoy their new affluent life-style.

  “On Sunday afternoons up at his house above Sunset Boulevard,” Moon recalls, “you could look down on Doheny Drive, the corner of Doheny and Sunset… there used to be a big gathering of the [Jack] Bennys and the George Burnses… ten or twelve people—then we’d all go out to dinner someplace on Sunday evening. If they were all out around the pool, in about thirty minutes, the Reagan brothers would have driven everybody into the house with our battles on politics. His statement to me always was: ‘That’s the trouble with you guys. Anybody who voted for Roosevelt is a Communist,’ and I used to agree with him heartily, at which point he’d get the screaming meemies.”

  Wyman was not finding life with Reagan easy. As he became more and more political and an increasingly forthright speaker, and as he began to enjoy whatever moments he had in the public eye, she became more withdrawn and involved in Maureen and her career, which had not been at all satisfying to her. They seemed to have little to talk about and she was the passive half, the listener. At premieres, Moon noticed that when people gathered around them as they entered, reaching out, grabbing for them, wanting to talk with them, she would take her husband by the hand and he would reluctantly follow her away from the crowd. Moon added, “He’s really not a demonstrative guy… he was a great swimmer but I taught Maureen to swim before she could walk.… He didn’t bother with her.… I was always a pigeon for children* but Dutch thought children should be on their own.…”

  On November 18 Reagan signed a new contract with Warners. This was not the “million dollar contract” he wrote about in his autobiography. That came in 1944 and he is mistaken in placing it three years earlier.† Nonetheless, the terms were favorable. [Reagan writes: “Lew Wasserman of MCA reminded me of a war that was going on, of Hollywood stars like Jimmy Stewart who had already been drafted, and of my own reserve officer status. He said, ‘We don’t know how much time you have—let’s get what we can while we can.…”‘] On August 19, Jane’s salary had also been renegotiated upward ($1,450 a week for the same time periods as those in Reagan’s contract).

  Reagan’s world looked bright and secure. Europe was still ravaged by war, but most Americans felt certain their country would not be physically involved. He claimed he was sleeping on Sunday, December 7, when the flash came over the radio, midday, that at dawn the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor.

  It had been 1:50 P.M. EST when E. E. Harris, Radioman First Class USN, received an alert to stand by at Radio Washington, the navy’s largest communication station, for an urgent message by the Honolulu operator. Moments later, he transcribed the following message:

  NPM 516

  Z0F2 1830 0F3 0F4 02 F0 O

  FROM: CINCPAC

  ACTION: CINCLANT CINCAF OPNAV

  AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR THIS IS

  NOT A DRILL.

  The brass hands of the ship’s clock on Roosevelt’s desk—where he sat eating lunch from a tray—stood at 1:57 when the news came over the wireless. At 2:30 EST (three hours earlier in California), the bulletin was flashed to the country via national radio. Even in California, the morning was gone. By the end of the day, fifteen hundred Hawaiians were dead, fifteen hundred others seriously wounded, and an American battleship and a destroyer had been sunk. Time reported, “At noon next day… the President moved slowly into the House of Representatives. In the packed still chamber stood the men and women of the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court. The heavy applause lingered, gradually began to break into cheers and rebel yells.

  “Mr. Roosevelt gripped the reading clerk’s stand, flipped open his black, loose-leaf schoolboy’s notebook. He took a long, steady look at the Congress and the battery of floodlights, and began to read:

  “‘Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…”‘

  By 4:10 P.M., December 8, the House and the Senate had voted almost unanimously for a declaration of war.* Reagan was stunned along with the rest of the Western world, and his service status had suddenly changed. A few months earlier, he had taken a physical at March Field and because of his poor eyesight was assigned to “limited service—eligible for Corps area service command, or War Department overhead only.” It seemed unlikely this conclusion would be reversed. He had little chance of being sent to the front. But before December 7, Warners had banked on the premise that he could win a permanent deferment.

  The studio was going through its own problems with the government. Isolationist factions in Washington were investigating Hollywood’s so-called “war mongering.” On September 25, 1941, Harry Warner had read a prepared statement before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate Commerce, United States Senate, Regarding Moving Picture Propaganda answering charges that Warner Brothers was producing films “relating to world affairs and national defense for the purpose allegedly of inciting [the United States] to war,” and that these films “twisted” facts dealing with world affairs and national defense for ulterior motives. Reagan’s recent International Squadron was one of four of Warners’ films cited by this committee.*

  Pleading eloquently, Harry Warner made the case that “if Warner Brothers had produced no pictures concerning the Nazi movement, our public would have had good reason to criticize. We would have been living in a dream-world. Today 70% of the non-fiction books published deal with the Nazi menace. Today 10% of the fiction novels are anti-Nazi in theme. Today 10% of all material submitted to us for consideration is anti-Nazi in character. Today the newspapers and radio devote a good portion of their facilities to describing Naziism. Today there is a war involving all hemispheres except our own and touching the lives of all of us____”

  He went on to counter a second charge by the committee that Warner Brothers supported Britain and opposed Naziism because the studio had a financial stake in Britain.

  “Warner Brothers receives a net revenue of approximately $5,000,000 a year from Britain,” he admitted. “If we were to stop receiving this revenue, we would continue to operate.… In truth this charge challenges our business judgment and our patriotism.

  “No one with any business judgment could possibly have acted on the assumption that the policy of this country towards England would be influenced by the relatively small investment of our industries in England.…

  “When we saw Hitler emerge in Germany, we did not try nor did we ask our government to appease him. We voluntarily liquidated our business in Germany.… If, God forbid, a similar situation should arise in Britain, we would follow the same course as we did in Germany.

  “… I will not censor the dramatization of the works of reputable and well informed writers to conceal from the American people what is happening in the world.* Freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of enterprise cannot be bought at the price of other people’s rights. I believe the American people have a right to know the truth. You may correctly charge me with being anti-Nazi. But no one can charge me with being anti-American.…”

  The hearings collapsed shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Warner Brothers had always been known for their action pictures, just as Metro specialized in musicals. And as that studio seasoned their product with generous measurements of idealistic portraits of American life and momism, Warners heaped on the ingredients of antitotalitarianism and the right of violence against it to reap the best profits in the marketplace. Box-office receipts proved that Americans bought the theory of “justifiable” violence. With America at war, Warn
ers now had a no-holds-barred situation and, under the banner of patriotic fervor, swung into production with a platoon of war films, whereas the other major film companies moved toward escapist entertainment.

  On January 1, 1942, Reagan received another deferment, requested by Jack Warner on behalf of the studio, this time until April 9, 1942. He was cast with second billing to Errol Flynn in an original Arthur Horman screenplay (then titled Forced Landing, later renamed Desperate Journey) about a British bomber on a mission over Nazi Germany. Once again, Raymond Massey joined them. Raoul Walsh was to direct, perhaps the most prestigious director Reagan had yet worked with. Walsh’s films were well known for a great sense of adventure matched by pathos and vulnerability, and he was considered by many critics “as one of the great primitive artists of the screen.”

  The film went into production at the end of January. Arthur Horman’s original screenplay remained the basis for the film, but in usual Hollywood fashion, other writers, though uncredited—Vincent Sherman and Julius and Philip Epstein in this case—had a hand in improving the weak story line.† The film was actually a series of chases sparked by some bright dialogue by the Epstein brothers. What story there was dealt with the five survivors of the crash of a British bomber in Germany. The five begin an arduous trek on foot back to England, encountering and eradicating Nazis by the bunch on their way. Two meet glorious but violent deaths early on, leaving three—Flynn, Reagan and the robust Alan Hale—to reach Holland, seize a British plane from the Nazis and fly back to England with military information acquired.* (One reviewer called the film “Three Musketeers 1942.”)

  Reagan felt his “high spot in the picture was a solo effort in which I knocked an arrogant Gestapo officer kicking, and calmly helped myself to his breakfast.”

  “There is quite a bit of joking in the script now,” Walsh wrote Wallis two weeks after the start of principal photography. “I like it, I think it might be a good twist to have a sort of a ‘Musketeers’ feeling of great comradeship between our men. Frankly, they don’t think they have a Chinaman’s chance of ever escaping, so they are going to have a ‘Roman’ holiday, and do all the damage they can, blow up all the military equipment they can lay their hands on…” Flynn, however, was not too pleased at the fast snappy lines handed to Reagan by the Epsteins, and on four different occasions stalked off the set claiming to be ill. Walsh refused to be cowed by his star and retaliated by giving Reagan some additional bits of humorous dialogue.

  Flynn’s interest in the scripts he performed, an interest Reagan seldom shared, prompted him to make his opinion known. He wrote Hal Wallis on February 23:

  Since we had not come to it as yet, I haven’t mentioned to you the very bad feeling I get from having [Arthur] Kennedy dead in the bomber while I talk cheerfully to Reagan and jokingly to the CO in England over the short wave. It is, to say the least, callous and I don’t think the audience will forget for one moment the corpse flying with us in the back seat while we ignore him. Can he be wounded, or killed outside the plane?†

  Please let me know.

  Regards,

  Errol

  A week after filming began on Desperate Journey, Kings Row was released, and never were reviews so at odds. The New Yorker decreed: “‘Kings Row’ will give you that rare glow which comes from seeing a job well done crisply, competently, and with confidence. It has such distinction that it is plainly too good for the shoddy fellowship of the ‘ten best pictures of the year.’ Let us simply record that in February, 1941, Warner Brothers produced a good movie.… I wish I could understand the mechanics of the picture—how they combined dialogue, costuming, and set design to convey the variety of the social structure in an American town of the nineteen-hundreds. Anyway they did… Ronald Reagan capably breezes through the part of the town sport who becomes a victim of Dr. Gordon [Charles Coburn].… Reagan has never appeared to such excellent advantage.”

  Taking a different view, The New York Times reviewer felt, “Warner Brothers bit off a great deal more than they could chew when they tried to make a cogent motion picture out of Henry Bellamann’s gloomy and ponderous novel, ‘Kings Row.’… Just why Warners attempted a picture of this sort in these times, and just why the corps of high-priced artists which they employed for it did such a bungling job, are questions which they are probably mulling more anxiously than anyone else. For the disappointing fact is that ‘Kings Row’… is one of the bulkiest blunders to come out of Hollywood in some time… and Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan make only casual acquaintance with the characters [they play]…” If Reagan believed the film would make him a major star overnight, he had miscalculated. Nonetheless, it did extremely well at the box office, perhaps because the turgid soap-opera quality of the film afforded a kind of masochistic relief from the torrent of horrific war stories both real and on film.

  For a brief few days in March, Warners considered Reagan for an upcoming film, Casablanca. Publicity releases stated he would star opposite Ann Sheridan (the Ingrid Bergman role). Exactly which male role he was to play was never specified. In the original concept, the idealistic Laszlow (played by Paul Henreid) and Rick (Bogart) had equal billing as co-stars. Howard Koch, who shared screenplay credit on the film, claimed the role for which Reagan was considered was Laszlow (the casting list in Warners’ file substantiates this). Reagan never knew which part he might have had or why he lost it. At the time, it did not seem important in view of his army status.

  On March 30, 1942, Jack Warner had written the U.S. Army asking for an extended deferment for thirty days (from the pregranted April date already set) on the basis that Reagan had not completed the “patriotic” film Desperate Journey. On April 2, Warner received this telegram:

  REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT ANOTHER DEFERMENT CANNOT BE GRANTED 2ND LT. RONALD WILSON REAGAN CAVALRY STOP SHORTAGE OF AVAILABLE OFFICERS PREVENTS FAVORABLE CONSIDERATION—HORACE SYKES, COLONEL AGD, ADJ. GENERAL, FT. DOUGLAS, UTAH.

  Reagan’s remaining scenes were given top priority for completion before his departure.* His major concern was money. In spite of Jack Warner’s patriotic bravado, players’ salaries were suspended the same day they went off to war.

  With all the expenses of the new house, Jane was not going to have an easy time budgeting, despite her increased salary. Then there was Nelle, whom Reagan had been supporting. He wrote Steve Trilling (now Jack Warner’s assistant) asking if his mother could be paid $75 a week by the studio to answer his fan mail. Trilling sent a memo to Warner, who refused the request with: “We can’t start a precedent.” Reagan then approached Warner for a loan of the $75 a week to be paid directly to Nelle while he was in active service. Warner rejected this idea as well, but finally Reagan signed a note for $3,900; Nelle was to be sent $75 a week for one year. And Reagan, upon his return from his war service, was to repay the loan, interest free, to the studio at the rate of $200 a week for eighteen weeks and $300 on the nineteenth week.

  He entrained for Fort Mason, California, near San Francisco, as 2nd Lieutenant Cavalry Reserve U.S. Army on April 19, 1942. He had learned beforehand that he would be on the staff there as a liaison officer loading convoys, so the physical he had on his first day of military service was redundant. But he claimed that after the eye examination one of the two doctors said, “If we sent you overseas, you’d shoot a general.” And the other doctor countered, “Yes, and you’d miss him.”

  * During the several hundred interviews conducted for the purpose of this book, a pattern began to form. As Reagan’s political influence began to grow, his personal detractors multiplied significantly. After 1941, private opinion became jarring in its diversity. Some coworkers still found him “a wonderful guy” and “thoroughly likeable,” but a considerable segment referred to him as “power hungry” and “dangerous,” or as “boring,” with “no depth,” “a cardboard figure.”

  * Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the Second Commandment made the saluting of the flag a crime against the Lord (“You shall not make for yourself a graven im
age or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.”)

  † Upon meeting old Dixon acquaintances in 1980, he had been able to pinpoint the exact locations of homes they had occupied fifty-five years earlier.

  * Ruth Walgreen Dart went on to become a writer and poet (The Flight, My Crown, My Love and Prelude to Poetry) and publisher (The Tiger’s Eye, a literary magazine).

  * In later years, Reagan used lines from these films in many of his political speeches to underscore or make a point, treating the film line or situation as reality.

  † Originally titled Jook Girl.

  ‡ Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (The Light of Heart in Great Britain) and Moontide.

  * Neil and Bess Reagan are childless.

  † The 1944 contract negotiated by Lew Wasserman designated that one million dollars be paid to Reagan over seven years at the rate of thirty-five hundred dollars per week for forty-three weeks in each of those years. It also stipulated that his option could be dropped at any option period if he refused to appear in films that were assigned to him.

  * The vote in the Senate was 82-0; in the House, 388-1. The lone dissenter was Jeannette Ranking, a Republican from Montana “who sat with a bewildered smile, muttering over and over that this might be a Roosevelt trick.”

  * The four films were: Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Sergeant York, Underground and International Squadron.

  * Warner Brothers’ position and the testimony of Jack Warner during the proceedings of HUAC less than a decade later contradict this statement. A blacklist existed at Warners throughout the fifties and most of the sixties and scripts were closely vetted for any pro-Communist philosophy, which was cut without the screenwriters’ approval even if the excision was a truthful statement in terms of world conditions.