Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  Actress Arlene Dahl also recalled a “paternal” kindness at this period of Reagan’s life. “Gary Cooper had the same quality.” Dahl had just been signed by Warners and cast in a small role in Life with Father. The first day she came into the commissary, Reagan got up and went over to her table. “‘I understand we’re both from the same part of the country [Dahl’s home was Minneapolis],’ he said, ‘so I thought I should be the one to welcome you to the lot.’“

  He was not romantically involved with either of these beautiful women. “We did very little offscreen conversing,” Virginia Mayo confessed of her work with Reagan on The Girl from Jones Beach. “I was shy, I guess, and I was newly married [to actor Michael O’Shea]. He did have, occasionally, young ladies on the set.… His charm was overwhelming and I think that was the basis of his career as an actor.” A sense of fun pervaded the set. “Eddie Bracken was always playing magic tricks—like making your watch disappear. And Dona Drake kept me laughing all the time,” she reminisced. “We went to the beach to film and play leapfrog. I jumped over Ronnie’s back.”

  Bracken recalled an incident that turned out to be amusing. “Reagan was supposed to be running away from, or after Virginia Mayo… and I was in hot pursuit of Dona Drake. I came up with the idea for a comedy bit where we’d get confused and chase the wrong girl for a minute or two, then turn around and bump into each other. That’s when Ronnie broke some vertebrae.” Reagan’s version of the incident: “Eddie got so goggle-eyed he stepped on my heels, tripped me and cracked my coccyx.”

  “Reagan was a lonely guy [during the making of The Girl from Jones Beach] because of his divorce, but a very level-headed guy,” Bracken later said. “He was never for the sexpots. He was never a guy looking for the bed. He was a guy looking for companionship more than anything else.”

  The director, Peter Godfrey, who had previously worked with Reagan on That Hagen Girl, shot around him for three weeks while he was hospitalized for his back injury and then recuperated at Wyman’s Malibu home while she was vacationing in Hawaii. His ties to Wyman remained strong and would for another year. When The Girl from Jones Beach was finished, both Reagan and Wyman had cameo bits (but not together) in It’s a Great Feeling, a spoof on Hollywood studios. During the time had been making lighthearted comedies, which were destined to do more for his female co-stars than for himself, Wyman was fast becoming a critically acclaimed box-office star.*

  “Supplies of headache powder are running low and there’s moaning and groaning in the ‘land of make believe’—for Hollywood and the entire amusement industry are caught in the throes of revolution,” Reagan wrote in July 1948 as guest writer for labor columnist Victor Riesel’s syndicated column. The revolution Reagan referred to was the fast ascent and availability of television, which had brought the Screen Actors Guild smack-dab into a dispute with the motion-picture producers that once again threatened to shut down the Hollywood studios. Reagan went on to explain the dispute:

  “All actors, whether in low or high salary brackets, take the position that when they sell their services for films intended for exhibition in theatres, such films should not be used in another medium, i.e., television, without additional payment to the actors. Obviously, the producer of the film is not going to give it to television free of charge.

  “The actors feel they should get a reasonable portion of the additional revenue from theatre films when used in television… all we are asking is that when theatre films are televised—and hundreds of old ones are being sold or leased for television right now—the actors should get a reasonable percentage of the additional revenue.

  “The producers’ position is that once a picture has been made, they have the right to use that film for any purpose they desire. They claim they made a mistake in granting to the musicians the very principle the Screen Actors Guild is asking for actors.”†

  The dispute over the new producers’ contract with the controversial television clause momentarily pushed aside the issue of Communist infiltration in Hollywood. Reagan’s life in the summer of 1948 revolved around the negotiations for the SAG with the producers. He was the sole actor in the three-man team that included Jack Dales and the Guild’s counsel Laurence W. Beilen-son. The big issue in the new proposed producers’ contract was the television residual clause, but the actors were also fighting for compensation for overtime hours put in and for close-ups shot after the film’s completion (a general practice at the time). The producers wanted to pay the actors by the hour for these services. Reagan wanted a minimum weekly wage to be applied. Finally, the producers gave in on this but were immovable on the point of the residuals from television.

  “The conference with the producers,” Jack Dales recalled, “went on so long that finally we decided to break for fifteen minutes to go to the toilet or whatever. There had been a very big bowl of M&M’s [candies] in the middle of the table as Ron always liked to eat something sweet as he was talking and it was M&M’s then. As he got up he angrily pushed the bowl over to the producers’ side of the table. ‘Eat these and I hope they’re poison,’ he said and walked out of the room.” Once they were outside, he turned to Dales. “‘You know, I don’t think it’s good that they’re going to have to pay minimum if an actor has to have a close-up. It’s not good for the actor. That may decide to tell the producer not to do the close-up and it’s very important for an actor to have those extra close-ups.’ So he did the unprecedented thing.… He went back into the producers… and he said, ‘I’ll give you one for you.… I don’t think we’ll take the deal on the close-ups.’“

  Dales also remembered another tough negotiation. “The producers were just not giving in at all and he kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, and finally he said to them, ‘I’ll tell you’—cause everything he’d suggest they said no—’How about a piece of green cheese?’ Everyone laughed. It was kind of a corny moment [but] it broke the tension and they were able to come back at that point and renegotiate what they were doing. He always said that he believed, because of Roosevelt, in the impossible dream—he absolutely believed in the impossible dream—and he believed he could get for an actor or anyone that he fought for—the impossible dream and make it possible.”

  The negotiations with the producers broke down on June 1 and Reagan presented the SAG board with three choices:

  1. To request a renewal or extension of the present actors-producers’ contract for one year.

  2. To strike.

  3. Not to renew the contract and not to strike.

  The producers, he told them, were convinced that the time was ripe for a showdown, not merely with the SAG but with all labor. And they had no “firm conception” of what the impact of television was going to mean to them. They would undoubtedly stand firm.

  A strategy committee was formed, headed by Reagan. Three weeks of frantic meetings in board members’ homes followed. Then negotiations were opened again with the producers. “Ronnie acted like a professional [negotiator],” Dales said. “We were balancing so many balls in the air all at the same time. We’d meet with the Hal Roach group on a Monday, and then on a Wednesday we’d meet with the majors on the same issues. We intended to break the majors down by making a deal with the Roach group. All of them were adamant that there was no such thing in their world as ever paying for reuse of a film… both sets of producers were absolutely adamant that this was utterly… well practically un-American. ‘How dare you? You buy something. You pay for it. We pay you adequately. We pay you people munificently. Now you tell us we can’t use the stuff? It’s ours!’ And we said… ‘You’re talking economics of the 1900s.… It’s a whole new ball game.’

  “I can remember sitting around with the independent group, big Hal Roach with that big chin and his pipe in his mouth and furious, red, and Ronnie saying, ‘Now Hal, this is not an offer, but let me ask you: You wouldn’t give an actor a thousand dollars for a repeat. You wouldn’t give him a hundred. Would you give him that pipe you’re smoking? Would you give him
a pencil? Would you concede the principle at all?’

  ‘“Absolutely not.’

  “So it looked to us like we were going to have two strikes going against both sets of producers. Ronnie was, I think, marvelous. What happened was the major producers, the people we were trying to break by using the independents, actually gave in first. I think the thing that convinced them, if there was one final thing, was… their fear that if we got reruns for television, somehow we would ask for the same thing for… reissuing of films, and Ronnie was fairly honest about that. He told them, ‘That’s a dream. Actors can have it. They can dream. But not in our time.’ And they had to believe him… and they gave in, and that broke the other producers then. We got our first contracts. But it was endless days of bouncing between groups of producers.”

  The negotiations came to a “successful conclusion” on July 7. The producers had agreed to certain new work compensations coming out of the advent of television. But the new contract was more or less a truce that gave both sides until the following March to reach an agreement on points yet to be negotiated.*

  One of the industry problems hotly discussed at this time was the problem of “runaway” films. In England, American films could be exhibited, but the profits had to remain in that country. The only answer appeared to be to make pictures in Europe with the frozen dollars. The SAG was fighting against this practice, as were most of the other trade unions, for obvious reasons.

  His image had changed considerably. Before he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, he had dressed informally, showing a preference for sports coats, slacks and sweaters. He now wore suits, neckties and, in the evenings, formal clothes more often. He still read every book he believed important as well as most of the political columns. He wore contact lenses in front of the camera, but his glasses at other times. He took the women he dated out to dinner, quite often to Chasen’s, and talked away most of the evening. The charm was retained, but the boyishness and the down-home quality were fast disappearing. What remained merged with the political side of his nature, the easy smile, the solid handshake, the eye-to-eye contact on meeting, the ability to remember everyone’s names (co-workers, Guild members, negotiating teams) and some small personal facts—like a husband or wife’s first name, a recent illness, birth, wedding, award. On the lot, he always waved at the people on the tour bus. (“They came to see Hollywood stars. I think the least I can do is to send them back home saying one waved at him,” Reagan told movie columnist Sidney Skolsky.) He good-naturedly signed autographs, even when it was an intrusion on his privacy (at a restaurant or in a theater).

  Bob Cummings remembered that about this time he kiddingly said to Reagan, “One day you should run for president—his answer was, ‘Yes.’“ His political interest had always been (and remained) national, not regional. He concentrated part of his attention on Hollywood and the industry and the rest on Washington and the world. However, if he had intentions of moving into the national political arena, he still gave no real evidence of it. The problems and politics of California were not in his area of expertise. (Close associates concur that until the mid-sixties he was never as well-informed about the political climate of California as he was about that of Washington, D.C.) What he appeared to want now was a chance at better film roles. Throughout 1948 and 1949 he wrote Jack Warner, suggesting roles he thought better suited for him than the ones the studio gave him to play. His choice would have been to look tall in the saddle like John Wayne or Gary Cooper, or to have an opportunity to portray a Jimmy Stewart Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kind of character.

  In January 1945, the John Patrick play The Hasty Heart had opened on Broadway. Jack Warner had not been overly enthusiastic about the film potential of a story whose locale was a hospital in Burma just after the war where five convalescent soldiers of assorted nationalities are being tended by a wise but soft-hearted nurse. The play had one outstanding character, a Scotsman with quick changes of mood who was alternately heel and hero. Jerry Wald had seen the play when it opened and had asked Warner to purchase it. Unable to rouse Warner’s interest, he wrote him on February 20, 1945:

  Dear Jack,

  On Sunday you wanted to know why I thought I should produce “The Hasty Heart.” In the last election [1944] they had a very good slogan called “Look at the Record.”

  During the past year you have purchased quite a flock of important properties… of all the juicy assignments I didn’t receive a single one, nor was I considered for any of them. Don’t you think in the name of fair play there should be some compensation made to me in the way of a good assignment in the light of all the originals I have turned in and old novels I have dug up [therefore lowering the story cost]?

  Certainly I like whipping up original stories, but I do feel once in a while—just once—I should be shown some consideration.…

  Wald, who was part-model for Budd Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? had been doing a lot of action films for Warner. A dynamic, indefatigable worker, he also could be counted upon to doctor any script in trouble. Warner did not want to lose him and he bought the property, which Ranald MacDougall adapted. Warner was not much more enthusiastic when he read the screenplay. It took Wald two years to finally get the go-ahead, but the budget he was given was too low for the quality of film he wanted to make. Finally, to circumvent this problem, Wald and Warner agreed The Hasty Heart should be made in England with the studio’s frozen revenues, and where salaries for cast and technicians were considerably lower than in Hollywood. The studio wanted only two American performers in the cast—also to keep expenses down.

  When Reagan was given the script in September 1948 and asked to star in The Hasty Heart, he assumed that Wald was offering him the role of Lachie, the Scotsman, and was not aware that the film was to be shot abroad. He had just been renominated to a second term at the SAG and was working on the strategy for a second series of meetings with the producers in the next sixty to ninety days. After he signed to do the film, he discovered two things: he was cast as Yank, the secondary role (although guaranteed top billing); and he would sail on the Britannica with his co-star Patricia Neal and the director Vincent Sherman on November 2 for England. Lew Wasserman convinced him that he should not take a suspension, and that, because of the favor he was doing for Warner, when he returned from abroad the two would be in a strong position to renegotiate Reagan’s contract so that he would have more freedom in the choice of his material and be able to accept outside films. The talk within the Guild was that Reagan was being shipped overseas by Jack Warner so that the producers would have the upper hand at the negotiations (in which first and second vice-presidents William Holden and Paul Harvey would now represent the SAG).

  This was to be Reagan’s first trip abroad and he should have been at least slightly enthusiastic about the chance to see another part of the world. Such was not the case. The crossing was wet and windy. He received the news en route that Truman had won the election against Thomas Dewey. “A single handed fight against the sneers of his enemies and the lack-lustre resignation of his friends,” Sir Harold Nicolson, English historian and diplomat, observed, “… a bitter blow for Dewey… and Dr. Gallup and all those Republicans who were counting on jobs. There is a nasty streak in human nature which gives one a mean sense of Schadenfreude [pleasure at other people’s discomfort] when such confidence, such actual hubris is punished by the Gods.” Dr. Gallop had forecast a Dewey victory, and one newspaper had even prematurely headlined DEWEY WINS. Reagan had found himself in a quandary in this election, publicly stating his dislike of both candidates. (He claimed he voted for Truman in the end.)

  The Britannica docked at Southampton on a terribly cold day with a real northeaster howling at her decks. A limousine met the Hasty Heart contingent and drove them to London. The day was gray; and much of England was still suffering from the aftereffects of the war. For a man who was seldom out of sunny California, the drabness must have been overwhelming. Along with Vincent Sherman, the director,
Reagan and Neal stayed at the Savoy Hotel, in adjoining suites. (“Although I was a young, pretty girl, he never made a pass at me,” Neal declared. “… There were splendid reasons. I was wildly in love with Gary Cooper [with whom she had just played in The Fountainhead] and he was still in love with Jane Wyman.”) While Sherman was setting up the production, Reagan and Neal made some appearances for the benefit of actors in Cardiff, Wales and Dublin. Virginia Mayo and her husband, Michael O’Shea, were in England, also at the Savoy, and had been scheduled to make the tour. “Because Mike was divorced he was told he couldn’t go,” Mayo says. “Well, they sent Reagan who also had been divorced!” However, Reagan’s passport still listed him as married since his divorce was not yet final.

  From the beginning of his first meetings with the staff at Elstree Studios, where The Hasty Heart was to be filmed, Vincent Sherman realized the budget he had was unrealistic. Technicians and cast were paid about one half of what Americans would have received. But the English worked at a much slower pace, and fewer hours (despite the fact that the British film industry was suffering a serious recession and many employees were out of work). Sherman wrote Steve Trilling, who replied that he must pare down to the very lowest budget he could and cut any extra expense, because: “You probably will read soon about our ‘slow down’ at the studio here.… We want to carefully analyze and estimate the values of our future properties before going into production, so that we are able to meet present world picture conditions… we will not start a picture until the script, cast and price are right. If we feel a picture will cost too much or present difficulties, we will fold it rather than hazard any extreme gamble____”