Early Reagan

by Anne Edwards

  Stein was already the second biggest stockholder in Paramount Studios and now he was going to take over Universal. MCA had moved away from its roots in the overworked band, radio and nightclub fields (although it never gave up its toehold) and into film and television production—the really big money.

  Reagan later said the Universal film comedy Louisa was “a good and healthy plus to any list of screen credits.” The film was pleasant and did have a grand cast of sturdy, disarming character performers—Charles Coburn, Edmund Gwenn and Spring By-ington. But it was not in the same league with The Hasty Heart, or even some of the Warners comedies—The Voice of the Turtle, John Loves Mary—that he complained bitterly to Jack Warner had not done him justice. Certainly, the role of Hal Norton, a good-natured, middle-class, middle-aged architect who has to deal with the arrival in his home of a dotty mother-in-law, Louisa (Spring Byington), was not going to bring him head to head with Duke Wayne. He appears to have needed money and his fee for the film was substantial (the agreed seventy-five thousand dollars). However, film veteran Coburn, also represented by MCA, received equal money and co-star billing. As Louisa’s imperious suitor and Reagan’s boss, he also got the best lines in the script. The truth was a dozen other actors could have played Reagan’s role; but for the success of the film, Coburn was essential.

  Louisa was shot in thirty-five days at a cost of $792,954, a good portion of the budget going to the artists and crew brought in by Wasserman. On March 7 (a week before completion), Stage 18 of the studio was turned into a ballroom for a huge party to mark Coburn’s sixtieth anniversary in show business. Many stars who had worked with or knew Coburn during his long career showed up (including Jane Wyman), and newspapers and magazines were flooded with photographs of the publicity-inspired event.

  Ironically, Reagan, while making his most forgettable films, was earning more than he ever had, while sliding dramatically downward in his box-office appeal. He claims the caliber of the roles he was offered by producers was colored by his hard-hitting position as SAG president and negotiator, which implies the studios were taking their revenge on him for fighting for the rights of the SAG membership. But had Reagan felt strongly enough about his roles, he could have taken a suspension (as had Cagney, Davis, Bogart and Bacall, to name a few) rather than accept them.

  Nor does his cry hold true that the studios typecast him. From 1950 to 1954, he chose many of the scripts in which he played. The parts were varied enough and included everything from a worried father (Louisa) to a Confederate cavalry officer (The Last Outpost) to a western marshal (Law and Order). Reagan had simply reached middle age, a state that ends more Hollywood careers than bad films do. The youthful glow had begun to leave his body. Lines were beginning to mark his face. If he had been a romantic figure like Cary Grant, or had the star appeal and acting ability of a James Stewart, Henry Fonda or Paul Newman (who at the same age was to make Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the freedom to have a say in the roles he played could have taken him from weakness to strength. He is right in placing the blame on his SAG activities, but not for the reasons he claimed.

  When it came to choosing where his great passion rested, as an actor or as a negotiator-politician, there was no contest. If Reagan had done little to improve either his performances or the quality of his scripts before his association with the SAG, he did almost nothing in this area afterward. He needed money to maintain his life-style. Films offered him this and with MCA’s clout he knew his chances for making large sums were good.

  His old friend Sam Israel (Parsons’s former publicity man) was working for Universal and was assigned as a press agent for Louisa (the Coburn shindig had been his idea). On March 8, 1950, he memoed the head of publicity, Al Horwits:

  A good idea would be to send Reagan on a tour to Dixon, Illinois and hold one of the premieres [of Louisa] there. Reagan once saved 76 [sic] natives from drowning and is the town’s outstanding hero, also I was on an earlier tour there [with him] and know the coverage we will get. All of which is by way of suggesting that we might plan to hold at least a regional premiere in Dixon in conjunction with a local festival there in August [a three-day Indian Summer Fest]. Ronald is going there anyway,* and he tells me that Warners is trying to swing him behind one of their pictures. But he is at outs with Warners and would much prefer to do business with us.

  This plan was set into motion in June. “[Louisa] must be sold by word of mouth and I propose that we engage in an extensive job of ‘giving away samples’ [personal appearances of stars at premieres] throughout prime cities in the same manner in which other industries successfully use samplings to get favorable comment.”

  Reagan was therefore sent out on a public-appearance tour in August.* Al Horwits accompanied him on the train journey that took him from Los Angeles to Des Moines on August 14, then on to Clinton, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; and then down to Dixon (August 20-23), Denver and San Francisco; and back in time to appear with the film at the Los Angeles Orpheum on September 7. In each city he spoke to the press and said a few words from the stage of the theater in which Louisa was playing.

  The trip home to Dixon was to be the high spot and he was looking forward to it. Because he was corresponding with Bill Thompson and knew the town had big plans, he arranged for Nelle to join him in Omaha, Nebraska. Reagan stood on the platform waiting for her. She looked tired, somehow smaller, as she greeted him. Al Horwits noted, “He grabbed her up and took her in his arms,” then they boarded the train and mother and son continued on together to Dixon.

  * The unions worked under a parent organization, the Associated Actors and Artists of America, which was generally referred to as the Four A’s. These unions included the SAG and SEG (Screen Extras Guild) on the West Coast, and AGVA (Associated Guild of Variety Artists), Actors Equity and AFRA (American Federation of Radio Artists) on the East Coast.

  * Bacall stated: “I told [Warner] he had a fine picture but that the part wasn’t for me. I’ve asked him for my release many times, thinking I would be doing him a favor. I’m tired of being suspended.” This was Bacall’s sixth suspension in a year. For refusing one script she had been laid off for twenty-two weeks.

  †Wald to Charlie Mack (wardrobe) on November 10, 1949: “Ronald Reagan’s clothes too formal. Must loosen them up. Shirt and tie need small town look… if his clothes don’t fit so well, it might do a lot to help his character. We should try testing him with a hat—flannel shirt—small knotted tie—off-the-rack clothes.”

  * At this time, Reagan was also dating Patricia Neal (who was still in love with Gary Cooper). On December 14, 1949, they attended the premiere of The Hasty Heart at Warners’ Hollywood Theatre along with “the entire consular corps in Los Angeles, in formal attire and wearing the decorations of their respective nations.” Jack Warner was so elated about the film’s prospects that he went back to his office after the premiere and wrote a memo to one of his staff: “2800 people at our premiere tonight had many tears and much more laughter than I have heard in any picture. We have been trying frantically to write or buy a great comedy about the war. One with some heart, pathos and much laughter. Tonight I rediscovered this is the very picture we have in ‘The Hasty Heart.’… Maybe we should go after a big campaign to sell this picture giving it importance which we have time to do before its [general] release.”

  † Young Man with a Horn, a film biography of the great trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke, also starred Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall and Hoagy Carmichael.

  * Publicists and Reagan himself claimed Corona was a hotbed of the Klan. It seems unlikely the studio would have taken such a chance and there is no substantive proof to back up this claim.

  † Crossfire was a critically acclaimed film (1947) that dealt with mob violence and anti-Semitism with taste and intelligence. It was directed by Edward Dmytryk, who was included in the Hollywood Ten persecution.

  *High Noon (1952), produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Fred Zinnemann. Jerry Wald’s first choice for director
on Storm Warning had been Zinnemann, but he had been unavailable. High Noon was about a sheriff (Gary Cooper) who tries unsuccessfully to get his town to rid itself of a band of desperadoes. With the support of his new wife (Grace Kelly) he accomplishes the task.

  * The denouement of the High Noon screenplay (story by John W. Cunningham, adaptation by Carl Foreman) has the newly married sheriff and his wife leaving the town he has saved, in disgust.

  * In 1951, she was nominated again. This time she was elected and served on the board with Reagan until she and Ronald Reagan resigned their positions on July 9, 1960.

  * Kahane to Nancy Davis Reagan (January 7, 1953): “… of course, we could have taken it for granted that the wife of Ronald Reagan could not possibly be of questionable loyalty and could have disregarded that report. But as the citation was merely the signing of the Amicus Curiae brief and many persons signed this brief who we have been convinced are not now and never were Communists or sympathizers, we informed you of the citation, believing that a satisfactory explanation would be forthcoming…” Despite this explanation and apology from Columbia with its clear message that a signatory to such a brief was not necessarily a Communist sympathizer, Mrs. Reagan repeatedly referred to the other Nancy Davis as such, although no proof that this is the case txists.

  * Typical of Reagan’s speeches and articles in 1950 were his guest columns for Victor Riesel, the labor columnist:

  “… Day after day in this year’s hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the same story has been unfolded—a story of Communist frustration and failure in the party’s bold plot to seize control of the talent guilds and craft unions, through which the subversive brethren hoped eventually to control content of films and thus influence the minds of 80,000,000 movie goers… the Red propagandists and conspirators in this country… were trying to carry out orders from Joseph Stalin, who had said: ‘The cinema is not only a vital agitprop (active propaganda) device for the education and political indoctrination of the workers, but is also a fluent channel through which to reach the minds and shape the desires of people everywhere. The Kinofikatsiya (turning propaganda into films) is inevitable. The task is to take this affair into your hands, and vigorously execute it in every field.’

  “So the Red enemies of our country concentrated their big guns on Hollywood. And they failed completely. But not before they had succeeded in bringing about two years of disastrous strikes and bloody fighting in which American workmen battled other American workmen at the studio gates. And, unfortunately, not before the Communists had fooled some otherwise loyal Americans into believing that the Communist party sought to make a better world. Those dupes know today that the real aim of the Communist party is to try to prepare the way for Russian conquest of the world.…”

  He ended the article with this personal statement:

  “‘… I believe that all participants in the international Communist conspiracy against our nation should be exposed for what they are—enemies of our country and of our form of government.’ And any American who has been a member of the Communist party at any time but who has now changed his mind and is loyal to our country should be willing to stand up and be counted, admit I was wrong’ and give all the information he has to the government agencies who are combatting the Red plotters. We’ve gotten rid of the Communist conspirators in Hollywood. Let’s do it now in other industries.”

  The column was also the basis of a speech he gave at a convention for LAMBDA fraternity members.

  * Warner claimed he was being forced to hire additional and undesired MCA talent in order to secure a desired client.

  * The two films were She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952) and The Winning Team (1952).

  * Reagan had received an invitation to this festival the previous November when he was filming Storm Warning. No mention of sending Reagan to Dixon to promote a film (presumably Storm Warning) appears in the Warner Brothers publicity files.

  * Louisa, though made after it, was released before Storm Warning.

  20

  THE TOUR HAD TAKEN HIM BACK TO DES MOINES, where he was scheduled to crown an Iowa beauty “Miss Jaycee of 1950” at the Paramount Theatre after a “preview showing of ‘Louisa.’“ He arrived “all done up in cocoa brown suit and tie—which matched his complexion.” He introduced red-haired Piper Laurie (who made her debut in the film as Reagan’s daughter) with the remark, “They didn’t tell me the girls were dressing.” Laurie wore an emerald-green strapless gown, rhinestones massed and glittering at her neck and on her ears, and a silver-blue dyed-muskrat coat (the prize for the beauty-contest winner) flung femme fatale-stylt over one shoulder. Outside, the thermometer soared to 89 degrees, while the Paramount, filled to its two-thousand-seat capacity, had no air conditioning.

  At the mike, Reagan spoke of the days when he broadcast daily from Radio WHO and of his prediction that Max Baer would defeat Joe Louis in a heavyweight boxing match. “So many memories pop up and have since I arrived that I have to watch out I don’t just go on.” Of course, he did and the audience appeared to love it.

  “I have another home town,” he admitted in closing. “Hollywood. I didn’t take to it easy. But I have learned that show people make up a fair cross section of American life. I know that if you could get acquainted with Hollywood, you would find the people very fine and wonderful. They are not like the stories that get out.”

  When eighteen-year-old, blue-eyed, five-foot-two-inch Jackie Jay was declared Miss Jaycee, she hopped up on her toes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Now that was what I was planning to do to you,” he said with a wide grin.

  He saw Myrtle Williams and whatever old friends remained at the radio station. The years had changed Des Moines. Wartime prosperity had pushed the city up and out and brought an influx of out-of-town workers. He had changed as well. In the 1930s, Des Moines had seemed sophisticated to him. It was in Des Moines that his dreams had been honed and he had tasted his first heady cocktail of fame and riches. Thomas Wolfe perhaps was right—one can’t go home again. But the journey homeward did not end in Des Moines.

  “There was quite a crowd at the station [Sunday morning, August 20]—the whole town had turned out to welcome Dutch and Nelle [home to Dixon],” Zelda Multz, the international president of the Ronald Reagan fan club, recalled. “Finally someone noticed the signals of an incoming train. The band played ‘California Here I Come’ and into sight came the streamliner City of Los Angeles, which made a special stop in Dixon to allow Ron and Nelle to detrain. Passengers aboard the train were quite amazed at the procedure.… Ron had a big grin on his face and was so excited, and… he sure was tan!”

  A few moments later, the train had moved on and Reagan was given the key to the city by Dixon’s Mayor Fred Hoffmann and Nelle was presented with a massive bouquet of flowers that she had difficulty in managing to hold without obscuring her vision.

  Miss Multz remembered shaking hands with Reagan (“a firm grip!”) and his “sort of cocking his head to the side, and saying in a very deep voice, ‘Well, hello.’“

  Bill Thompson drove Reagan and Nelle out to Hazelwood where they, the publicity staff and Miss Multz were to stay. Just about every store in town had Reagan’s picture in the window. Banners were strung across the streets exclaiming WELCOME HOME DUTCH. This time there was no one with whom to share the glory. He was taken by the drugstore where he had once bought ice cream sundaes for Margaret Cleaver, past the house on Hennepin Avenue (now in considerable disrepair) and the statue of Lincoln as a young soldier.

  A harsh midday August sun bore down on the town as the first event of the day, the Horse Parade, got under way. Reagan, astride a handsome palomino, led the parade through town. He wore sunglasses, a yellow turtleneck sweater (the sleeves rolled up high to display his muscular biceps), tan breeches and well-worn knee-high boots and was the only hatless figure in the parade. At trail’s end, Reagan’s old friends from his Rock River lifeguard days had organized a barbecue buffet
. A special table had been set up for him and Nelle, but he moved around the gathering, “playing the audience,” as one observer noted.

  The film was “premiered” yet again at three-thirty that afternoon. Reagan had not been scheduled to speak until after the showing, but the applause was so thundering after he was seen getting into his seat that he mounted the stage. “Such an experience for anyone,” he exclaimed, “could only happen in America.”

  “A banquet was scheduled for Monday evening at the Masonic temple,” Multz recalled. “In the large dining hall were eight or nine tables set up to seat about four hundred people. The pianist and vocalist hired for the occasion serenaded us with old-time songs, and suddenly, Nelle took the mike and joined them singing ‘In the Good Old Summertime.’…” Multz was overwhelmed at the chance to be so near her idol. “Ron liked his food.… He takes a little cream in his coffee and half a teaspoon-ful of sugar—then just a little more. ‘That’s the story of my life,’ he grinned. He laughed when he told a joke—and remembered so many of his friends, and when meeting their children would say, I used to throw your father across the river.’“

  Reagan next attended the dedication of Dixon’s first public swimming pool. “You must be a bunch of sissies,” he exclaimed good-naturedly. “The river was good enough for the rest of us.” He then surprised everyone by stripping to a pair of bright-red bathing trunks, handing his glasses to Nelle and swimming several laps.

  Nelle was honored with a dinner at The First Christian Church (also attended by Reagan). She renewed her friendships, and even found time to give a Bible class. When they departed early Wednesday morning, she cried. Reagan, still grinning, held her close to him with one arm as they walked toward their train. With the other, he waved enthusiastically to the gathered crowd. With Nelle safely ensconced in her compartment by Al Horwits, Reagan stood in the doorway of his car and continued waving until Dixon’s North Western Station was lost from view.