by Bob Spitz
Twenty-minute talks were Ronald Reagan’s stock-in-trade, but this speech—so momentous that it would be known forever as “the Speech”—was about to give his abstract views their fullest expression in an entirely new arena, one where they would be taken seriously.
And so would he.
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The first few months of 1964 brought him to the realization that his acting career had run its course. His appearance in The Killers, a joint effort of Universal Pictures and Revue Productions, was foreshadowed by John F. Kennedy’s assassination the day before filming started. It cast a pall on the Burbank soundstage, where vivacious co-star Angie Dickinson—rumored to have been one of JFK’s girlfriends—delivered her lines through a palpable mask of grief. The script required Ronnie, miscast as a scowling, squint-eyed heavy, to slap Dickinson, slap her hard, which, according to her, “he hated doing.” It ran counter to his personal values, an impression he no doubt conveyed to the audience. If the original version, a 1946 “film noir masterpiece,” functioned as Burt Lancaster’s crackerjack debut, this Don Siegel remake served as Ronald Reagan’s swan song, underscored by its eventual release on a double bill with The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, a Mamie Van Doren sex farce.
Forced to scramble for work, Ronnie succumbed to a pitch by his brother, Neil, now an advertising executive with TV clients, to succeed “Old Ranger” Stanley Andrews as the host of Death Valley Days, a half-hour TV series based on legends of the American West produced by Gene Autry’s Flying A Productions. Moon, an executive with the McCann-Erickson advertising agency, represented the show’s sponsor, U.S. Borax, which had no trouble with Ronnie’s stepping in as its new emcee. It mirrored his duties on GE Theater—introducing each week’s episode and acting whenever a role suited him.
It wasn’t a dream job. The show, which had been around in one form or another since 1930, wasn’t much of a challenge, nor was it considered an artistic ideal. The scripts were fairly banal, the acting serviceable. Under the circumstances, it was a decent paycheck. And as Neil Reagan shrewdly concluded, “It kept him in the public eye for what I figured might be helpful if he ran for governor in a couple of years.”
Ran for governor? It was the first anyone had raised that prospect. Politics was one stage Ronald Reagan hadn’t performed on, other than the speeches he delivered as after-dinner entertainment. Holmes Tuttle had approached him a few years earlier about challenging moderate Thomas Kuchel for a U.S. Senate seat, a seat his old Hollywood pal George Murphy was now running for in the 1964 election. Murphy’s emergence as a candidate might have whet Ronnie’s appetite for a similar ambitious effort. Politics, Tuttle argued, was the next logical step.
Holmes Tuttle had known Ronald Reagan since the mid-1940s, when Hollywood stars like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich frequented his dealership shopping for a car that suited their outsize personalities. Jane Wyman introduced the men during a routine visit, and as Tuttle recalled, “I sold him a Model A Ford.” Admittedly, it wasn’t love at first sight. Tuttle was a hard-core internationalist who “hated Roosevelt” and couldn’t stand Ronnie’s New Deal proclivities. “He was a Democrat then, and we used to argue.” But both men saw something in each other that rose above their political interests. Holmes Tuttle was a master charmer, tall, charismatic, and debonair—“an oracle,” according to socialite Betsy Bloomingdale.
What his charm couldn’t do was counteract the low approval rating dogging owl-eyed Barry Goldwater, making him, in the words of one conservative activist, “a tremendous underdog.” Goldwater’s candidacy had been rocky from the start. He was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal’s progressive legacy, and his nomination had caused a schism in the Republican Party, pitting a grassroots conservative upsurge in the South and West against the moderate wing of “Rockefeller Republicans” predominant in the northeast corridor. Goldwater had fought and won a bitter primary against Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. The process had branded him the darling of the ideological right, but he was unable to soften his image because of his penchant for harsh rhetoric, exemplified by his paraphrase of Cicero toward the end of his acceptance speech:
I remind you, that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
During the campaign, Goldwater’s Achilles’ heel had been his mouth. He talked tough and loose, off the cuff but on the record—which loyalists like Holmes Tuttle had come to regret. In one famous missive, Goldwater argued that the United States could “lob one into the men’s room of the Kremlin.” In another, he called on the administration to violate the Test Ban Treaty. Labeled an extremist and a radical, his “abrasive Götterdämmerung approach” scared off the moderates in his party, so much so that Rockefeller, Scranton, Lodge, Jacob Javits, and George Romney refused to campaign for him. Ike, the party’s standard-bearer, disdained Barry Goldwater, but he advised reluctant Republican intimates, “You’re going to hold your nose and vote for him.”
It was left to the true believers—the tight-knit band of self-made California tycoons—to scrounge up support. An observer might wonder: What was in it for them? Certainly, money wasn’t the motivating factor. Like Holmes Tuttle, who ran Ford dealerships scattered throughout the West, the others were wealthy beyond their dreams. Henry Salvatori built Western Geophysical into the world’s largest contractor for offshore oil exploration; Cy Rubel retired in August 1964 as the chairman of Union Oil; and Justin Dart headed the Rexall Drug empire. None of them sought political appointment, federal funding, or patronage. They weren’t ambitious that way. Except for the blustery, pugnacious Dart, they were humble men, “not Wall Street, not corporate types,” as Salvatori liked to remind people, but “men who saw the importance of preserving free enterprise” and, just as important, thwarting the worldwide spread of communism. “They were worried about the direction of the country,” says Robert Tuttle, who worked closely alongside his father and later served in the Reagan administration.
Conservatism had given their expressed interests a name. For years, they had pushed back in fits and starts against the indomitable liberal tide, decrying entitlement programs and what they considered diminished freedoms. They spoke of the Soviet Union in apocalyptic terms, distrusted the Eastern establishment, the encroachment of Big Government. In time, they realized there were others across the country who shared their views. The intensifying strength of labor unions and the civil rights movement brought like-minded ideologues out of the woodwork and energized an emerging cultural right that had been growing in number and influence since the end of World War II. Some of the more intellectual members of the movement started a publication that pulled these ideas together. In 1955, National Review sounded an assertive public voice for conservative ideas and policies and spoke directly to its homogeneous flock. (Henry Salvatori put up seed money for the magazine.) In its charter issue, editor William F. Buckley laid out the doctrine of modern conservatism as the willingness to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” By 1960, the movement had its inspirational manifesto—The Conscience of a Conservative, actually written by Buckley’s brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell—as well as its national spear-carrier in Barry Goldwater.
But weeks before the election, his campaign floundered on life support. It had all gone downhill following the Republican convention, which Holmes Tuttle, among other party stalwarts, considered “a fiasco.” Piling on, Lyndon Johnson’s reelection team released a devastating TV commercial titled “Daisy,” depicting images of an adorable little girl picking petals off a flower that dissolved into a nuclear bomb explosion; it never mentioned Goldwater by name, but its critique of him was implicit. The dinner at the Ambassador wouldn’t alleviate the woes, but at one thousand dollars a plate it would at least underwrite a few ads to soften the blows going into
the home stretch.
Ronald Reagan understood the significance of the speech he agreed to deliver. He had stumped vigorously for Goldwater throughout the late summer and early fall of 1964, and he witnessed the collective malaise. He’d heard about it as well from Neil, who had accompanied the candidate throughout the summer on a swing through the Midwest and the South as a Goldwater operative. The odds of a Republican victory were growing dimmer by the day. Goldwater needed some inspirational help—a speech like the one George Gipp had used to rally his football team back in 1928. Someone had to step up and make the case. At any rate, this speech “was more important than all the others,” Ronnie admitted, perhaps the most important one he’d ever make.
Writing it wasn’t going to present any problems. He’d given one or another version of it, by his count, “hundreds of times before,” switching up issues and references as the situation dictated. The old standbys never changed: the burden of taxes, encroaching government, welfare spending, the threat of communism. He’d hit the same notes as a Democrat and now as a Republican, having officially changed his affiliation in 1962. The speech played across the political spectrum to those who harbored fears that something serious was wrong with America. This time around, he’d give those fears a good shot of juice with many apocryphal examples of waste and overreach he’d plucked from various sources. Congress, he’d reveal, was on the verge of seizing farms and taking over the country’s agriculture program. Apparently, the United States bought a $2 million yacht for Haile Selassie, dress suits for Greek undertakers, and extra wives for Kenyan diplomats. He’d make the president’s plan to build more public housing sound like government internment centers, and Johnson’s War on Poverty like a euphemism to step up welfare.
A judge, he wrote, had called him about a young woman who had come before the court in a divorce action. “She had six children, was pregnant with the seventh,” he claimed. “She wanted a divorce so that she could get an $80 raise. She is eligible for $330 a month in the aid to dependent children program,” and realized there was more to be made as a single mother on the dole than from a husband who pulled in a measly $250 a month. Years later, in future retellings, the woman in this story would morph into a welfare queen from the wrong side of Chicago’s tracks, and another time a scam artist from Watts—Ronnie knew a powerful allegory when he heard one. And he knew how to deliver it, with unforced sincerity and the right touch of irony.
In a nod to a one-time hero, he appropriated a line from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration that he’d use in closing out his remarks: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.” A rendezvous with destiny. It was irresistible, poetic, such a powerful sentiment. He’d make it sound like an apocalyptic call to arms, a goal of all right-thinking Americans to make critical choices, none more decisive than casting a meaningful vote for Barry Goldwater.
He wrote the speech out in longhand on a yellow notepad and, as an afterthought, scrawled a title across the top: “A Time for Choosing.”
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The speech was a revelation. The Cocoanut Grove was packed with eight hundred Los Angeles power brokers to whom Ronald Reagan was nothing but the usual Hollywood raconteur recruited at functions such as these to soften them up with a few gossipy movie anecdotes before asking for donations. They clearly weren’t expecting to hear an actor deliver cogent ruminations on the health of the nation or express the kinds of views that echoed concerns they’d been discussing among themselves. For half an hour he electrified that crowd, prompting an eruption of applause followed by a standing ovation.
Henry Salvatori, a man known for being stingy with praise, was besotted. “It was the best speech ever made by anybody,” he raved. Holmes Tuttle recalled how afterward he was besieged by well-wishers who congratulated him on his inspired choice of speaker and pledged to support the campaign with newfound enthusiasm. The evening was more than a resounding financial success, it was an eye-opener as far as the organizers were concerned. Barry Goldwater had been making the same points for months, achieving nowhere near the impact. “His philosophy was sound,” Salvatori thought, “but he didn’t articulate it moderately.” Ronald Reagan knew how to communicate, he connected with his listeners. They needed to bottle his eloquence and put it to use.
They didn’t waste any time. Later that night, while the busboys were methodically clearing the tables, Tuttle and Salvatori cornered Ronnie with a proposal. “We’ve got to get that speech on television,” Tuttle said. The voters needed to hear Ronald Reagan express the party’s position on key issues if the Republicans had any hope of salvaging the election. He and Salvatori would put up the money to buy a half hour of national airtime on NBC if Ronnie was willing to repeat his performance.
The Goldwater camp was less than thrilled. The candidate’s advisers worried that the speech was too controversial and would confuse voters about where they stood on certain hot-button issues, in particular Social Security and the TVA. There were concerns, too, about being upstaged. Instead, they preferred to use the same time slot to rebroadcast a meeting between Goldwater and Dwight Eisenhower at the president’s home in Gettysburg. But Ronnie pushed back. He knew the speech was more effective—“it had always gotten a good response,” he recalled—and went ahead with it as planned.
“A Time for Choosing” was taped before an invited studio audience in Phoenix and shown in prime time on October 27, 1964. Patti Reagan, who sat next to her mother, was mesmerized by the experience. “I remember my father molding the crowd with his words,” she recalled, “quieting them at moments, inciting them at others, pulling tears from them as a finale.” He was candid and direct, at times charming, at times paternalistic, injecting a Midwestern folksiness, like Nelle onstage with her religious parables. His delivery was engaging, dynamic, supremely well modulated. He projected confidence. He had gravitas. Those who watched at home came to the same conclusion as the audience had at the Cocoanut Grove: Ronald Reagan was a far better conservative advocate and came across as more reasonable and statesmanlike than Barry Goldwater.
Judging by the feedback, it was the most successful performance he’d ever given—on any screen. The minute the broadcast ended, the Republican National Committee’s phones lit up. Contributions poured in at an extraordinary clip from all over the country—in all, close to a million dollars by the end of the week, enough to erase the campaign’s deficit. The reviews were in and they were unanimous: the speech—the Speech—had launched Ronald Reagan as a political star.
Holmes Tuttle watched it at a friend’s house, surrounded by his family, the Reagans, and the Salvatoris. “When it was over,” recalls Tuttle’s son, Robert, “my dad turned to Henry Salvatori and said, ‘The wrong candidate is running for president.’”
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The country reached the same conclusion. The Republican Party suffered its sorriest defeat in forty years, with Barry Goldwater managing to carry only six states. In California, where GOP stalwarts had pitched in plenty to promote the conservative cause, Lyndon Johnson won by more than a million votes. Holmes Tuttle took an unsparing measure of the situation. “The delegation was at its lowest ebb,” he realized. Party moderates—those who had supported Nelson Rockefeller—felt betrayed and bitter. Unrepentant conservatives called the moderates traitors for abandoning Goldwater. Everyone was pointing fingers and grumbling. If they wanted to recover, to unite the factions, it was time to start reordering priorities. “We didn’t want that to be the demise of the Republican Party, so we thought the best way to start rebuilding was here in California.”
There were several viable pursuits. One in particular stood out—an upcoming gubernatorial race in 1966. And bright spots: George Murphy had won a precious Senate seat in the midst of the Goldwater debacle, evidence that a Republican—a Republican actor, no less—could prevail in an otherwise hostile election cycle. The incumbent, Pat Brown, was a popular two-term governor, b
ut still considered vulnerable, a notoriously lazy campaigner whose eight years in office were coming a cropper. Notable candidates were lining up to challenge Brown. The conservative patriarchs wanted their say.
Tuttle, Salvatori, and Rubel repaired to an office they’d rented in the Union Oil Building on Washington Boulevard to review their prospects. “We were defeated, but not bloody,” Salvatori concluded. Enough of a groundswell remained to press their beliefs, but they’d learned their lesson: the next horse they backed had to be eloquent and charismatic as well as a unifier. Holmes Tuttle already had a talented recruit in mind. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I think we’ve got a candidate right here. How about Ron?” He had all the qualities they were looking for, as well as the right temperament and name recognition. His political philosophy was sound, his fundamental principles beyond reproach. He’d done everything they’d asked of him—and more. They were selling hundreds of videocassettes of the Speech at close to fifty dollars apiece. Both moderates and conservatives kept calling to voice their admiration. Cy Rubel, a tough-minded pragmatist who more or less functioned as the group’s leader, was sold. “Reagan is the man who can enunciate our principles to the people,” he said. Henry Salvatori made it unanimous. Stating the obvious, he chimed in: “Why don’t we run him for governor?”
The first week in January 1965, Tuttle and his wife, Virginia, visited the Reagans for a New Year’s drink and, ultimately, to make the pitch. He said that Ronnie “might be the only Republican around who had a chance of beating [Pat] Brown and bringing the party back together.” There wasn’t any question of financial support; Tuttle and his associates would see to a strong fund-raising effort. “I told him I knew it would be a terrible sacrifice but that he was the man we wanted,” Tuttle recalled.
