Reagan: The Life

by H. W. Brands

  MacArthur clattered in from the control booth. “Ye did great, ye big SOB,” he said. “Be here Saturday, you’re broadcasting the Iowa-Minnesota Homecoming game. You’ll get $5 and bus fare.”

  The game day came. Reagan discovered that he wouldn’t be alone in the press box; a veteran announcer would share the duties. Reagan called the first quarter, the other man the second, Reagan the third. He expected to hand off the microphone again for the fourth quarter, but MacArthur phoned Reagan’s partner and told him to let the new fellow finish. Reagan concluded that he had passed his live test.

  MacArthur offered him $10 a game for Iowa’s three remaining home games. Reagan was thrilled to accept and delighted to be a high-profile sports announcer. The Big Ten was the best football conference in the country, and to call its games was a remarkable feat for someone so new to the business.

  Unfortunately, his job terminated with the season’s end. Basketball and other winter sports had nothing like football’s following, and the station had no work for him. MacArthur said he’d keep him in mind for the following season, but he couldn’t make any promises.

  REAGAN COULD NOT have lost his job at a bleaker time. The depression had prompted thousands of jobless, often homeless veterans of the war to march to Washington to petition for early payment of the pension they had been promised, lest they expire before they reached the statutory age. Herbert Hoover, the self-made millionaire whose precrash election had seemed confirmation of the business-oriented policies of that Republican era, grew alarmed at their presence. He envisioned a Bolshevik revolution toppling America’s capitalist democracy, and he ordered the army to drive the petitioners away. The operation, headed by Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur, who shared Hoover’s red fears, proved a tragic fiasco as the soldiers scattered the pitiful vets, burned their makeshift shelters and many of their meager belongings, and, in the process, killed the baby daughter of one of the protesters. The country recoiled at Hoover’s overreaction; Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democratic nominee for president, turned to his friend Felix Frankfurter and declared, “Well, Felix, this will elect me.”

  It, and the deepening depression, did just that. Reagan was one of the twenty-three million Americans who in November 1932 voted for Roosevelt, and with them and more than a few of the sixteen million who voted for Hoover, he looked to the new president to stanch the economy’s bleeding. But Roosevelt wouldn’t be inaugurated until four months after the election, as inaugurations occurred in March in those days, and it wasn’t clear the country could survive until then. The banking system staggered under the weight of stock losses and bad loans; its distress caused depositors to fear for the security of their deposits. Few deposits were insured, and the depositors raced to withdraw their funds before the banks collapsed. These “runs” precipitated the very result the depositors feared; dozens, then scores, then hundreds and thousands of banks closed their doors. The entire financial structure of the United States teetered at the edge of an abyss.

  As if the moment weren’t fraught enough, Roosevelt was nearly assassinated just weeks before he was to take his inaugural oath. The deranged gunman missed Roosevelt but killed a member of his traveling party, the mayor of Chicago. The incident intimated that Hoover had been right in declaring democracy in danger, if perhaps wrong about the direction from which the danger came.

  Reagan didn’t record his reaction to Roosevelt’s instantly famous inaugural address, with its reassurance that America had nothing to fear but fear itself. Nor did he comment directly on the initial measures Roosevelt adopted to stem the bank panic. But after Congress, convened in special session at Roosevelt’s summons, rubber-stamped an emergency banking bill sent from the White House to the Capitol, Reagan listened with rapt attention as Roosevelt explained the measure to the American people. A radio man himself, Reagan heard the master radio performer of his political generation deliver the first of what came to be called Fireside Chats. Reagan listened and learned. “His strong, gentle, confident voice resonated across the nation with an eloquence that brought comfort and resilience to a nation caught up in a storm and reassured us that we could lick any problem,” Reagan recalled. “I will never forget him for that.”

  Roosevelt’s bold action and calming words saved the banks, and the president turned to the other challenges facing the country. He sent fifteen major bills to Congress during the hundred days of the special session, and the legislature approved every one. The aim of the New Deal, as Roosevelt’s program was called, was relief for suffering individuals, recovery for the economy, and reform to prevent a recurrence of the depression. The sum was an enormous expansion of government authority over the private sector and of government responsibility for the welfare of the American people.

  Conservative Republicans were appalled. The virtues of individual initiative and personal responsibility that had formed the bedrock of the republic were in danger, they said. American self-reliance had long held Leviathan, the insatiable beast of big government, at bay. But in the frenzy of the moment the Democrats had unchained the beast, whose appetite would grow with the eating.

  Some Democrats were sobered, too. Southern conservatives, Democrats by virtue of bad memories of the Civil War and Reconstruction, chafed at the takeover of the party of Jefferson and Jackson—skeptics of big government both—by its northeastern liberal wing. For the moment they heeded the demands of party solidarity, but they remained unconvinced of the New Deal’s virtues.

  Yet Reagan was in awe. The poor kid from the struggling family was thrilled that a patrician like Roosevelt had taken the part of ordinary people. “I soon idolized FDR,” Reagan remembered. “He’d entered the White House facing a national emergency as grim as any the country has ever faced and, acting quickly, he had implemented a plan of action to deal with the crisis.”

  THE REAGAN HOUSEHOLD benefited directly from the New Deal. Democrats in Dixon weren’t numerous, and Jack Reagan was one of the most visible. He was still unemployed and for this reason was delighted to accept a job helping administer federal relief. Reagan visited Jack’s office when he was in town. “I was shocked to see the fathers of many of my schoolmates waiting in line for handouts—men I had known most of my life, who had had jobs I’d thought were as permanent as the city itself,” he remarked later.

  Reagan’s own unemployment was of shorter duration than that of many of Jack’s clients. In early 1933, Pete MacArthur at WOC tele phoned to say that one of his regular announcers had quit; did Reagan want the job? Reagan said he did, and he left for Davenport the next day.

  He discovered that regular programs posed a different challenge than football games. At the games, Reagan chiefly had to report. He elaborated and embellished, to be sure, but the story unfolded in front of him. In the regular programs, by contrast, he had to create stories. He played recorded music and read advertisements, but he had to craft a narrative that held the disparate parts of the show together. He had to convey his personality and develop a rapport with listeners.

  It didn’t come easily. By his own admission he was stiff and uncomfortable. He nearly got fired, but the man he was supposed to train as his replacement had second thoughts about entering the entertainment world; he thought his current job, teaching, provided greater security. Reagan got a second chance. He asked for and received coaching to improve his on-air performance, and he gradually learned to feel more comfortable in front of the microphone.

  Meanwhile, though, the parent company of WOC decided to consolidate operations and fold WOC into a more powerful station, WHO, in Des Moines. Reagan and the other Davenport staffers were told they could keep their jobs if they were willing to move to Des Moines.

  Most were, including Reagan. The depression still blighted the land, notwithstanding Roosevelt’s efforts at relief and recovery, but the radio industry surged forward. The Davenport station had broadcast at 1,000 watts, limiting its range to the environs of Davenport; the Des Moines station broadcast at 50,000 watts, sending its signa
l across much of the Midwest—and at night, when the signals bounced off the ionosphere, across the country. One result of the switch to more powerful transmitters was the industry consolidation Reagan experienced; another was the deeper penetration of radio into American homes and American lives. Radio stations broadcast music, with bands and orchestras performing live in radio studios. They broadcast drama, from highbrow plays by distinguished playwrights to the popular detective series The Shadow and the comedy Amos ’n’ Andy.

  And they broadcast ever more sports. The bigger stations reached larger audiences and commanded higher fees for advertisements; these fees supported bigger staffs that could cover events previously ignored. Reagan’s new employer sent him to football games, baseball games, automobile races, track meets, and swimming championships.

  Yet the budget wasn’t boundless, and he sometimes announced games from a distance. His station would arrange for telegraphic summaries to be wired to the station from the ballpark where the Chicago Cubs or White Sox were playing. A telegraph operator at the station would pass the summaries to Reagan, who would convert them into a narrative. The numbers “6-4-3” meant a double play from the shortstop to the second baseman to the first baseman. Reagan would relate how the batter Jones hit a sharp grounder or a high hopper to Smith at shortstop, who would field it cleanly or perhaps bobble it a moment before tossing it to Murphy at second, who would leap over the sliding runner from first, Young, while firing it to the first baseman, Greenberg, who would stretch to catch it just in time to nip Jones barreling down the first-base line.

  The system left ample scope for Reagan’s imagination, especially when technical malfunctions occurred. “One summer’s day—and this is a story that I’ve probably repeated more times in my life than any other—my imagination was tested to its maximum,” he remembered. “The Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals were locked in a scoreless ninth-inning tie with Dizzy Dean on the mound and the Cubs’ Billy Jurges at bat. I described Dean winding up and releasing his pitch. Then Curly, our telegraph operator, shook his head and passed me a slip of paper, and I looked for a description of the pitch. Instead his note read, ‘The wire’s gone dead.’ Well, since I had the ball on the way to the plate I had to get it there. Although I could have told our listeners that the wire had gone dead, it would have sent them rushing toward their dials and a competitor. So I decided to let Jurges foul off the pitch, figuring Western Union would soon fix the problem. To fill in some time, I described a couple of kids in the stands fighting over the foul ball. When Curly gestured that the wire was still dead, I had Jurges foul off another ball; I slowed Dean down, had him pick up the resin bag and take a sign, shake it off, get another sign, and let him pitch; I said he’d fouled off another one, but this time he’d just missed a home run by only a few inches.” Eventually, the wire came alive again, but not before Reagan’s Jurges had fouled off a record number of pitches. Then he popped out.

  How many of Reagan’s listeners were actually fooled by his performances is impossible to say. His wasn’t the only radio station that made do with the telegraphic hookups, which were common across the country during the 1930s and for years after. Nor was Reagan the only announcer to fill dead time with faux fouls and spurious pitches. Other announcers added sound effects: toy bats hitting marbles to re-create the crack of bat against ball, recorded cheers for crowd noise, canned organ music for the seventh-inning stretch, even sheets of metal to provide rumbles of thunder for rain delays. What captured and held listeners wasn’t so much the game at the actual ballpark as the story the announcer crafted around it. Reagan’s audience didn’t care that he couldn’t see the game as long as he spun a good yarn that let them see it, in their minds’ eyes. He did, and they kept tuned in.

  PART TWO

  THE GOLDEN WEST

  1935–1962

  3

  YET REAGAN WANTED more. He always wanted more. Even as it honed his skill at spinning stories, radio whetted Reagan’s appetite for the larger audiences of movies. He worked at the Des Moines station for four years, but as time passed, he plotted his escape to the silver screen. He talked his bosses into sending him to Southern California in 1935 to cover spring training of the Chicago Cubs; to offset the cost, he agreed to count the trip as his annual vacation. He hoped to visit Hollywood while in the area and discover what he could about the magical place where movies were made. Maybe the magic would touch him.

  He told no one about this ulterior part of his plan. And during his first trip to California, little came of it. Catalina Island, where the Cubs held their training camp, was farther from Hollywood than he had thought, and the journey by ferry and streetcar wasn’t convenient. Nor did anything of substance emerge on his second trip, in the spring of 1936. But on his third visit, in April 1937, he got help from the weather. A storm system sat over Southern California, canceling baseball and giving the reporters covering the team time off. Reagan took the opportunity to go to Los Angeles and visit the Biltmore Hotel. He had the name of a woman who had worked at WHO before he arrived and who had left the station to have a try at Hollywood. She hadn’t caught on in movies yet, beyond bit parts, but she had landed a gig singing with a band that played the Biltmore. Reagan took in one of the shows and sent her a message inviting her to meet him afterward.

  Her name was Joy Hodges and she was happy to see a fellow midwesterner. He brought greetings from mutual friends; they swapped reminis cences of Iowa. Eventually, he screwed up his courage and admitted he had a secret wish to break into movies.

  He was wearing the glasses he regularly wore to correct his nearsightedness. She told him to take them off. Movie actors didn’t wear glasses, at least not on-screen. She looked him over and decided he might do. She said she had an agent who was looking for clients. Reagan said he’d love to meet the man.

  The next morning she called Reagan and said she had set up an appointment. Reagan arrived for the ten o’clock meeting without his glasses; he felt his way through the receptionist’s office to his meeting with Bill Meiklejohn. He described his experience acting onstage and broadcasting on radio, exaggerating where he thought he could get away with it. Meiklejohn doubtless discounted the description but liked the new fellow’s appearance sufficiently to call Warner Brothers. “Max,” he told Max Arnow, a casting director at the studio, “I have another Robert Taylor sitting in my office.”

  Arnow heard such statements from agents every day. “God made only one Robert Taylor,” he replied, loud enough for Reagan to hear. But the studios were always looking for new talent and fresh faces, and he told Meiklejohn to bring Reagan over.

  They took Meiklejohn’s car, and Reagan soon found himself sitting in front of Arnow. After they were introduced, Arnow asked, “Is that your real voice?” Reagan thought the question strange but replied that it was. Arnow didn’t elaborate, but Reagan learned afterward that he sounded like an actor who had worked for Warner Brothers and recently died.

  Arnow sized Reagan up while Meiklejohn preached his virtues. Arnow agreed to give Reagan a screen test. He handed him a few pages from the script of The Philadelphia Story and told him to memorize them and wait for a call.

  Reagan couldn’t believe his swift good fortune. He took the script to Catalina, where he found he couldn’t concentrate on his baseball reporting. He returned to the mainland by ferry several days later and reported to the studio. The screen test lasted but a few minutes. Reagan exchanged lines with a young actress brought in for the purpose and then was dismissed.

  The next day Arnow called Meiklejohn and said the test had gone well enough that he wanted to show it to Jack Warner, the head of the studio. But Warner was busy and might not be able to look at it for a couple of weeks. Reagan should sit tight.

  Reagan was hopeful but not unrealistic. Amid the continuing depression, he couldn’t afford to jeopardize his radio job on the chance Warner might like him. He said the Cubs were breaking camp and heading to Chicago; he had to be on the eastbound train with them.

>   Reagan only later reflected that his apparent nonchalance about an acting career might have served him well. “I didn’t realize that Hollywood was a place where everyone knocked down the doors trying to get in, and they weren’t used to someone telling them that he had another job and couldn’t wait around. It must have intrigued them a little.” At the time he thought he might have ruined his one chance of fame. “I said to myself, ‘What a damn fool.’ ”

  And so when, two days after arriving back in Des Moines, he received a telegram from Meiklejohn, he was stunned. “Warner offers contract seven years,” it said. “One year option. Starting $200 a week. What shall I do?”

  Reagan replied at once: “Sign before they change their minds.”

  JACK WARNER DIDN’T change his mind easily. He didn’t do much of anything easily, because nothing in life had come easily to him. A son of Polish Jews who had fled pogroms in the Russian Empire, Warner grew up hearing stories of Cossacks raiding the shtetlach and burning houses and raping women and girls. He spent his boyhood in Youngstown, Ohio, where Mafia mobsters and labor thugs broke heads and slit throats for profit and influence. He gravitated to vaudeville to escape the gang life of the steel town, performing onstage until his elder brother Sam persuaded him to move to the production side of the business, where the money was. He and Sam got into movies just after the turn of the twentieth century, showing early films in makeshift theaters around Ohio and Pennsylvania. In time they turned to film production. But this threw them athwart Thomas Edison’s movie trust, which controlled most production on the East Coast, and they decided to relocate west. Jack planted the family flag on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood as the Roaring Twenties were beginning, and the Warner Brothers studio—Sam and Jack were joined by Harry and Albert—rode the rising tide of consumer spending and technological improvement in the years that followed.