Movie Nights with the Reagans

by Mark Weinberg

  Ronald Reagan liked many aspects of the Superman view of the world—specifically, truth, justice, and the American way—as well as the Star Wars films, in which good vanquished evil. Star Wars echoed his messages of patriotism perfectly, though it may not have been a message Hollywood or the film’s creator intended. By many accounts, George Lucas held views similar to Reeve’s. He even revealed his true intentions in a 2005 interview with the Chicago Tribune, asserting that the first Star Wars film “was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term.” Years later, the Los Angeles Times observed: “For the counterculture, America itself was the Empire to be combated in the name of youth solidarity, just as the Death Star amounted to another name for the military-industrial complex.” Darth Vader and the Empire could be seen as stand-ins for the US government—led by men like Nixon and Reagan—versus the small group of freedom fighters, who were stand-ins for the Vietcong.VII The Soviets also shared this view. Its official news agency, Tass, compared Reagan to the villainous Vader, dark lord of the Sith.VIII

  Perhaps what was most interesting about the kerfuffle with Reeve was what it said about the differences in the philosophies and outlook of the president and his critics. As Reeve noted in his infamous Playgirl interview, “Reagan seems to dig into this thing of believing in himself no matter what his critics say, which I think is a particularly American trait.” Asked by Playgirl if he had “any problems with Superman’s politics, his role as a defender of truth, justice, and the American way,” Reeve responded, “The way I deal with that is to dismiss it completely.”

  “Don’t you think he has any influence on the way kids see the world?” the reporter pressed.

  “I certainly hope not,” the actor replied.IX

  But that didn’t come across to moviegoers, or to the Reagans. In a review that year of Return of the Jedi, the Washington Post noted how Star Wars “helped close some of the psychological wounds left by the war in Vietnam. Star Wars tapped into inspirational depths that transcend political allegiance. It reflected politically uncomplicated yearnings—to be in the right, to fight on the side of justice against tyranny.”

  The president was a fan of the films because in many ways they were, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, adaptations of his favorite Westerns, in which the villains were mostly unambiguous, and the good guys always won. And it was easy to see the appeal of Luke Skywalker: a good-looking, optimistic farm boy with big dreams who changes the world. Not much of a departure from Reagan himself. Leia and Han Solo were both quintessential Western characters: he, the swashbuckling daredevil with the heart of gold; she, the tough-talking, rugged pioneer woman determined to make it in a man’s world. As the writer Charlie Jane Anders noted in 2015: “Star Wars starts out in the Wild West, the rough-hewn old frontier, and then it races upward, soaring and expanding its scope, until at last it becomes World War II. It’s the story of drifters and dreamers, who find their purpose out in the absolute dead middle of nowhere, and end up leading the revolution against an Empire. You can’t even imagine a more quintessentially American story than the original Star Wars.”X

  Return of the Jedi offered a special twist, because it included the redemption of one of the most evil characters in movie history, Darth Vader, who sacrifices himself and his ambitions out of love for his son. Reagan was a big believer in redemption stories, as were most people. I suspect he may have reflected on his own father, Jack, who had been tormented by alcoholism and died at age fifty-seven in 1941.

  Contrary to some popular notions, Star Wars didn’t give birth to Reagan’s policies. His reference to the “evil empire”—in what sometimes was called “the Darth Vader speech”XI—was not a phrase inspired by the films. If the line was inspired by anything, it was probably the 1952 anti-Communist book Witness by Whittaker Chambers, an American Communist sympathizer who, beginning in 1932, spied for Russia against the United States. In 1939 a disillusioned Chambers went to the US government and revealed the names of others in the spy ring in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Meanwhile Chambers wound up becoming a vocal critic of Communism and a darling of US conservatives. He was a senior editor at William F. Buckley’s National Review in the late 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1961.

  He referred to the Soviet Union as “the focus of institutionalized evil.” (Reagan, in his famous 1983 speech, labeled the Soviets “the focus of evil in the modern world.”)

  Nor was his vision of a missile shield rendering nuclear weapons obsolete inspired by Star Wars. It came from his deep belief in the importance of ridding the world of the MAD (mutually assured destruction) policies that nuclear weapons enabled.

  Although both Reagans liked United Press International’s White House bureau chief and legendary reporter Helen Thomas personally, the president occasionally expressed annoyance when she referred to his defense system as “Star Wars.”

  “I wish whoever coined that expression would take it back again, because it gives a false impression of what it is we’re talking about,” he said once. In an interview with Soviet journalists, Reagan explained that the term was “based on a misconception,” and distanced the actual missile defense system from the movies. “We’re talking about seeing if there isn’t a defensive weapon that does not kill people, but that simply makes it impossible for nuclear missiles, once fired out of their silos, to reach their objective—to intercept those weapons.” His irritation with the “Star Wars” label only caused his “tormentors,” such as ABC News’s chief White House correspondent, Sam Donaldson, among others, to persist in calling it “Star Wars.” (Reagan eventually gave in to the inevitable, at one point telling reporters that for supporters of the missile defense shield, “the force is with us.”)

  I have often been asked if the president was aggravated by Donaldson, who was perhaps the loudest and most provocative of the shouting questioners. Not at all. President Reagan got it that television was a performance medium and that Sam was just doing his job. Both Reagans liked Sam, and I think he liked them too.

  The Reagans’ feelings were not shared by everyone on the White House staff. On more than one occasion, I got dirty looks from some senior aides when reporters would shout questions at the president during Oval Office or Cabinet Room photo ops. A senior aide once asked me why I could not “control” the press and tell them not to shout questions at the president. I replied that it was fantasy to tell a reporter not to ask a question. Another time, toward the very end of the Reagan presidency, a top aide grabbed my arm during an Oval Office photo op when reporters were shouting questions about some supposedly sensitive national security issue. “Make them stop,” he ordered me. I’d had enough. I had already accepted the Reagans’ offer to join their post–White House staff in Los Angeles, so I was relatively fearless in answering. I turned to the person and said, “If you had adequately briefed the president, this would not be such an issue,” and walked away.

  Reagan understood the role that the press played in informing an American public that was still very tense in the later days of the Cold War. It is easy to forget now, but even in the 1980s, the specter of nuclear war still hung closely over the United States and the Soviet Union. President Reagan and all of us in his administration understood the stakes, as did the members of the press corps. We all had our jobs to do in keeping the country safe and informed.

  But while Reagan may not have appreciated clever film-inspired nicknames for defense programs, this is not to say that films and dramatized depictions had no influence on his views regarding the Cold War. Anxiety over the prospect of a global nuclear war at the time was a common theme in acclaimed movies such as Threads in Great Britain and Testament in the United States. They were both stark depictions of people suffering and dying amid a global nuclear fallout.

  One TV movie that reached the greatest audience was The Day After, a 1983 ABC-TV production watched by a record one hundred million people. The film, starring Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams
, and John Lithgow, dramatized the nuclear destruction of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. It shocked and depressed many, including Ronald Reagan. When asked his opinion of the film, he replied, “Any drama or any motion picture or any play is based on one thing. It isn’t successful unless it has or evokes an emotional response.”XII And it definitely provoked one in the president. “It’s very effective and left me greatly depressed,” he recalled. “My own reaction was one of having to do all we can to have an effective deterrent and to see that there is never a nuclear war.”XIII

  Indeed, the commander in chief’s determination to support a missile defense system may have been bolstered further by the second film we saw that weekend: WarGames, which had just hit movie theaters on Friday, June 3.

  WarGames, starring a twenty-one-year-old Matthew Broderick in a breakthrough performance along with 9 to 5’s Dabney Coleman, received glowing reviews. The film’s premise was fanciful. An air force computer in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal goes haywire and is on the verge of launching a preemptive missile strike against the Soviet Union, only to be averted at the last minute through the resourcefulness of a teen computer whiz played by Broderick.

  Like most suspense films, the pacing brings viewers into the action. And it certainly did for us. At one point, a general standing in a conference room at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)—a photo of President Reagan visible on the wall behind him—picks up a red phone and barks, “Get me the president!” At that moment, everyone gathered in the Aspen living room to watch the movie, including President and Mrs. Reagan, turned to look at the phone next to where he was sitting. Laughing, we half expected it to ring.

  There were other edge-of-the-seat moments, such as when Broderick’s character has no money to make a crucial call from a pay phone. He improvises, using a ring top from an aluminum soda can, thereby saving the world from a nuclear holocaust.

  When the movie ended, the entire Aspen cabin was uncharacteristically quiet. We rose from our seats, pondering the possibility of rogue computers triggering a global catastrophe.

  Mrs. Reagan finally broke the silence, asking no one in particular, “Could that really happen?”

  There were several high-ranking military people in the room who had watched the film with the Reagans. They kept their silence.

  Then the president’s doctor, Dan Ruge, a civilian, answered calmly, “Yes, that could happen.” After a long pause, he added, “In fact, I’ve done it.” Dr. Ruge, a distinguished neurosurgeon, had been a partner of Mrs. Reagan’s stepfather, Loyal Davis, in Chicago. He and his wife, Greta, had known Nancy Reagan for a very long time.

  There was another long pause, with stares and silence.

  Then Dan said with a smile, “I’ve used a ring top to make a call at a pay phone.”

  The room erupted in laughter, with none heartier than the Reagans’.

  The film’s dire warning of the dangers of an accidental nuclear launch clearly made a lasting impression on President Reagan. Just two days later, as Lou Cannon describes in his biography, Reagan met with a group of Democratic congressmen to discuss his missile defense program. At one point, he put aside his notes and talked about WarGames and the dangers an inadvertent launch might pose to the United States. His concern, like the film itself, was dismissed by some in the room as far-fetched, even absurd. Yet only a few months later—on September 26, 1983, to be exact—the Soviet Union’s early warning system malfunctioned twice, alerting Russian generals of a launch of US nuclear missiles. Fortunately, a senior official in the underground bunker near Moscow deduced that the computer was in error, and a nuclear crisis was averted. Life, it turned out, imitated art—and it might have had dire consequences.

  8

  CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER

  Starring:

  David Niven, Ted Wass

  Directed by:

  Blake Edwards

  Viewed by the Reagans:

  September 16, 1983

  The Film That Revealed Reagan’s Biggest Disappointment

  On Friday, September 16, 1983, the president held an event honoring Hispanic Americans in the Armed Forces and demonstrated yet again how films affected his thinking. He told those gathered that he’d recently seen “a wonderful film” called Hero Street, the story of a street in a Hispanic neighborhood in Illinois. At the end of that street, the president noted, is a monument to eight heroes who gave their lives for America.

  In fact, from twenty-two families on this block, eighty-four men served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. In World War II and Korea, fifty-seven came from that street. The two Sandoval families sent thirteen sons: six from one family, seven from the other, and three of the Sandoval sons never came back. I think you will agree with one man in the film who says they so willingly defended America because it was for them, as for all of us, a place of opportunity. I think you will agree with his words when he said, “I don’t think there’s any more to prove than has been proven on this street.” And perhaps you will understand why the name on Second Street in Silvis, Illinois, was changed a few years back. The new name is Hero Street.I

  This story was exactly the sort the president loved because it reaffirmed his feelings about America. By telling it, he hoped it would encourage others to feel the same way.

  Not that the country was in an optimistic mood at that moment. Two weeks earlier, the Soviet Union had shot down Korean Airlines Flight 007 after it had strayed inadvertently into prohibited Russian airspace while en route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, killing all 269 aboard, including a US congressman. After originally denying involvement, the Soviets claimed preposterously that the passenger airliner was a spy plane. The crisis over the shooting—the president called it “a crime against humanity that must never be forgotten”—was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union had come to armed confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. That weekend, the president’s weekly radio address offered some of the harshest rhetoric yet regarding the atrocity.

  “Apparently [the Soviet Union’s] contempt for the truth and for the opinion of the civilized world is equaled only by their disdain for helpless people like the passengers aboard KAL Flight 007,” Reagan said. “They reserve for themselves the right to live by one set of rules, insisting everyone else live by another. They’re supremely confident their crime and cover-up will soon be forgotten, and we’ll all be back to business as usual. Well, I believe they’re badly mistaken.”

  The president’s weekly radio addresses had begun in 1982 and have been a tradition of every president since. (President Barack Obama turned them into video addresses, available on YouTube.) Two events in Reagan’s life probably influenced the idea for the weekly address: his memory of his idol Franklin Roosevelt delivering “fireside chats” throughout his twelve-year presidency and Reagan’s own career in radio. The president took pride in his abilities as a radio sportscaster—sometimes even dramatizing play-by-plays of entire baseball games based solely on wire reports back when that was his profession.

  President Reagan established the practice of delivering a weekly radio address to the nation at 12:06 p.m. every Saturday from wherever he was. He liked to do it live, rather than tape it in advance, unless logistics—such as time differences on a foreign trip—made that impossible. He did them from the Oval Office, the ranch, and, sometimes of course, from Camp David. Those involved in the broadcast, and those with no role whatsoever, all showed up at Laurel Lodge anywhere from 11:00 to 11:45 a.m. The White House Communications Agency (WHCA), an elite military unit that provides communications support to the president in his role as commander in chief, had technical oversight of the broadcast, under the strict supervision of the White House Television Office’s director, Elizabeth Board, or Deputy Director Flo Grace. Representatives from the media were also always present to “feed” the broadcast to the US radio networks.

  At first, when at Camp David, the president would deliver the address from a small table in the
Laurel living room, but because more and more people felt they needed to be present, the broadcast site was moved to the Laurel conference room, which had a table large enough to accommodate the Cabinet and then some.

  Shortly before noon, a Secret Service agent posted in Laurel would announce, “Imminent arrival,” and everyone would snap into action. The WHCA team tested the microphones at the president’s chair, the camp commander and the military aide checked their watches, the presidential food service coordinator placed a glass of bottled water on a napkin embossed with the presidential seal next to the president’s microphones, the personal aide stood near the main door of the conference room, and I stood next to Mrs. Reagan’s seat against the wall just behind the president. The Reagans entered Laurel through the front door and walked into the conference room. If they were going horseback riding that afternoon, the president would have his riding boots on. He frequently wore a baseball cap. Mrs. Reagan would always wear a nice shirt and usually jeans, plus a sweater or a Camp David jacket.

  The president greeted everyone with a big smile and a “Hello, all. How do you do?” as Mrs. Reagan took her seat next to me. We’d whisper as we talked about whatever was on her mind. The chief executive made his way to his seat in the middle of the conference table, in front of the microphones, and looked through his script. Elizabeth or Flo sat next to him, and the personal aide next to her. Sometimes a White House staff photographer or official White House TV crew was present to record the broadcast. The camp commander, the military aide, and Secret Service personnel hovered near the doors at the end of the room. The president would chat with Elizabeth or Flo about such topics as the weather, the number of squirrels or deer seen on the walk to Laurel, or the movie shown the previous night, until the WHCA technician would ask for a voice-level check. The president would then go into “broadcast mode” and recite a few lines of the address, until the tech assured him all was okay. He would then resume chatting, very quietly, until Elizabeth or Flo shouted, “Thirty seconds!”—at which point a big “On the Air” sign would light up, and everyone would be silent. “Five seconds,” Elizabeth or Flo said loudly, and they would count down on their fingers, pointing to the president at the precise moment he was to begin. “My fellow Americans” were the next words heard.