America's Greatest 20th Century Presidents (27 page)

Jack's drunkenness, however, was in stark contrast to Reagan's mother Nelle, who adhered to a strictly Protestant morality and did not drink at all.  Ronald Reagan's family mirrored the cultural conflicts taking place across America.  Jack was an Irish Catholic with a drinking problem, while Nelle was a prohibitionist member of the Disciples of Christ Church.  Drinking was, thus, a major point of conflict in the Reagan home.  In the 1920's, Americans across the country were having the same discussions, as Prohibition and speakeasies competed to win over American hearts and minds.

Ronald and his brother, Neil, grew to choose between the lives of their parents.  Ronald chose to be more like his mother, adopting her faith and temperance, while Neil chose a more mischievous life, became an advertising executive, and converted to Roman Catholicism.

The Reagan family circa 1916. Jack called Ronald “Dutch” due to his “Dutchboy” haircut

Education

Since Reagan's family moved around so frequently, Ronald’s early education was erratic and unstable.  Nevertheless, despite changing schools, Reagan performed well in his early education, and even managed to skip a grade.  His brother, on the other hand, fell behind a grade.

In high school, Reagan found his calling.  In Dixon, Illinois, Reagan became active in sports and clubs.  In academics, he only maintained a low-B average, but he was on varsity sports teams, school government, art clubs and volunteer organizations.  He was elected president of his senior class, vice president of the Boy's Hi-Y (a moral uplift group) and was art editor of the school newspaper, the
Dixonian.
  He was also a varsity football and baseball player.

Where Reagan shined most, however, was in drama.  As a member of the Dramatic Club, Reagan starred in
You and I
with his high school girlfriend, Margaret Cleaver. Reagan further developed his interest in drama at Eureka College, which he began attending in 1928.  Located in a small Illinois town just like those in which Reagan had grown up, Eureka College was also a center of the Disciples of Christ Church.  Economic collapse, however, dominated Reagan's time in college.  His family was too poor to afford tuition, but Reagan had saved enough money through working as a lifeguard and construction laborer during his high school summers. Reagan was famously credited with saving nearly 80 lives as a lifeguard, keeping track by literally notching marks on a wooden log.  

By the fall of 1929, the nation was descending into the Great Depression, further complicating Reagan's ability to attend the college.  Fortunately, despite dire financial times, Reagan secured an athletic scholarship that allowed him to continue at Eureka. Much like in high school, Reagan excelled in extracurriculars.  He joined a fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, and began to star regularly in college plays.  He was also elected president of his college senior class.  He graduated in 1932, though with substantial debt due to the Depression, and horrible grades – mostly D's and C's.  At home, his father had been out of work for months, and his family was deep in financial distress.  Despite the circumstances, Reagan managed to secure a job as a lifeguard for the summer after graduating, a sizable achievement given the state of the economy.

Chapter 2: World War II and Hollywood, 1933 – 1962

Sportscasting and Hollywood

Reagan’s screen credit in
Cowboy from Brooklyn
, 1938.

After spending the summer as a lifeguard, Reagan hoped to spearhead the career he really wanted.  Hoping to intertwine his love for sports with his charming charisma, Reagan wanted to be a radio sportscaster.  He travelled throughout Iowa interviewing and searching for the position he wanted.

Despite a series of frustrating rejections, Reagan eventually secured a position broadcasting on radio for the University of Iowa's Hawkeyes.  This position was short-lived, because Reagan became a staff member of radio station WOC in Davenport, Iowa a year later.  His promotions in radio didn't stop there, however; he was later promoted to a position in Des Moines as an announcer for the Chicago Cubs. Not bad considering the nation was in the depths of the Great Depression. But that’s not to say Reagan was the 1930s version of Bob Uecker. In fact, in a time before TV existed, Reagan’s emotional delivery was often used to do play-by-play accounts of games that were being played elsewhere, while the descriptions of what was going on in those games were wired over to his station.

Reagan’s time with the Cubs is largely forgotten, because as fate would have it, the traveling nature of that job paved the way for the profession he would later become best known for. While covering the Cubs in 1937, Reagan traveled to California, where he participated in various screentests. As a result of them, Reagan managed to secure his first position as an actor with Warner Brothers, signing a 7 year contract and moving west permanently. It was a career-defining and lifechanging move.

“B List” Actor and Marriage

Reagan was so eager to get to Los Angeles that in May 1937 he completed the 1,900-mile drive from Des Moines to Los Angeles in just three days.  He did so alongside thousands of refugees who were also moving west to escape the Great Dust Bowl that had devastated the nation's midsection.

When Reagan arrived in Hollywood, he quickly learned the rigid hierarchy associated with the movie-making industry.  Being a relatively new and inexperienced actor, Reagan was consigned to the B-List, meaning he would participate only in low-budget films and receive smaller compensation. Regardless, Ronald was happy to be acting, and among the B-Listers, he shined.  His very first role was a starring one in a film called
Love Is On the Air.
  In the film's first shooting, Reagan fumbled, having difficulty with injecting emotion into material he had never seen before.  He brought the lines home, memorized them overnight, and was able to perform much better in the following day's shooting.  This became his practice throughout his career.

Reagan followed up
Love Is On the Air
with a slew of performances.  He played everything from the title role in
Sergeant Murphy
to a lead position as a drunk playboy in
Dark Victory
. And in 1940, Reagan earned his famous nickname “the Gipper” through his performance in
Knute Rockne, All American.
  His strong performance in that role ensured he would continue to carry the character's name off stage.

In 1938, Reagan starred with a woman named Jane Wyman in a film called
Brother Rat.
  Wyman became infatuated with Reagan, but Reagan did not return the affection.  In late 1939, however, Reagan's feelings for Wyman changed abruptly.  When she was hospitalized for stomach pains, Reagan rushed to see her, and the two were engaged to marry by the time she was released.

The engagement and later marriage proved to be ridden with the tabloid fodder typical of Hollywood marriages.  Supposedly, Wyman's hospitalization was a product of a pill overdose and was designed to render sympathy from Reagan, and coerce him into marriage.  Worse, Wyman's marriage to Reagan was her third, and their engagement came while she was still settling a divorce from her second husband.  Regardless, the two married in 1940, had their first child in 1941, and adopted a second in 1945.

Initially, however, marriage was to be second in Reagan's life.  In December of 1941, the United States entered World War II, and Reagan was called to duty.

Service in World War II

Back in 1937, Reagan took the prerequisite tests to gain admission to the Army Enlistment Reserve.  He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Office Reserves Corps of the Cavalry on May 25
^th
, 1937.

With the outbreak of war, Reagan was not immediately called to duty.  By April of 1942, however, Reagan was enrolled in active service.  This came just as his acting career was booming.  His success in a film called
Kings Row
had allowed his name to be floated for a lead position in the soon-to-be-famous film,
Casablanca.
 

Reagan in Kings Row

In reality, though, Reagan's military service was not terribly disruptive to his career.  Because he had abysmal vision – he could not read most signs just ten feet away without glasses - he was not eligible to serve abroad.  He spent most of his time at the First Motion Picture Unit (FMPU), a Hollywood division of the army located in Los Angeles.  There, he performed in films designed to help train recruits and prepare them for war.  As far as service in World War II went, Ronald Reagan had the best possible position.  The only active combat Reagan ever saw was witnessed in the comfort of a studio, aided by props and technical effects.

Despite not seeing real combat, Reagan's work was not inconsequential.  The films he participated in were seen by hundreds of thousands of American military men, boosting morale and helping keep the nation's armed forces prepared for the harshest conditions. Reagan served in the FMPU almost until war's end, with his official release from active service coming in December 1945, over 3 months after Japan had surrendered.

Screen Actor’s Guild, Communism, and Second Marriage

Before the war, Reagan had been elected to the Board of Directors for the Screen Actors Guild.  When he returned to the guild after the war, he was quickly elected the third vice president, in 1946.  During the war, Reagan joined a variety of civic groups, including the Hollywood Democratic Committee and the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions.  Each of these groups were left-leaning, and many consorted openly with communists.  As a member, Reagan began to give political speeches.  He condemned the internment of Japanese-Americans, attacked British and Dutch colonialism and opposed American support for Chiang Kai-shek, China's anti-communist leader, in that country's civil war. 

On February 9, 1950, a young U.S. Senator from Wisconsin was delivering an ordinary political speech to the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. But in the middle of the speech, he pulled out a piece of paper which he claimed was a list of dozens of known Communists working in the State Department. This sensational announcement by Senator Joseph McCarthy propelled him to the forefront of national politics, but anti-Communist hysteria was already years old. Shortly after World War II, Congress’ House Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating Americans across the country for suspected ties to Communism.