Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked (48 page)

playing varsity football
: Eliot,
Reagan,
21.

enough to be elected
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 21.

He was also
: Eliot,
Reagan,
21.

Setting out to convince
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 24.

first for a fraternity
: Ibid.

his majors had been economics and sociology
: Ibid., pp. 32–33.

Davenport, Iowa
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 27.

There he landed a slot
: Ibid., p. 30.

After Davenport
: Ibid., p. 32.

In 1937
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 49.

five years after saying good-bye
: Eliot,
Reagan,
pp. 26–30.

“goodbye sports”
: Wayne Federman,
The Atlantic,
November 14, 2011.

twenty-six-year-old
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 13.

A native New Yorker
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 75.

Returning after her four years
: Nancy Reagan at Smith College 1911–1943, Reagan Foundation website.

He’d gone as
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 47.

But the chance to take
: Morris,
Dutch,
p. 130.

to keep an eye on the Chicago Cubs
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 48.

In Los Angeles
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 42.

in the Biltmore Hotel’s
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 48.

One performer was a singer
: Ibid.

He sent a note
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 42.

It was a break
: Ibid., p. 48.

he be billed as Ronald, not “Dutch”
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
pp. 49–50.

Reagan’s first film
: Ibid., p. 53.

Love Is on the Air
was
: Ibid., p. 54.

The reviews
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 53.

Over the next few years
: Ibid., pp. 353–55.

He appeared as a military cadet
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 54.

and as an army private
: Turner Classic Movies.

In a change of pace
: Eliot,
Reagan,
pp. 94–96.

1940, the year
Knute Rockne: Ibid., p. 356.

On the Warner lot
: Ibid., p. 69.

Each day
: Ibid., pp. 70–71.

When O’Brien won
: Ibid., p. 113.

he soon learned from Reagan
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 55.

and that he’d grown up worshipping both
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 116.

died in 1920
: Jack Cavanaugh,
Sports Illustrated,
December 30, 1991.

he’d once even started
: Reagan,
An American Life,
pp. 90–91.

he brought in
: Ibid., p. 91.

“This is a helluva important role”
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 55.

offering to read Rockne’s lines
: Ibid.

premiered in South Bend
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 117.

the role he himself considered his best
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 57.

as he often did in those years
: Nicholas Wapshott,
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage
(New York: Sentinel, 2007), p. 49.

Opening in early 1942
: Bob Colacello,
Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House, 1911 to 1980
(New York: Warner Books, 2004), p. 150.

“Where’s the rest of me?”
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 142.

what Reagan’s character, Drake McHugh, demands to know
: Ibid.

the title of his 1965 autobiography
: Ibid., p. 4.

Measured by box office
: Ibid., p. 357.

with Errol Flynn
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 66.

Two years earlier they’d appeared together in
Santa Fe Trail: Ibid., p. 55.

Desperate Journey
follows the perilous path
: Ibid., p. 154.

On December 8, 1941
:
Prologue,
The National Archives, Winter 2001, Vol. 33, No. 4.

The movie industry
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 161.

The month before he’d moved
: Ronald Reagan Library.

Arriving in Hollywood, he was appointed
: Ibid.

two months after
Kings Row: Colacello,
Ronnie and Nancy,
p. 150.

kept him from assignment to a combat unit
: Ronald Reagan Library.

Transferring from the cavalry
: Ibid.

then to the just-created First Motion Picture Unit
: Eliot, p. 161.

Never before had a military unit
: Ibid.

It was this unit
: Ibid., p. 162.

now dubbed Fort Roach
: Ibid., p. 162.

In 1943
: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

he’d narrated
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 68.

won the Oscar
: The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences.

Though he both appeared in and voiced-over numerous movies
: Eliot, p. 166.

he was also
: Ronald Reagan Library.

at the end of his active duty
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 176.

and Burbank
: Ibid., p. 163.

wife of eight years
: Ibid., p. 7.

She’d become a Warner
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 63.

though often as an uncredited
: Internet Movie Database.

chorus girl
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 63.

thirty or so pictures
: Internet Movie Database.

A native Missourian
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 63.

her showbiz start in radio, as a singer
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 81.

She’d also been twice married
: Ibid., pp. 81–82.

But by 1948
: Ibid., p. 179.

She’d been nominated
: Ibid., p. 194.

the Hollywood gossip mills went to town
: Ibid., p. 213.

“Don’t ask Ronnie”
: Wapshott,
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,
p. 43.

“You bore me . . . Leave!”
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 210.

By his own account
: Reagan,
An American Life,
p. 47.

would shut down the campus
: Ibid.

Reagan was the one picked
: Ibid., p. 48.

“When I came to actually”
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
pp. 25–26.

Robert Cummings, his
Kings Row
costar
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 145.

Nancy, whom Ronald married in 1952
: Ibid., p. 253.

One, he wrote, was the “public”
: Ron Reagan,
My Father at 100
(New York: Viking Penguin, 2011), p. 13.

he wasn’t being considered for parts
: Eliot,
Reagan,
pp. 176–77.

He shot a few
: Ibid., pp. 357–59.

a young actress ten years his junior
: Ibid., p. 7.

she’d dated Clark Gable
: Ibid., p. 230.

“My life really began”
: Nancy Reagan Biography, White House Historical Association.

who’d voted for FDR
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 37.

had backed Helen Gahagan Douglas
: Ibid., p. 101.

would remain a registered
: Morris,
Dutch,
p. 326.

In 1937 Reagan had joined
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 85.

In 1946 he became
: Ibid., p. 86.

Ugly violence
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p.190.

In the weeks that followed
: Ibid., pp. 188–91.

“Ronnie Reagan has turned”
: Ibid., p. 192.

Reagan would go on to serve
: Reagan Biography, SAG-AFTRA.

“citizen-politician”
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 82.

His audience
: Ibid., pp. 208–9.

While acknowledging
: Ibid.

When asked by Robert Stripling
: Ibid.

two-week stand
: Morris,
Dutch,
p. 295.

“It’s a long way”
: Ibid.

Within weeks Reagan began
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 275.

first and only continuing host
: Thomas W. Evans,
The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), p. 3.

Airing on Sundays
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 276.

James Dean
: Evans,
The Education of Ronald Reagan,
p. 57.

Natalie Wood
: Suzanne Finstad,
Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), p. 158.

Lee Marvin
: Robert J. Lentz,
Lee Marvin
:
His Films and Career
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2006), p. 194.

Sammy Davis, Jr.
: Gary Fishgall,
Gonna Do Great Things: The Life of Sammy Davis, Jr.
(New York: Scribner, 2003), pp. 123–24.

Over the eight years it ran
:
Encyclopedia of Television: A–C
(volume 1), Horace Newcomb, ed. (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 968.

Bill Clinton
:
Newsweek,
June 21, 2004.

Traveling to hundreds of cities and towns
: Morris,
Dutch,
p. 305.

“I am seen by more people”
: Ibid., pp. 304–5.

As of 1958 he was one
: Ibid., p. 305.

at least a quarter of a million of them
: Reagan,
An American Life,
p. 128.

the relationship ended abruptly in 1962
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 325.

In 1964 Ronald Reagan emerged
: Ibid., p. 112.

What brought him this
: Ibid., pp. 123–25.

the Goldwater campaign paid to have it nationally televised
: Eliot,
Reagan,
pp. 333–34.

“a rendezvous with destiny”
: Reagan speech, October 27, 1964.

It was a speech he’d been polishing
: Eliot,
Reagan,
p. 333.

When Reagan ran
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 160.

To denigrate Reagan’s profession
: Ibid., p. 116.

a televised campaign ad
: Ibid., p. 151.

“As a politician”
: Reagan,
My Father At 100,
p. 24.

“The man who
has
the job”
: Cannon,
Governor Reagan,
p. 149.

that July night in 1980
: Reagan Speech, Republican National Convention, July 17, 1980.

CHAPTER EIGHT
: THE RISE OF TIP O’NEILL

“All politics is local”
: Tip credited his father for the famous motto. Author John A. Farrell said it was a familiar phrase in Massachusetts during the younger O’Neill’s upbringing. However, there’s been speculation tying the motto to Finley Peter Dunne’s “Mr. Dooley.” His biographer Edward J. Bander has said this is not the case.

When he was tapped
: Author interview with Tom Foley.

His father, Thomas
: Farrell,
Tip O’Neill,
p. 35.

He was only nine months old
: Ibid., p. 49

Young O’Neill remembered
: Ibid.

O’Neill found warmth
: Ibid., p. 42.

Tip’s own lifelong moniker
: Ibid., p. 13.

Here’s Tip’s own version
:
MOH,
pp. 6–7.

A year later
: Farrell, p. 51.