Home > Ronald Reagan
1.1 Hollywood
Reagan had a successful career in Hollywood as a second-rank leading man, aided by his clear voice and athletic physique. His first screen credit was the starring role the 1937 movie Love is On the Air . An agent signed him to his first contract after saying "I have another Robert Taylor sitting in my office". By the end of 1939, he had appeared in 19 films. In 1940 he played the role of George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American, from which he acquired the nickname the Gipper, which he retained the rest of his life. Reagan himself considered that his best acting work was in Kings Row ( 1942). He played the part of a young man whose legs are amputated. He used a line he spoke in this film "Where's the rest of me?" as the title for his autobiography. Other notable Reagan films include Hellcats of the Navy, This Is the Army, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan was kidded widely about the last named film because his co-star was a chimp. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6374 Hollywood Blvd.
Reagan was commissioned as a reserve cavalry officer in the U.S. Army in 1935. After the attack on Pearl Harbor he was activated and assigned, partially due to his poor eyesight, to the First Motion Picture Unit in the United States Army Air Force, which made training and education films. He remained in Hollywood for the duration of the war. He attained the rank of captain. Reagan tried repeatedly to go overseas for combat duty but was turned down because of his astigmatism. He always remained very proud of his military background.
Reagan married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. They had a daughter, Maureen in 1941, adopted a son Michael in 1946, and had a daughter born four months prematurely in 1947 who lived but one day. They divorced in 1948 (Reagan was the first President to have been divorced). Reagan remarried in 1952 to actress Nancy Davis at a time when she may have already become pregnant. (Their marriage was on March 4; daughter Patti was born on October 21 of the same year.) In 1958 they had a second child, Ron. Reagan was a loving devoted husband according to all accounts. One of the most touching speeches he ever made as President was a tribute to his wife. He spoke of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and how Eleanor had been his "legs" during his term. He said "I want you to know that Nancy Reagan is my everything...thank you partner thank you for everything...by the way are you doing anything tonight?"
As Reagan's film roles became fewer in the late 1950s, he moved into television as a host and frequent performer for General Electric Theater. Reagan appeared in many live television plays and often co-starred with Nancy. Reagan – then not just the talent agency's client but boss Lew Wasserman's first million-dollar client – became head of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). Back in 1952, a Hollywood scandal concerned his granting of a SAG blanket waiver to MCA, which allowed it to both represent and employ talent for its burgeoning TV franchises. He went from host and program supervisor of General Electric Theater to actually producing and claiming an equity stake in the TV show itself. At one point in the late 1950s, Reagan was earning approximately $125,000 per year—equivalent to at least $600,000 in 2004 dollars. Before that, Ronald Reagan had been working Las Vegas, Nevada as a song-and-dance act's master of ceremonies. Dennis McDougal , author of the unauthorized Wasserman biography The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood commented that "He and his board engineered it, thus giving MCA carte blanche control over US television for the next six years." McDougal goes on to say that Reagan didn't recall his role in the waiver when he was before US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's grand jury in 1962. It was in 1945 that Wasserman brokered Ronald Reagan's unprecedented seven-year, $1 million deal with Warner Brothers. His final regular acting job was as host and performer on Death Valley Days. Reagan's final big-screen appearance came in the 1964 film The Killers , in which, uncharacteristically, he played a mob chieftan. This film was a remake of an earlier 1946 version from a short story by Ernest Hemingway. Reagan's co-stars were John Casavettes and Lee Marvin. At one point, he belts Angie Dickinson across a room. Angie Dickinson and Reagan were good friends in real life and she said he would always apologize for this!
