Here's the rest of him

Human Events, May 28, 2001 by Meroney, John

Ronald Reagan's political enemies criticized him as a second-rate B-movie actor who couldn't distinguish the fantasy of the big screen from the reality of world affairs.One again the critis got it wrong.

THOSE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER have probably forgotten - and those too young could probably never imagine - the criticisms that Ronald Reagan endured when he first ran for political office. During his campaign for governor of California in 1966, the incumbent, Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, relentlessly attacked Reagan's career as a movie star. One Brown television spot showed clips from Reagan's pictures while a voice-over announcer said: "Ronald Reagan has played many roles. This year he wants to play Governor. Can you afford the price of admission?" In an appearance before elementary school students (also filmed for a commercial), Governor Brown told two black girls, "You know I'm running against an actor. Remember -this: You know who shot Abraham Lincoln, don't you?" The students began to laugh. "An actor shot Lincoln," Brown said.

Reagan's victory and subsequent reelection proved that the public didn't mind particularly that he and John Wilkes Booth had once been actors. So critics soon switched their argument and said it was Reagan's pictures themselves that were declasse, asserting his performances were limited to B-grade films with absurd plots. Political opponents and commentators weren't the only ones voicing such views. There is the famous scene from the 1980 comedy "Airplane," in which Leslie Nielsen, playing a doctor, attends to an ill passenger at 30,000 feet who tells him, "I haven't felt this sick since we saw that Ronald Reagan movie."

Once Reagan became president, another line of attack came into vogue. Far from being only an average actor, he was a master showman - the "Acting President," as CBS correspondent Bob Schieffer titled his book about the Reagan presidency. Reagan was a leader full of theatrics, the "Great Communicator" who applied the skills he'd honed on Hollywood soundstages to dupe the public into supporting his political agenda. The critics wanted to have it both ways, but Reagan was either a successful movie star, or he wasn't.

In a final postmodern twist, Reagan's critics charged that he couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality. The President had disappeared into the Actor playing the President. Had he been a liberal, Reagan would have been celebrated as the Chief Deconstructionist; but since he was a conservative, the critics implied instead that he was daft.

The $1 Million 'Failure'

Few politicians, especially presidents, have lived as much of their lives in the public eye as Reagan has. Almost three decades of Reagan's life before he became a candidate for public office are recorded on film. As his presidency recedes deeper into the past, and Reagan himself becomes part of history, it is now finally possible for his career as an actor and an industry labor leader - he served seven terms as president of Screen Actors Guild, starting in 1947 - to be seriously examined.

Not only have historians and biographers missed the full significance of Ronald Reagan's Hollywood life, they have largely ignored the importance of the roles he played, and the themes and storylines of his films. On closer examination, many of the themes that resonate in the majority of Ronald Reagan's movies patriotism, liberty, justice, sacrifice, loyalty, and idealism - are in keeping with the principles by which he lived his life, and the ones he used to shape the public policy of his presidency.

In all, Reagan made 54 films, portraying characters who were mostly heroes. True, some pictures just don't fit Reagan.

In "Santa Fe Trail" and "The Last Outpost" he played Confederate soldiers, even though as president he was fond of quoting Lincoln. In "The Killers," a 1964 film based on the Ernest Hemingway short story, Reagan played an underworld boss. The film is notable mostly because it is the only time he was ever a villain - in one scene he famously slaps another president's real-life girlfriend, Angie Dickinson - and because it was his last picture. He regretted that he went out on such a note.

It's difficult to call a failure the first MCA actor to win a contract (negotiated in 1941 by Lew Wasserman) worth more than $1 million. But that is one of the hackneyed accusations leveled repeatedly against Reagan. He was then getting roles that had been offered initially to the likes of William Holden, John Wayne, and Robert Young. In 1941, Jack Warner personally ranked Reagan ahead of James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as a studio commodity. Even years later, when Reagan turned to television as the host of "General Electric Theatre" on CBS, he was generating higher ratings than Arthur Godfrey, Red Skelton, Perry Como, Jack Benny, and even the powerhouse "Gunsmoke" series. These were not the accomplishments of a professional mediocrity.

Reagan's best-known films are "Knute Rockne AN American" (1940), and "Kings Row" (1942). In the former, he plays Notre Dame football star George Gipp. The lines from his deathbed scene - "Someday when the team's up against it, the breaks are beating against the boys, ask them to go in there with all they've got, win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then, but I'll know about it. I'll be happy" - are almost as well-known as "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."