Ronald Reagan

Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in an apartment above a small bakery in Tampico, Illinois. He was the second of two sons born to John Edward Reagan, an Irish American Catholic, and Nellie Clyde Wilson, who was of Scottish, Canadian and English descent. His paternal great-grandfather, Michael Reagan, came to the United States from Ballyporeen, County Tipperary, Ireland, in the 1860s, and the rest of his paternal family immigrated from Ireland in the 1800s as well.[2] Prior to his immigration, the family name was spelled Regan. His maternal great-grandfather, John Wilson, immigrated to the United States from Paisley, Scotland, in the 1840s and married Jane Blue, a Canadian from Queens, New Brunswick. Reagan's maternal grandmother, Mary Anne Elsey, was born in Epsom, Surrey, England.[3]

Reagan developed a gift for storytelling and acting. These abilities led to his selection as one of the freshman speakers during the late-night meeting prior to the student strike at Eureka College. In 1932, after graduating from Eureka (B.A. in economics and sociology), Reagan was at radio stations WOC in Davenport, Iowa, and then WHO in Des Moines as an announcer for Chicago Cubs baseball games, getting only the bare outlines of the game from a ticker and relying on his imagination to flesh out the game. Once, during the ninth inning of a game, the wire went dead but Reagan smoothly improvised a fictional (and slightly implausible) play-by-play, in which hitters on both teams fouled off numerous pitches, until the wire was restored.

Throughout his life, Reagan would often mention that while a child his father would not allow Reagan or his brother to go see D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" because it glorified the Ku Klux Klan.


Hollywood
In 1937, when in California to cover spring training for the Chicago Cubs as a headline radio announcer, Reagan took a screen test that led to a seven-year contract with the Warner Brothers studio.[citation needed] Reagan's clear voice, easy-going manner, and athletic physique made him popular with audiences; the majority of his screen roles were as the leading man in B movies. His first screen credit was the starring role in the 1937 movie Love Is On the Air, in which he plays a radio personality. By the end of 1939, he had appeared in 19 films. Before appearing in Santa Fe Trail with Errol Flynn, in 1940, he played the role of Notre Dame University star athlete George "The Gipper" Gipp in the film Knute Rockne, All American. The film had a memorable scene in which Reagan, as Gipp, gives a speech from a hospital bed and implores his fellow football teammates to "win just one for the Gipper." From this role he acquired the nickname the Gipper, which he retained the rest of his life. Reagan considered his best acting work to have been in Kings Row (1942). He played the part of a young man whose legs were amputated. He used the line, "Where's the rest of me?" (what his character says when he wakes up in the hospital after the surgery) as the title for his autobiography. Leonard Maltin, in his Movie Guide book, calls it Reagan's finest performance.

Other notable films include WWII drama The Hasty Heart (1949) opposite Patricia Neal and Richard Todd; Storm Warning (1951) as an attorney who goes after the Ku Klux Klan, co-starring Ginger Rogers and Doris Day; The Winning Team as Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander who overcomes alcoholism; and Cattle Queen of Montana opposite Barbara Stanwyck. He also appeared in Bedtime for Bonzo, a 1951 comedy, as a college professor who treats a chimpanzee as a human child for an experiment.

He co-starred with first wife, Jane Wyman, in several films including Brother Rat (1938) and its sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940). He starred with his second wife, Nancy, in the WWII submarine film Hellcats of the Navy (1957), which was their only feature film appearance together.

His final film role was in the 1964 remake of The Killers as a brutal criminal mastermind. The movie was to have been premiered on NBC television but was deemed at the time as too violent (especially after the Kennedy assassination), so it was released theatrically. Had it not been turned down by NBC censors, Hellcats of the Navy would have been Reagan's final theatrically released feature film. Reagan was a voice actor and narrated the 1961 melodrama The Young Doctors starring Fredric March and Ben Gazzara. Reagan also appeared in several episodes of the television western series Death Valley Days that aired in 1965.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and received a Golden Globe "Hollywood Citizenship Award" in 1957.

Reagan was commissioned as a reserve officer in the United States Army in 1935. In November 1941, Reagan was called up but disqualified for combat duty because of his astigmatism. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Reagan was activated and assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in the United States Army Air Forces, which made training and education films, where his acting experience could be put to work. He remained in Hollywood for the duration of the war.


Ronald Reagan visiting Nancy Reagan on the set of her movie Donovan's Brain, 1953.Reagan's film roles became fewer in the late 1950s; he moved to television as a host and frequent performer for General Electric Theater. Reagan appeared in over 50 television dramas.

He went from host and program supervisor of General Electric Theater to 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 (around $800,000 in 2006 dollars). His final regular acting job was as host and performer on Death Valley Days. He served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1947 until 1952, and again from 1959 to 1960. In 1952, a Hollywood dispute raged over his granting of a SAG blanket waiver to MCA, which was run by Lew Wasserman (who as a talent agent had personally represented Reagan), which allowed MCA to both represent and employ talent for its own burgeoning TV franchises. [4] This triggered an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division. Reagan was never charged with any crimes. Under continued government scrutiny, Wasserman implented changes that made MCA no longer a talent agency. [5]

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