Ronald Reagan: From Actor to President of the United States

Introduction: The American Dream and Ronald Reagan

From the days of Abraham Lincoln, it has been an instilled American belief that anyone, regardless of social status, can rise to the highest office in the country — that of President of the United States. Given this belief, is it possible for a college football player turned actor to rise to governor of California and then move on to the highest office in the land?

Early Life, Education, and First Steps in Politics

Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. After high school graduation, he attended Eureka College, where he studied economics and sociology, played football, and participated in school plays. When Reagan graduated from Eureka, he became a radio sports announcer, and then in 1937 a screen test won him a contract in Hollywood, where over the next two decades he appeared in some fifty-three films. Reagan's first marriage to actress Jane Wyman produced two children, Maureen and Michael, and his second marriage to actress Nancy Davis also produced two children, Patricia Ann and Ronald Prescott. While serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he became involved in disputes over the issue of Communism within the film industry, which ultimately shifted his political views from liberal to conservative and eventually led him to tour the country as a spokesman for conservatism. He was elected Governor of California in 1966 and re-elected in 1970.

Reagan writes that although he did not play much football during his first semester at Eureka, he did get his first taste of politics. It was 1928, a year before the stock market crash and the Great Depression, yet in the Midwest farmers were already beginning to feel the pinch. The school was losing financial support and decided to impose cuts and lay off faculty. Reagan was elected to represent the freshmen on a student committee formed to consider the possibility of calling a strike, and was then chosen to present the proposal for the strike.

Reagan recalls that giving that first speech was as exciting as any he ever gave: "For the first time in my life, I felt my words reach out and grab an audience, and it was exhilarating. When I'd say something, they'd roar after every sentence, sometimes every word, and after a while, it was as if the audience and I were one." Everyone then rose to their feet with thunderous applause, approving the strike and resulting in the college president's resignation.

Reagan continued his studies and playing football throughout his time at Eureka. In 1932, his senior year, the college hired a new English professor with a flair for teaching dramatics, and Reagan began to act in school plays. When the school placed second in a drama contest, the head of Northwestern's Speech Department told Reagan that he should consider acting as a career, and the acting bug was firmly planted in young Reagan. However, instead of heading to Hollywood or New York after graduation, Reagan went to Chicago, the center of radio broadcasting.

Radio had created a new profession — the sports announcer who reported play-by-play football games — and these announcers had become as famous as many Hollywood stars, often more famous than the athletes they reported on. Reagan hitchhiked to Chicago, but without experience he was met with rejection at every turn. He then sought out stations outside Chicago and finally landed a job at WOC in Davenport, Iowa, as a sports announcer for five dollars plus bus fare.

From Radio Announcer to Hollywood Star

He was later switched to staff announcer, playing records, reading commercials, and serving as a vocal bridge between local and network broadcasts, earning $100 a month. The sister station in Des Moines, WHO, then hired him to broadcast the Drake Relays, and a few weeks later the Palmer Company received a permit for a 50,000-watt clear-channel station in Des Moines, which overnight became one of the most powerful NBC stations in the country. At twenty-two, Reagan was hired as the sports announcer there, earning seventy-five dollars a week in the middle of the Depression, and gained fame throughout the Midwest. This fame brought numerous invitations for speaking engagements that provided extra income, which he sent back home to his parents.

Reagan was eventually sent to Los Angeles to cover the Cubs' spring training camp. There he ran into a singer he had known at WHO, who was working bit parts in the movies and offered to connect him with an agent she knew, Bill Meiklejohn. After a screen test, he was offered a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers starting at $200 a week.

In June 1937, Reagan drove through the gates of the Warner Brothers studio to begin his first movie, playing a radio announcer in Love Is on the Air. The review in the Hollywood Reporter read: "Love Is on the Air presents a new leading man, Ronald Reagan, who is a natural, giving one of the best first picture performances Hollywood has offered in many a day." Like all actors and actresses, Reagan was required to join the Screen Actors Guild, though at first he considered it an infringement on his rights, uncertain why actors needed a union.

However, he soon changed his mind after discovering how many actors had been exploited and had trouble with contract negotiations. He was subsequently appointed to the Screen Actors Guild's board of directors. Reagan confesses that he was the Errol Flynn of the B-movies until he got the part of George Gipp in Knute Rockne — All American, the story of the legendary Norwegian-born coach of Notre Dame who revolutionized the game of football. Although it was a small part, it was an emotional one that drew sniffles from the audience and gave Reagan the break he had been waiting for. By the end of 1941, he was co-starring with Errol Flynn in Desperate Journey.

Three months after Pearl Harbor, Reagan was called up to report to Fort Mason, where he was assigned to make training films and documentaries used throughout the Army Air Corps. Here he got his first taste of government bureaucracy, learning that his supervisor's salary was based on the number of people he supervised — meaning no one was expendable, regardless of job performance or the necessity of the position.