Transcript: Chapter 03

Narrator: In 1928, at a time when few Americans went to college Reagan attended Eureka College, run by the Disciples of Christ. He majored in sociology and economics. "I got poor marks," Reagan later admitted. "[But] I copped off the lead in most plays. And in football I won three varsity sweaters."

Narrator: Reagan graduated from Eureka in 1932. It was the depths of the Great Depression. But it took Reagan only six weeks to find a job. At WOC Radio. Later he moved to Des Moines, to work as a sportscaster.

Life was easy for Ronald Reagan. He had money, independence and the time to learn to ride. For the next four summers, using only statistics coming through telegraph Reagan transported his listeners to the bleachers of Wrigley Field with his vivid recreations of baseball games he never saw.

Cannon: If you look at where Reagan is really a master communicator, it really is on radio. If you think about Reagan's career as an actor and as a president and as a speaker, just generally, he was a powerful recreator. He recreated our experiences.

Morris: I remember Hugh Sidey telling me that when he was a child in Iowa in the '30s, in the Dust Bowl years, he used to hear Ronald Reagan's voice coming over the airwaves, and he said – just doing baseball commentary, but he said there was something about that voice that gave me as a child the feeling that life was going to get better.

Narrator: Reagan had long dreamed of becoming an actor and in 1937 he went to Hollywood. He recalled the moment he stepped onto the set of his first film Love is on the Air. "I was ... surrounded by a wall of light (which) gave me a feeling of privacy that completely dispelled any nervousness I might have expected."

Morris: Reagan has always liked to be looked after. He likes to have a Jack Warner in charge of the finances. He likes to have a wardrobe mistress and a supporting cast. He likes to be surrounded by the busyness of a great commercial enterprise. And that's where I think Ronald Reagan became a corporate person.

Narrator: Ronald Reagan would make more than 50 films. And only in one did he play the villain.

Dallek: Reagan loved the hero's role because he fantasized himself as a heroic figure. The first time his mother sees him in the first film he plays in, she looks at the screen and she says, "that's my Dutch," and what she's speaking to is the idea that he's himself on the screen, that he's in a sense playing out the fantasy that he has, that he's very comfortable with.

Narrator: Reagan was becoming a box office draw. Guaranteed work and steady pay, he brought Nelle and Jack to California and bought them the only home they ever owned. In 1940 he married a promising young actress Jane Wyman.

Ron and Jane became the darlings of the Warner Bros. publicity machine -- a valuable asset for an industry preoccupied with its image.

Cannon: They were always worried, the people who ran the studios, that some whiff of scandal involving their bright stars would ah cause people to stop turning up en masse at the box office, or the Legion of Decency would turn on them or something like that. Reagan and Wyman were real, you know. They were, they were in love, they were wholesome, people liked to look at them. If they wanted to celebrate the marriage, Reagan was willing, so they did.

Narrator: With their daughter Maureen, and their adopted son Michael, the Reagans were promoted as the perfect Hollywood family.

Edwin Meese: Ronald Reagan came up from middle America. He came up in the movies in a time when most of the movies were designed to make people feel good when they left rather than feel sad. He reflected these kinds of qualities.

Narrator: Reagan was cast as football legend George Gipp in Knute Rockne All American. It was his first major film -- the one that earned him the nickname "The Gipper." In 1940, he played opposite screen giant Errol Flynn in Santa Fe Trail. But the height of his acting career was as Drake McHugh in King's Row. By the time King's Row opened, America was at war. And so was Ronald Reagan. But only on the screen. Reagan spent the war making training films at Culver City, less than ten miles from home.

Morris: He certainly loved -- learned and loved -- to wear a uniform, to act like a soldier, to salute properly. There was nothing he enjoyed more as President than saluting. As commander in chief, he would do that little extra flip to the salute, which you hardly ever see in the Armed Services anyway, it was a real Hollywood salute. But it meant a great deal to him.

Narrator: Hollywood emerged from World War II with a new understanding of the power of movies in shaping American views. Many who had mobilized in support of the war now turned their attention to other causes.

"I ... blindly joined every organization," Reagan wrote, "that would guarantee to save the world." As a liberal Democrat, he spoke on issues ranging from the dangers of atomic weapons to racial equality. If he knew some of his associates were Communists, he did not seem to care.

Cannon: He's involved in these, you know, leftist organizations where the Communists clearly were struggling for control. The Communists valued Hollywood. Reagan is one of these people who would dismiss this, who would dismiss the Communist conspiracy, the Communist threat. And then when he became convinced that it was real, he over-dramatized it and overreacted to it.

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