Reagan: A Life In Pictures

Images: Ronald Reagan: The Movie, Michael Rogin

"Ronnie and Nancy: A Life in Pictures "—the title of an essay in the 1988 Gore Vidal collection, At Home.

This was originally a 1983 review of Laurence Leamer's Make-Believe: The Story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan, published in The New York Review of Books [library access or subscription: "The Best Years of Our Lives" 9/29/83].

Of Leamer's book, Vidal observes that

In time all things converge. The campaign biography and the movie star's biography are now interchangeable. The carefully packaged persona of the old-time movie star resembles nothing so much as the carefully packaged persona of today's politician. Was it not inevitable that the two would at last coincide in one person?

...

...Since Mr. Leamer is as little interested in politics and history as his two subjects, he is in some ways an ideal chronicler. He loves the kind of gossip that ordinary folks—his subjects and their friends—love.

Vidal recalls his first sighting of the Reagans as political couple: at the 1964 Republican convention in San Francisco.

This was as Barry Goldwater was about to be nominated for president, and the foaming at the mouth right-wing base was just getting warmed up. In a scene reminiscent of our current tea partying droolers over Palin, Vidal describes a scene including Nelson Rockefeller

... being booed not only for his communism but for his indecently uncloseted heterosexuality. Who present that famous day can ever forget those women with blue-rinsed hair and leathery faces and large costume jewelry and pastel-tinted dresses with tasteful matching accessories as they screamed "Lover!" at Nelson? It was like a TV rerun of the Bacchae, with Nelson as Pentheus.

I felt sorry for Nelson. I felt sorry for David Brinkley when a number of seriously overweight Sunbelt Goldwaterites chased him through the kitchens of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. I felt sorry for myself when I, too, had to ward off their righteous wrath: I was there as a television commentator for Westinghouse. I felt sorry for the entire "media" that day as fists were actually shaken at the anchorpersons high up in the eaves of the hall. I felt particularly sorry for the "media" when a former president named Eisenhower, reading a speech with his usual sense of discovery, attacked the press, and the convention hall went mad. At last Ike was giving it to those Commie-wierdo-Jew-fags who did not believe in the real America of humming electric chairs, well-packed prisons, and kitchens filled with every electrical device that a small brown person of extranational provenance might successfully operate at a fraction of the legal minimum wage.

Vidal was seated near the Reagans, who attracted his attention during Eisenhower's speech. Following Leamer's practice of calling his subjects by their first names, Vidal recalls Nancy—

First, there was her furious glare when someone created a diversion during Ike's aria. She turned, lip curled with Bacchantish rage, huge unblinking eyes afire with a passion to kill the enemy so palpably at hand—or so it looked to me. For all I know she might have been trying out new contact lenses. In any case, I had barely heard of Nancy then. Even so, I said to myself: There is a lot of rage in this little lady.

Vidal had worked for years in Hollywood, where

Ronnie was already notorious for his speeches for General Electric, excoriating communists who were, apparently, everywhere. I had never actually spoken to him at a party because I knew—as who did not?—that although he was the soul of amiability when not excoriating the international monolithic menace of atheistic godless communism, he was, far and away, Hollywood's most grinding bore—Chester Chatterbox, in fact. Ronnie never stopped talking, even though he never had anything to say except what he had just read in the Reader's Digest, which he studied the way that Jefferson did Montesquieu. He also told show-biz stories of the sort that overexcites civilians in awe of old movie stars, but causes other toilers in the Industry to stampede.

I had heard that Reagan might be involved in the coming campaign. So I studied him with some care. He was slumped in a folding chair, one hand holding up his chins; he was totally concentrated on Eisenhower... I do remember being struck by the intensity with which Reagan studied Eisenhower. I had seen that sort of concentration a thousand times in half-darkened theaters during rehearsals or Saturday matinees: the understudy examines the star's performance, and tries to figure how it is done. An actor prepares, I said to myself: Mr. Reagan is planning to go into politics. With his crude charm, I was reasonably certain that he could be elected mayor of Beverly Hills.

In the end Vidal finds "Nancy's story is more interesting than Ronnie's because she is more explicable and Mr. Leamer can get a grip on her." Basically, Nancy's is a familiar story of obsession with her appearance, casting couch career boosting at MGM, and lifelong social climbing.

On the other hand, "Ronnie is as mysterious a figure as ever appeared on the American political stage." Back-stage at a Southern California auditorium before a 1982 speech, Vidal spoke with a journalist who had covered Reagan as governor. When Vidal

...said something to the effect how odd it was that a klutz like Reagan should ever have been elected president. He then proceeded to give an analysis of Reagan that was far more interesting than Mr. Leamer's mosaic of Photoplay tidbits. "He's not stupid at all. He's ignorant, which is another thing. He's also lazy, so what he doesn't know by now, which is a lot, he'll never know. That's the way he is. But he's a perfect politician. He knows exactly how to make the thing work for him."

I made some objections, pointed to errors along the way, not to mention the storms now gathering over the republic. "You can't look at it like that. You see, he's not interested in politics as such. He's only interested in himself. Consider this. Here is a fairly handsome ordinary young man with a pleasant speaking voice who first gets to be what he wants to be and everybody else then wanted to be, a radio announcer [equivalent to an anchorperson nowadays]. Then he gets to be a movie star in the Golden Age of the movies. Then he gets credit for being in the Second World War while never leaving LA. Then he gets in at the start of television as an actor and host. Then he picks up a lot of rich friends who underwrite him politically and personally and get him elected governor twice of the biggest state in the union and then they get him elected president, and if he survives he'll be reelected. The point is that here is the only man I've ever heard of who got everything that he ever wanted. That's no accident."

I must say that as I stepped out onto the stage to make my speech, I could not help but think that though there may not be a God there is quite possibly a devil, and we are now trapped in the era of the Dixon, Illinois, Faust.

Cigarette Advertising Image Gallery
Caption: Ronald Reagan as he appeared in a 1932-33 promotion when he worked as a sportscaster for WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Photo is a copy of a postcard which was sent to people who wrote to Reagan at WHO. Reagan, who does not smoke, is pictured with pipe and dog, Peggy, in this advertisement for Kentucky Winner cigarettes and Kentucky Club pipe tobacco. (AP Photo)