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He may not have had the most dazzling of Hollywood careers, but—as any late, late television watcher can attest —it was certainly durable. In the course of 50 movies, Ronald Wilson Reagan almost invariably played the grinning gallant, the fall guy who winds up heartbroken, dead broke or plain dead. In King's Row, he lost his legs; in Santa Fe Trail and Dark Victory, bigger stars got the girl. In Hellcats of the Navy, he wound up taking a submarine on a suicidal mission; as George Gipp in Knute Rockne—All American, he expired exhorting the team to greater glory. So indelibly was Reagan type-cast as the Great Loser that when Movie Magnate Jack Warner, his longtime employer, was first apprised of the actor's ambition to run for Governor of Cali fornia, he protested: "No, Jimmy Stewart for Governor. Ronald Reagan for Best Friend."
In this case, at least, the casting was up to Actor Reagan, and in January 1966 he decided to write, direct and star in an independent production that may well wind up as Best Friend Goes to Sacramento. Crisscrossing California from Roubidoux to Rialto, from Taft to Twentynine Palms, Republican Ronald Reagan, 55, has been running 18 hours a day as if the Dead End Kids were after him (they were in at least two of his movies). And to the surprise of Republican pros and the chagrin of the Democratic hierarchy, the candidate from Warner Bros, has turned out to be the most magnetic crowd puller California has seen since John F. Kennedy first stumped the state in 1960.
Center Stage. Wherever he goes, from supermarket to packing plant, fairground to factory, Reagan far outdraws his rival, Democratic Governor "Pat" Brown, 61, who is seeking a third four-year term. Even in Colusa County, where the Governor owns a home, Reagan last month attracted many more voters than Brown. A polished orator with an unerring sense of timing and his listeners' mood, Reagan can hold an audience entranced for 30 or 40 minutes while he plows through statistics, gags and homilies. At times—although there is only six years' difference in their ages —he does a stagy caricature of an ancient-sounding Pat Brown that is true to the last creaky quaver.
When he is through speaking, the crowds engulf him, clutching at his arms, reaching over his shoulders to grasp his hand, clapping him on the back. "You're wonderful!" women cry. Men shout, "Good luck!" He is besieged for autographs. Reagan is not a compulsive crowd plunger, like Nelson Rockefeller, or an irrepressible hand grabber, like Lyndon Johnson. By nature he is almost reticent. At a factory gate, he will often wait with hands limp at his sides, nodding a .bit awkwardly at passers-by until someone recognizes him. Then, on center stage, Reagan's face lights up, a joke comes to his lips and he launches smoothly into a spontaneous-sounding stump speech on his plans to put California to rights.