(2 of 5)
But he did devote two prime decades to movie acting. And film work offered some returns on his investment. It lent Reagan the status of a marketable commodity. It landed him two actress wives: the first, Oscar winner Jane Wyman; the second, Nancy Davis, who would be his and America's First Lady. Acting schooled Reagan in the hortatory oratory of movie dialogue--speeches crafted to sell an ideal or an emotion and still sound like plain-spoken common sense--a technique he used so persuasively in politics. And acting created the image of a pleasing persona: "Ronald Reagan," a collaboration of the man, the actor he became and the roles he was given to play. Where's the rest of President Reagan? A lot of it is in movies.
On June 1, 1937, the 26-year-old radio spieler strode into a $200-a-week contract at Warner Bros. His visible attributes: a golden smile; a long, lanky frame; a thick mane of dark hair, slicked back. But Reagan's most supple instrument was his voice. His Chicago Cubs play-by-play gig honed his ability to deliver dialogue with speed, assurance and conversational authority. Warner was a studio of fast-talking actors, but most of the men either sounded straight off the sidewalks of New York City (Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien) or had acquired a well-bred British accent (the Australian Flynn, the Irish Brent). Reagan could pitch the sassy patter, but in heartland-America tones. Warner realized this and custom-made his first movie, Love Is on the Air. Playing a crusading radio host, he got to read much of his dialogue straight from the script.
As hero material, though, Reagan had limitations. His head was relatively small, his eyes were narrow, his lips thin. And he didn't know what to do with what he had. As critic Mitch Tuchman has noted: "Reagan's own repertoire of facial expressions was limited to an all-purpose, high-flung left eyebrow and tartly pursed lips. Later, when his attractive young face aged, these expressions were left behind, indelibly etched."
Reagan also lacked the true performer's love of being minutely scrutinized. Bluffly outgoing, infallibly at ease in large groups, he seemed inhibited by screen intimacy. He had trouble sustaining an emotion in close-up, as if he couldn't wait for someone, anyone, to yell, "Cut!" You can almost read the fear on Reagan's face. Only his eyebrow was cocky.
In his first Warner years, Reagan shuttled between supporting roles in A-level films and starring parts in B's. Brother Rat, set in the Virginia Military Institute, handed him the thankless role of the one sensible cadet in a bunch of college cutups. He was a radio announcer, again, in Boy Meets Girl--a good bit part, letting him display a frantic aplomb at a movie premiere as chaos erupts and he tries both to describe it and to rein it in.