I had a little time to finish the second hundred pages, so here is the next phase of the review:
Reagan did not stay a benchwarmer in college, but it was clear that, with his eyesight, he had no future in sports. As it happened, he finally got the acting bug, but mostly kept it too himself. Nevertheless, it turns out that his high- school sweetheart broke up with him because she did not want to raise her children in Hollywood.
After college, he headed off to Chicago to look for radio work, and after some free- lancing as an announcer and newspaper sports reporter, he landed in Des Moines at a 50,000 watt station that made him famous throughout the Midwest. He had an amazing capacity to flesh out reports from the telegraph. Eventually, he made his way to Southern California as a reporter on spring training for the Sox and Cubs, and finally landed a screen test, and got the call.
Before leaving Des Moines ('37), he managed to finish officer reserve officer training for the calvary, with an overall average of 94 percent on his classes, and "Excellent" ratings on his character and efficiency. His one flaw was his myopia: his eyesight was 20/200, in both eyes, and deteriorating. By the outbreak of war, he was legally blind, although he did serve as a liaison officer for a calvary troop before joining the First Motion Picture Unit.
He rose rapidly in B movies, and was just beginning to break through as an A movie star when the war broke out, so that his career suffered considerably. On the rumor that he tried to join the Communists, the author, after some conflicting accounts, thinks it is probable that he was lured by the Popular Front into inquiring about it, as he was strongly anti- fascist and a New Dealer at the time, and upset by the Spanish Civil War and the rise of the Axis powers. The party decided he was too flaky in the sense that he would not react well to party discipline, and instead persuaded him to remain an interested friend, i.e. fellow traveller, in the parlance of the day. Reagan followed politics closely, and Dick Powell and others tried to persuade him to run for Congress.
It is possible, but not certain, that Jane Wyman pressured Reagan into marrying her through a suicide attempt. Reagan, by the way, had a reputation as a Boy Scout, although he dated around before marrying. It was not too long before they had Maureen. Both his eyesight and his new daughter could have kept him out of active duty, but he wanted to serve.
When he transferred to the FMPU, he became its personnel officer, with the rank of Captain, and real bureaucratic responsibility. This is as far as I am today..... |
