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Did the movies ever matter? They did to Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was made by the movies—not just his career but his mentalité was made in Hollywood. As much as he had been a movie actor, Reagan was a fan—a true believer in what he saw, or imagined, on the screen.
My takeaway from several days of research in the Reagan Library—a Magic Kingdom shrine set on a Simi Valley hilltop—was the degree to which Ronald and Nancy Reagan regarded themselves as senior members of the Hollywood community. The presidency was fine but movie stardom was the supreme gig.
Reagan would tell many, Warren Beatty among them, that he couldn’t understand how anyone could be president without having first been an actor. A politician who built a career on a professional image, Reagan knew how to take direction and hit his marks. He intuitively grasped how a president (or a good Joe or action hero) is supposed to present himself.
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Ronald Reagan in a publicity still for the film, Law and Order, 1953. Credit: Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images.
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