Into national politics. But why did he do it . And what might have happened if the killers had been shown on tv as planned . Heres reagans last movie as a matter of fact, i have been permitted to choose my own words, and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks. In 1964, a middle aged hollywood has been called Ronald Reagan went on tv to speak in support of the republican candidate for president , Barry Goldwater. We are spending m5 billion on welfare. Do some arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the m5 billion up equally among those 9 million poorfamilies, we would be up to give each family 4600 a year. And this, added to their present income, should eliminate poverty. Reagans mix of wit, warmth and rapid fire statistics made it one of the most effective political addresses in us history. Direct aid to the poor, however, is running at about 600 per family. It seems there must be some overhead. And it launched him into a stratospheric career in politics. How does the glamour of politics compare with the glamour of the screen . In 1966, he became governor of california. By 1968, he was running for president. And in 1980, this charming, genial old movie actor became the leader of the free world. And yet at the very start of his rise, he put that carefully nurtured public image at risk. Just a few months before that breakthrough speech, Ronald Reagan was on american screens in a very different role. You get back to the hotel and stay there. I like it here. Go on, get moving. I said i like it here. Well, i can change that in a hurry. The killers caught one of the most important men of the second half of the 20th century at a turning point between his political future and his hollywood past. But why did reagan make this movie . And what does this screeching change of gear telling us about the role of the movies in the making of a president ial public image . The killers was a gangster movie made for tv in 1963 by the veteran action director don siegel. Reagan plays jack browning, the treacherous, violent leader of a gang of thieves. Get it over with, jack im adam smith, a historian of america, and in this programme, i want to own pick this strange tangle of movies and politics. To do that, we need to go back to the 1940s. Don siegel and Ronald Reagan both got their careers up and running at Warner Brothers. There were two men, i suppose approximately the same age, who came through warner at the same time. Don siegel, as a young man, was very important in the montage apartment. Reagan was an actor who was never really ever going to make it big time, but he was a very reliable supporting part actor. Come on, lets turn in. Theres no relation to get a cadet having his own idea. Reagan was a very obedient guy. He was also every political young man. Not as a right wing republican, but as a democrat. In 1916, hed gone on the radio to lambast the ku klux klan, and in 1951, he played a District Attorney that confronts them. Itll take more than these sheets youre wearing to hide that youre mean, frightened little people, or you wouldnt be here, desecrating the cross. Meanwhile, don siegel, reagans future director in the killers, was also attacking fascism. They hope it disillusioned america to set up a messiah. In 1919, siegel directed reagan for the first time, and his impression of him was surprising. It was night onto night, and the all american boy, who at that time was extremely left wing i thought he was a communist was Ronald Reagan. In fact, reagans politics were on the move. In 1947, he became the president of the screen actors guild, known as sag, and appeared before the house un american activities committee, denouncing communism from a liberal point of view. Because weve spent 170 in this country on the basis that democracy is Strong Enough to stand up and fight for itself against the inroads of every ideology, no matter how much we disagree. By the early 1950s, reagans once promising movie career was stalling. When his limited range landed him leads. I thought i only made a downpayment on one house. It was only in pedestrian movies like this. But then a whole new phenomenon began to sweep through hollywood. Yet commercial television can probably produce more television in one week than all the studios in hollywood turnout in a year. Television transformed hollywood and american politics, and with them, the career of Ronald Reagan. To understand what happened, we need to look behind the cameras, at the role of a man called Lew Wasserman, the head of a huge movie agency, mca. In the early 1950s, most hollywood moguls were scared or scornful of tv. Not wasserman. So wasserman gambled on taking mca into tv production. And it paid off handsomely. But to do that, he needed the help of one of his clients, who, handily, was also the head of the screen actors guild. They asked reagan to give them a waiver. Because back then you couldnt be an agent selling talent, and the producer, who supposedly was buying talent. So Ronald Reagan gave Lew Wasserman and a waiver of sag rules, so that they could both buy and sell talent. And that was enormously helpful for Lew Wasserman and mca, because suddenly, their tv revenues boomed to be six times higher than their Talent Agency business. And that was because of the favour that Ronald Reagan had given them. What did reagan get out of that . Well, reagan got, in 1951, a nice little ranch in malibu. And he later said that that ranch, when he sold it, enabled him to run for governor in the mid 1960s. So it was a huge gift. And then in 1954, mca agent Taft Schreiber also got reagan a rather promising gig as the front man for a tv drama show called General Electric theater. In 1959, he was given quarter ownership of the show. There is no question that mca and Taft Schreiber particularly had a huge stake in Ronald Reagan. Mca and reagan were kind of interlocking members of the same corporation. Reagan had a stake in their success, and they had a stake in his. Here, then, is lou costello, in blaze of glory. In the beginning, Ronald Reagan would come on and tell america just what they were going to see, now. And so he became theirfriend. Their uncle. The guy next door. And that was usually important for his political career. Reagans mind was turning more and more in that direction. By 1963, he had become a republican, and was writing what was to become his political launch memoir, wheres the rest of me . Yet now, he found mca pressing him into another new Lew Wasserman wheeze. Mca had bought an entire movie studio, can get universal, next to which they were building themselves a massive new h0, the black tower. And they were busy reworking an old universalfilm noir called the killers as the first ever film for tv reagans old Warner Brothers colleague, don siegel, was brought into direct. Having two magnificent actors like lee marvin and clu gulager as the two killers, but it would be very dull if i showed them going over to everybody and beating people up. But who should play the crime boss . Why, Ronald Reagan. But he had generally been a good guy. Are you sure that youre just thinking of the success of the job . So why did he agreed to play a role so completely at odds with his public persona . Reagan was working on his memoir, the where is the rest of me . And he was busy. And i think he was focused much more at that point on the political. Ronald reagan never wanted to play a bad guy. He didnt see himself as a bad guy. He didnt want to do that movie at all. But his friend, Lew Wasserman, who owned the studio, had made him a lot of money. So he owed him big time. Big time. I asked him why did he do this movie, and he immediately said lew wanted me to do it. There was no i mean, dont blame mean. I like what youre doing with the car. Just stick with that. And so like an ageing movie gangster do one last bankjob, the ageing actor decided to do one last film. Go back to the hotel and stay there. I like it here. Reagan later said his fans kept waiting for him to be revealed as a good guy. I like it here. In one shocking scene, he lashes out at his screen wife, angie dickinson. I can change that in a hurry. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said he didnt like it. I mean, he did his part, he was a professional. He said he memorised the part, and think he did 0k, but he didnt like hitting angie dickinson. There was a meanness to the action that he has in the film that really shocked people. This was a shock at the time. The shock of what he was going to do later would only dawn gradually. That makes the price too high. Lets tell them that we believe that we can propose a plan. The other part of reagans life was beginning to clamour for his attention. Barry goldwater wants to give the Government Back to the people. Right wing republican senator Barry Goldwater began a campaign for president. Goldwaters run was the beginning of the modern conservative movement. That is a big problem with big, inflationary government it takes more and more of your earnings. At the time, some saw goldwaters campaign as the great hope for the moral redemption of the nation. 0thers saw it as dangerously extreme. And the United States should announce in no Uncertain Terms that we are against this element. Absolutely. Barry goldwaters team asked reagan to make speeches for him. He doesnt really commit to that. He commits later on. At the same time, hes filming the killers, and trying to write his own book. This is a bizarre turning point. In this highly charged atmosphere, the two halves of reagans life hollywood and politics look as if they are about to collide. I showed extreme violence as quickly as possible, and then from then on, you werent really seeing as much violence as you thought. It was so violent, this movie, that even the network for whom it was made decided not to run it. And at that time, reagan begged wasserman to put it in the can and put it away. Well, wasserman was not going to do that, and instead released it in theatres, where did not do well at all. Reagan went off to present an act in a tv series called death valley days. But he also became California Co chair of the right wing republican Barry Goldwaters campaign. So the decision to pull the killers from the television was a lucky escape. The enduring image of him on tv in 1964 was not this. But this, his barnstorming rallying cry for American Freedom and american business. Every businessman has his own tale of harassment, some where a perversion has taken place. Reagan had been developing the speech for years, often in his touring visits to General Electrics staff, when he was the companys spokesman. What he was talking about was how governments shouldnt be so big or so powerful that it can restrain the individual, and he had that as a theme before he became a partisan. It was a theme there all along. Reagan had given the speech of his, which became the speech, as you say, to a group of californian republicans and knocked them off their socks. Reagans leading finance man at the time said, this would really help goldwater. You and i have a rendezvous with destiny. And so a few days before the 1964 president ial election, reagans pre recorded speech before a hand picked audience was broadcast on the very same network, nbc, that was to have broadcast reagans last movie, but dropped it. You and i have the ability, the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. Thank you very much. Instead, a bear few months later, they broadcast reagans First Great National political speech. Thank you, ronnie, for the very stirring speech. Im john kilroy, National Chairman of tv for goldwater miller. The speech was a big hit. It raised 1 million, which would be like raising 10 million today. No televised speech had ever raised that kind of money. But heres the striking thing. John kilroy was a Real Estate Developer and was certainly a perfectly respectable businessman. Reagan was becoming a champion of the virtues of californias Business Community and yet that was exactly the sort of person hed just been portraying as a corrupt thug in the killers. Because reagans character uses his ill gotten gains to go legit as a Property Developer in los angeles. Yes . A mr strong and another gentleman to see you, sir. Until the killers track him down and expose him as a criminal. Clu gulager played the younger killer and remembers the sharp contrast between reagans approach to the scene and that of the older killer, lee marvin. He came in and he did it completely differently. There was not one smidgin of similarity between the first take and the second take of his performance. You know who that leaves . Ronald reagan, same performance. Really thought out. He gave the same reactions to the lines and it was really good. Browning development corporation. Youve come a long way from being an ex mail robber. Reagan was actually a mobster pretending to be a legitimate businessman and this could have come back to bite him. But the story gets stranger. In hollywood, businessmen and gangsters have often been closer than you might think. The founders of mca had had to deal with gangsters ever since the company began, booking bands in al capones chicago. So that makes this scene in the killers, where reagan plays a crook turned businessman, even more extraordinary. First of all, look at what lee marvins wearing. That was the mca agentss uniform, which don siegel deliberately copied for the movie to make his fictional killers look like his real life bosses. But look closer still. See that model of a new Building Development clu gulager is messing about with in reagans office . Its a model of mcas big new development, universal city, centred on the black tower. So what on earth were don siegel and his designer playing at, putting a model of their producers shiny new development bang in the middle of a criminal turned businessmans office . Even if the businessman wasnt played by Ronald Reagan, it seems a bit cheeky perhaps the universal executives were in on the gag, perhaps they didnt notice or perhaps they knew siegel had a point about the old gangster links and decided to let him have hisjoke. Whatever the reason, that scene hinted that business and crime might not always have been polar opposites, which wasnt the obvious message to launch a career as a conservative politician. But, with the killers and its awkward links between business and crime safely confined to a few movie theatres, Ronald Reagan was able to move towards his new role as a politician. In the wake of his dazzling tv speech for Barry Goldwater, californian republicans clamoured to get him to run for governor. And early in 1966, he finally launched himself as a politician in his own right. Cue an avalanche of ridicule. I always knew that i was playing a part and when the director yelled cut and i took off my make up and my costume, i wasjust plain, damn me again. But one of my colleagues is having a bit of trouble separating fantasy from reality. Hes confusing the ability to play a fictional character with the ability to be that person in real life. But in the mid 1960s, america was changing at terrifying speed and reagan discovered a weapon that would blow the mockery of his acting career to pieces. While he was running, the campuses in california became aflame. There were protests on free speech, filthy speech, vietnam, civil rights, so there was kind of a backlash against this. Reagans opponents underestimated the old actors chances. He ran a canny highly moralistic campaign the played up the issues of crime and social unrest. I dont think that taking to the streets and rioting and disorder has ever solved anything or ever will. And it worked. Against the odds, he won. Even as radical unrest and the backlash against it grew ever more aggressive, he launched his first run for president. We must recover the will necessary to make our streets safe and our cities free of violence and oui campuses centres of learning rather than for outrage and insurrection. We must reject the idea that every time the law is broken society is guilty, rather than the lawbrea ker. It is time to restore to america the precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. And then in 1971, the rising tensions in governor reagans state were dramatised by reagans old director on the killer, don siegel, in a film called dirty harry. The backlash had found its superhero. Harry behaves like a right wing cop, but he talks and he moves and he sort of reacts like a natural, amiable loner, and that is very much a sort of pattern that reagan had. Reagan would do harsh things, but he would talk about them in a chatty way. Youre thinking, does he fire six shots or only five . But if Clint Eastwoods Harry Callahan was the embodiment of the age of reagan, the tough cop on the tail of a murderous hippy, there was still the awkward memory from reagans own acting career, the killers. Get it over with, jack. And so even as reagan rose towards the presidency, his role in that old movie refused to die. A reminder that his new simple moral certainties were built on shifting sands. Much to his annoyance it was still being rerun on tv in 1972. Do i have any doubts about my ability to play the role of a leading man in america . And even during his 1980 run for president , his opponents screened it in new yorkjust so they could laugh at him. And yet maybe that tensed up, narrow eyed thug reagan played in the killers was actually the missing piece of his public image. The sunny boy made good shtick was all very well, but it was his capacity to play the hard man that completed reagans political persona. Maybe he regretted that old made for tv movie as a bad end to his hollywood career, but perhaps it was more useful to his transformation into a politician than he thought. All he had to do was flip the aggression round and turn it, like Clint Eastwood in dirty harry, against the criminals. It has been a day of mixed weather fortunes and i dont mean across the british isles, i mean in any one location. While the low pressure has been the dominant driving feature and we have had a bit of shower activity urged along by a noticeable north north westerly wind across the british isles. Lurking in the wings, that is sundays weather. A lot of showers and thunderstorms, quite heavy, drifting their way towards the south and east. A little build of pressure just in the first part of the night will tend to kill off some of the showers. Some eastern parts were i think skies will stay clearest for the longest may have cool night. We could get down to four or five degrees in east anglia. Later in the night, we will begin to bring the temperatures up as this area of cloud and rain begins surveys is a go. To make itself known. A bit cool perhaps but it will be a lot of dry weather. As we come further west, the cloud fills in and wouldnt rule out the odd showery burst ahead of the main event which lurks off the coast of wales. It lurks all over the top of scotland, the far north west of england and Northern Ireland as well. This is a weather front bringing continuous rain that whole band of weather boost its way towards the east. It will be replaced by a great raft of showerers rattling their way in on a noticeable wind across Northern Ireland and eventually increasingly across the mainland of scotland. Further south, it is the tail end of the weather front which, from the north midlands, southwards, would have a lot about it. Yes, a spell of wet weather but it will take time before it gets into the south east, later in the afternoon. A lot of isobars around the bristol channel. On monday, gusts of 60 mph. Monday, another blustery and showery day across all parts of the british isles. With something again a little bit quieter as we get on into tuesday. More cloud and rain later in the west. This is bbc news. Im gavin grey. Our top stories irmas impact is already being felt in florida. 0ver six million have been ordered to leave their homes. Millions of floridians will see major hurricane impacts with deadly, deadly storm surge and life threatening wins. The death toll rises to 65 in mexico as emergency workers continue to hunt for survivors after thursdays earthquake destroyed thousands of homes. And an emotional night as Manchester Arena re opens with a benefit concert for victims of the terrorist attack which claimed 22 lives
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