In another thread, there is a bit of a disagreement over how well known he was, with some saying that he basically a household name before his political career started?
I though he ws a B-Movie actor and not someone who was known to the general public like say Ben Affleck is now.
He was more of an A- actor. Depends on your definition of B movies. He was very well known and recognized. He moved into television in the 50s and was well known as the host of Death Valley Days as well as playing parts in the shows. His earlier movie work included some critically acclaimed movies like Kings Row and The Killers. I think Knute Rockne All American put him on the map. When he ran for governor of California he was certainly well known from his acting career and he maintained that reputation through his presidential run.
ETA: I’d say he was about as well known as Ben Affleck is now. There were fewer movie stars and as a studio actor he was heavily promoted.
Can’t forget *“Bedtime for Bonzo”, *his pro-evolution propaganda piece. 
I also recall that he was head of the Screen Actors’ Guild, i.e. a union boss. He disagreed with the more communistic elements in the labor movement and cooperated with efforts to get them out of Hollywood.
He was certainly no airhead despite what some might have suggested.
Apparently the suggestion that he was originally in line to play Rick in Casablanca was just Hollywood fluff with nothing to it.
He was sort of heading for A-list with Knute Rockne All-American and King’s Row but went into the Army and made films for them. When he got out, his career never regained its momentum. He still got work, but was never as successful until Death Valley Days on TV.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, he was well enough known before he became president (1981) to be mentioned in this Airplane! joke. Airplane! was filmed in 1979.
I was totally unaware of him before the election. I suspect that what there was of his fame was mainly in the USA.
Ben Affleck is well known internationally, although it is very different today, even nonentities like the Kardashians are famous.
I was 14 when Reagan was elected governor of California. I had never seen a movie with him in the theater (I probably had seen them on TV) but I knew exactly who he was. He’d been host of two pretty popular series, which meant he was on TV every week for years, he’d done plenty of guest star bits on other TV shows, he’d gone around the country speaking to Republican groups, and even then his “win one for the Gipper” and “where’s the rest of me” clips were pretty well known even to those of us who couldn’t actually remember the movies they came from.
If he wasn’t a big movie star anymore, he was certainly still a celebrity.
He made major political waves in 1976, trying to unseat Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. Whether a person in 1979 knew of him mostly as an upstart superconservative Republican or as a movie actor might depend on one’s age at the time. I don’t think I ever saw him in any movies despite my folks’ fondness for watching old movies on TV.
I’m not old enough to remember him as a motion picture actor, but I knew him from TV. I knew who he was before he became governor of California.
So by the sounds of it, roughly on par with 2015 Donald Trump?
Let’s move this to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I would say Trump is more famous, only because of the proliferation of media at the time. Or lets say, more celebrated, especially internationally. Reagan was never on the cover of Time or Fortune (before his political days). But Reagan was plenty famous, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone (American) in the mid-1960s who hadn’t heard of him from the movies or TV.
Not really. He was in a lot of movies, but he played the lead mainly in B-movies. When he was in A-movies, he usually played the leading man’s best friend or some other supporting role. And very few of the movies he was in are remembered today. He was moderately well known at the time, but definitely never regarded as a first-rank actor.
So . . . less Ben Affleck, more Jeremy Renner?
He was certainly already well known as a politician by that time. He had been governor of California for two terms.
Pre-politics, no. He was a familiar face but, in terms of fame and perceived wealth, not the equivalent of Trump. That all changed when he became governor of California. He had become the de facto leader of the Goldwater wing of the GOP by 1968 when he made a brief stab at the nomination for president. He almost knocked off Ford in 1976 and was considered a major political force before he made his successful run for the presidency in 1980. Trump in 2015 wasn’t anywhere close to where Reagan was that year.
It’s about definition. Playing secondary roles puts an actor in the B grade as an actor. The OP specified B-movie actor not B-actor, so I’d put many of his movies in the low end of the A grade as opposed to B-movies which are generally considered lower quality as in cheaply made with low production values. So there his career was a mix. He definitely wasn’t top tier though, neither in acting or the quality of movies. I tried to compromise with the A- rating.
Bette Davis on Ronald Reagan:
“Everybody called him ‘Little Ronnie Reagan the boy scout’ at the studio and we didn’t think he was terribly bright. For instance, in DARK VICTORY he is playing a gay man and he never really understood that. I will grant that he did give one good performance in his career–in KING’S ROW. He did love to talk, though. He would go on and on and would eventually bore everyone. Jane Wyman divorced him because he was a bore.”
And, it’s not like Trump suddenly burst onto the scene over the past few years. He’s been a visible public figure (at least in the US) since the mid-to-late 1980s. Flamboyant business deals, self-promotions, TV appearances, regular appearances on Howard Stern’s radio show, and lots of tabloid fodder – his affair with Marla Maples, which led to his high-profile divorce from Ivana, was back in 1990.
Living in NYC at the time, I was aware of him - and thoroughly loathed him - in the 70s.