In the live, 1965 recording of his song “George Murphy”, Tom Lehrer mentions two other names of people attempting to mix show biz with politics. From context and audience reaction, Helen Gahagan was given as a serious example, and Ronald Reagan as a joke. It would appear that, at least in 1965 in that audience, Reagan was known as an actor but not yet taken seriously as a politician.
To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, ‘After all, I wouldn’t be the first Warner Brothers actor to run for governor!’
Was he the poor man’s George Murphy, or was George Murphy the poor man’s Reagan?
This was the nature of the Hollywood studio system. You showed up to work and did whatever movie they told you to do. Mostly they gave you stereotype roles in not-so-good movies. If something about you clicked with moviegoers, you’d get moved into better roles (think Humphrey Bogart.) If not, you bounced along, sometimes with good parts, sometimes not, until you faded away or maybe found a niche as a character actor.
Take a look at someone like Fred MacMurray. He made dozens of movies, but even movie fans would say he was great in Double Indemnity and The Caine Mutiny and have trouble even placing him in much beside those two. He’s pretty much remembered now for his TV show.
Being well-known doesn’t equate with talent. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are still pretty well known, and were REALLY well-known 10 years ago. They are pretty talentless, though, and got work because they were twins, period. Well, twins who lived in California and had a stage mother.
Ronald Reagan had a limited range, but he had an athletic build, and great hair. He was like Randolph Scott or Ralph Bellamy. In modern terms, he was maybe Matt LeBlanc. A one-trick pony, who nonetheless did his one trick pretty well. If he’d been born 50 years later than he was, he still probably would have been a moderately successful actor, but never gotten out of TV. Maybe never even gotten out of soaps-- he would have been great for TV soaps, plus the occasional L&O appearance.
From what I understand, Bette Davis criticism of his social skills notwithstanding, he was a competent professional. He showed up on time and knew his lines. If you are a huge star capable of giving the performance of the year in one take, you can show up late, make scenes, and slow down production by not knowing your lines at first, but if you are just competent, you need professionalism to give you the edge over all the other “just competent” people. Reagan never showed up drunk, or got into fistfights on the set. That’s how he got so much work being basically mediocre. The studio system needed some reliable people in the supporting role to shoot around for the time the diva star didn’t show up.
Not, I feel compelled to not, that everyone was a Diva. For every Judy Garland, there was an Irene Dunne.
If he hadn’t gone into politics, he probably would have guest-starred on The Love Boat, and I’m not kidding. His King’s Row co-stars all did.
I was working as a psychiatric nurse in the 70s and even if Reagan wasn’t known as a movie star he was well known among psych nurses for beginning the process of deinstitutionalization in California. As discussed in Ronald Reagan’s shameful legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness we knew we were about to go through the same thing in Australia.
By 1980, he was more famous as a politician than an actor, and his movies were essentially trivia about a politician.
A lot of the fame that carried him into politics was actually from his time as host of General Electric Theater. In addition to hosting the show (which got up to #3 in the Nielsen Ratings), he went on the lecture circuit to promote GE as its main spokesman, and his speeches (which were often to conservative-leaning business groups) became increasingly political. By the time his TV show was canceled, he wasn’t just a celebrity, but an explicitly conservative celebrity.
He was well known in Hollywood because of his clean work ethic. He had a nickname “On time and sober” because he was those things in a time when many actors were not. He was also the head of SAG at one time (Yes Reagan was the President of a Union!). I suspect his fame prior to being President was amplified because he was also Governor of California but I guess there is no way to prove that.
I agree that his pre-TV fame was quite decent but his TV hosting work really put him on the map. (And being a star in a bunch of B-movies didn’t make you less famous in any way. Quite the opposite.)
Being on TV like that in the 1950s was a big deal. Far fewer channels, etc. made any TV star a household name in no time.
There were a lot fewer actors in those days that “everyone knew”, and those who were known tended to remain in the public eye for decades. Reagan was certainly one of the “well-known” actors of his era.
But it is impossible to compare anything about the movies then with a present-day counterpart. There was no TV then, there was no home viewing them. One knew of screen media only by getting dressed up once a week and going to a theater to see actors play roles in a movie, and that was the totality of the visual entertainment for the week. You got what you got and that was Ronald Reagan, as regularly as anyone else.
There were several monthly movie magazines at the newsstands, where you could read about actors and their personal lives, and Reagan was just one of the familiar faces regularly featured on the black-and-white pages.
Regan became known for his political views starting with the 1964 presidential election, when he was a vocal supporter of Goldwater. I used the (admittedly imperfect) Google ngram viewer to compare him in the period 1940-1963 with other male actors I had heard of and who were born 1909-1913.
Over most of that period he was considerably less frequently mentioned than David Niven, Roy Rogers, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, Errol Flynn, James Mason, Burt Lancaster, Red Skelton, and Jose Ferrer. He was much more frequently mentioned than Karl Malden, Lloyd Bridges, Jim Backus, and Jay Silverheels. He was on roughly the same level as Van Heflin, Vincent Price, Danny Thomas, Alan Ladd, and Victor Mature.
Starting with the 1966 election campaign for governor, his fame shot up and he immediately overtook all the actors named above, by a wide margin.
I conclude that before he got involved in party politics, he would have been known to most Americans but far from an A-list celebrity. After he became governor of California, he was definitely a household name.
I came across this Reddit post today:
Ronald Reagan on a safety poster, Dept. of Energy, 1956
The premise is that Reagan was SO famous (in 1956) that he wouldn’t be expected to need to present identification for access to a DOE facility.
There’s something odd about that. The Department of Energy was created in 1977.
Good catch. The typeface looks a lot newer, too. I’ll bet it was a DOE poster from about 1980 using the earlier photo.
I’m of an age and a location (the UK) such that he was essentially always the President, with his film career seen through that prism.
But from my memory of his Eighties take on the matter, my Dad, who had been a British cinemagoer in the 40’s and 50’s, rated Reagan as “he was never that big a star, but everyone knew who he was.” And that’s given the fact that Knute Rockne surely barely had a British audience, no-one here can have seen his US TV stuff and only US politics nerds might know any governors.
That said, at that time The Hasty Heart from 1949 tended to be remembered in the UK as his best film. Undoubtedly a Richard Todd vehicle, but Reagan slotted in as big-name Hollywood cameo doing the representative Yank in the next bed. Casting say John Wayne or James Stewart in that part would have capsized the film. But Reagan fitted as the recognisable American star who added box-office, without overshadowing Todd.
Again, it is possible to be a well-known hack. Who is better know, Sir Ian McKellan, or Jim Carrey? And what is Patrick Stewart better known for? Star Trek, I, Claudius, or his many turns in Shakespeare plays (or Jeffrey, for that matter?)
Matt LeBlanc, arguably the worst actor on Friends, a TV show that has been off the air for 20 years is more famous than more talented actors of a similar age, such as Edward Norton, Tim Roth, Adrien Brody or Mark Ruffalo. Which is not to say that Matt LeBlanc is bad-- he was perfect as “Joey”; but he does not have either the depth nor range of the other actors I named. He’s sort of the Tony Danza of his time. If he can parlay that into a big check, more power to him.
But Reagan may have been the Tony Danza of his time. The actor every actor wanted to work with, not because he was good, but because he was easy. He took direction well, showed up on time and sober, and knew his lines. He played a great sidekick/temporary love interest (until the real hero got the girl). He played guys who were uncomplicated, and weren’t what the movie was about, but audiences could imagine being buddies with him; women could be satisfied dating him if their best friend was the leading lady, so it was OK that she got the leading man.
TL;DR fame =/= talent. Reagan was well-known, but still a B talent. A likeable B talent, but you’d rather have him to dinner than many Diva-esque A talents-- or the ones who played quixotic guys, or even villains, like Robert Mitchum.
As has been mentioned, he was president of the screen actors’ guild. So he was fairly well-known, and fairly well-liked, by his peers. He was in several popular movies and hosted a popular TV show when there were lots of TV sets and not many choices. And on the strength of his name alone, (plus the help of some wealthy “friends”) he was elected governor of California. So he was well-known and well-liked by the public at large.
Short answer: yes. He was very well known as an actor even before he was a political figure.
Ok, then follow up question, what about Nancy as an actress?
At the time he took up hosting GE Theater and Death Valley Days, taking on a TV series was an admission by an actor that his movie days were over. A TV appearance on the way to films was ok and maybe a Cameo on TV was ok too, but hosting an anthology? As for his film days, I’d guess he was never cast as a lead actor.
In the 60s Reagan was well known in the sense that he was a perennial Hollywood name. As an actor he had moved from some success in “Knute Rockne” to leaden performances in B movies to being the token celebrity name in bombs like “Bedtime for Bonzo”. He was somewhat notorious for his role in supporting McCarthyism. In that sense, he was well known.
When I heard he was going into politics, I assumed it was a joke. I couldn’t imagine that a literate society would accept Reagan as a serious candidate. It appears that I was in error.
Reagan