Thing is, Reagan was top-billed as the lead in HELLCATS OF THE NAVY after he started hosting GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER. (And before that – well, look, I get maybe not knowing about BROTHER RAT all these decades later, but there’s a reason why I got ninja’d while writing this by someone mentioning BEDTIME FOR BONZO; and, yeah, he’d get cast as the leading man’s pal if it was an Errol Flynn picture or whatever, but it’s the work of a moment to list movies where he simply was the lead.)
It’s kind of hard to compare because Trump’s fame waxed and waned. Also my perspective is skewed because I live in the northeast and Trump was much more famous around here than he was in the rest of the country (he never really went away from our media the way he did elsewhere). i would say the peaks of his national fame were in the 80s during the Art of the Deal era and the early 2000s in the Apprentice era and, of course, now.
Ronald Reagan (one of my favorite Republicans of the 20th century) was pretty well-known as an actor, enough that his endorsement of Truman carried a lot of weight in 1948, with Truman going so far as to let him campaign with him in Los Angeles that year against Dewey. Reeagan was a former liberal Democrat.
There were other people, of course, who were less enamored of Reagan’s acting skills:
From Martin Luther King, Jr, during a speech he gave in November 1967 at a pro-labor assembly:
“When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the Presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.” (King’s speech)
Just looked it up. Not a joke. :eek:
That font (“Souvenir”) was created about a hundred years ago but it was redrawn back in the 70s and was mega popular then.