Was Reagan denied admission to the Communist Party for being too stupid?

[Anal_Scurvy]

I tend to think this is just an urban legend because: a)it’s too substantial of coup for all the people who think he’s an idiot, and b)nobody could be stupid enough in post-WWII America to wander into communism while, in pre-WWII America it seems unlikely that the Communist Party would want to eliminate potential applicants. Well, what’s the dope?

P.S. I eat my jellybeans while laughing at Reagan.

[Bricker]

Reagan’s intense dislike for the Communist Party was well known for many years before he got involved in state or national politics - indeed, before he even got involved in SAG politics.

In Russell Johnson’s autobiography, Johnson relates a tale of how he worked on a film with Reagan following the war, and was asked by Reagan to sign a loyalty oath. Since Johnson was a decorated war veteran of the Army Air Corps, and had been shot at overseas, he felt he had demonstrated his loyalty more than had Reagan, and told him so in words of one syllable.

This places Reagan’s dislike of Communism relatively early on in his life, and at the very least considerably narrows the time in which he could have tried to join.

The lack of any cites or credible evidence is similarly a strong factor against the truth of the story.

Finally - to what Cecil column does this question even refer?

• Rick

[Anal_Scurvy]

*Originally posted by Bricker *
**
Finally - to what Cecil column does this question even refer?

• Rick **

Yeah, I meant to put this in GQ. Can a mod stick this over there? I don’t want to end up cross-posting.

[bibliophage]

Off to GQ.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

[Johnny_L.A]

I don’t have a cite, but I remember hearing about this from (I think) A&E’s Biography. IIRC the young, idealistic actor Ronald Reagan was all set to join the Communist Party. Then something happened. I don’t remember what, but I think there was a strike and Reagan felt the Communists were violating their own ideals. Did someone get hurt? I don’t recall. In any case, the incident turned Reagan from a near member to an enemy.

Sorry I can’t be more specific. I hope someone will come in to provide details. But I never heard anything about him being denied membership because of stupidity. It was something the Communist Party did, that made an enemy of Reagan.

[Johnny_L.A]

I turned this up by searching google for “ronald reagan”, “communist party” and “screen actors guild”:

From http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reagan/timeline/

1946 November: SAG asks Reagan to mediate a dispute between rival unions. One, the Conference of Studio Unions, is lead by Herb Sorrell, a suspected Communist. It is while battling Sorrell that he learns to mistrust Communists.

From http://www.ronaldreagan.com/hollywood.html

The gates of the studios soon became a bloody battleground of daily clashes between the people who wanted to work and the strikers and outside agitators brought in to help them. A union of waterfront workers headquartered in San Francisco suspected of having Communist affiliations sent mass pickets to aid the CSU strikers. Homes and cars were bombed and many people were seriously injured on the picket lines; workers trying to drive into a studio would be surrounded by pickets who’d pull open their car door or roll down a window and yank the worker’s arm until they broke it, then say, “Go on, go to work, see how much you get done today.” [snip]

The strike and the efforts to gain control over HICCASP and other organizations had a profound effect on me. More than anything else, it was the Communists’ attempted takeover of Hollywood and its worldwide weekly audience of more than five hundred million people that led me to accept a nomination to serve as president of the Screen Actors Guild and, indirectly at least, set me on the road that would lead me into politics. One of the best reviews I ever got didn’t involve a movie but came from a fellow actor testifying in court. Sterling Hayden, who’d been among those flirting with Communism before later renouncing it, said: “Ronald Reagan was a one-man battalion of opposition” to the attempted Communist takeover of Hollywood during the 1946 strike. Now I knew from firsthand experience how Communists used lies, deceit, violence, or any other tactic that suited them to advance the cause of Soviet expansionism. I knew from the experience of hand-to-hand combat that America faced no more insidious or evil threat than that of Communism.

So it appears that Reagan opposed the tactics that the Communist Party was using against the filmmaking industry, and he came to believe that Communism was evil.

[Anal_Scurvy]

*Originally posted by Johnny L.A. *
**I knew from the experience of hand-to-hand combat that America faced no more insidious or evil threat than that of Communism. **

Anyone got a more reliable source than Reagan himself? This is Reagan, after all.

[tomndebb]

I have no respect for Reagan on either the professional or personal level, but the notion that a man who successfully headed up the Screen Actors Guild and managed to act as both governor and president was too “stupid” to get into the Communist Party (which is not Mensa and does not use IQ tests for admission) is simply silly.

(And I know that the OP was not proposing that idea; I simply guess that it would be difficult to find evidence against the notion in the same way that it would be hard to find evidence that he was denied admission to a Catholic monastery for being too effeminate–the situation could never occur, so we will never find even negative evidence to refute it.)

[Sofa_King]

Reagan never had any experiences with hand-to-hand combat off the set, did he?

[Anal_Scurvy]

*Originally posted by tomndebb *
**(And I know that the OP was not proposing that idea; I simply guess that it would be difficult to find evidence against the notion in the same way that it would be hard to find evidence that he was denied admission to a Catholic monastery for being too effeminate–the situation could never occur, so we will never find even negative evidence to refute it.) **

What I was hoping for is that someone would be able to trace this urban legend back to its starting point. I first heard of it last year, and I don’t exactly hang out with people who like Reagan, so it might be new.

[tomndebb]

Dunno. I found nothing on Snopes or a couple of other UL sites.

[obfusciatrist]

According to this old article at Slate, Edmund Morris’ biography, Dutch claimes “that in 1938 Reagan flirted with joining the Communist Party.”

Here is another old Slate article that goes into much more detail on the story. I would guess that Edmund Morris is the source for the story (or his source, Howard Fast, is) and the author of the article doesn’t seem to take the claim too serously.