Reagan - The Movie

Obviously, I completely misjudged Ronald Reagan.

Maybe not as an actor, he was wooden and did not have star power.

But, I certainly did as a Governor, and as a President.

Reagan was a great friend of one of my mentors and godfathers, the legendary Frank Casey, a Warner Brothers publicist.

Describing Frank Casey as a mere ‘Warner Brothers Publicist’ is like describing Caravaggio ?just as a painter. Or Cook a sailor. Or Napoleon as a former corporal in the French army.

Casey, no one called him Frank, handled publicity for top Hollywood movies, yes, but every major star for fifty years knew him, loved him, requested that he handle their movies. They, and everyone in the business knew, that he could get movies green lit, nominated for an award, a career revitalized, a star made into a STAR!

Oh, and he could commandeer United 727s to ferry you around with a phone call. He could supply first run movies, pre-release for private screenings for Governors, Senators, billionaires, and Presidents.

His network was vast and intricate and he was sought out for ?connections and favors and increased promotion budgets and creative ideas, all supplied with a twinkling eye, practical jokes, endless charm ?and an endless supply of stories about everyone who was anyone in Hollywood.

He befriended Ronald Reagan when his career was going nowhere, and helped it go somewhere.

He introduced Nancy Davis, a friend from 5th grade, the daughter of a prominent Chicago doctor, to Ronald Reagan.

When Reagan was lost in a career wilderness, Nancy would call Casey and ask him to provide the star treatment when he was in Chicago. Set up interviews with Kup, or invitations to do an inning or two at Wrigley Field with Jack Brickhouse.

He put together a national publicity tour on a B- movie for Reagan and rode the train with him from stop to stop winding up in Jacksonville, Florida.

Jacksonville? Let me revise the movie’s potential: B—-).

He had even set up an interview with a St. Augustine radio station (40 miles ?south of Jacksonville) to flesh out the tour.

Casey, who styled himself the best ‘wheel man’ in Chicago in terms of driving skill, rented a car while they were in Jacksonville. After a day tootling around going to radio stations, riding stables and fish camps along the Intracoastal took off for St. Augustine in the late afternoon.

Started to pull into a gas station in Ponte Vedra to fill up before starting the 4o miles along A1A to their St. Augustine hotel.

What are you doing Casey? Reagan asked. We’re late for dinner already.

Filling up, there are no gas stations along A1A.

Nah, the future President told him, we’ll make it.

Casey wasn’t convinced.

Look Casey. If we run out of gas, I’ll walk or hitchhike to the next station.

A few miles out from St. Augustine they ran out of gas.

Reagan, a man of his word, Hollywood star, left his publicist in the car listening to the radio as he trudged off to find gas.

Ronnie was great, he would tell me after Reagan became President. But, if you asked him what time it was, he’d tell you how watches worked.

I passed up numerous opportunities to meet the President. Turned down an invitation to the second inaugural.

Why?

Because Reagan wasn’t cool.

He wore brown suits. Ugly, unhip ties. He was old. He was conservative. Pro Vietnam. Did not tolerate the antiwar left or the Black Panthers or SDS or, really anything.

Plus, and most importantly, Saturday Night Live’s Chevy Chase savaged him. And, then Phil Hartman became what we thought Reagan ?was really like.

He definitely wasn’t cool.

Nancy was weird with her horoscopes and primness and Just Say No.

I never voted for him.

Then he was gone.

Back in California. Working on his ranch and writing people letters. Only then did we find out he wasn’t really Chevy. That he was a great writer.

That his was thoughtful and smart and that his years as President, compared to the charlatans who followed him, were great years for America.

Jimmy Carter? Clinton? No brown suits, but no steady steely character either.

Plus, the world was demonstrably going to shit.

Then, his letter saying goodbye to the American People.

A serious rethink by me of the man.

And, today, with some reluctance, going to see the new biopic: Reagan.

Stodgy, traditional, kind, pleasant, and a trip down half remembered memory lane.

The Fall of the USSR. The heady days of 1989. The solid stolid bunch of California business types that populated his administration.

Gorbachev. Iran-Contra. The 49-state landslide reelection despite what young guys like me thought and SNL’s best efforts.

The assassination attempt. Reagan, deadpanning to the doctors in the emergency room where he nearly died, ‘I hope you are all Republicans.’

Ron made human and likable by the improbable but the right choice casting of Dennis Quaid.

Nancy Reagan made wonderful and admirable and nothing like how the media portrayed her by Penelope Ann Miller, who will lose to Willa Fitzgerald for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars. If Casey was still alive, he could have put her over the top.

At the end of the movie, moved and fascinated and ashamed of my arrogance and pettiness about Ronald Reagan, feeling nostalgic, I sat in the dark and said out loud to nobody…what a damn good movie.

No nudity. No cursing. No bizarre behavior. The story of Ronald Reagan and America in recent times.

I wish I’d met him. I wish I had sat and listened to he and Frank Casey tell Irish jokes and stories about Hollywood and Jack Warner and when Casey had both he and Bill Holden in the car on the way to Kup’s apartment.

Stay at the end to watch Reagan’s life reviewed in actual family/official photographs.

Most of them famous and familiar, but after watching Reagan - The Movie, new and poignant and wonderful.