CHAPTER 1
1. “News from Dixon YMCA,” Dixon Telegraph, January 3, 1928; and “Water Carnival Monday Proved Great Success,” Dixon Telegraph, September 4, 1928.
2. Ron Reagan, “My Father’s Memories,” Esquire, June 2003, 110.
3. July 23, 1932 Dixon Telegraph. Lou Cannon also lists the figure on 1,000 bathers at a time with no assistant. Cannon cites a July 3, 1931 Dixon Telegraph article. See Lou Cannon, Governor Reagan (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 22. The July 23, 1932 article updates Reagan’s save tally to seventy-one lives.
4. Ron Reagan, “My Father’s Memories,” 111.
5. In the Esquire piece, his son Ron recalled one particularly interesting account: A large blind person, a towering hulk of a man, entered the area. Dutch spotted him right away, and worried how he would pull him from the water if he were fighting for his life. Sure enough, the man paddled away from the beach and within minutes was swept into the middle of the river. As Ron tells the story, bathers began yelling and pointing at the big arms slapping in vain at the surface. Dutch dove into the water and began chasing the bobbing head as it rushed downstream. He wondered if it might be his final rescue attempt. Bewildered and panicky, how would the terrified man react once someone grabbed him? “Dad imagined them in a grotesque embrace, rolling along the river bottom toward the next town downstream,” said Ron. To Dutch’s great relief, when he seized the man’s shoulder, total compliance followed. Reagan attributed this response to the blind man’s being accustomed to being led by others; he associated human touch with safety, and immediately relaxed.
6. This issue seven decades later evoked blushes from three elderly women who grew up with Reagan. With a wink, Marion Emmert Foster and sisters Olive and Savila Palmer explained that Dutch’s physical appearance made him popular among the girls. “Oh, my!” exclaimed Savila. “You can imagine how that affected his confidence!” Interview with Olive and Savila Palmer and Marion Emmert Foster, Heritage Square nursing home, Dixon, Illinois, June 22, 2001.
7. Fran Swarbrick, ed., Remembering Ronald Reagan (Dixon, IL: Creative Printing, 2001), 8, 11–2. At a Ladies’ Day event in Chicago in March 1965, the speaker introduced Reagan by teasing him about young girls nearly drowning themselves so he could rescue them in his lifeguard days. “Great Speech by Ronald Reagan Thrills Capacity Ladies’ Day Meeting at the Hilton,” Executives’ Club News, 41, no. 20 (1965): 1–8, filed in “RWR-Speeches and Articles (1965–6),” folder, RRL, vertical files. “RRL” refers to the Ronald Reagan Library, which hereafter will be as “RRL.” On women straying to the middle of the river so Reagan could save them, see Ron Reagan, “My Father’s Memories,” 111.
Throughout Reagan’s life, many women were attracted to his looks, and this started at a young age. The letters and sources backing this up are striking. In coverage of his GE engagements, there were often comments from women about his looks. Also available are letters from women around the country who met him at events and take the time to recall how struck they were by his appearance. One especially amusing letter is from Audrey M. McAfee, February 4, 1999, filed in “RWR—Acting Career (1937–64),” vertical files, RRL.
8. For example, the June 18, 1931 Telegraph credited Reagan with fifty-one saves. Again, the July 23, 1932 edition updated the total to seventy-one.
CHAPTER 2
1. The strike was jurisdictional, meaning that it centered over which union would represent the workforce.
2. Ron and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005), 117–22.
3. “Threatened in ’46 Strike, Ronald Reagan Testifies,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1954, 3. Reagan subsequently wrote and talked about this a number of times.
4. Peggy Noonan, When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (New York: VikingPenguin, 2001), 56–57; and Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 11–12.
5. Bill Clark has told me about the many threats during the gubernatorial years, which Clark said were too frequent to count. See Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 51–53, 124, 178–79, 216.
6. John Meroney, “Rehearsals for a Lead Role,” Washington Post, February 4, 2001, G8.
7. Joseph Shattan, Architects of Victory: Six Heroes of the Cold War (Washington, DC: Heritage Press, 1999), 236; Meroney, “Rehearsals for a Lead Role”; and Reagan and Hubler, Where’s the Rest of Me?, 6–7.
8. Arthur F. McClure, C. David Rice, and William T. Stewart, eds., Ronald Reagan: His First Career, A Bibliography of the Movie Years (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1988), 12–17.
9. Doug McClelland, ed., Hollywood on Ronald Reagan: Friends and Enemies Discuss Our President, the Actor (Winchester, MA: Faber and Faber, 1983), 178.
10. John Meroney, an expert on Reagan’s Hollywood years, correctly notes that today’s conventional wisdom on Reagan’s movie work was poisoned by politics. The “B movie actor” tag was not slapped on Reagan until the 1980s, long after he left the industry, when people who disliked his politics aimed to discredit him across- the-board. John Meroney, “Night Unto Reagan,” National Review Online, August 4, 2005.
11. Daily Variety, February 9, 1950. Excerpted by McClelland, Hollywood on Ronald Reagan, 96. See Jack Gould, “Sweeping and Imaginative in Conception, ‘Omnibus’ of Ford Foundation Makes Video Debut,” New York Times, November 10, 1952.
12. He joined SAG on June 30, 1937, was appointed to the board July 1941, was elected
CHAPTER 3
1. Quoted in Joseph Lewis, What Makes Reagan Run? A Political Profile (New York: McGrawHill, 1968), 46; and Lou Cannon, Reagan (New York: Putnam, 1982), 141.
2. Reagan performed at the Last Frontier in February 1954. Later in 1954, he began the GE job. Information on Reagan at the Last Frontier was provided by the same hotel, which is now called the New Frontier; the name has been changed a number of times.
3. McClure et al., Ronald Reagan: His First Career, A Bibliography of the Movie Years, 188–93.
4. “General Electric Theater—1954–57,” directory of show episodes on file at RRL.
5. Reagan said this in a 1980 campaign stop at a GE plant in Erie, Pennsylvania. Text located at RRL. The show began on September 12, 1954 and ran in thirty- to sixty-minute installments. In all, 200 episodes were made during the show’s eight-year run. McClure et al., Ronald Reagan: His First Career, A Bibliography of the Movie Years, 188. See Morris, Dutch, 304.
6. Reagan, “Commencement Address at Eureka College,” June 7, 1957.
7. Ibid.
8. This episode of GE Theatre was titled, “No Skin Off Me.” It aired February 3, 1957. A copy of the video is located at the RRL.
9. McClure, Rice, and Stewart, eds., Ronald Reagan: His First Career, 188–93. See Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 33.
10. Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, Reagan’s Path to Victory (New York: The Free Press, 2004), 228.
11. Matthews said it gave him his first “sense of Reagan the politician.” Chris Matthews speaking at “The Reagan Legacy” conference, Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, CA, May 20, 1996.
12. McClure, Rice, and Stewart, eds., Ronald Reagan: His First Career, 193–94; and Skinner, Anderson, and Anderson, eds., Reagan: A Life in Letters, 145n.
