Original subtitles

dramatic music

[ indistinct speaking]

Economic future, priority B.

[man] Get the last line in,

be that much more convincing.

dramatic music

This is roll one, sound two.

[Director] Stand by and action.

In 1980, we said we would reduce inflation and we have.

We said we would create new jobs, lower taxes,

and rebuild our defenses and we have.

But in the next four years, we must do more.

We must help those who haven't fully shared in the recovery.

We must build a lasting peace for our young,

security for our aging,

and create millions of new jobs.

We pledged cities of promise, a countryside of abundance.

I don't think America ever stops wanting to be better

because Americans are only satisfied with doing our best.

[man] 20 seconds.

[man] How much?

[indistinct]

- [man] 57, perfect. - [woman] That was good.

- [man] Perfect. - [woman] That was good.

- [man] Okay. - [woman] Okay.

tense music

Ronald Reagan said himself, if you are not a good actor,

you cannot be a good president.

And it came to pass,

it absolutely came to pass.

[crowd cheering]

If someone's running for president,

and they are not willing to do what an actor does,

look good, read your lines well,

you cannot lead.

There were some strange aspects to my father,

particularly by Washington standards.

He was just a very different kind of person.

He was intelligent,

but at the same time, it's like, huh.

You know, knowing him as well as I do,

this is kind of a strange fellow

to be president of the United States.

You couldn't change Ronald Reagan.

We just made sure that he never got off script.

It was our job to protect him, protect him from himself.

[crowd] We want Reagan, we want Reagan.

[crowd cheering]

He was a caricature out of American culture.

Here's the story as I see it.

A caricature reinforced by our belief

that what happens in the mass media,

particularly in the movies,

is more real than real life.

And that was the appeal of an actor turned president.

I hope you're a good driver,

you know what you're doing I hope.

Yes, I've been driving this for quite a while.

You probably got used to one new.

I don't want to hurt your feelings,

but this is the scroungiest jeep.

Ronald Reagan was an incredible myth maker.

He reinforced a myth of America that served many,

but actually hurt many, many people.

dramatic music

[Reporter] Mr. President,

the Soviets say that your position has made it impossible

to meet in Vienna in September.

Well, we would come to realize that Nancy Reagan

was the most powerful person behind the president.

She was like the studio head.

She was like the consigliere,

because people around her were afraid of her.

And she was kind of the presence over everything.

It was 9% or 8% in the 1970s.

By 1979, it brought it down to 5%...

[crowd laughing]

...and we are holding it to 7%.

[laughing]

Blow the candle out.

[woman] Make a wish.

Make a wish.

[crowd clapping]

And you have to take the first piece.

[Sam] Did you bake it yourself?

As a matter of fact, Sam,

since she cut that one smaller here,

here, take mine, and I'll trade.

No, no, no, no, that's bad luck.

[all laughing]

I have learned not to argue with her superstitions.

So much about the Reagan presidency,

so much about the man was mysterious.

People studied Reagan,

biographers, historians,

and nobody ever really figured him out.

There was this 10% under the surface

that really very few people had access to.

In many respects

Ronald Reagan lived in a world he created.

It's the triumph of the human mind.

It's the triumph of the human imagination.

His imagination was gigantic, okay?

And that was true throughout his whole life.

The way he portrayed his own childhood.

The way he had the marriage with Nancy

was kind of imagination,

what the ideal couple would look like.

It was imagination, rather than reality.

He saw himself as a hero,

and he was playing an American hero.

It was a role first in the movies,

and then as a politician.

Reagan was more than an expert on this American mythology.

That was based on an America that really didn't exist.

[Interviewer] Do you actually think of yourself

as a politician?

What?

[Interviewer] Do you think of yourself as a politician?

No, ex-actor.

big band upbeat music

How do you do, everybody?

I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Ronald Reagan.

A few months ago I was a sports announcer

on a radio station in Des Moines, Iowa.

One day I ran into one of these movie talent scouts,

I think I caught him off guard

because the next thing I knew

I was taking a screen test for Warner Bros. in Hollywood.

First picture,

well what do you think it was about?

A radio station.

In these United States,

a man is always innocent until he is legally proven guilty.

[Interviewer] What was it, Mr. Warner,

that caught your eye

when you looked at that first test of Reagan?

Well, he had his personality projected in what,

as I term it, off the screen into the audience,

it comes through.

He had a good smile, happy delivery,

rather a little good sense of humor.

upbeat music

In those days your Hollywood life was a confection.

It was something that gossip columnists created.

That was an era when there were basically

two reigning queens of the gossip columns.

Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.

And they really wrote the story of Hollywood

for the American heartland.

Reagan was often referred to as a lucky man.

Louella Parsons was from his small town.

So for Reagan to be mentioned favorably

or to be written up in a nationally syndicated column,

it made all the difference in the world.

Suddenly, this hugely powerful gossip columnist

latches on to this good-looking, young guy,

essentially becomes his sponsor.

But it starts, as to my mean,

if you took people and built them,

exploited them, and developed them,

as I did with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford,

Norma Shearer, and all of those young women.

[Interviewer] You mean by signing them up,

putting them under contract

and publicizing them?

Well, I think people shop for stars.

Well, here's to you, Louella.

And to you.

Now I see a great many more celebrities coming down here.

I'm gonna try and get some of them up to the microphone

to say hello to you.

I'm sure that you're going to wanna meet...

[Jonathan] In many ways he was playing himself

in almost all of his movies.

He was always the dependable one,

often the best friend

and just had this winning way.

Louella Parsons not only becomes the stage mother

of Ronald Reagan's career,

but she also becomes the godmother

of his first marriage to actress Jane Wyman.

She wanted to bring Ronnie up to Jane's level

'cause he wasn't as big a star.

So when they're seen out together, gives him publicity,

which is good for his career.

He was willing to be influenced

and do whatever she told him to do.

Pretty soon you believe the Hollywood myth.

He was very assiduous about editing and shaping his story

until the story became the reality.

upbeat music

In the '20s, early '30s,

he really wanted to be a football player

because that's how you became a national hero

if you were a young man.

Problem was he was blind as a bat,

he was not terribly fast

and was not really all that large.

So my father never became a real hero on the grid iron,

but he did get to be a football leaguer eventually in

"Knute Rockne All American" where he plays George Gipp,

uh, the famous Notre Dame star.

bright music

[crowd cheering]

upbeat music

So when Reagan in that film could connect himself

to being the hero, George Gipp,

it helped put him in the American grain.

And he became Ronald Reagan, All-American.

We're all the heroes of our own stories.

He was just a little better at it than most people, I think.

He has appropriated other American folk tales,

making it difficult at times to distinguish

between the teller and the tale,

between this one American and America itself.

That explains Reagan's intimacy with the American psyche.

He comes at it from within.

[birds singing]

It was always interesting to me

in talking with Ronald Reagan

how he sort of referred and reflected his roots.

Ronald Reagan was born in this house

on February 6th, 1911.

In his book, " Where's the Rest of Me? "

he says, "That's where the whole story began.

My face was blue from screaming.

My bottom was red from whacking.

And my father claimed afterwards

that he was white and shaken.

Ever since my birth,

I have been particularly fond of the colors

that were exhibited, red, white, and blue."

thoughtful music

Both of his parents were Roosevelt Democrats

in a fairly Republican area of Illinois.

The WPA was a big lifeline for them, actually,

during The Depression.

I think my father's early liberalism

probably sprang from that.

FDR had put his father and his brother to work

when they were out of work in The New Deal,

you were grateful for that.

We were poor.

We had problems when my brother and I were boys growing up

that seemed insurmountable to young boys at the time.

[Walters] You mean your father?

Yes.

A lot has been made of Jack's drinking

and that he was an alcoholic.

My father kind of pushed that story a bit himself.

Jack's drinking didn't sit well with Nelly.

She would give him hell about this.

I've heard him talk about

Christmases where the little money that they had

would go to alcohol.

He tells some very poignant stories about

going out to find his father in the snow

in the early morning

and pulling him back into the house unconscious.

- [wind whooshing] - soft music

In my father's version of the story,

he, as an 11-year-old boy, grabs his father,

pulls him into the house

and somehow gets him onto his feet

and half carries him up this narrow winding staircase.

I went to see the house,

and I thought about my 11-year-old father

and his 180-pound dad.

And I thought, he didn't drag him into the house,

and he sure as hell didn't get them onto his feet

and, you know, hoist him up these stairs.

This is a story,

a story in which Jack barely appears.

Jack is not a subject, he is an object in the story.

This is a story about my father

and what he would like you to think is his coming of age.

For Reagan, who held himself tight,

that is did not disclose

a lot about what was going on inside,

you'll find this among people who don't want to open up

or make themselves too vulnerable to other people,

they use storytelling to deflect interest

or inquiry into his personality and psyche.

[Ron] He trained himself to ignore the negative

and accentuate the positive.

soft music

[Ron] As the years went by,

Nelly became more and more religious.

And my father became part of her church,

the Disciples of Christ.

She was a preacher and healer

and she invested so much of her own life

and belief systems into her son.

That instilled a belief

in what you could call magical thinking,

that if you will it, it will happen.

That you can write your own story.

And that's what Reagan did.

His whole life created his own reality.

Johnny, what happened to you?

Nothing, I just changed clothes.

You've enlisted.

You knew it was gonna happen sooner or later.

You look wonderful in that uniform.

Not any better than the rest of the fellas,

we all have the same tailor.

upbeat music

Reagan had joined the Army Reserve in '37.

Then when war came, he failed his eye test.

[Optician] Tell me when you see just one, one now.

[Lou] He always was terribly near sighted.

No, still two.

And he spent the war in Culver City

making training films, never left the United States.

He worked under Pearl Jack Warner

making propaganda films,

Charlie, I'm coming home.

[Jonathan] Using his fame to sell war bonds with his wife.

[Director] And action.

[coins rattling]

Ronald Reagan, aren't you ashamed of yourself,

robbing from your own daughter's bank?

What's the big idea, you bandit?

Now, don't fly off the handle, Jenny,

I'm gonna invest it for her.

United States defense bonds.

And the freedom of this country

is the best thing we can buy for our children today.

The propaganda films were important,

but it wasn't fighting.

intense music

During World War II,

Jimmy Stewart was a legitimate war hero.

He left Hollywood, he went overseas.

He flew a bunch of combat missions,

was almost killed.

And if you're Ronald Reagan and you never leave home,

this is hard to take.

To compensate he starts to merge his own life

with his cinematic life.

You know, I've often wondered

if it's the same with other people

as it is with me, that the war,

the four years that I was gone during the war,

seems to have done something in my own sense of time.

It's as if those four years were taken out

and then spliced together.

I came back from the service

after the four years in World War II

and discovered that something was going on in Hollywood.

[crowd jeering]

Some of the people from our own FBI made contact

because of what they saw I was doing,

and I'd become President of the Screen Actors Guild.

And they came wanting some findings from me

on people that I had dealt with and so forth.

And it did give me a real understanding

of the communist menace.

upbeat music

In the early stages of the Cold War

the FBI set out under Hoover

to enroll as many actors as it could

who cooperated with them during the Red Scare.

And Reagan did cooperate with the FBI.

He didn't have what I would call

a coherent political philosophy during any of that time.

He wanted to come out on top

and he would make concessions so he could come out on top.

[Jonathan] He had been adopted by J. Edgar Hoover

and he became a private informant for the FBI

at the expense of his colleagues.

Hollywood was a scary place to be in those times,

because if you were somebody who was actually a communist

or who was associated with a communist,

you couldn't work in Hollywood.

The Screen Actors Guild became part of the instrument

that enforced the blacklist

and routed the communist faction.

[Reporter] George Murphy, Ronald Reagan

and Robert Montgomery

are among the top flight movie actors testifying before

the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington.

[gavel banging]

[Chair] You have no knowledge yourself

as to whether or not any of them

are members of the Communist Party?

Would you refer to them as a disrupting influence

within the Guild?

I happen to be very proud of the industry in which I work.

I have to be very proud of the way

in which we've conducted the fight.

I do not believe that the communist has ever at any time

been able to use the motion picture screen

as a sounding board for his philosophy or ideology.

That was politically skillful on Reagan's part

because he gets his anti-communism credentials,

stay on J. Edgar Hoover's right side,

and also not get tagged

with ruining the careers of his colleagues.

He was willing to do whatever it took to get ahead.

This was Reagan at his most slick.

[Narrator] His embroilment in political affairs

by then were so strong

that his wife Jane Wyman, the actress, sued for divorce.

His concentration on politics

made home life impossible, she said.

She was tired of his politics.

She found it an embarrassment.

It alienated her from the people she liked.

[Ron] And when her career started to take off...

[Presenter] And the winner, Jane Wyman in "Johnny Belinda."

[audience cheering and clapping]

And his was on the down slope.

I think she saw it as a drag on her career.

That was the first time I believe

that he'd been really rejected conclusively by somebody.

And it must've stung terribly.

That made him very wary

about opening his heart to other people.

This was a low point,

probably the lowest point in Ronald Reagan's life.

Religiously, socially, personally,

he really felt a failure.

enchanting music

[Nancy] Hello, so nice of you guys to be here.

Where should we go?

Right over there.

Now I just wanna make a voice check.

[clears voice] Let's see.

Did you ever think that you'd be so much in the public eye

when you were younger?

No, never. [laughs]

[Interviewer] What did you want to be or do?

I just wanted to be married.

[Interviewer] How did you meet your husband?

We met through Mervyn LeRoy.

She was working on a picture with him,

he was directing.

I was getting mail addressed to another Nancy Davis,

was obviously not intended for me,

and it began to be bothersome.

So I mentioned it to Mervyn,

and he said, "Well, I know Ronald Reagan

and he's president of the Screen Actors Guild

and I'm sure that he might be able to help you."

I don't know whether she told you this,

but there are four,

we found out there were four Nancy Davises

connected with this business.

And one of them must have some rather exotic political ideas

because she began getting

notices and invitations to meetings.

And " The Daily Worker " began arriving at her door.

The story involves this Nancy Davis and the Red Scare

and all of that kind of stuff.

I think she just wanted to meet Ronald Reagan.

She knew he was single

and thought he was a pretty handsome guy,

and maybe they could, you know, hit it off.

Well, Ronnie didn't know me,

but I knew him from the pictures.

And I thought that was just a dandy idea.

[laughing]

So Mervyn had him call me,

and we went out to dinner.

We went to see Sophie Tucker,

and after the first show he said,

"Well, being as you've never seen Sophie Tucker before,

how would you like to stay and see the second show?"

[laughter] And I said, "Fine."

And at 3:00 we were still watching

Sophie Tucker at Ciro's.

And then we had dinner the next night. [laughter]

[Interviewer] So it was love at first sight?

Yes.

I don't think that my mother was all that interested

in being a professional actress.

She would've taken it, it would've been fine.

I think she was actually a pretty good actress.

Jan, I thought you'd never get here.

Where's Graham?

He's meeting me here.

Looks like a wonderful party.

It would be even better if it had a host.

[Ron] It didn't take too long

after she arrived in Hollywood

to find divorced actor Ronald Reagan.

[Reporter] Just in case you men haven't noticed

the sports shirt Reagan is wearing,

take a good look at it.

It's a one-piece affair

called the Ronald Reagan sports shirt.

[Ron] He was knocking around

in need of a woman to take care of him. [laughing]

[Reporter] I can't help but wonder

what you young ladies are thinking about.

I have a hunch that you're saying, "Lucky colt."

He was now a divorcee.

He was caddying around, the studio didn't like it.

He finds Nancy, and she's gonna keep him out of trouble.

And the studio applauds it, this is the one, right?

And so it's a business relationship.

upbeat music

When Nancy Davis got Ronald Reagan to marry her,

and he was really reluctant,

but because they were pregnant it had to be.

Patti was born seven months after they got married.

She came out a healthy baby at seven and a half pounds.

And so it was very, very hard to pretend,

although Nancy did try and pretend

that it wasn't a shotgun marriage.

Part of Nancy's restructuring of reality

is to say that her daughter Patti was premature.

She was going to control as much as she could

of who she was and how she was presented to the world.

[Interviewer] Aside from your husband,

who is the man that you admire most?

[Nancy] My father.

[Interviewer] Do any women come to mind?

My mother. [laughs]

I'm a family type girl. [laughs]

For the first eight years of Nancy's life

her mother really wasn't around that much,

but that didn't fit into Nancy's fantasy of family.

tense music

Edith Luckett was an actress.

She married an automobile salesman, had Nancy,

but when Nancy was two years old, they separated.

Edith went back on stage and left Nancy with her sister.

Underneath all of that

is the idea that I'm somebody who can be left.

You know, my own mother can just leave me.

And that's, you know,

I mean, that's a deep-seated sort of thing.

[Kitty] There was a social insecurity about Nancy Reagan

and she herself said she always felt like

a little girl on the outside looking in.

[Nancy] Oh, well I didn't mean to neglect you.

No, I didn't mean to neglect you.

Eventually, Edith wanted to find herself a husband

and on a cruise over to Europe,

she ran into Loyal Davis.

She was actually about eight years older than he was,

but, you know, she wasn't gonna tell him that. [laughs]

So they became the same age.

Loyal Davis was a prominent neurosurgeon,

and that gave her a sort of entrée into a social class

that had been elusive for her.

Women's ambitions in that era

would play out in their husband's success.

It was really Edith who made a point of

getting to know the right people,

setting the path for this social trajectory in Chicago.

Loyal Davis was a doctor.

Do you know how many social steps that is

up from the used car automobile guy?

She was able to give Nancy a life

that Nancy wouldn't have had otherwise.

Nancy absolutely loved her stepfather, Loyal Davis.

They were close, and he was nut, a right wing nut.

Loyal Davis was famously conservative,

famously racist and antisemitic,

but also very charming, smart, and convincing.

The more liberal Reagan is brought into this social milieu

where they were imbibing Loyal Davis' conservative views.

He was able to convince his son-in-law that

Truman's healthcare plan was socialized medicine.

And that was only one of many incremental conversions

from left to right in Reagan's life.

pulsing music

Our story tonight

asks rather a disturbing question.

How much do you and I really know about ourselves?

Are we honest, for instance?

It's only because circumstances have conspired

to keep us honest.

And if circumstances were to change,

would we also change?

His film career started to take a dive.

Now a guy with responsibilities, a divorce,

two kids from that marriage, soon another,

and then another kid in his second marriage.

Yet the tax man was still coming and collecting his due.

[crowd laughing]

And he just began to feel beleaguered by that.

And I think in a stressful time in my father's life,

I don't mean to insult him,

but he relied a little more on low effort thinking

and became a little more conservative,

much more conservative in fact.

As Ronald Reagan's movie career is going down the tubes

and he's becoming more and more involved in union activities

as the President of the Screen Actors Guild,

he does one gigantic favor for his agent Lew Wasserman.

He cuts a deal where his agency

could also produce television programs.

And it's a blatant conflict of interest.

No agent could wear the two hats

of employee, as an agent,

and employer as a production company.

And the Screen Actors Guild did grant a waiver

to this regulation to MCA.

And of course, that was a quite unprincipled,

wrong thing to do.

[Narrator] It may have been wrong,

but as Reagan saw it,

what was good for business was good for everybody.

At least it was good for Reagan.

dramatic music

When in 1954, MCA launched the flagship

of its television production empire,

Reagan was named host

and given a contract worth over $125,000 a year.

I'm Ronald Reagan speaking for General Electric.

Lew Wasserman was the key there.

He engineered that generous contract

and there were a lot of people who were unhappy with it.

The General Electric contract

was financially a very, very big deal for them.

Also, not to put too fine a point on it,

GE gave them a GE house.

[Reporter] Well, the Reagans have started

to build their new home,

and their home's going to have full house power,

so they can live better electrically.

A very cool mid-century modern house with, of course,

every electrical gadget you could possibly

cram into this place.

Behind this picture,

inside here is a projection machine for home movies.

If we want entertainment...

All we do is flick a switch.

[Ron] There were lights everywhere.

By turning the knobs of this dimmer,

we can change the colors, mix them,

and get different effects.

Eye-catching, isn't it?

Curtains were on this electrical thing, until it broke

and we just went back to the usual way.

This is a portable television set.

Most of the time it's out here on the patio or by the pool.

With a steady heat, and the exact timing

of my new automatic skillet,

even a soufflé is easy and safe to make.

My electric servants do everything.

That's why every housewife wants them,

the latest models with the newest improvements.

Because she knows that you really begin to live

when you live better...

Electrically.

He was no longer a grade B movie star.

He became a kind of living advertisement

for corporate America.

melancholy music

[Ronald] A part of my job now

is, twice a year, going around the country

to the plant cities, uh, meeting the employees,

participating in whatever community functions

are going on in that community

that General Electric wants to be a part of,

and tries to be a part of.

[Lou] He went to 39 states, speaking at 138 plants.

He talked to maybe 200,000 people.

He embraces a notion of the free market

and it's now working,

and we don't want a government getting in the way of it.

We don't need government regulation

and there's Ronnie Reagan ready to take advantage of it.

What he developed was a pro corporate view of America.

This was really the political re-education of Reagan.

You have to remember Reagan was

the liberal head of a labor union.

And a few years later,

he is arguing on GE's behalf

that they don't need labor unions,

because of course GE didn't want to be unionized.

He's working for this big corporation

and of course, now he's gonna benefit

if he's in an anti-labor position.

So it was very convenient for him

to take these positions.

And he was able to convince himself of that.

thoughtful music

[Narrator] In 1962, after eight years as GE spokesman

Reagan was fired.

The reasons are unclear,

but at the time, his producer, MCA,

was facing possible indictment

by the Kennedy Justice Department

for monopolistic practices.

There was this allegation

that his lucrative job with GE was a kickback

because of the waiver that he had granted MCA.

I think he really resented

that he was essentially a target

of the Kennedy Justice Department.

And that was the last straw that convinced him

to change his party registration.

Mrs. Reagan, your husband used to be a Democrat.

As a matter of fact, I hear that he once wanted

General Eisenhower to run on the Democratic ticket.

Yes.

[Interviewer] What, in your opinion,

made him switch from being a Democrat to being a Republican?

Well, he says that he didn't leave his party,

his party left him,

that the Democratic Party of today

is not the Democratic Party that he joined as a young man.

dramatic music

[crowds jeering]

[gun banging]

There was all of this demonstration and protest

in the '60s from the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations,

as well as the civil rights movement.

There were many different groups coming forward and saying,

"We want transformational change."

By saying, "The Democratic Party left me,"

what Reagan's really saying was,

"You're supposed to be the party

of the hard-working white people,

and if you are elevating the rights of others,

you're working against my interests".

And this was something that presidential candidate

Barry Goldwater also believed at that time.

And it was part of the rising tide of conservatism.

And the Republican Party went more and more to the right.

Reagan really understood the big picture.

He knew middle America,

and the principles and values that he embraced

were conservative Republican principles.

The Goldwater boom

for the presidential nomination is well underway.

It's been a long time since the Republicans

have picked an avowed and militant conservative,

but then it's been a long time

since they've had anyone who seems to have made

conservatism as politically attractive

as Senator Goldwater has.

In 1964 Barry Goldwater's running for president

as this reactionary.

And one of his surrogates at the time is Ronald Reagan.

[indistinct conversations]

It's very important to understand

just how outside of the mainstream their ideas were.

They really were tilting against the notion

of the government should work for regular people.

They were promoting government should work for big money.

That's a really extreme idea.

So the question is how you sell an extreme idea

to the American public.

Late in the campaign, and we're talking October 1964,

Barry Goldwater knew he was heading for defeat,

but he wanted to go down fighting.

And they had to raise some money,

so they had a national broadcast.

And Goldwater says, "Get Ronnie to do it."

So Ronald Reagan, whose star had never shone

all that brightly as an actor,

suddenly was a rookie star on the political scene.

A sponsor has been identified,

but unlike most television programs,

the performer hasn't been provided with a script.

As a matter of fact,

I have been permitted to choose my own words

and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice

that we face in the next few weeks.

Ronald Reagan stepped in

with the "Time for Choosing" speech,

which explained what the conservative vision

for the Republican Party was.

The full power of centralized government,

this was the very thing

the founding fathers sought to minimize.

They knew that governments don't control things.

A government can't control the economy

without controlling people.

And they know when a government sets out to do that,

it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

They also knew, those founding fathers,

that outside of its legitimate functions,

government does nothing as well or as economically

as the private sector of the economy.

To give a speech in 1964 about the threat of government,

the threat of welfare,

that's the sort of rhetoric that aims to scare people.

It became a theme for Ronald Reagan,

and this became the way in which

the Republican Party recast itself.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.

We'll preserve for our children

this, the last best hope of man on earth,

or we'll sentence them to take the last step

into a thousand years of darkness.

We will keep them in mind

and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us.

He has faith that you and I have the ability

and the dignity, and the right to make our own decisions

and determine our own destiny.

Thank you very much.

[crowd clapping]

He gives this speech and the phones light up

and the money pours in.

And some people noticed.

[Reporter] Henry Salvatori, President of a group called

the Anti-Communist Voters League,

a millionaire from the oil industry

and a prominent backer of Goldwater,

told Bill Styles what happened next.

He made his talk on national TV,

which just was received throughout the nation

with tremendous enthusiasm

and resulted in millions of dollars

coming into the campaign.

So we knew that he had a terrific

capacity to move people.

And shortly after the Goldwater defeat,

three or four of us got together,

and we decided that we had to look for someone

who had the qualifications

that would make him an electable candidate.

And Ronnie Reagan was the man we all agreed

would be that particular fella.

This group of California millionaires,

Justin Dart, Holmes Tuttle, Alfred Bloomingdale,

what they call the Kitchen Cabinet,

they needed somebody who could sell

their free market ideology, sell their idea

of getting the government out of their lives,

whether that was lower taxes or less regulation.

They also had a common cause with

anti-communism, anti-civil rights.

And they found in this actor the perfect front man for them.

[Reporter] Have you seen my old friend,

Henry Salvatori lately?

I talked to him, uh, Thursday.

tense music

They sat down in '65 with Stu Spencer.

And they said to Stu,

"How much would it cost to run a gubernatorial campaign?"

And Stu says, "I don't know, I've never won one".

He said, "$2.5, $3 million, I don't know,

say $2.5 million".

And Holmes said, "Well, gentlemen,

there's 10 of you here.

it's gonna be the most expensive lunch you ever had.

Pull out the checkbooks,

and write out checks for $2.5 million".

[Reporter] The election campaign

was run by a political consulting firm

known as Spencer Roberts.

We were not ideologues.

Our criterion was good human being, smart,

not too many scandals, that was it.

And our next meeting was with Reagan.

People don't understand what a big gamble it was,

but the guy had something that we liked,

freshness, articulation, a belief system.

We said, "You know, this is, maybe the guy."

As of now, I am a candidate

seeking the Republican nomination for governor.

[Narrator] To coach Reagan, Spencer hired a team

of behavioral scientists.

Through his actoral training,

he was used to working off of cue cards.

So what we did was take five-by-eight cards,

organize them into a total of 13 black books

on 17 issues of California.

And it was amazing how he would take all of them,

not miss anything that we said

and click the things off [fingers clicking]

like that, one, two, three.

Now, would there be anyone here

who would want to make a bet that

somebody isn't cooking up two budgets,

depending on who's going to wind up governor?

The interesting part of those meetings,

we were in the living room of their home in the Palisades

and over there is sitting Nancy Reagan with the big eyes.

She was very alert and she was absorbing.

It was politics 101 for her.

She had no idea what her husband was getting into.

She didn't care about politics.

She didn't have a political ideology.

She just wanted to help him.

Whatever was good for him,

that's what she was gonna be promoting.

[Reporter] How do you feel about that, Mrs. Reagan?

I agree with everything he says, I always do. [laughs]

There is absolutely no question that Nancy Reagan

worked socially to help her husband politically.

She had seen her mother do it.

She knew how effective it was.

They had such a partnership

that he couldn't have been who he was without her.

The Kitchen Cabinet wives ran their social lives.

And Nancy connected with these women,

in some cases became very close friends with them.

bright music

[Narrator] With her friend Betsy Bloomingdale,

Nancy Reagan took a drive out to Lake Malibu

and the Reagan ranch.

Right here.

All my fences need painting.

I really did paint all these,

and Ronnie really did build them all.

My parents were never very wealthy, really.

You know, they had this house because GE built it for them.

[Nancy] You know what I need?

I need some kibble for the dog.

[Shop Worker] A 25-pound bag?

[Ron] But a lot of these other people like Justin Dart

and, you know, and the Bloomingdales and all,

these were people who had a lot of money.

[Nancy] You know what, Al?

Name it.

I haven't got any money. [Laughs]

[Shop Worker] Sign that.

Appearances are important.

They were paramount to the Reagans,

and they lived a moneyed life.

But she really got concerned and she called Holmes Tuttle,

and she cried several times and said,

"Ronnie and I can't afford to do this."

And Holmes Tuttle reassured her and said,

"Don't worry, there's private money."

And you know, he was right.

They didn't have to worry from that point forward.

[Reporter] Here she is in the Galanos showroom,

picking out some clothes.

The only thing she loves better than picking them out

is wearing them.

That's pretty,

I'd like that in another color.

Don't need a gray dress, but I'd like it in another color.

[Male] So, you're gonna have to tell me

what you're gonna need for the fall.

And then we can work a plan, it's a little difficult

right at this moment, until I know exactly what you want.

[Nancy] Oh, look, red. [laughing]

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Any campaign, you're looking for some thematic.

We were sitting around one day, two or three top people.

And one of them was a preacher who came from Texas.

This guy knew people, and his business is screwing people.

He had a lot of money in the name of the Lord.

That guy says, sitting next to me, he says,

"How about citizen politician?"

And I looked at him, I said, "You got it."

That's where it came from.

[Reporter] Reagan's campaign as a citizen politician

with common sense answers to problems

has enormous appeal in California.

The people have a definite feeling

that maybe they'd like a change

from the professional politician.

By that time he's been on camera for 29 years.

He fuses these two worlds, image-making and politics.

[Reporter] At age 61, Governor Brown

is trying for an almost unprecedented third term.

That is his biggest liability.

Brown has a good record as Governor,

but after eight years in office

he has become a focal point for discontent.

Sacramento was seen as being a corrupt place.

So I think that the movie that Reagan has in his mind

is "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".

It's about an outsider

who represents a breath of fresh air.

I don't think I'm gonna be much help to you

down there in Washington, Senator.

[audience laughing]

I'll do my best with all my might.

Reagan absorbed himself into that role completely.

And he believes in the myths that are

at the root of these characters.

I'm a citizen, I'm not an office holder,

or a party official.

And I have gone wherever I've been asked to.

I'll make a speech at a bus stop

if enough people are waiting.

Reagan played the voiceover

for the myth of Good Guy America, and it worked.

[Reporter] Can Governor Brown stop Ronald Reagan?

Will California turn to a Republican governor this year,

or will it continue with Democrat Pat Brown?

It looks now, at this early day, like

Mr. Reagan has won this campaign.

[crowds cheering]

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His story was one of a hero in his mind.

Playing a politician, though,

he got to be that hero.

He could do that by having wealthy, powerful friends,

but he had always depended on my mother to be his rock.

She knew he was an actor at his core,

so she would give him encouragement.

She was a strong woman.

Presented herself as the little lady,

but she became a very much more powerful force

behind the scenes.

He lived in a world,

he didn't need you or me.

He needed Nancy.

He would not have got elected governor without Nancy,

or president without Nancy.

And I don't find anybody as close as those two were.

That's the sort of thing you don't mess with.

[Pilot] 727 transit flight to Sacramento, our state capital.

enchanting music

[airplane engines roaring]

[Reporter] This charming woman

flying over the land she loves,

no longer gets mail meant for three other Nancy Davises.

She long ago left the world of the Nancy Davises.

She's now the one and only Nancy Reagan,

First Lady of California.

[Nancy] California, what a wonderful state.

I think if I had to choose the one thing that I love best,

it would be the place in a state where there's water.

The lakes are lovely of course,

but there's nothing in the world like the beaches.

[waves crashing]

Call me sentimental if you want to,

but the song says it all

and I still get a lump in my throat when I hear it,

"America the beautiful, from sea to shining sea."

sentimental music

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