Reagan: The Life (9 page)

Of all his film roles this was the one Reagan thought might have won him an Academy Award nomination. But
Warner Brothers put its weight behind James Cagney, who starred that same year in
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, and Reagan was left out. Warner nonetheless gave him a raise and a new contract and expressed unbounded confidence in his future.

R
EAGAN WOULD LATER
derive great benefit from lucky timing, from being in the right place at the right time. But in the early 1940s his timing could hardly have been worse. While
Kings Row
was in production, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, exploding the premise on which American
isolationism had traditionally been based. The oceans no longer afforded protection; the world’s problems—the ambitions of aggressors, the struggles for empire and influence—were America’s problems, whether Americans liked it or not. Until that fateful day—December 7, 1941—the parting counsel
George Washington had given his countrymen about avoiding foreign entanglements had provided a plausible basis for American policy; in the flames of Pearl Harbor, the Father of His Country’s hoary counsel became stunningly obsolete.

Franklin Roosevelt had anticipated the moment, though not the locale. For many months tension had been rising between the United States and Japan. Tokyo was determined to gain predominance in East Asia and the western Pacific; Roosevelt was equally determined to keep this from happening. He warned the Japanese diplomatically; when his warnings failed, he ordered a halt to shipments of American oil and steel to Japan. The Japanese interpreted Roosevelt’s embargo as a declaration of economic war, which it was. Both he and they understood that the embargo threatened to bring Japan’s war machine, engaged heavily in China, to a shuddering halt. The Japanese high command prepared a strike to the south and east, toward the resource-rich East Indies. Roosevelt, who had learned military strategy during seven years’ service as assistant navy secretary during
World War I, fully expected such a strike. What he did not expect—what no one in the American chain of command expected—was that the Japa
nese would inaugurate their southwestern offensive with a blow to their far east, against the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the surprise was total and the damage to American battleships, the heart of the fleet, overwhelming. The deaths of more than two thousand Americans added to the pain the nation felt and to the culpability that might have been charged against Roosevelt.

But Roosevelt deflected the blame downward and outward. He launched an investigation of the navy commanders responsible for Hawaii and the Pacific, and he went before Congress to register the nation’s outrage at Japan’s murderous violation of the rules of civilized behavior. The day of the attack would “
live in infamy,” he said. He asked for a declaration of war, which Congress delivered at once. When Germany, Japan’s Axis ally, declared war on the United States three days later, Americans rallied around their president as they have always done at the start of wars. The only critics leveling serious charges against Roosevelt were the most die-hard of the isolationists, who charged him not with knowing too little about the Japanese plans but with knowing too
much
. Realizing that events had cut the ground from beneath them, they alleged that Roosevelt had engineered the Pearl Harbor attack in order to stampede the American people into war.

Roosevelt didn’t dignify the charge with denial. He recognized that he had won the argument over America’s international role as definitively as arguments are ever won in political life. He knew that what had been impossible just weeks before was now not merely possible but necessary. For two decades he had believed that the United States must play the leading role in world affairs, but for most of that time he had been compelled by America’s popular aversion to foreign involvement to keep this belief to himself. Finally he could speak his mind, confident that the American people would follow where their commander in chief led. The few isolationists left could only gnash their teeth in vain.

P
EARL
H
ARBOR PROVED
the starting point for Reagan’s long march across the political spectrum. It was a complicated journey, for it required moving along two axes. In the 1930s, Reagan was a liberal isolationist: Rooseveltian in domestic affairs but anti-Rooseveltian on foreign policy. In the next two decades he would undergo a double transformation, becoming a conservative internationalist: anti-Rooseveltian domestically but Rooseveltian in foreign policy.

The march began in foreign policy. Reagan’s work had kept him too busy to develop strong views about America’s role in the world; he leaned toward the anti-German opinions of the Warners and others in the film industry’s
Jewish community, but he hadn’t considered matters closely enough to develop convictions of his own. His patriotism was sporadic and opportunistic. While working in radio in Iowa, he had encountered a member of the U.S. Army reserve who informed him that the local cavalry regiment was recruiting. The cavalry was a dying branch of the army; though horses had played a larger role in World War I than was generally appreciated, no one expected they would have much to offer in the next war. Yet the army clung to the past in many things, and it clung to its horses. And it was looking for new horsemen. Reagan had become enamored of horses watching movies as a boy, and the chance to ride at the army’s expense made the recruitment pitch appealing. Equestrian skills certainly wouldn’t hurt his film career; to be the next
Tom Mix, he’d have to learn to ride. So he enlisted. “
I didn’t have a burning desire to be an army officer,” he conceded afterward. “I still thought we’d fought the war to end all wars. But it was a deal too good to turn down.”

The rising tension with Japan changed the terms of the bargain. As Roosevelt applied economic pressure against Tokyo, the army called up reserve officers like Reagan. He received a letter telling him to put his affairs in order and prepare to report on short notice. He was in the middle of filming
Kings Row
with
Warner Brothers, and the studio set its lawyers to securing a deferment lest the project, with its $1 million budget and large crew of workers, be jeopardized. Such deferment requests were neither unusual nor particularly unpopular at a moment when most Americans still hoped and many expected to avoid a war. The Warner lawyers succeeded, and in October 1941 Reagan was informed he would not be called before January 1, 1942. But the army told him to be ready to report at “
any time after that date.”

The studio sought an additional extension. It had other movies in the works, and Reagan’s impressive performance in
Kings Row
made the Warner executives think they had a valuable property in him. They strove to keep him working.

Pearl Harbor spoiled their plans. The onset of war accelerated the army’s timetable for mobilization, and it altered the public’s perception of military service. Special treatment for celebrities no longer sat well with those the film industry relied on to fill the theaters. Reagan’s screen persona as a defender of the public weal would have been badly damaged
had he dodged service. And so, after a final reflexive effort to delay the inevitable, Warner dropped its lobbying on his behalf, and in April 1942 off to the army he went.

B
UT HE DIDN
’
T
go very far. Warner’s surrender on Reagan was part of a larger reorientation of the film industry. Hollywood had survived the depression better than most industries; the dream machine allowed Americans to put their troubles out of their minds for a few hours at modest cost. Whether Hollywood would survive the onset of war was unclear at first. The manufacturing industries and everything connected to armaments and war provisions took precedence in government planning, and these were subject to dictates from Washington. Auto production was halted as Detroit’s assembly lines were converted to making airplanes and tanks; the sale of consumer goods was strictly controlled lest their frivolous use by noncombatants weaken the war effort. The escapist entertainment that formed a staple of the Hollywood studios was about as frivolous as anything could be; in the weeks and months after Pearl Harbor, movie executives faced the distinct possibility that the government would order them to suspend production until the war ended.

But no such order was given. Its withholding reflected the resourcefulness of Jack Warner and other movie executives; it also owed to the vision of Hap Arnold and certain fellow officers in the U.S. Army. Warner’s commitment to the war effort was unimpeachable; having warned about the Nazis for years, he was determined to see Hitler crushed as quickly as possible. But Warner was no less devoted to the welfare of
Warner Brothers, and he calculated that by making the movie industry a wing of the War Department, he could ensure that the studio not suffer in the anti-Axis struggle. Warner went to Washington with a proposal that the army publicize the brave work its officers and men were doing on behalf of the nation’s security. He met General Henry Arnold, called Hap, who headed the U.S. Army Air Forces and believed his fliers were the future of warfare. Arnold enlisted Warner—literally, as a lieutenant colonel—to create a motion-picture unit.

The two men served each other’s purposes. Warner made Arnold and the air force look good, giving Arnold an edge in the competition for resources that became a central aspect of the politics of the war effort. Arnold and the army ensured that the movie industry was classified as essential to the nation’s struggle against fascism.

An early collaboration,
Winning Your Wings
, starring
Jimmy Stewart, depicted army pilots as heroes and dramatically stimulated recruitment. In fact the prospective pilots enlisted faster than Arnold’s air force could handle them. “
Jack, we’ve got enough pilots to fly every plane in the world since you released
Winning Your Wings
,” Arnold told Warner.

“Good,” Warner replied.

“Not good,” Arnold rejoined. “We need rear gunners on the planes, too, and we’re not getting them. Can you put something together in a hurry? Give it some romantic appeal.”

“I couldn’t see anything very romantic about the duties and hazards of a rear gunner’s job,” Warner observed later. “But we turned out a quickie at General Arnold’s request.”
The Rear Gunner
had the desired effect, and within weeks the rear-gunner enlistees exceeded Arnold’s capacity, too.

R
EAGAN REPORTED TO
Fort Mason, which had guarded the entrance to San Francisco Bay since the Civil War. It still guarded the bay, but after an initial panic that the Pearl Harbor attack presaged a Japanese assault on the American mainland, Fort Mason served chiefly as a point of embarkation for American army units headed to the western Pacific.

Reagan assisted with the embarkation. Any thought that he would join the departures dissipated when army doctors discovered his nearsightedness. “
If we sent you overseas you’d shoot a general,” one of the doctors told him. “And you’d miss him,” the doctor’s colleague added.

Reagan remained at Fort Mason just long enough for the army to find a higher use for his gifts and experience. Jack Warner’s film outfit, the
First Motion Picture Unit, had set up shop in Culver City, ten miles from Hollywood. The unit gathered top movie talent, including such stars as Jimmy Stewart,
Clark Gable, and
William Holden. Reagan seemed a natural, having played a pilot in prewar films and possessing a voice well suited to the narration many of the films featured.

He was ordered to Culver City and subsequently took part in the production of dozens of films. He played a lieutenant in
The Rear Gunner
who recognizes the aptitude and grit in the young man who becomes the movie’s hero and thereby a model for other young men who might want to enlist. He narrated
Beyond the Line of Duty
, about an actual airman who won the Distinguished Service Cross on a mission over the western Pacific. He helped fan the enthusiasm for war with
Westward Is Bataan
and
Target Tokyo
, which respectively celebrated early American
victories in the Pacific and the onset of the strategic bombing of Japan’s home islands.
The Fight for the Sky
portrayed the exploits of American airmen over Europe.
This Is the Army
, a musical produced with the assistance of the army but not by the film unit, included Reagan as a
World War I veteran’s son who, in a metaphor for America collectively, receives the task of completing the unfinished work of his father.

His wartime movies made Reagan more familiar to audiences than ever. Millions saw him in uniform on-screen and came to recognize his voice as the voice of those protecting America against aggression. They learned to associate him with American power and American patriotism. Reagan discovered that the role of defender of the nation suited him, and he happily added it to his repertoire.

W
ORLD
W
AR
II changed Americans’ thinking about much more than their country’s place in the world. It radically reshaped their attitudes toward one another. Advocates of women’s political rights had won a signal victory when Reagan was too young to notice, with the 1920 ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment. But though women could subsequently vote, most remained economically dependent on the men in their lives. During the
Great Depression many employers unashamedly laid women off first, assuming that their female employees were not the principal breadwinners in their families. The entry of the United States into the war dramatically increased job opportunities for women, who replaced the millions of men pulled from the civilian workforce into the military. As women assumed jobs previously reserved for men, they brought home paychecks previously claimed by men. For some the experience of economic independence was unsettling; for many it was empowering.

African Americans were similarly drawn into the industrial workforce. Blacks had begun moving from the rural South to the urban North and Midwest during World War I, but amid the Great Depression the migration slowed and in some places reversed.
World War II again opened employment opportunities, and blacks once more moved to the industrial cities. For centuries America’s race question had been a southern issue; now it became a national one. And it grew entwined with the war effort.
A. Philip Randolph, the head of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a largely black union, organized a march on Washington to spotlight
segregation by federal war contractors. Franklin Roosevelt did his best to stop Randolph’s march, believing it would distract from the war effort. A
deal was struck: no march and no discrimination in war industries. The bargain bought Roosevelt the war focus he desired; it taught African Americans that in organization lay strength.