Reagan's 'Rosebud'
All self-respecting Ricochet readers will want to go read this amazing story published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (!) about how President Ronald Reagan came to understand the threat of Communism in Hollywood and develop effective strategies for fighting it.
After cultivating a relationship with former movie-industry union chief Roy Brewer, reporter John Meroney obtained access to his voluminous archives filled with private correspondence, speeches, congressional documents, Communist Party newspapers, transcripts of testimony from executive sessions and minutes from closed union meetings. Meroney discovers Reagan's "Rosebud," as he puts it, since the information explains so much about why President Reagan entered politics, what animated him, what strategies he learned and how he deployed them.
Meroney uses these to tell a fascinating story about Reagan. Here's a snippet:
"In one-on-one meetings with workers, he would explain what he saw as the fallacies of the painters’ union and its claim to be for democratic unionism. “They want control,” Reagan would say as he presented facts to support his position. Eventually, he began to speak publicly to scores of union members and anyone else who would listen. He and Brewer found liberals and conservatives such as Allen Rivkin in the Screen Writers Guild and Cecil B. DeMille in the Screen Directors Guild who agreed with their view that this was a struggle not just for integrity in trade unionism but for the soul of Hollywood.
"Reagan and Brewer convinced them to build a coalition across the partisan divide in their locals and guilds. That strategy essentially stopped the Communist Party in Hollywood.
"Hayden confirmed as much in 1951, when he revealed in sworn congressional testimony that he had been a covert operative for the Communist Party, with the specific mission to swing the Screen Actors Guild to join up with the painters.
"In the archive is a copy of the testimony (along with never released recordings of Hayden being interviewed by a Saturday Evening Post reporter), in which Hayden said Reagan “was a one-man battalion against this thing. He was very vocal and clear thinking on it. I don’t think many people realized how complex it was.”
"By vanquishing the painters’ union, Reagan and Brewer preserved IATSE and SAG and the larger American Federation of Labor structure in Hollywood. Their strategy also essentially saved the motion-picture industry, which was struggling financially because television was siphoning moviegoers and courts were ruling that studios could no longer own movie theaters, as they had for decades.
"With that financial specter haunting Hollywood, the last thing needed was a national boycott claiming movies were full of Reds. “We fought them on and off the record,” Reagan wrote in 1951. “We fought them in meetings and behind the scenes.” That same year, Brewer said he considered his friend Ron to be the most effective person in the movie industry at fighting Communism."
The best part about this story is the note at the end of the piece that says Meroney is completing the book Ronald Reagan in the Hollywood Wars. My only complaint with the piece was that I wanted each anecdote fleshed out more and more. I will definitely be reading the book
There's also this mini-documentary that accompanies the piece, which I'll try to embed as well as link here. OK, I'm having trouble embedding it so you'll have to go check it out. In tapes that have been under wraps for 60 years, you can hear Reagan and Brewer discuss their battles with the Communist Party in Hollywood. It's utterly fascinating.
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Comments:
Mar '11
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
[W]hat has been typically portrayed as anti-Communist hysteria—for instance, that writers exploited their position for the party agenda—may be true after all, according to documents.
This just in: Alger Hiss wasn't just a Red, but a KGB Colonel to boot.
The "anti-Red scare" was a just little scarier than a lot of people, then and now, will admit.
Dec '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Thanks for posting this.
Aug '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
I'd say with two victories against the reds, Reagan saved a great deal. Who will do the final tally ?
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
John Meroney will be joining us here on Ricochet just as soon as his book is published!
Jul '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
That would be The Almighty.
Apr '11
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Another point in the documentary is well made, but I'd like to add something to it. Most American unions fought communism, as did some European ones. Only the Americans succeeded, meaning that when Solidarity needed support, its fellow unions in Europe would not help, while American unions did.
Unions have done a lot of bad stuff, too, but there's really nothing in America, nothing, that the world doesn't have good reason to be grateful for.
It's hard to be specific in quantifying these things, but easy to know that it's enough to be worth falling to one's knees over.
Feb '12
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Fascinating stuff. Ronald Reagan truly understood what they were up against. More than a one dimensional view.. But will Gorgeous George make a flick out of it? Clooney to play Reagan? Now there would be a turn up for the scripts.. Good Night and No Way..
Sep '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Notice how to the right of the video the Times has the point of all this as the early Reagan not being the conservative modern "GOPers are invoking".
Apr '11
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
I love the fact that Reagan fought for a fair and just Union. One that cared about the workers and was not just the political arm of some political party. That is after all what unions should be, but what often they are not. I suggest that every one who reads this article in the LA times also watch one of the greatest movies of all times "On the Waterfront" hearing about how Hollywood film guild were almost taken over really sheds more meaning to an already powerful movie about standing up for what is right.
Apr '11
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
At Hillsdale College's seminar on the Reagan Centenary Ronald Radosh gave a very good talk about how Reagan fought the Communists' efforts to take over SAG and other Hollywood unions. The video is available on line.
Edited on February 14, 2012 at 8:22amMay '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
The first lines drive me crazy. There's misunderstanding about Reagan on "both sides" of the political aisle. On the right, "his role as a union man who campaigned for Truman is conveniently forgotten." (It is? Seems to me I've heard people like Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin mention it regularly.) The left has "held tight to its view of him as an arch conservative red baiter."
Seems to me that what we have here is not "misinformation" about Reagan on "both sides", but rather a complete misreading of Cold War history on the part of the left. The right had it right, and therefore honor Reagan as a great moral hero. The left had it wrong and therefore despised Reagan as a war-mongering imbecile.
The right was right; the left was wrong. An honest journalist should acknowledge as much.
Edited on February 14, 2012 at 12:38pmMay '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Gotta love this:
"If you can make the message come from the mouth of Gary Cooper or some other star [Clint Eastwood perhaps?] who is unaware of what he is saying, but he time it is discovered, he is in New York...."
May '10
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
And while the author wants us to believe that the Reagan the GOP contenders invoke is nothing like the real Reagan, what's really going now is just like what went on then:
The left is smearing and bullying all those who stand in their way. The media is implicated in a campaign of lies and disinformation, designed to deceive and manipulate the electorate into voting Democrat.
They intuit that Jefferson and Reagan were right: If the American people are told the truth and given all the information, they won't make a mistake. Therefore, they lie, deceive, hid the truth, spread disinformation, smear, intimidate, demagogue.
It's still happening. Only now it's got other funding sources than the Soviet Union.
Edited on February 14, 2012 at 12:56pmApr '11
Re: Reagan's 'Rosebud'
Fantastic article, and I can't wait to read the book.
What an amazing story. Here's one man - an average Joe, in the context of his profession - who sees something wrong and decides speak out against a bunch of two-bit commie thugs. 40 years later he finds himself the most powerful man in the world and oversees the liberation of hundreds of millions from that evil ideology.
To think he could have easily just continued making movies with chimps.