THE REAL RONALD REAGAN
aired 1/20/89 [1989-01-20]
close up FRONTLINE (CC) 8 PM 7; Return: The series' seventh season begins with a profile of Ronald Reagan in which journalist Garry Wills gathers comments from the President's show-business and political colleagues as well as from Mrs. Reagan and the President himself. Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Ill., on Feb. 6, 1911, and grew up wanting to be an actor. He made it, but his career, as Charlton Heston acknowledges, wasn't "extraordinary." Still, Olivia de Havilland found the young Reagan "charming." So did Nancy Davis, who met him after his divorce from Jane Wyman, and married him in 1952. "He was less like an actor than anybody I had ever known," the First Lady recalls. Stints as Screen Actors Guild president and General Electric spokesman provided Reagan with a natural segue into politics, and in 1966 he was elected governor of California, where he developed his knack for delegating responsibility. Indeed, former political antagonist Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill believes Reagan to be "the least knowledgeable man as far as the facts of government of any President I've ever known." But former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who also worked for Reagan in California, gives his old boss's work habits a different spin: "He conserves his time for the important decisions." Some decisions were controversial, of course. But controversy, Wills says, was something Reagan "floated over" during his Presidency, which he leaves with his popularity undiminished. (90 min.)
