Killing Reagan Read online

  This is not an answer. It is an evasion. And while Carter is hoping to appear presidential and above the fray, the fact is that he looks indecisive and somewhat weak.

  When it comes Reagan’s turn to field the same question, he stumbles again—though only for an instant. His thought process seems to be clearing. Reagan has rehearsed this debate with adviser David Stockman, whose sharp intellect rivals that of Carter. That practice now shows in Reagan’s new confidence. Statistics suddenly roll off his tongue. He rattles off the 38 percent reduction in America’s military force under the Carter administration, the refusal to build sixty ships that the navy deems necessary to fulfilling its global mission, and Carter’s insistence that programs to build new American bombers, missiles, and submarines be either stalled or halted altogether.

  The outrage in Reagan’s voice will connect to those viewers sick and tired of America’s descent into global impotency.

  Jimmy Carter reaches for his water glass.

  * * *

  More than one thousand miles west, in the city of Evergreen, Colorado, a twenty-five-year-old drifter pays little attention to the debate. Instead, John Hinckley Jr. fixates on schemes to impress Jodie Foster, the young actress who starred opposite Robert De Niro in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver—a film Hinckley has seen more than fifteen times. Even though he has never met her, Hinckley considers Jodie the love of his life and is determined to win her hand.

  Hinckley’s obsession with the eighteen-year-old actress is so complete that he temporarily moved to New Haven, Connecticut, to stalk her while she attended Yale University. Hinckley is a college dropout, unable to focus on his own studies, yet he had little problem sitting in on Foster’s classes. In New Haven, he slid love notes under the door of her dorm room, found her phone number, and, in a brazen move, called Foster and asked her out to dinner. Shocked, she refused. So stunned was Foster by Hinckley’s advances and subsequent actions that she will not speak of them for years to come.

  Now, nearly penniless and having moved back in with his parents, John Hinckley ruminates over how to make Jodie Foster change her mind. His plans are grandiose and bizarre. Hinckley has contemplated killing himself right before Foster’s very eyes, or perhaps hijacking an airliner.

  He has even plotted the assassination of President Jimmy Carter.

  The pudgy Hinckley, who wears his shaggy hair in bangs, has yet to see a psychiatrist for the schizophrenia that is slowly taking control of his brain. That appointment is still one week away. But no amount of therapy will ever stop him from thinking about Jodie Foster—and the lengths to which he must go to earn her love. Now, sitting in a small basement bedroom, Hinckley considers suicide.

  Bottles of prescription pills cover his nightstand. It will take a few more days to summon his courage, but Hinckley will soon reach for the container labeled “Valium” and gobble a deadly dosage.

  Once again, John Hinckley will fail.

  He will wake up nauseated but alive, vowing to find some new way to impress Jodie Foster.

  Killing himself is not the answer. Clearly, someone else must die.

  * * *

  About halfway through the ninety-four-minute debate, Ronald Reagan gets personal. “I talked to a man just briefly there who asked me one simple question,” Reagan says gravely. “‘Do I have reason to hope that I can someday take care of my family again?’”

  Watching from the side of the stage, Nancy Reagan can see that her husband is gaining confidence with every question. This gives her solace, for Nancy was so afraid that her Ronnie would say something foolish that she initially opposed the debate. More than that of any of his advisers, it is Nancy’s opinion that matters most to Reagan. They have been married twenty-eight years, and she has been a driving force behind his run for the presidency. Throughout their marriage he has chosen to address her as Mommy, a term of endearment mocked by some journalists covering Reagan.

  Nancy Reagan wears a size four dress and has thin legs and thick ankles. Her mother was an actress, her adoptive father an esteemed surgeon, and she grew up determined to find fame.9 She relies on sleeping pills and tranquilizers, and sometimes bursts into tears from stress, but there is steel in her voice when she corrects her husband or sees to it that one of the campaign staff is disciplined. Nancy Reagan professes shock when the press portrays her as the conniving Lady Macbeth, but the description isn’t entirely off the mark. She is by far the more grating half of the Reagan marriage, and she is determined that this election be won at all costs.

  Cheating is not out of the question. Although he does not yet know it, Jimmy Carter’s briefing notes for this debate were recently stolen from the White House and secretly handed over to the Reagan campaign. This, of course, has allowed Reagan to know in advance how Carter will respond to every question. Certainly, no one is pointing to Nancy Reagan as having engineered the theft—indeed, reports of the act will not be leaked to the public for three more years, and the real culprit remains in question.10 Yet it is well known that, with so much at stake, she doesn’t play nice. To Nancy, gaining access to Carter’s playbook is a windfall to the Reagan campaign, not a crime.

  As the debate continues, Jimmy Carter is not doing himself any favors onstage. “I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy,” Carter says, referring to his thirteen-year-old, “to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry and the control of nuclear arms.”

  In the greenroom, Carter’s campaign staff is distraught. While prepping for the debate, Carter told them he planned to use his daughter to make a point. His staff strongly urged him not to.

  “In the end,” Pat Caddell will later recall, “it came down to ‘I’m the president. Fuck you.’”

  It is a huge mistake. That the president of the United States is allowing a teenager to decide what matters most to America in a time of such great crisis is laughable. One journalist will later write that the statement was “Carter at his worst: Weak and silly.”

  But Jimmy Carter does not have that sense. “In the debate itself, it was hard to judge the general demeanor that was projected to the viewers,” Carter will write in his diary tonight. “He [Reagan] has his memorized tapes. He pushes a button, and they come out.”11

  Carter’s statement is true. Like all veteran actors, Reagan has mastered the art of memorization. Also, while there are a great number of scripted lines that he has written himself or with his speechwriters to help him score points, Reagan has concocted a simple statement to deride Carter. After the president launches into a detailed and very dry explanation about Reagan’s opposition to national health care, Reagan pauses at his lectern. It is obvious that Carter is showing off his intellect in a way that is meant to make Reagan look old, slow, and out of touch. The president’s words were specifically chosen to ensure that Reagan’s scripted lines could not rescue him and to make it obvious to one and all that Jimmy Carter is the more intelligent of the two.

  What follows is Reagan at his best. In four simple words that will be remembered for decades, he succeeds in making President Carter look foolish. They are words that Reagan came up with during the long hours of practice debates but which he has kept to himself, knowing that for maximum effectiveness the line must sound completely spontaneous.

  Slowly shaking his head, Reagan turns to Carter and says, “There you go again.”

  The auditorium erupts in laughter. Reagan’s tone is that of a disappointed parent, saddened by a child who has failed to live up to expectations. The words mean nothing and everything. One short sentence captures the mood of a nation that no longer wants detailed policy explanations as to why the economy has collapsed and Americans are being held hostage in a foreign country.

  The time for words has passed. Now is the time for action.

  The election may be seven days away, but for James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. of Plains, Georgia, it is over. The only man who does not know that is Carter himself. “Both sides felt good about the debate. We’ll see
whose basic strategy is best when the returns come in next Tuesday,” he will write in his diary.

  * * *

  Reagan finishes the debate with a flourish. “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” he says earnestly into the television camera, wrapping up with an emotional appeal to the American people. “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago? And if you answer all of those questions yes, why then, I think your choice is very obvious as to who you’ll vote for.”

  So obvious, in fact, that the election is a landslide. Ronald Reagan receives 489 electoral votes; Jimmy Carter receives just 49.12

  On January 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan is sworn in as the fortieth president of the United States.

  John Hinckley Jr. has a new target.

  2

  UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

  HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA

  SEPTEMBER 1950

  DAYTIME

  The chimpanzee wears a white jumpsuit as she climbs high into the branches of a eucalyptus tree in the front yard of 712 Colonial Street.1 “Peggy” is five years old. She was born in the jungles of Liberia and lured into captivity with a bundle of bananas. Since coming to Hollywood, Peggy has been taught to understand 502 voice commands, ride a tricycle, do backflips on cue, and put on a necktie. She has become one of the motion picture industry’s top animal performers, commanding a thousand dollars per week in salary. Now, as the cameras roll, she is starring in her first title role. The film is a screwball comedy entitled Bedtime for Bonzo.

  Ronald Reagan and Peggy the chimp on the set of Bedtime for Bonzo, 1950

  “Action!” cries director Fred de Cordova.2 Peggy instantly obeys trainer Henry Craig’s instruction to do what comes naturally for her: climb a tree.

  One would think the act will not be quite as easy for her costar. Thirty-nine-year-old Ronald Reagan balances precariously on the top step of an eight-foot ladder leaning against the tree trunk. In his slick-soled shoes, dress shirt, and tie, he is hardly dressed for climbing. His trademark pompadour, meantime, is carefully Brylcreem’d into place. There is no safety rope to halt his fall should Reagan lose his balance, but that is not a problem. Nearly twenty years after his college football career ended, the rugged actor is still lean and athletic. Reagan pulls himself up into the tree with ease, with not so much as a hair out of place.

  Just a few years earlier, it would have been ludicrous to imagine Ronald Reagan acting opposite a chimpanzee. He was a star contract player for the Warner Bros. film studio, well on his way to becoming the sort of lead actor who could command any role he wished, like his friends Cary Grant and Errol Flynn.

  In every way, Ronald Reagan’s life in the early 1940s could not have been better.

  But that was then.

  * * *

  Ronald Reagan is twenty-six when he steps off the electric trolley at the Republic Pictures stop in Hollywood. The year is 1937. A torrential April rain drenches the young baseball announcer as he strides quickly along Radford Avenue to the studio gate. If Reagan were to lift his head, he would see the legendary “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign just miles above him in the hills, but he keeps his head low, the collar of his raincoat cinched tightly around his throat.

  Dutch, as Reagan is known to family and friends, works for radio station WHO in Des Moines, Iowa, covering sports. He has come west to visit the Chicago Cubs spring training camp on nearby Catalina Island, twenty miles off the California coast.3 But the storm has shut down the ferries and seaplane service to Catalina, giving Reagan a free day in Los Angeles. Cowboy singing sensation Gene Autry is filming a new Western called Rootin’ Tootin’ Rhythm, and a few of Reagan’s friends from back home are playing the roles of Singing Cowhands.4 Reagan, who has long fantasized about being a movie star, has come to offer moral support to his pals.

  Reagan will later write that “hundreds of young people—from Iowa, Illinois, and just about every other state”—shared his fantasy. They “stepped off a train at Union Station in Los Angeles … they got no closer to realizing it than a studio front gate.”

  But thanks to his pals, Reagan makes it through the gate and hustles to Autry’s soundstage. He enters the cavernous building with klieg lights hanging from high wooden beams. He is immediately intoxicated by the sight of the actors, cameras, lights, and everything else that goes into making a movie. All is quiet as filming begins. Gene Autry himself, dressed in the knee-high boots and gun belt of a cowboy, strums a guitar and sings a lament about life on the prairie. The set is made to look like the parlor of an ornate home. Autry is surrounded by musicians and actors clutching fiddles and guitars, all dressed as cowboys.

  “Cut,” yells director Mack Wright as the song winds down. Autry stops. Everyone relaxes on the set. A few minutes later, as Wright calls for “action,” the scene is repeated.

  “I was starry-eyed,” Reagan admits to a friend that night. His friend’s name is Joy Hodges, and she and her band are performing at the stately Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA. Joy knew Reagan back in Des Moines, and they now enjoy a quiet dinner between sets. The walls are lined with oak, and a marble fountain gurgles in the background. Reagan tells her his dreams of becoming a movie star and how he wishes he could find a way to break into the business.

  Joy Hodges, a pretty, raven-haired lady, finds Reagan intriguing.

  “Take off your glasses,” she commands.

  He removes them, and Joy instantly becomes a blur to Reagan.

  Hodges, on the other hand, can see him quite clearly—and she likes what she sees. “Studios don’t make passes at actors who wear glasses,” she warns him before going back onstage for her second set.

  Thus, the fairy tale begins. By ten the next morning, Reagan is meeting with Joy’s agent, who arranges a screen test for the handsome young man. The test eventually makes its way to Jack Warner, the powerful head of Warner Bros. Pictures. He also likes what he sees and offers Reagan a seven-year contract at two hundred dollars a week—almost three times what he makes at WHO. A hairstylist transforms Reagan’s center-parted look into the trademark pompadour he will wear the rest of his life. A tailor ingeniously alters the taper of his collar to create the optical illusion that Reagan’s neck is not so thick. Finally, after some deliberation, the publicity department declares that he can keep his real name on-screen.

  Up-and-coming movie star Ronald Reagan, 1939

  So it is that by June 1937, just two months after stepping out of the rain at Republic Pictures, Ronald Reagan is acting in his first motion picture. The movie is called Love Is on the Air. Appropriately enough, Reagan plays a radio announcer.

  * * *

  Sarah Jane Mayfield—or Jane Wyman, as she is known in Hollywood—knows a thing or two about love. It is early in 1938 as she arrives on the set of the film Brother Rat. At the age of twenty-one, she is already married. Her current husband is dress manufacturer Myron Futterman, whom she wed in New Orleans six months ago. Small, with bangs worn high on her forehead and a husky voice that will one day become her trademark, Wyman has struggled to break into Hollywood since coming west from Missouri. But now she finally has gotten her foot in the door through a series of small roles in B movies and is determined to become a star. Her weakness is being impulsive when it comes to love, and she separates from Futterman almost as quickly as she married him.

  As Ronald Reagan begins his tenth film in less than a year,5 there is no hiding the fact that his Brother Rat costar has quickly become infatuated with him. By December 1938, Jane Wyman officially divorces Myron Futterman and takes up with Reagan.

  They soon become Hollywood’s golden couple, “wholesome and happy and utterly completely American,” in the words of gossip columnist Louella Parsons, who, knowing that nothing in Hollywood lasts forever, nevertheless predicts that thei
r union will last thirty years. Wyman and Reagan are married in January 1940, shortly before Reagan begins filming Knute Rockne All American with Pat O’Brien. He plays the role of legendary Notre Dame running back George Gipp, uttering the immortal line “Ask ’em to go in there with all they’ve got, win just one for the Gipper,” before dying on-screen. It is his first A film and is soon followed by a costarring role alongside the swashbuckling womanizer Errol Flynn in Santa Fe Trail. Just four short years after breaking into Hollywood, Ronald Reagan is now a major star. He and Wyman are soon building a massive new house and spending their evenings at the best Hollywood nightclubs.

  Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman with baby Maureen

  In 1941, Wyman gives birth to a beautiful daughter whom they name Maureen.

  * * *

  World War II is raging. But Ronald Reagan’s poor eyesight exempts him from fighting overseas. He stays in California but is eager to contribute to the war effort. Long before moving to Los Angeles, Reagan had joined Iowa’s Army Reserve, serving in the cavalry. In May 1937, before making his first motion picture, he was offered a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Cavalry Officer Reserve Corps.

  He begins active duty as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in April 1942, assigned to making training films and selling war bonds. He secures a top secret clearance, meaning he is often privy to classified information about upcoming American bombing raids. In the process, he learns how such attacks are planned and conducted. Reagan’s career up until now has seen him in a series of jobs that do not require leadership or organization. But the army teaches him about taking charge and motivating the men he commands. These are lessons he will use for the rest of his life.

  The duties of Reagan’s U.S. Army First Motion Picture Unit shift in the waning days of the war. In June 1945, he sends a photographer to a local aircraft factory to take pictures of women working in war production. Pvt. David Conover shoots using color film, a rarity at the time, snapping the indelible image of an eighteen-year-old brunette holding a small propeller. The wife of a young merchant seaman, the fetching girl earns twenty dollars a week inspecting parachutes at a company named Radioplane, which also makes some of the world’s first drone aircraft.6 She has a wholesome smile, wears a modest green blouse, and has clipped her factory ID badge to the waistband of her pleated gray skirt. Her name is Norma Jeane Dougherty, and these photographs will soon open the doors of Hollywood to her. Eventually, Norma Jeane will divorce her sailor husband and change her name, as she becomes one of the most famous women in the world. As his own career is on the verge of combusting, Ronald Reagan is directly responsible for initiating the fame of Marilyn Monroe.