Reagan's 'Rosebud'

[Valin]

Ricochet:

Mollie Hemingway

2/13/12

 

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.

 

(Snip)

 

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

 

mini-documentary, Inside Ronald Reagan's Surprising Early Days