Posted 6:23 PM by Gene

I wish I could talk more about Ronald Reagan the actor, but I've only seen a few of his features, most notably the deathless She's Working Her Way Through College, which has a special place in my brain as it was adapted (not well, but entertainingly enough) from the dated campus comedy The Male Animal -- a collaboration of the actor and director Elliott Nugent and my writing inspiration James Thurber (I played the reactionary trustee in a college production) -- and it contained the first known caricature of him with that pointy hair. And some lousy songs. (By Vernon Duke.) One other reason to note it is that Reagan's co-star Gene Nelson (whose name looms large in DER KULT OF HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM) did a showy gymnastic routine, which inspired a young truck driver named Elvis Presley. (They did two of his bad movies together.) I always thought Reagan would be perfect playing one of my heroes, Oscar Hammerstein II, in the film biography which refuses to materialize. They had that same craggy handsome sincerity, that same wholesome earnestness; and if their politics were worlds apart (Hammerstein was a notorious Eleanor Roosevelt liberal -- as was Reagan early on) boiled down to the minimum, they were very much alike. That's why he succeeded; that's why he deserved to.