Interview of Neil Reagan

Neil, as I came in, you were talking to me about someone that passed away in Ron's early childhood and this might be a good way to start, because you mentioned that he had an influence on Ron. Could you tell me that again?

Well, I got a phone call this morning, not on this particular subject, from back in our old home town, Dixon, Illinois, about an hour or so ago, with some details relative to the schedule I will be on back there. The call was from a radio station. We're going back this weekend for the high school class reunion, plus a lot of visits to the old Reagan home that they are refurbishing, which has just been named by the state of Illinois a state historical monument, and so they've made all kinds of appointments for me to be at the home and take a trip thirty miles south of there to the little town where another building has been purchased where we were both born in the apartment on the second floor above this bank building. In the call this morning, the man from the radio station mentioned that about an hour prior to his call to me an eighty-five-year-old man [B. J. Fraser] had passed away. When Ronald was a youngster in high school, this man was an English teacher and dramatic coach, and of course directed all the high school plays, all of which Ronald participated in. They've been lifelong friends, and he had just passed away about an hour earlier than the phone call this morning. I had to hustle around and dig up the security headquarters in the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles where Ronald had stayed overnight on a trip out here to Los Angeles, to get the message to him; so I expect I'll be getting a call before long from the president, telling me he got the message and did I have any details.

Yes.

But he was a great respecter of this old professor's ability.

And he actually, in a way, sort of shaped Ron's acting talents?

I guess that's where Reagan got the bug originally. [laughter]

Were you a part of that, too? Were you a part of that acting bug?

No, I will have to explain, which also sort of gives you a picture of the two Reagans when they were young, but sort of apart. The Rock River, a fairly sizable river, runs right through the center of Dixon, Illinois, so that the town is split into what has always been known as the north side and the south side. When we first moved to Dixon, I was nine and Ronald was not quite seven, and we lived on the south side. The town had two grade schools and two high schools, one on the north side and one on the south side. They were separate schools except for athletics. The athletic teams were made up from the two student bodies. The football team had both north- and southsiders, the basketball team, the track team. Just about the time that I was ready to enter high school, our mother and father gave us the good news that we were moving to the north side, at which point I immediately stated that I would not go over to the north side and go to the northside high school, for odd and various reasons. [laughter] We always looked on the north side, we southsiders, as sort of the sissies' part of town. It really wasn't; we had no reason for believing that. But the northsiders felt the same way about us. So, we moved, and I then took the long trips across the bridge, morning and night, cold winter weather--ooh--the wind blowing down that river; but I did all of my grade school and the rest of my high school there. Ronald immediately went into the grade school over there, because he was just starting grade school. As a result, over the years, I built up my group of friends over on the south side and he built up his group, and we just sort of went our separate ways clear up through high school. The last two years I was in high school, the first two years he was in high school, we did play together on the same football team. Other than that, when I think back, we had very little association and communication during the school years.

How do you account for that? Is it the age difference?

Well, no, I account for it for my going to one school and him going to another school, and each having a separate group of friends that we ran around with and killed our spare time with, one thing and another.

What kinds of things did you do in high school?

Mine was all sports. Oh, back in those days there were other things that we got intentionally interested in, like I devoted almost one year to-- This was back in the days when you could make a radio receiver by taking a round oatmeal box and winding it with copper wire and putting a slide bar on it. One of the boys who was in the group that I ran around with on the south side there, he was very interested in it; so we each built a little shortwave Morse code transmitter and built the receiver. He lived about eight blocks from where I lived, but across the river. We learned Morse code and had conversations back and forth. It didn't mean anything, but we thought we were on the same list with Marconi and the rest of the great brains who brought radio into existence. [laughter]

When you talked about saying no to moving to the north side, were you more independent from your parents than Ron was at the time?

Well, if for no other reason than I was nine years old and he was not quite six.

But, in terms of personality, was there more of an inclination for one or the other of you to be more independent?

Yes, I guess you could say that. My mother never called it independence; she called it brassiness. [laughter] Before we moved over to the north side, we had a big two-story house, the one that has now been designated by the state of Illinois as a historical monument, and a group downtown have bought the house and put it back in the shape it was when we lived there. Over the years, it had been divided and two apartments made, upstairs and downstairs. But the construction work has all been finished, and one of the things I'm going to have to do when I go back there this weekend is go up there and take a look at it and say, "Well, you've got the door in the wrong place," or something like that. I don't think that'll happen, because they sent me the architect's drawings out of the house as it existed with the two apartments, and I marked in red ink the walls that were to be taken out, the stairway where it was to go. It had been changed in order to accommodate the upstairs apartments; the upstairs stairway had been changed. Several things had been changed; so it'll probably be pretty much as it was when we lived there. But they have put thousands of people through there, and in just the last few weeks, since it was well enough along that they could allow people to go in. So, I guess it's going to be quite a thing for the little town.

Are there any mementos or original furniture, any of that kind of stuff there as well?

No, no original furniture, but people, mostly rural people out around in the outlying countryside who have a lot of that kind of thing, have come through with furniture that dates back to the year when we lived there. So, they won't have any trouble furnishing [it]. It'll probably look pretty much-- In fact, if they were to start asking me about pieces of furniture, I wouldn't be able to remember, and there are no pictures or anything of it. What few pictures we had of that era were my mother's, and when she passed on, all of that stuff came to our home up in Bel-Air. When we burned to the ground in 1961 in the big Bel-Air fire, about all we got out with was, my wife grabbed a box of silverware and threw it in the car and we got out. We didn't save any clothes or--

--any personal things?

--personal things or pictures that went clear back to our childhood. My wife did manage to grab my mother's Bible, which had a lot of dates on empty pages in the back of the Bible of the family and relatives and pertinent dates. My wife did get the Bible. But we didn't have any time, so we lost it all.

And Ron didn't have any of it himself?

No, no.

Did you keep any scrapbooks since that time?

Do we?

Yes, of Ron's career?

No. We have now. [laughter] I'm glad we didn't keep any of his career up to this date, because we've got a room back here that we used to call a bedroom, now it's a warehouse. [laughter] Yes, what I'm doing is: I'm a member of the board of the college where we went, and I don't know how it's going to work out, because there's a lot of bidders, but this is a real small college (450 student body). But they have a beautiful campus, and the buildings there are all Illinois historical monuments, given that status by the state. It's an old, old college, originally owned by the Christian Church-- the same as Drake University, Chapman [College] up in Los Angeles, Texas Christian [University]. That church affiliation has almost completely vanished as far as those schools are concerned. But I would like--and I've already started a campaign--when it comes time to build his library, I want it built on the back campus down there.

This is Eureka [College] now?

Yes. I think it would be a great boost for the college, and being a member of the board of directors, I am always interested in boosts, financially and otherwise. So I have started quite a collection of material and pictures and so on and so forth to take down and give to the school library. I have to go down in October for a board meeting, and I will take a couple of crates of that stuff down there to at least get something started in the school library and then see how we make out with him and his presidential library later.

Both you and Ron seem to have had a close association with both the high school and the college. How do you explain that warm attachment for your schools?

Well, first of all, we have great respect for educators and education. Secondly, we came from a poor family, and for years if anybody would have said I was going to college or he was going to college, I would have just laughed. "No possibility." We got help on all sides and made it, and I guess so far we haven't been a detriment to the institutions. We've kept up a good relationship with the high schools there; up until recent years, teachers [who were there when] I went to high school were still there. They were a little doddering. But this man that I got word this morning that he passed away was eighty-five years old, and there are still members of the faculty back there. In later years, they built a common high school over on the river bank (it's on the north side), right along­side of the athletic field that was in existence when we went to school. They built a fine high school, and the man who was principal of the south side school when I was there is now superintendent of schools, and still active. I guess he's as old as Methuselah too. But, no, we had great respect, and even before I was made a member of the board down there, I always managed to make a couple of trips a year back there, the same way my wife is from Des Moines, Iowap and so some of her family are. stilLthere. We make two and three trips back there each year. I stanted in radio in Davenport, Iowa; so always when we get back there, as we will do this time, I rent a car and we drive over to Dixon and spend two to three days over there, and then on our way back to Des Moines, stop in Davenport, and spend a couple of, three days there. Gangs--

What did you just say, I'm sorry?

I said gangs of us, both in Dixon and Davenport, get together for lunches and dinners and tell untruths about how great we were back in those days. [laughter]

Ron, apparently, has been back several times too, for some reunions; so he shares that enthusiasm.

Oh, yeah, sure, sure.

They tell a story of when you were in college that Ron had an influence on your going to college, having left the steamer trunk in your room when you had not wanted to go to college.

Yes, yes.

Is that a true story?

Yes, I always say (when I tell the story) that when I graduated from high school, I was smarter than any college professor, so I saw no need for college. It was the height of the depression, and I fortunately got what for those days was a very good job for a high school kid. When I finished high school, I went to work for Medusa Portland Cement Company doing cost work. And nearly as I can remember, I was getting $125 a month, and that was in the depression. There were a lot of men working at the cement plant with three and four and five children who weren't making that much money; they were doing the manual stuff. But, I was doing very well. He came home at the end of the second year down at Eureka, where he had gotten a scholarship to play football, and he made the announcement that he had it all arranged for me to go to college--a scholarship for football, a job at the girls' dormitory hashing, and then he would see that I was pledged to the fraternity that he was a member of, so that all I'd have to raise was the $10 a month to pay for my room at the fraternity house. And I just laughed. His pride and joy was the steamer trunk that he had saved faithfully to get the money together to buy it, and when the day came that he was to go back to school, that fall, I got up and went to work. When I came home that evening, I dashed upstairs and there sat the trunk in the middle of the floor. As soon as I got cleaned up I went down, and my mother was out in the kitchen preparing "supper" (in those days). I walked into the kitchen--we never called our mother and father "mom" and "dad"; it was always "Jack" and "Nelle " I said, "Nelle, I thought Dutch was going back to school today," and with a tear in her eye she said, "He did, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. He left the trunk, thinking you'd change your mind." I laughed again. I went out to work the next morning, and Mr. Kennedy, who was superintendent of the plant and my boss-- And before I went in to my desk, why I told him this very funny story, and I was not aware that he wasn't laugh­ ing. About ten o'clock, his secretary came in and said, "Here's your paycheck, Mr. Reagan." I looked at the calendar and says, "Paycheck? It's not payday." And she said, "It is for you." And I said, "Well, do you mean I'm fired?" And she says, "Call it what you want to, Mr. Kennedy says if you're not smart enough to take the good thing your brother has fixed up for you, you're not smart enough to work for him." So that solved all my problems. I went out and headed back to town and stopped at the bank to cash the check and went home and packed the trunk and went to school.

Why did Ron want you to go with him?

Oh, I would have done the same thing if I'd have been in his position. I would have done the same thing as far as he was concerned.

Was it more for companionship, and he wanted you to be with him, or because he was thinking of your future, or--?

He was thinking of the future. I don't know how to explain it, but we didn't have what you would call great companionship. We had great understanding. I knew when he had down moments, but I never said anything to him. There was no such thought of, you know, putting my arm around his shoulder and saying, "Let's talk this over." or anything like that. But he was quiet. Well, the house on the south side, a big two-story house, had a barn. The downstairs part of the barn had just been made into a garage for a car, but there were still a couple of stalls there. Upstairs was just an empty hayloft. To this day, I can't remember what brought it about, but in some way I got interested in pigeons. I said something to my dad about it, and my dad brought horne a pair of fancy pigeons, pouters, and said, "Now, build a little nest in a couple of boxes and put them into the haymow, keep the haymow door closed for three or four days. Feed them and keep them watered, but don't let them out for three or four days. That way, when you do open the mow door, they'll go out in the morning and they might stay all day, but they'll come back at night, because now this is their nest." Well, over a short period of time, why, he bought two or three other pairs of different kinds of fancy pigeons; and, of course, as pigeons do, before long, when they carne back at night, a thousand others would come back with them. The first thing you know I had practically the whole mow up there covered with boxes nailed to the walls and had pigeons up to our neck. Dutch got interested in birds' eggs, collecting birds' eggs, and my dad got him an old glass display case from a store. He worked one weekend getting that thing up there. Then they put cotton batting on the floor of it, and that's where Ronald kept his bird egg collection. He'd punch a hole in both ends and blow the eggs, and he was climbing trees to get them out. This kind of stuff didn't interest me. Then I got to raising rabbits and built quite a hutch out back of the barn, where I had rabbits who ate the chunk [Reagan's own expression meaning, ate a lot]. Then I developed a little business. Come Friday night, after the pigeons came in, if there were squabs up there, I'd get the squabs and a bucket of boiling water, and I'd snap their heads off and clean them. I'd kill four or five young rabbits, skin them and clean them. Then I'd take a market basket and go out the next day beating on doors, and I never failed to sell all the squabs and rabbits I had in the basket. I built up a little business. I was the one who, then., would go down to the one pool hall in town that was downstairs under a store, where your folks couldn't see you if they happened to walk by on the walk. He would never do qnything like that. He would rather be up there, just gazing at his birds' eggs, and [had] no such thought of going into a pool hall. Actually, I guess you'd have to say--of course we didn't know the term in those days--that he wasn't interested in belonging to a gang, and I had my own gang. I'm often asked, "Well, If you went your separate ways like that, didn't you ever get into any battles and swap punches or anything?" I'm sure once in a while we must have wrestled out in the yard, but I can't remember an occasion where as kids we ever fought like even brothers do, where you threw punches, or anything like that, no. There was no question of, if somebody started taking picks on me, he'd stick in and if somebody started taking picks on him, I'd stick in. But on the other hand, if you were a casual ob­ server, you'd say, "Well, those two brothers don't have any association at all, do they?"

You mentioned the term respect, that you had a healthy respect for each other. Is this something that your parents inculcated in you and Ron?

Oh, now that you bring the subject up, it just seems to me that the association between Ronald and myself, that I'm trying to explain and don't know how, was about the same kind of an association that the two of us had with our parents. We got disciplined. I had to howl the other day when he had just had a set-to with Tip [Thomas P.] O'Neill. Tip had made the crack in, I think, a "Today Show" appearance that Reagan's tax bill didn't do anything for the people on the other side of the tracks. Later that day, I had grabbed Reagan some place as he was going into some meeting and told him about this remark. Reagan made the remark that he didn't know whether we lived on the other side of the tracks, but we sure as hell could hear the trains whistle. I just howled, and Dutch wanted to know why I thought that was so funny and I said, "It brings a very vivid memory to mind in the little town of Tampico [Illinois]"--where I will be in a week from tomorrow, where we were born. This is a town of only 800 people. There's just one block, a business district. It's all farm country. There's a big grain elevator there where the farmers all brought their grain to sell it. The railroad track ran right alongside the grain elevator, and just beyond the grain elevator was the depot. Right on the other side of the two sets of tracks--I have to get my direction here--south, was a little city park. It was about one hundred yards wide and probably two hundred yar.ds long, with the old Civil War cannon sitting right in the middle of the park, mounted on wooden standards. You could tip it up and down. Kids used to get out on one end and a bunch of kids on the other end and push the back end down and then let it drop with the kids on the other end, and they'd all fall off. Big excitement. Well, freight trains used to come in there, espe­ cially if there was grain to be loaded, the freight train would sit there quite awhile. One morning (I was probably five years old, not over five years old: Ronald was probably getting close to three), I took him by the hand and we went over to the park across the street from the house. We spent a few minutes in the park, and I took him by the hand and we got down on our hands and knees and crawled under the train. As we crawled under the train, I heard my mother screaming. She was on the front porch; so, being a strategist, I said, "We'll go down and play in the sand." Well, about a city block down from the depot, there were great big bins--open-topped--where a coal car full of sand would come in and be unloaded in there, and that was the sand and gravel that the lumber-yard sold to builders. So we went down and played in the sand until the train pulled out, probably an hour or so later. The freight train pulled out, and then I knew, "Well, there's no place now to go but home and face the music." We got about half-way through the park when my dad, who worked in the general store right across from the elevator, starts coming across the park, and he walks right on by us and says, "I'll see you as soon as you get home." When we walked in the house, there he stood, and he just reached down and unbuckled that belt and [laughter] pulled it out of those belt loops, and I got it. Ronald didn't, because he was influenced by me. But I just laughed when he made that remark the other day: "We may not have lived on the other side of the tracks, but we sure could hear the whistle blowing." It brought to mind the railroad.

So, you were explaining the kind of respect that you had for your parents?

Well, yes. You see, my mother and father, they acted. They had a little dramatic group there in Tampico, and they'd rent a set of Samuel French plays, or a play with several copies, which you had to pay a royalty on. On the second floor of one of the buildings there in the little one-block-long business district--it was up above a bank--they called the upstairs "the Opera House." They had folding chairs, and they had a stage, and you could probably put a hundred people in. They used to do plays. My first appearance on the stage was when I was about, oh, three or four months old, and my mother has told all about it many times. There was a play called The Dust of the Earth, and in it, there is a baby who is dying. My mother had pictures of it. They would calcimine my face so I would look like I was already dead, and she'd carry me on stage. She was my mother in the play, too. I don't remember the plot of the play, but that was my first appearance on the stage. I was the actor back when I was a kid, long before Ronald ever did anything, other than the high school plays. The Knights of Columbus used to have a big benefit show every year in Dixon, Illinois. Generally, it was a combination of a story line and music, and they'd put it on at the big Dixon Theater there for three nights to raise money for the Knights of Columbus. I always was one of the leads. I was a song and dance man. [laughter]

What age were you about that time?

I was in high school, and for the two years after I was out of high school before I went down to college. There was an open stairway in the old house across the park. The crowd always came in there to rehearse. When we were just little kids, Ronald and I'd sneak down the stairs partway and look through the spindles on the stair rail at all the goings-on down there. When the rehearsal wound up at the end of the evening, my mother always had a big oyster stew, and they'd all sit down and have a bowl of oyster stew and crackers. It was a great sort of esoteric sport for us, because it would be between eleven and, twelve midnight. Here we were on the steps-­ any time they happened to look up and see us, we were skinned back upstairs. I think, probably, the association between our parents and ourselves was about the same as the association between my brother and myself. When I went down to school and was pledged to the fraternity, he showed no mercy, because that was back in the days of paddles, and they drilled one-inch holes all over the paddle so that you got good blood blisters when they laid it on. When I was a pledge, any time I heard the shout, "Assume the position, Reagan," and grabbed my ankles, when they each took their whack, I knew that the whack I got from him was gonna be worse than the others, because he felt he had to, otherwise they'd accuse him of showing partisanship. So I took a lot of abuse during my first semester of my freshman year in college, mostly from my brother. [laughter]

So you were pledged to the same fraternity?

Oh yeah, yeah.

But you were the older brother.

Yes.

Who had more influence on whom during those days?

Well, I'm always asked that question, and you know, it's a funny thing, and I guess I've really never gotten over it completely. I automatically became the younger brother.

Can you explain why?

Oh sure. I mean when I went to college, he's two years and some months younger than I am, and he's two years ahead of me in school; so when I was a freshman, I was a freshman as far as he was concerned. And, like I say, I don't believe that he thought that that's what the rule books should read, he just didn't want to appear as being overly considerate of me, so they could charge him with, "Oh, brotherly love!" No, I assumed the position of the younger brother, and that carried on for a while.

When I finished school, I really had it in my mind to go up to Northwestern University, in Evanston, with the downtown campus, the law school, in Chicago, to study law. The summer after I got out of school I got a call from him. He was by that time in Des Moines, doing radio; he had started in Davenport. I got a call from him. A friend of his--Ronald was going with a girl from Dixon at that time--and this chap married her sister. They were through school, and they went down to central Illinois, and he became an automobile dealer, Nash automobiles. I got a call from Ronald, who was out in Des Moines, and I was back in Dixon. I'd been up and talked to them at Northwestern. While I should have done that a year before, they said, "Well we think we can fit you in." So, I must have been pretty convincing in my love for law to have gone up just the summer before I wanted to start that fall to law school. But they finally said yes, it could be arranged.

I got this call from him and he said, "I just bought a new Nash convertible. Would you go down and pick it up and drive it out here. I'll send you some money for a hotel and gasoline." I said OK. Then he says, "Plan to spend two or three days out here and see the station and meet the guys at the station." And I said OK.

So I drove the car out. He had an apartment near Des Moines, and I was taken down the first morning and introduced around to the people. There was a favorite place out west of town called Cy's Moonlight; so that evening we went out to Cy's. (Ronald's picture was mounted up back of the bar there for many years.} Back in Iowa, during those days, so soon after the end of Prohibition, Cy's was one of the places just outside of Des Moines where you could always get a drink, Prohibition or no Prohibition. But everybody in Iowa, at that time, drank near beer with a spike of alcohol on the top, and they'd put their finger over it and tip it upside down to get it mixed. Oh, there used to be great choral activities out there in the back room where you had to go. There was a great big horse tank, that you've seen sitting out in many a farmer's backyard, and these bottles of near beer--a string around [each of] them, and it was also tied to the rim of the tank--and all around the rim of the tank were bottles of near beer, uncapped. Big cakes of ice were floating in the water, so that the near beer was ice cold. Everybody would gather out around the horse tank and sing what we called harmony. Anyway, we went out that first night, and he introduced me to Cy's Moonlight.

We got up the next morning and went down to the station. I had met the program director the day before. He was born and raised in Scotland, and he had a Scotch burr you could cut with a knife. The morning after the first day, we went. down to the station, and he said, "I want you to meet so-and-so" (it was one of the an­ nouncers), and he took me into the studio. Now, I'd never been in a radio station in my life until the day before; so I knew nothing about terms or locations or what any of this meant. We walked into, what turns out to be the booth of this one studio, and there's a fella sitting there looking out through this big glass window, and there's a guy out in the studio up in front of a microphone, and he's broadcasting a football game. He does that for two or three minutes while we're standing there, and then stops and says, "I'm number twelve," or whatever it was, and then, read a commercial for an oil company. Then the guy in the booth pushed this button and says, "Fine, now wait across the hall with the rest of the fellas, and I'll be over in a few minutes." And the guy walked out.

I was introduced to this fella sitting there, and we talked for just a couple of minutes. My nickname was Moon, and that's the way Dutch introduced me, "This is my brother, Moon." He says, "Why don't we have Moon do one of these?" And Dutch said, "Sure, why not?" And so Ernie says, "Could you go in and do three or four plays of a football game, an imaginary football game? Like, pick two teams, Iowa-Northwestern or Illinois­ Wisconsin or anything " So I said, "Sure." Being a football player and very interested in sports, I knew all of the football players in the Big Ten teams and Notre Dame especially. So I went in and I did Iowa-Northwestern, two or three plays.

He also told me, "When you get through, say you're number thirteen, and then read that sheet that's on the music stand there." So I did. When I was finished, I was just walking in the booth when I heard coming out of the speaker, "Bring number thirteen upstairs." And I said, "What the hell is this?" And Dutch says, "It's trouble, I can tell you right now." And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" And he says, "Never mind, come on."

Well, we went up to the second floor, and he rapped on the door. Now, I know it's the program director's office, because I was there the day before, and the word is on the frosted glass door. Reagan taps very lightly on it, and the door opens a little, and it's Pete [Peter] MacArthur, the Scotsman, and he says, "I'm busy right now, come back in a few minutes." And Dutch says, "No, no, no, this is number thirteen." At which point, the door swung open. Pete came out, pulled the door closed behind him, and says, "What kind of monkey business is going on? I've got men from the advertising agency and men from the Deep Rock Oil Company, the sponsor, and what kind of nonsense is going on here?" Pete already knew I was going home and going to law school; that was in the conversation the day before. And Dutch says, "Well, uh-- Now I could see that he's in trouble, so I say, "Well, look, what is this?" And he says, "Well this was an audition for an announcer on the Deep Rock Oil Company's 'Score Board of the Air' for the football season. A fifteen-minute [program]--about all you do is read the scores for today's games every Saturday evening." And I said, "Well, what does it pay?" And he says, "Five dollars."

Right away quick, Dutch speaks up and says, "Look, don't worry about it now. You can live in the apartment, that won't cost you anything. We'11 get by." And Pete says, "Well, look, we have a series, and it'll go on for years, of dramatized cathartic commercials. A man and his wife talking about this great physic, or two women talking about this great physic, or two guys, or a man talking to his son or his daughter." And he says, "Each one of those pays five dollars, and there's three a day, and I'll see that you get at least five a week. Now, you've got thirty dollars a week." And I says, "OK, I'll forget about the idea of law school."

So, you didn't even know that you were being set up for an audition?

No.

Did Dutch know you were being set up?

Oh, sure, sure.

Well, I mean, did he set it up? Was this all planned?

No, no, no, I don't think so; no, it wasn't planned at all.

So, did he have any intention of your staying with him in the radio station?

No, no. So, I stayed and lived with him for awhile, and then we put together a show, the two brothers. On Friday nights during the football season, the two brothers would sit across the table with each other, and we had arrived at a list of games for the next day. I've picked my winners and why, and he picks his winners and why. If we both pick the same winner, no discussion. But if we pick opposite teams, then the Reagan brothers'fight would start as to who was right and who was wrong, as to who the winner was going to be tomorrow; and then the next Friday night, the laughs would start. The show would start with laughs. He's telling me how stupid I was to pick Notre Dame over Northwestern, and how they got clobbered, and then the balance of the show is the next day's games. The owner of this station also owned the home station [WOC] over in Davenport, Iowa. It was owned by Dr. [Bartlett Joshua] Palmer of the Palmer School of Chiropractic. Dr. Palmer's father, [D. D. Palmer], if you can use the expression, "invented" chiropractic, and they had a big school there--it's still a big school--but the station was right in the school. I was sent over there as sports announcer after several months in Des Moines. While I was over there, I did my stint as a sports announcer, then became program director, and finally wound up temporarily managing the station, which I had no interest in. I had made a couple of trips out here with my wife. By that time, Ronald had come out to Los Angeles; so we had made several trips out here, and I finally decided to come out. I went to KFWB as sportscaster for a while, and then became news editor and program director. CBS hired me from there. I was only at CBS about eleven months. Then McCann­ Erickson advertising agency hired me and I was with them for thirty years.

Could you tell me how you got into the advertising agency? I mean, what made you go from KFWB to CBS to advertising as a career?

Well, as I say, I was program director over at KFWB. CBS hired me as a director, which is what I was really interested in. But as a program director, you didn't do any directing: the directors worked for you and you told them whether they were right or wrong or good or bad. The program director had very little contact with talent, so CBS came over and hired me as a director. I was directing a show one day for Edwards Coffee Division of Safeway Stores, up in San Francisco; the show was being done down here. There was a kind of a little thing that could have been a disaster.

Jack Bailey, of "Meet the Mrs." fame in radio and television, was working for CBS as an announcer, and he was the master of ceremonies on this show that I was directing, and I was having trouble with Jack. We were very good friends, but he loved to tease--I guess you'd call it. When I'd give him the signal to wind up whatever he was doing and get the show off the air, he loved to just look away from me in the window and keep right on going, right down to the very last tick of the clock, before we would get cut off the air. And then I would probably be asked by the program director at CBS, "How come you ran the show over?" So, I told Jack one day, "Jack, you know what I'm gonna do? The next show, if I get this, I'm just going to very calmly walk out of the booth, walk right up and step right in between you and the microphone and take the show off the air. You remember, I started in this business as an announcer."

Well, right at that time, there was a new program director for the West Coast who was coming out from New York. There'd been all kinds of stories about what a real tiger he was. No fooling around, no nothing. But many of us didn't know whether he was here yet" or not. Certainly I had never met him if he was here. They had said he's a great big giant of a man and ooh, ooh, ooh. The show goes on, and then, _about five minutes after the show goes on the air, in walks this giant of a man and sits down in the booth very quietly. Now, there's a timing gal, the show's secretary, the engineers, and myself, so it's pretty crowded. The thought goes through my mind as this big guy comes in, "This must be the new program director. Wouldn't it be funny if one of his slaves turned around and says, 'I'm awfully sorry, we don't allow visitors in the booth, you'll have to get out.'" [laughter] Then I thought, "No, I'd better not." So I didn't.

Now, Bailey gives me the same thing at the end of the program, and I just turned around to the engineer, who was aware of what I had told Bailey, and I said to the engineer, "Well, the time has come to really set him up. You're in command here. When I get in between Bailey and the microphone and sign the show off, just close the key, and flip the micro­ phones off." Before I could get out, Bailey sees me [getting] up out of the chair and heading for the door of the booth and very quickly signs the show off. It's all over, and this guy gets up and walks out. The big guy never said boo.

Later that day, I get a call, and it was a man who says, "My name is Clare Olmstead, you don't know me. I'm the manager of the McCann-Erickson office here in Los Angeles. I'd like to have lunch with you." I said, "OK, fine," "Well, meet me at the Derby, tomorrow noon at twelve, the Vine Street [Brown] Derby." I said, "OK, fine." I met him, and here it's this guy: he was in the booth that day. And before we're through, he says, "I've got a very big show coming along, and I'd like to have you take over the direction on it." With John Charles Thomas, a sixteen-voice-male chorus, :Victor Young and a seventy-two piece symphony--one hour weekly--Ken Darby Male Chorus and John Nesbitt, who back in those days did the famous five-minute "Passing Parade" shorts for MGM. And John was going to do a three-to-five-minute "Passing Parade" spot in this show. It was for Westinghouse, and the money he offered was up managing retire, and successful. so fabulous. Well, stayed, and I wound the office after Mr. Olmstead decided to stayed there thirty years, very successfully. [laughter]

To get back to Reagan--my one big triumph was, that I produced the "Death Valley Days" shows, and the old boy who was, at that time we called him The Old Ranger, who was the host on the show, he got to the place where he was so old that it took more time for us to shoot the forty-five second opening and forty-five second close with the Old Ranger than it did to shoot the half-hour show. Put three words together, and he couldn't remember the middle word, or maybe the last word. It got to the place where you couldn't go on with it; so the client, U. S. Borax, agreed that we're going to have to replace him. Well, the question becomes, now, who?

Well, Reagan had just finished the General Electric contract and wasn't doing anything. I was not particularly disturbed because I didn't think that he needed money, but I knew that he probably had some thoughts about doing nothing. Kind of a' little punch in the chin after being so active that it might hurt his pride, so I suggested to the client, "What about Reagan?" He said, "Oh, if you can get him, you're damned right."

[laughter] Did he know you were his brother?

Oh sure, oh sure, oh yeah. So, I went to him and asked him, and he said, "No way, I don't want to do anything, I don't want to do anything." But I kept after him and got turned down for over a period of a few weeks. Finally, it got to the place where I was going to have to do something. Then I got the brilliant idea, "Why don't I go to his agent? Because his agent doesn't make anything off of him if he isn't working." So I found the man who needed money, besides Reagan. So I went to Bill Meiklejohn, who was the man who had originally taken Reagan out to Warner Brothers and got him a contract, the first contract that brought him out here. After getting him his contract, Bill sold his agency to MCA [Music Corporation of America], the biggest in the business, or one of the biggest, and Bill was with them for several years. Then he left and set up for himself again, but wasn't doing very well; so I had a good strategy all worked out.

I went to Bill, and I told Bill that I'd been talking to him [Ronald]. I told Bill what the results were, and Bill says, "Well, leave it to me." So, I walked into the Derby one day. I ate lunch there every day and had my own booth right up at the front (if you know the Derby, as you came in off the parking lot around into the dining roo,the first booth as you turn the corner). Two or three guys happened to be standing there, and I stopped to talk to them, fellas I knew, when over my shoulder I heard a voice say, "If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have to be here this noon, dressed up with a tie on." And, of course, I knew it was him [Ronald]. I says, "What do you mean, because of me?" He says, "I'm having lunch with Bill Meiklejohn." I said, "Well, good, I hope he's got something for you."

Well, they went over and had lunch. Pretty soon, Bill comes over. Ronald wouldn't even come around by the booth. Bill comes over and says, "Go ahead and write the contract up and send it out to him. He'll sign it." I did. Anyway, about two days later--and I'll show you the windup of the gag. Have you ever been in the Derby on Vine Street?

Yes.

Well, he doesn't have a caricature there on the wall. Two or three days later, he came in, and I was sitting in the booth, and he came over and stood there talking to me, and kind of shoving the knife into me about the trouble I'd gotten him into and so on and so forth. And [Robert H.] Cobb came over, and he says, "I'd like to have a photograph of you two guys for my office upstairs. Don't leave after you're through with lunch. I'll have the photographer come down from up in the office upstairs and catch you two guys for a picture." I'll show you the picture that was taken. I needle him every once in a while that he's never had a caricature on the wall in the Derby, he never was that big an actor. In my booth, the whole wall back of it in a panel, are caricatures, and one line has Clark Gable, William Powell, Pat Buttram, and Neil Reagan. Every once in a while I call that to his attention: "Don't forget, I've still got my picture on the Derby wall, and you never did." I'll show you the picture; I've got it out here in the den.

OK.

But, it worked out all right. He was happy. There was a little method in my madness that transcended the "Death Valley Days" thing. It kept him in the public eye for what I figured might be helpful if he ran for governor in a couple of years.

Did you really have that in mind?

Oh, sure I did.

Did he ever have that in mind at that time?

I don't know. I've never really asked him, and I've never thought about it. Let me put it this way. First of all, you should understand that I was a registered Republican about six months after [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt's first inauguration. He was not a registered Republican until some time during the first year after [Dwight D.] Eisenhower was elected president. He endorsed Eisenhower when Eisenhower ran, but he endorsed him as a Democrat.

On Sunday afternoon up at his house up above Sunset Boulevard--you could look down on Doheny Drive, the corner of Doheny and Sunset--every Sunday there used to be a big gathering of the [Jack] Bennys and the [George] Burns. Oh, usually there were ten or twelve people around there every Sunday afternoon, and then we'd all go out to dinner someplace on Sunday evening. If they were all out around the pool, in about thirty minutes, the Reagan brothers would have driven everybody into the house with our battles on politics. His statement to me always was: "That's the trouble with you guys. Anybody who voted for Roosevelt is a Communist." And I used to agree with him heartily, at which point he'd get the screaming meemies. [laughter]

But, I think, as a result of two things: number one, his activities with General Electric--because a major point of his activity was not the show; it was the trips he made to General Electric plants to talk to the employees out in the shops--that, plus the beating that he took mentally during the Screen Actors Guild strike [1946-47] with two of the unions. Not the Screen Actors Guild or the Directors Guild or anything like that, but two of the labor unions, you know, where it got down to the place where this was the first time he ever saw any bunch of pickets swinging three-foot lengths of log chain at people's heads who were just trying to go in- and go to work, whether they were in the office or where they were. It finally brought him around to the place where he thought maybe the country needed some changes, but he held out a long time after the suggestion was made to him that he run for governor.

The group that got together, Cy [A. C.] Rubel, who was at that time chairman of the board of the Union Oil Company, and Holmes Tuttle--familiar names. Every time Reagan gets a newspaper story, they have to put them in, too. They saw fit to include me in their group during the long sessions up at the house, which used to start at eight o'clock in the evening and wind up at three and four the next morning, talking to him about running for governor. He was very noncommittal.

Why did they ask you to join them?

Because I was his brother.

And they thought that you would have an influence on getting him? I kept a very low profile for the meetings, but every once in a while he would call me or I'd call him, and then we'd get to talking about that. And then I'd say, "Well, you really ought to give it serious consideration." When he finally said he would 1 somebody in this group, I have no idea who it was, mentioned Spencer­Roberts. Now, in the meantime, I had said to him, "We'll handle the whole thing through the agency," meaning we [McCann-Erickson] would take the commission on the newspaper placements and the TV placements and the radio placements. Obviously, if I was going to work! [laughter] Somebody mentioned Spencer-Roberts. I didn't know who Spencer-Roberts was, but Ronald called me one day and said, "I want you to have lunch today, I don't want to go alone." And I said, "Where are you going?" Well, it was on whatever corner the Rexall Building is on, on Beverly and--

La Cienega?

La Cienega. This was a private club, south of La Cienega. I can't remember the name of the club [Cave des Roys]. It didn't do very well and kind of went broke, I think. But anyway, I met him there for lunch, and he told me to meet him at eleven-thirty. So I met him at eleven-thirty, and he comes over and gets in my car and says, "The people we're going to have lunch with won't be here until twelve. I want to talk to you." And I said OK, and he said, "Now, this is an outfit called Spencer-Roberts." "Who is Spencer­ Roberts?" "I don't know," he said, "somebody suggested that we might talk to them about handling the campaign. They've handled other campaigns." I said, "Well, I thought that I made it plain that this would go through McCann-Erickson." "Well, why?" "So I can keep an eye on it."

Well, any way, to make a long story short, [Stu] Spencer and (Bill] Roberts arrived. We shook hands around. As I said, neither of us had ever met them. Now it drags out, and one day, I'm called by Mr. Rubel and asked to come down to his office, to the Union Oil Company. When I walk in, all the boys are there, and they said, "Look, we've got to get off the dime. 'Ve've got to get things started." So, my quick answer was, "Who's been sitting on the dime?" And they said, "Well, what are we going to do about Spencer-Roberts?" "Well," I said, "hire Spencer-Roberts. Don't forget, the campaign is going through the office. They're not running it; they're working for us, for you, for him." And Cy says, "Well, how do we go about that? I can't get them off the dime to do anything. They can't give me a figure as to how much they want, or anything else." I says, "Well, it's very easy. When do you want them to give you an answer?" He says, "Today." And I said, "All right, can you fellas"--this was in the morning--be back up here at, say, ,three o'clock this afternoon?'' And they said, "Well, what for?" And I said, "Because I will leave here and go down to Spencer-Roberts and tell them they have from now until three o'clock to get up a budget for their part in the campaign, and be here at three o'clock to present it to you, and then you say yes or no." They said, "Well, at least that's action. Go ahead."

So I left and went down and told Spencer-Roberts-­ we still don't speak--that they had to be over there at three o'clock. I said, "I'll wait down in the lobby to take you up to his office... because they'd never been up there. Actually, they had never met Mr. Rubel. They'd met Holrnes.Tuttle and a couple of the others. So, at three o'clock that afternoon, why they walked in and I took them upstairs, and before they were through, why, they had a contract.

Why was Spencer and Roberts taking their time?

Well, they couldn't figure out how they were going to fit in with McCann-Erickson, because we were going to write the TV spots, we were going to write the radio spots, we were going to write the newspaper ads. So, it wound up that they took care of the purely political, what should I say, contacts. We took care of the media writing and the media placement.

I wanted to ask you about that, because in reading about Spencer and Roberts, there is a lot of concern about how Reagan would portray himself to the public, to his audience. And there was a lot in the image making, that Ron was new at politics, and that he needed a lot of information and help in learning how to talk to the people about politics. Is this an incorrect summation, or--?

Oh, I think that's good newspaper copy, yeah--

But?

--probably mostly engendered by Spencer and Roberts. I don't have any doubt about it. Without going into the big long story that I just went into to them, but I often get asked, "How do you account for your brother's success in getting elected governor twice, and now getting elected president, and one thing and another?" Well, the question was asked of me, not once but several times after these all-night meetings up at his house.

A lot of the questions that were asked of me were in the vein of what you've just said, you know, he's got a lot to learn, and one thing and another. And I said, "Well, he might have a lot to learn, but he does have the most important thing: there isn't a better communicator in the business. Not a better communi­ cator in thebusiness." Here's a guy-- [inaudible] You say, "Well, he was elected governor twice, and now he's elected president." Also, just about as tough as any of those, he was the only person ever elected president of the Screen Actors Guild for six years in a row. There have been some two-term presidents, but no six-term president, no three-term president. How? Why? Because, if you've ever got-­ what's the word I want to use? I should have gone to school--a composite of the great American people, fill up a room with a bunch of actors (when they don't have their makeup on), which includes extras, right on up to the top-money actors. There wasn't anything you had to teach him about communication. I don't think he even knows it. But, I was in the advertising business for thirty years, where every time you turned around, there's a Coca-Cola bigwig standing there saying, "Are you sure this copy's right? Who are you going to use for the announcer to read the commercial?" and so on and so forth. And your answer has to be, "Look, don't worry about it."

You know, I've fought my way through little things like-- What's the dame's name, she's a kind of consumer advocate that appears on the "Today Show" every once in a while? [Betty Furness] We had her doing Westinghouse commercials, and I fought my way through the time when she couldn't get the refrigerator door open. (They were doing live shows and live commercials then; they weren't filmed.) She gives two or three yanks and then turned around right into the camera and said, "I can't get the goddamned door open." Coast to coast, you know. Well, of course, the phone started jangling right then from over in Ohio, at the Westinghouse offices. And she was getting $100,000 a year.

So I think I know pretty well who makes a good communicator and who doesn't make a good communicator, and he's one of the best. Or don't take my word for it, just get ahold of some General Electric offical and say, "Do you think. Reagan was a good communicator? You had him on the payroll." They'll tell you.

Some people have said, during his campaign, that he was a manufactured candidate. But that's just good copy as you say, and--

Now, just a minute. I'll give you one little instance. Lyn Nofziger is a pretty good politician. In the first Reagan campaign for governor, one of the first treks that we made-- We got into Fresno, and this is like the second or third day of the campaign, and I can't even remember the group that he was to speak to. But it was out at a hotel for lunch. We went down to Fresno State [California State University Fresno] campus, to start with, like ten-thirty in the morning, and then from there we're going to the hotel. We drive in underneath this porte cochere, over the driveway in front of this hotel. The bus is not only loaded with Reagan campaign people, but also the press, because there's only the one bus. We didn't have any money for two buses.

Lyn jumped off the bus and says, "Everybody sit quietly, I'll run in and case the joint." He came back in about thirty seconds, just took a couple of steps up onto the bus and faced the bus and said, "Everybody relax. There's been a breakdown in the kitchen, and we'11 be about twenty minutes late. So just sit and relax." The air-conditioning [in the bus] was on and everything was comfortable.

So I thought, well, I think I'll go in and case the joint myself. Well, I get in, and as you turn right out of the lobby, here's your great big area. Over on this side are double doors into the banquet room, and on this side is the bar. And you can't push your way into this--it is a huge area--the bar is absolutely loaded. They're standing like this, you know, so they can drink in this open space between the bar entrance and the banquet room, because they won't let them in.

I thought, Lyn is not right, because what's going to happen when we get in there is everybody's going to be seated, and they'll bring Reagan in from the back onto the stage where the head table was. He'll be introduced, he will speak, and then he'll go out. There's twenty minutes here with nothing to do but sit on the bus, when we can be making hay with it. We'll bring him in here. Let him mingle with these guys. There's no bad actors in here; they all paid money for the lunch. So I went out and I just whispered in Lyn's ear, and Lyn said, "Well, you're his brother," So I said, "OK, everybody off the bus, we're going in. It's crowded. You'11 have to push your way around, but at least, in twenty minutes before they open up the doors, you can get up close enough to get a beer." I was talking now for the press. We walked in, and you've never seen a thing in your life--he did better in that mob. Guys were standing over in the bar and hollering above other people's heads, "Bring him over here, we'11 buy him a beer," and you know, and reaching over like this to shake his hands and one thing and another. And he wasn't even governor; he was just running.

We all spent the whole twenty minutes in there, until finally somebody pushed those doors open and said, "We're all ready." Everybody filed in, and then he walked right down among them and up the steps at the end of the stage and up to where he was going to be seated at the head table. He didn't have to have anything built. There were times when, yeah, you had to take ahold of his arm and whisper in his ear and say, "Look, keep your lip buttoned up. See the guy over there with the red hair? Don't open your trap to him." And you also had to do that with him as far as some of the people in the press were concerned.

But--I wish I could think of his name, he's now retired, but he was a political editor for the Los Angeles Times; we became very close friends as a result of Reagan's first campaign--Carl [Greenberg]. Isn't it awful? Anyway, Reagan's going to make his first big speech at a high school out in the Valley. It's going to be on statewide radio. I don't know about television, but I know it was on the radio. It could have been television, too. The main part of it's going to be on the Central Valley Water Pro­ ject. We get out there that evening, and Carl comes up to me and says, "Neil, where are the handouts?" And I said, "There aren't going to be any handouts." Arid he says, "No handouts? You mean your brother is going to take twenty to thirty minutes on the platform talking about the Central Valley Water Project, which means acre-feet of water figures, money figures, time figures, everything else, and he doesn't have a handout?" He said, "In the first place, what the hell are we going to work from?" I said, "Well, work from the same thing he works from." He says, "What's that?" I said, "Well, he's got four or five three-by-five index cards. Whatever he says, just put it down, and you've got all the figures." "Oh," he says, "he'll never be governor. In this one speech, tonight, he can cut his own throat a thousand times by saying the wrong things and having the wrong figures, having the wrong dates." I said, "Well, let's see what happens."

After it was all over, Carl came up to me, and he said, "I would never have believed it if I hadn't seen it." He has a photographic mind. Hell, I've been on the set out there when he was still in pictures, and he never took a script home to memorize the lines. He'd read the script get the character in his mind and what the story is, and one thing and another, but no studying to remember lines. No, I've been out there when you'd walk in the little dressing room on the stage, there'd be two or three grips and an electrician or two, and they're all in there arguing about whether the Cubswere going to go into the World Series, or whether Illinois was going to win the Big Ten, or whether USC was going to beat UCLA. All of a sudden you would hear the second assistant director's voice way over on the set from the dressing room, "Ronnie, we're all ready." Ahd he'11 holler back, "What are we doing?" The assistant director says, "Ninety-two, ninety-three, and ninety-four." And Reagan grabs the script and says, "I'll be back in a few minutes, fellas." And as he's walking on to the set across the stage, he's going like this--"Hold this, will you?" as he goes on by you and walks on. It's no secret, it's public information: he had a reputation in the picture business that they never had to do a retake because he flubbed a line. Retakes, maybe because the director wanted just a little bit different action or something. He never flubbed a line.

So, what you're saying is that stage management, in acting or in politics, is not the same thing as manufacturing something. It's not the same thing as building up an image that wasn't there to begin with. That's what you're saying. That stage management is necessary in any campaign. You have to tell someone how to do something and how not to do something.

Well, I don't say that's so with everybody; I'm just talking about him.

Right.

If that's not so with him, who built his image: Spencer-Roberts? I know of no instances where Spencer-Roberts locked themselves in a room with him for two days and two nights and says, "Now, this is the way Abraham Lincoln would have waved this arm and that arm." No, none of that.

I know Spencer-Roberts hired a group of behavioral scientists from BASICO [Behavioral Science Corporation] Stanley Plog and Kenneth Holden. I think they helped him out on the campaign. Did you know them?

I knew of them, sure. That's like saying you had to hire a couple of people to plant in his mind firmly, "After you're introduced, don't walk up and, as soon as the applause stops, start picking your nose and talking." You see, I was in politics long before he was.

Right.

I traveled with Barry Goldwater sixty-five days right across the table from he and Peggy [Mrs. Goldwater] on the 727 and did all of his TV commercials and all of his radio commercials.

For Barry Goldwater?

Yes. I was in politics pretty heavy back in Illinois. This was nothing new to me. There isn't anything Spencer-Roberts can teach me, and I don't like to say that. There are some things that I'm sure some political minds could teach me. .I'm sure probably Ronald could teach me some things now in the few short months he's been up at Washington. [laughter] And the funny part of it is, you know, he doesn't like to come to me and say, "Look, what do you think?" And I don't like to go to him and say, "Look, what do you think?" Because I don't want him to feel that I need any of his help, and he doesn't want me to feel that he needs any of my help. But we have our own little subtle ways, built up over the years and years and years of association. [laughter] You know, we've played little games. I can remember one time I was out, and he was in an organization back in Hollywood that was as bad as you could get: Hollywood [Independent] Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences, and Professions IHICCASP]. And I used to beat him over the head, "Get out of that thing. There are people in there who can cause you real trouble. They're more than suspect on the part of the government, as to their connections that are not exactly American, and one thing and another." Now, in those days, I was doing little things for the FBI. You know, "Neil, we'd like to have you go out and lay in the bushes and take down the car numbers off of the cars that are going to be at this little meeting in Bel-Air. Put it in a brown envelope, no return address. And always remember, if you get caught in the bushes, you can just forget about saying, well, you're doing this for the FBI, because we'll just look him right in the eye and say, 'We never saw the guy in our lives. Forget it."

I talked to him and talked to him about this organization. One evening he calls me--evening, hell, it was about midnight--he had stopped up at the Nutburger stand (there was a Nutburger stand at the corner of Sunset and Doheny at the time, across the street from the drugstore). He says, "I'm having a cup of coffee, come on up." I said, "Do you know what time it is?" "Yeah." "Well, I've been in bed for three hours. Have your coffee and go on home and go to bed." "No, I want you to come up." And I said all right; so I put a pair of trousers on and a shirt and drove up the hill. Here he is parked. I got in, and--he's a member of the board--he says, "You wouldn't believe it. It just came to me tonight. We have a rule that if a board member misses two meetings without being excused, you're automatically off the board. There's a gal out at the such and such studio," and he says, "I've been a little sus­ picious of her. All of a sudden, we had one of these cases come up tonight, that so-and-so had missed two board meetings, and so they were off, and now we've got to find somebody else. It suddenly dawned on me that over the last several months, every time one of these cases came up, she had just the individual that would be excellent as a replacement. I managed to filch the minute books before I left. I can show you the page where her board members became a majority of the board, with her replacements."

I just looked at him and said, "Junior, what do you suppose I've been talking about all these weeks and weeks and weeks?" He looks me right in the eye and says, "Why, you never mentioned a word about anything like that." Those are the kind of games we play. I do the same thing to him. You know, he'll say, "How come you didn't?" And I'll say, "Well, you never said anything to me about it." "What about--?" "You never said anything. I don't under­ stand what gave you the idea that we talked about this." So it's just a game we play.

But I love it every time that somebody talks about the great amount of work that was done to build an image for him, and how we all made sure that lie didn't make any mistakes, which are easy enough to make, even if you're a Tip 0'Neill. There's fellows that've been in public office for twenty-five years, and all of a sudden, this election, they get their brains beat out. And somebody said, "Well, they made a mistake. They just didn't know." Well, if you don't know in twenty-five years, you're never going to know.

So, not being a politician, not having any experiences in the larger political arena didn't bother you, in terms of what you thought he would make as a governor?

No, it didn't bother me a bit. Now, there are occasions-- I guess about the third week after the inauguration as governor the first time, I was up there. There was a fellow, now on his staff, who had been on the;Goldwater campaign in '64, and I suddenly became aware of the fact that this boy had--I don't want to say, "shot off his mouth," but he did. Here is a job that has to be filled, and two or three people have already been told they could have it. And here's another job over here, and I found two or three instances of that. I went to Ronald and said, "You've got a real problem, because you've got some jobs to fill and two or three people have been promised the same job." He immediately said, "Don't tell me who it is, I know. I just became aware of it." Well, you can't say that that is immaturity. If he had done this, then I would say, "Yeah, you don't know your way around, making noises like two or three people getting--

So, you were saying, "If he had done that, then--"

Sure, he'd be in real trouble. I think that's why the subject of building a politician, I don't think it's a case of building a politician. Number one, I think the first thing you have to have is, as I've said, an ability to communicate. Number two, from there on, I think you have to build yourself into the job. Sure, you're going to make mistakes, and you're going to win prizes. Where other people can be helpful, where a Lyn Nofziger can be helpful, is not whether you are a mature politician, or one who is just trying to learn the game. You have to have a few trusted people who have ears and eyes and can say to whoever you're leading around with a ring in their nose, "Look, this person is poison. They cannot be of any help to you whatsoever." Now, this can be a person that is a fairly recent acquaintance, and they appear to have knowledge and a grasp of a particular thing. But you haven't been there long enough, and you haven't been aware of them long enough to know that clear way down here on the scale, as far as their experience is concerned, they've really stubbed their toe, stubbed their toe, stubbed their toe.

I don't care whether it's Spencer-Roberts, or Lyn Nofziger, or who it is--after you beat around the bushes in politics for a certain length of time, you've got quite a list of individuals that you can just automatically say, "They're poison, and you'll be poison if you get closely identified with them." Here's somebody else that you might not, as the politician, be taken with them, "Oh, great," but somebody that's beat around over the years can say, "Look, here's his record. It's not the kind of record that gets in the papers, but it's the kind of record that produces results for a guy in your position that you've just been elected to."

If that's what they mean by saying they built an image, but that doesn't build an image. Well, maybe it does if you want to say, "Gee, the guy's getting smarter every day. You know, he just now signed God up for six months as Secretary of the Born-Againers. That's a smart move." It takes a certain amount of that there's no question about it.

But to me, clear back from the early morning hours when he said, "OK, I'11 run"--for governor the first time--there never was a thought in my mind, "Well, now, we've got a great job ahead of us molding him." In the first place, he's too smart. Yes, I'll bet you that if somebody carne along and had a good presentation that really involved,in just plain English, changing this mold a little, he'd be the most gracious listener in the world. I mean, if it was a hokey thing, he'd be the most generous and gracious listener in the world, and they'd go out saying, "we've really got him on the hook. Now all that we've got to do is tighten up the line." At the same time that he's going out saying, "I don't know who they think they are fooling."

This spot that he's in now is altogether different than being the governor of the state of California, but I'd be very surprised if he ever got caught because of not being pretty hep himself. But also, he's got people around him that I know that are in the position to say, "Look, Doc, back off, this is poison." Or, "Let me show you how this will finally develop and work out to the place where you wonder how come you've got the baseball bat sticking out of your forehead, here." So I don't think he'll ever get caught like that. I don't think he could ever get caught in the position that Nixon let himself get caught in. Never. When Nixon put together his group, I could have given chapter and verse of some individuals who wound up there that never were going to get gold stars in their books for their accomplishments. [laughter] All they did was get their names in the register book at a couple of places that I don't want to see the inside of. I shouldn't talk that way, but--

Do you feel Ron had a good way of picking people to work with him that he could trust?

Well, look, that eight years up there in Sacramento, and who turned out to be bums? None of them that I know of.

Some went with him to the White House.

Some went with him to the White House. And I suppose there'll be a certain number of people that will say they didn't go with him to the White House, they took him to the White House.

Of these early people that you talked about, some of whom are still with him, of that Kitchen Cabinet, which of the people did Ron seem to really trust and take counsel from?

Well, strangely enough, I'm not going to name, well, I probably shouldn't name anybody, but--

I'm not asking you which ones he didn't, just which ones he did.

Holmes Tuttle. And Holmes, for example, right now, I guess, although I haven't seen much about it of recent date, but Holmes Tuttle was mentioned prominently as one of the Kitchen Cabinet that must be on his way to a federal penitentiary for some bank deal that he was in. Well, I know the bank deal, and Holmes Tuttle is just one of the members of the board of directors, and he holds twenty-five shares of stock in the bank. Really, there's nothing illegal about the business deal between the two bank . It was a question of a transfer of funds, and that's the principal reason why you haven't heard anything more about it. There was a transfer of funds from one bank to the other on strictly a legal basis--there was nothing illegal about it at all--and probably the board of directors weren't even talked to about it. It was strictly something that was done by the working force. Like I say, Holmes had to have twenty-five shares to be on the board of directors. He had twenty-five shares of stock. It was just a bank he did business with, among his four or five automobile dealerships that he had. And he was a big enough customer on short­term paper to finance the cars that sat on the showroom floor that it was good to keep him a customer by making him a member of the board of directors. They told him he had to have twenty,-five shares, and he bought twenty-five shares, and he became a member of the board of directors, probably figuring that he'd get better deals for the loans he wanted, but it didn't have anything to do-- [laughter] But anyway, Holmes Tuttle, Ronald trusts Holmes.

How about Henry Salvatori; were they friends in the beginning?

No, no.

Although he was a part of the group.

He was in and out; he was in and out. Obviously, the minute Reagan was elected Henry wanted to be sure that he didn't get hit by a streetcar before he was inaugurated, because the minute he was inaugurated, he was one of the great supporters and friends. But there probably was a time when he would have sat back and said, "It's a big mistake for him to run." He pulled out on Reagan in Reagan's second gubernatorial campaign. He wanted no part of it, no part of it.

What about some of the others, like Cy Rubel, that you mentioned?

Well, Cy passed away years ago. Yeah, I would say Cy was probably as well accepted by Reagan as any of them, and more so than most of them. Then there were guys that didn't reach the status of "Kitchen Cabinet" like Lyn Nofziger. None of these guys were great politicians you know. They got their lessons from the Lyn Nofzigers as to "What should we do here, and what should we not do?"

What about Edwin Meese?

Ed Meese?

Yeah.

Ed's a very talented attorney, to begin with, and he's also a smart politician. He's very helpful to Ronald.

And William French Smith?

William is, and he's also a very smart lawyer.

Of all these, which ones did you, when you first met the group, did you seem to have more friendship with, or did you like?

Oh, Cy and Tuttle and Smith. Smith came to me one day--oh, it had nothing to do with politics (it must have been years ago)--and said, "I've got a boy who just finished undergraduate school, and he wants to do"--I can't even remember now what he wanted to do--and Smith says, "I think he should go on to school some more. He has said two or three times-something about advertising, so would you talk to him?" So the boy came in, and I had a long talk with him, the crux of which was I just told him, "Look, everybody is not as lucky as I am, and it's a different game than when I first got into it way back then. I would just say to you that the smartest thing in the world you could do if you have any interest especially in advertising, would be to hike yourself right back to Harvard Business [School] and get yourself a couple of degrees there. Then you can just put them under your arm and walk right down Madison Avenue"-- the fanciful "Madison Avenue"--"And you can get yourself a pretty good job with a good future ahead of you if you've got anything on the ball at all, after those degrees." I asked Bill, back at the inauguration, about the boy. And he said, "No, he never did." But he got into something. For the life of me, now that we've started talking about it, I can't remember whether it was real estate or insurance, and Bill said, "And he's doing very well." But I can't remember what it was. Bill said he was just bound and determined he wasn't going to school any longer. He probably is thinking now what a great thing that it would have been, even if he winds up as the president of the company at the age of fifty, he probably will say to himself, "If I had of gone on in school, I could have been president when I was forty and retired by the time I was fifty because that's the age that they're retiring the presidents of all of these companies now. [laughter]

That brings up another interesting question: that is Ron's own children's relationship to him and his to theirs as compared to your own parents. They seem to be pretty independent, and sometimes they have problems, or the children are perhaps not going quite the way Ron would like them to go. How do you compare your relationship with your parents to his with him?

No comparison, no comparison. He's really not a demonstrative guy. I don't know how to put it. He was a great swimmer, but I taught Maureen [Reagan] to swim before she could walk. He didn't bother with her. In the first place, I've never been a lifeguard. Second, if I'd been a lifeguard, I doubt whether or not it would have made the newspapers very much. He's made pretty good hay out of it. But I took her in before she could walk, just picked her up out of the crib, with her mother screaming bloody murder, that I was going to drown this child, and so on and so forth. I taught her to swim. She could swim before she could walk. And [she] loved it, never cried, not in one instance; the first time I took her in, no crying. But I can't picture him doing that. Maybe that's because he's had three and then one adopted, and I've never had any. I've always been a real pigeon for children. It has nothing to do with this, and won't interest anybody that listens to the tape, but if a three-year-old were to come through that door right now and we both stood up, the three-year-old girl would come right over to me. And I'd pick her up, and there'd be no fright or anything. This very possibly goes back--in order to get Ronald involved in this particular subject--this goes clear back to when he was born. And back in those days, you weren't born in the hospital, you were born at home, in bed. When they came to me--I'd been sent to the neighbors for a couple of days--and now somebody comes over. I don't even have any idea who it was--maybe it was the people I was staying with --said it, "Now you can go home and see your baby brother." And I wanted to go the opposite direction. I went home, and for two days after I was home, I would not go in the room where my brother and my mother were. I didn't want any part of a brother. I had been promised a sister by my mother and father. That's all I wanted. I guess that shows you how early in life I determined not to be queer. [laughter] I was strictly a girl man.

When Bess and I lived in Los Angeles, when we first got there, we lived in a bungalow court down on Chantilly, just four doors south of Beverly Boulevard, on the west side of the street. In the court right next to us was a fine, elderly woman, who had a son in the navy. He was a captain. They lived down in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and they had a little daughter between three and four years. old. I'd never seen the daughter. The mother was killed in an automobile accident. The little daughter started crying because her mother was no longer there and she cried for seven days straight, to a place where--according to him, in conversation with his mother who lived next to us--the little girl's eyes were swollen practically shut. She cried day and night. The grandmother said, "Well, bring her back here, and let's see what I can do."

They brought her back here. She was here for two days with the grandmother and the son before I saw her. The evening of the second day, I was home from the office and the grandmother called and said, "I'd like to bring my son and granddaughter over to see you." So, the doorbell rang, and I'm as far as from here to the wall across the living room from the door, and the grandmother came in first, turned around, and introduced her son. Her son walked forward to shake hands with Bess first and then me. The little girl then, who was behind them and still crying, saw me and came across the room and jumped clear up here. I caught her in my arms. I had her the rest of the evening, and she went to sleep on my shoulder, no more crying. The son, now, wanted to say, "The second coming of Christ." You know, he just couldn't believe it. So then, the grandmother said, "OK, now leave her here. Mr. Reagan will be here, and maybe in a few days or a week, she'll get over this whole thing and begin to forget with him around."

I was with her every night. Grandma came over, or Bess and I went over there. I got to the place where I'd drive home out from Hollywood for lunch, so I could go over and see her, or she could come over and have a glass of milk with me.

Just last Saturday night, we went down to some friends' house in La Jolla, and there were several other couples, and one of them brought this little girl, and, hell, I spent the rest of the evening [with her]. Every once in a while, somebody'd make a snide remark about, "Well, there's going to be a marriage here, pretty quick." You know, I'd sit down in the chair, and she's sitting right in the chair with me. I think it all started back in the days when I was promised a baby sister and got this. [laughter]

But you can't see Ron being that warm to anyone in that way?

No, no, no, not at all. He's more the type that he thinks they should be on their own. And I never bring up the subject to him. If it was your daughter, I'd be a great one to say, "Well, when's she going to make the next appearance down at the Hollywood Bowl, or out in front of the San Onofre Nuclear plant?" [laughter] But I never mention it to him, because I'm pretty sure it probably hurts him. That's not my way of doing things to give him any advice. I think it's up to families to bring up families, and don't ask the relatives to come in and do it. [laughter]

I know a question that you must often get is how did Nancy [Reagan] fit into his life in terms of, let's say, influence over the children?

I don't know whether either one of them have any influence over them.

They're independent,that's it?

Yeah, yeah.

How about Nancy's influence over Ron through the years?

Well, I'm always asked that question in an interview, and I think I have the best answer in the world. Two people, if they get married and stay married, especially if they stay married, and somebody says, "Do you think Neil's wife has any influence over him?" The obvious answer to it is, if he says she doesn't, just laugh in his face. [laughter] I wouldn't admit my wife has influence over me in anything. In fact, most of the time when we get into any kind of a conversation that would lay in this field, my first remark to my wife is, "Tell me about the bank account you brought to this wedding, will you?" [laughter] I wouldn't admit she has any influence. I can't conceive of people who are married, no matter how docile the wife, or at least the impression the wife gives to the public, to acquaintances, as to how she's the little old lady that sits in the corner and the old man stomps around, or the old man sits in the corner and she stomps around and writes out all the directions for his next day--isn't true. I'm sure it's true. If he puts a tie on she hasn't seen, and she says, "I don't like that tie," I'm sure he doesn't ever wear it again, or waits for an opportunity when she's here and he's back there, so he can wear the tie and get his money's worth out of it. He !Ronald] has a little-- And he uses his favorite word, well. I'm sure if somebody really put.it up to him, you know, a good friend of his, and said, "How much did Nancy have to do with writing up this whole new budget plan?" I can see him now, start to pick his fingers and say, "Well, well," and then you'd get some kind of an answer, but after it's all through, you still haven't gotten an answer. But, I know what the "well" means. [laughter]

That's the prohlem. When you're reading the literature, you're getting strangers' views of Ron. You're not getting a family, or a personal viewpoint, because what a lot of people say is ridiculous. Even when you read it, it doesn't seem to make any sense; it's because they're strangers. They don't know him. Some people say that he's hard to know, people that work around him--from the literature, again--that he tries to maintain an aloofness, that you really can't know who Ronald Reagan really is.

And the funny part of that is--

Is that true?

Yes, but that's not true of Ronald Reagan. That's true of the whole group. The picture business does that to you. And he handles it very well, I think, now--well, not so much now, because the Secret Service is tougher now. But when he first got up there to Washington, you know, hell, he wanted to stop and talk to everybody that happened to be lined up along the sidewalk when he was going into an affair or a function. When you go into the picture business, it's the same way. When he and Jane [Wyman] were married, we'd go down to premieres. In fact, I used to handle a lot of the premieres. I got all kinds of pictures, and me with the microphone out in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, stopping the people as they came up, to interview the big names. We would go down, the four of us together, and then the three of them would go on in. But we would walk over from the car up to the front, and I'd turn her loose at the door, and, you know, people are reaching out and grabbing them and want to talk to them and one thing and another. All of a sudden, you learn, in a relatively short time, that if you're going to have breakfast tomorrow morning and you're going to see this picture tonight first, you can't do that with the people. You just can't do it. Your time is gone. You know, not physically, but mentally, she's got ahold of his hand when he starts to walk sideways, and wave and shout some answers back to the press that's over there. If she didn't have him mentally right by the hand, he'd be right over there at the ropes. And now, the people who have got the whole schedule to take care of are standing there at the door saying, "Well, here we go down the drain again. We've got to have an answer, and now we're going to be thirty minutes late."

So what you're saying is that he really is a personable fellow, but that his stature, his role, his position, in a way, keeps him away from people?

Yeah, and as I say, I think this started long before he got into politics. Oh, well, what the hell, I know him like the back of my hand, and he's been that way ever since the picture days.

So it's something that happens to celebrities, in general.

Well, look, we've got some of them that live here on the ranch. For example, I want to drop Bob [Robert] Young a note. He has a home here on the ranch, but right now he's spending all of his time up at [Toluca] Lake, over in the valley, where [Bob] Hope and all of them live around the lake, not far from Wilshire Country Club. Anyway, he's spending all the time at the house up there. I know Bob very well. Bob and I were members together at the Bel-Air Country Club for twenty-five years until he moved down here, and then I moved down after he did.

So, I went up to the post office here, which is all boxes (there's no mail delivery here). I got an old gal up there who I'd got an autographed picture from Ronald and Nancy for. I got one for their son and daughter-in-law who live over in Arizona--they are in the pottery business they make beautiful pottery-­ and they sent Bess and I a couple of cups that they made, with our names on them. They're beautifully done, with Indian designs. So I went in there yesterday and said, "Go back and look at the list, and write Bob Young's box number, because I don't have his box number. I don't want to leave it on the porch over there because there's no telling when he'll be back down here." They probably have something where they forward the box mail up to him, I don't know.

Anyway, when I kind of whispered that to her so the rest of the people in the place wouldn't hear, she said, "Oh, Old Smiley, you mean." He has a reputation: the only time he smiles is when he's doing a Sanka [brand coffee] commercial. And you know he's getting paid big money for that, anybody could smile. But the reputation he has among people that are acquainted with him but don't know him [is that] he's a sourpuss.

Bob Hope is just as bad as Reagan, stand off, and "Don't bother me, boys." And yet, he's not that way. Hell, I've gotten things out of Bob Hope for free that a sponsor on the show couldn't get from him for big money. And I've never been around Bob a lot. I know it's not on account of Ronald, because he could tell me no on some of the things I'd ask him for, even though I am Reagan's brother. No, we got acquainted mainly through golf, and apparently I didn't rub his fur the wrong way when we first started getting acquainted.

But they're all like that. You probably figure the people in the picture business have a right to a certain amount of privacy, but if you're in politics you've been bought and paid for. You have no right to be-- But he's not demonstrative, even before he was ever in the picture business.

I always say that Ronald is my mother's boy and I'm my father's boy; but he is my father's boy in not being demonstrative. When I was ready to graduate from high school--and we were poor, and I mean poor--the class decided and voted that for the senior prom and for graduation, the fellows would wear tuxes. There was no way. So, the subject came up one evening at home, for dinner, about graduation, and I just remarked at the table, "I'm not going to graduation," and my mother said, "You're not what?" I said, "I'm not going to graduation." And she said, "Well, there's no question about whether or not you graduated, is there?" I said, "No, I graduated; I passed everything." "Why aren't you going to graduation?" And I said, "Well, the class decided that the fellas were all going to have tuxes for the senior prom and wear the tuxes at the graduation." (In those days, you didn't wear gowns, or at least at our high school.) And that was the end of the conversation.

I worked part-time in the shoe store for my dad. I guess it was less than a week before the senior prom, and one afternoon, a Saturday afternoon, my dad says, "Let's take a walk." Business was not very good, so we started out walking. All of a sudden, we turned into O'Malley's clothing store. (The two [O'Malley] boys and Ronald and I were very close friends; in fact, one of them had me on the phone for about an hour this morning from Washington, George, the oldest one and my classmate. He is senior judge advocate of the Naval Appeals Court in Washington; he's been in the navy for years. They're going to meet us over in Dixon this weekend; he and his wife are coming up from Washington.) Anyway, we wheeled into O'Malley's clothing store, and, no questions asked, Mr. O'Malley says, "Hi, fellas, how are you?" He turned around and walked away, and went back into one of the cubicles where they had clothes hanging, and pulled something off of a hanger. As he turned around, before I could even see what he had, he says, "Take your coat off, Neil." I took my coat off, you know, and here was a tux coat. He puts it on, and he said, "Well, we won't have to do anything with the coat. I'll get the trousers. Try them on. We might have to shorten or lengthen them." My dad had talked this all over with him after the conversation at the dinner table one night and said, "I'll bring the kid in and fit him with a tux." Now, this was a sacrifice to my family, don't think it wasn't, even though it didn't cost probably over $25 in those days. But, that was my dad.

I can remember when we were little kids in Tampico, and I can remember very vividly--how the subject came up, I don't know--my mother saying, "What do you fellas want for Santa Claus to bring you?" I had only one thing: "I want an electric train." Now that was the furthest from the family's budget, even though they probably didn't cost very much in those days. My mother then started the campaign that maybe Santa Claus didn't have electric trains, you know; and this went on every day, some way or another, she'd get around to the subject, trying to soften the blow when I got up Christmas morning and there was no electric train.

The night before Christmas, boy, we heard the whees and laughing and all this noise. We sneaked part way down the stairway and looked across into the parlor (we had a living room, and then we had a parlor) where the Christmas tree was, and here's Jack with the train all set up on the track. It's going around the track--it was about this big. around [demonstrates]--the engine,one car, and this caboose is going around this track, and he's getting a bigger kick out of it than I was getting. We didn't dare let them know that we saw it. They found out later in life that we saw the electric train through the stairs. But that's the way he is, and that's the way Ronald is.

Like I say, we play a lot of games between us. Many times I could bring something up and say "You could be a hell of a lot of help if you would just do this or do that." I never bring it up to him, and strangely enough, 95 percent of the time out of the clear blue sky he says, "I thought you might like," or "I thought maybe you would want." Hell, when we went back to the inauguration, the whole family was at the Blair House, and there was no comparison between the suite we had at the Blair House and the suite that the yet-to-be-inaugurated president and his wife had. Everybody, all the rest of the family, with the exception of them of course, because they were the ones who said, "Put them here and put them here and put them here." The whole family was there. All the kids, you know, they came in and said, "Oh, you're doing better than the president's doing." [laughter] This was just a little gesture.

Just one last question before we close, and that relates to what you were just saying. In the ads that you put together for him, or the TV spots that you created for him, it said in the literature that it started a different style of campaigning, in that previously people would be out on the streets and shaking hands, and staying up until midnight and doing all that kind, but now, with this campaign, there were a lot more heavy TV ads. Does this relate to what we were just talking about, in a way, the kind of person that Ronald Reagan was, not demonstrative, the actor type, who would come across better on TV?

Well, no. That didn't enter into it at all. Going back again to what I've said several times, he is such a good communicator that my theory was--and they all went along with it-- I guess, maybe, some of them went along with it so that when I proved I was wrong, they'd get rid of me. See, but he took it, he took it.

I did the same thing with Goldwater, and I got hooked up with Goldwater through Ronald. Goldwater had another advertising agency; and all of a sudden, one day, I got a call from Ronald. (This was in the primaries.) Ronald said, "I told Barry Goldwater to call you. I think you can help him." I said, "What's the problem?" And he said, "Well, he's getting all kinds of criticism of his TV commercials." Well, the criticism they were getting--I found out--was not necessarily content; it was the production.

For example, Barry called me, and he says, "I've talked to your brother"--now, I'd never met him--"and he knows my problem, and he said to call you." I said, "Well, what is your problem?" And he says, "Well, I'd like to have somebody bring my problem over and show it to you. I'm getting all kinds of criticisms on my TV commercials." I said, "Well, Senator, first of all, let me say this. You've got an. advertising agency, and this really is not kosher for me to get involved here. But," I said, "as long as you're a good friend of my brother's, just as a friend of a friend I'll look at the commercial that you want to show me, and I'll tell you what I think is wrong with it." "Fine."

Well, he didn't come over. He sent somebody over with the commercial. We set it up in the viewing room, and here's Barry sitting on a davenport, with a woman here and a woman here. Now, what had brought this whole thing to a head was that this commercial was running and some woman over in Pasadena who was chunking a lot of dough into his campaign finally called him up and says, "I don't want that commercial to run one more time. I will pay whatever you spent for that commercial for you to forget about it. Then, I'll put up the money out of my own pocket for a new commercial to replace it."

Here sits Barry in the middle of the davenport between two women. The spot opens with the camera on Barry Goldwater and an announcer's voice-over telling you that Barry Goldwater's going to be interviewed by these two women. Then the camera pans over to this woman on the left, and then back across Barry to this woman on the right. Well, in the first place, that's a bad pan. After you get off of Barry, you want to show the two women and then go back to Barry. You can't do it with one camera, so you have to have two cameras, or shoot it with one camera and then edit it--intercut it--so that you cut out the pan from the woman across Barry over to the other woman. Then the woman on the left, the camera's on her, she says, "Well, Senator, it's often said 'so-and-so and blah-blah-blah.' What's your answer?" Well, the camera didn't pan from the woman over to Barry. The camera dropped down to her knees and panned across to Barry's knees, and then up to his face. And it went on like that. Well, first of all, let's say that you don't do a spot with three people on the davenport, because every time that Barry has to now answer this woman over here, he now turns this way, and you've got a great shot of his ear. Then, he turns back, and the camera pans off of him down across to her knees and up to the other woman's face, and she asks a question. Then, boom, back across the knees, up to Barry, just as he's turned his head over to the other end of the davenport, and you've got a beautiful picture of the other ear.

So I told him, just the way I told you now, "If the other spots are like this, you're throwing money away." So he said, "Why doesn't your office take the campaign?" And I said, "No, that's not kosher. If you want to get together with your people and tell them that you've got a critique of the spots that are being done, and then they all come to the conclusion that they're going to fire that agency, then I'll be glad to have you call and say you'd like to have this agency handle it. "But," I said, "don't do it until I call New York because I don't know whether our agency even wants to get involved in politics." So he said, "Well, you call New York, and I'll get back to you."

So I called New York, and they said, "Sure, we'll take the account." Then, I didn't even want to go out; in fact, New York said I had to go with them, and I said, "I don't want to." I owned a big boat down at Newport, and I got in the big boat and sneaked away the weekend I was supposed to join the campaign crew. Bess and I went down and tied up at the San Diego Yacht Club down there in San Diego.

You were saying that you were sneaking out, and they finally caught you.

Well, I think that the whole idea--to get back to Ronald--is that I was the most surprised person in the world that he told Barry to call me, because I always operate on the theory that he doesn't even know I'm breathing, and he's probably suspicious that I don't know or care whether he's breathing or not. But that's the way it's always been with my dad, and with Ronald and myself. Not my mother. She was not that way at all. I guess all three of us were cut from the same bolt on the male end. Many things happen--and my wife will tell you--and it's happened the same way to him, I'm sure, because I do the same thing. You know, out of a clear blue sky I'll get this, or he will say this, and I'll say to Bess that I was the most surprised person in the world--"phoo!" Of course, my wife doesn't feel that way at all. She says, "Why not?" And I do the same thing with him.

You said you had experience with the Goldwater ads, now, and when it came to doing Ronnie's ads-- You were going to lead to that.

Well, my whole idea was--and I sold Goldwater on the same thing--forget, like you say, out on the street shaking hands and one thing and another like that. Sure, that's very impressive to the guy you just shook hands with and the eight or ten right around him. If you've got a good communicator, I can take that same guy, and in the same amount of time, with 20,000 in Hollywood Bowl, or on a TV spot; and the 20,000 will get the same kind of feeling out of it as the ten people around him on the street corner while he's shaking hands with somebody or picking up the baby. And, in this day and age, as fast as things travel, I just don't think you can do that anymore.

I think the guys that are going to get elected in any election are going to be the guys that can say, "Look, I can drop right down and meet the people. I'm running for county board of commissioners, or whatever it is, and so today I'll go up to Rancho Santa Fe. It's going to take me thirty minutes to drive up there. I'll go up there, and I'll spend about an hour and a half out on the street, 'Hi, I'm Joe Schmo, I'm running for [public office]." When you're all through, you've spent [two and a half hours], all told, driving and on the street up there; and you've met fifty people. Now, I'd say, "Well, tomorrow, we'll go up to Escondido up here, and we'll do that. But we'll really get a big crowd. We'll go to the Sears Roebuck store, and we might run through fifty, sixty, or seventy people before we have to leave."

If you do the right spot, pick the right stations, by the time you're through cutting the spot, you've spent half a day. Now, over the next two or three or four weeks, you've probably shown your product off to 100,000, 200,000 people, depending on how big the market is you want to reach and how many outlets you buy. If you've got a good communicator, it's just as impressive, in fact, it's more impressive, because, 75 percent of the people you stop and shake hands with really don't want to talk about politics at all. About one out of every two or three, when you say, "How are you? Nice to see you," "I'll bet you know an uncle of mine, he used to live in Elephant's Breath, Montana, and he says he knows you. He even thinks you might be a second cousin of ours." You gotta be polite; so now you've killed another two or three minutes that has nothing to do with politics at all. It goes that way. Well certainly, there was no thought on my part of keeping him away from the public. Because, like I say, I was the guy that took him in right at the opening of the campaign into that madhouse there in Fresno. And I do that many times. If I'm out with him and we're going walking, I've grabbed him many a time and said, "Wait a minute, here's a guy I want you to meet, over here." It's somebody I've an acquaintanceship with, or something, and I drag him back there. He really is not like that.

For example, a gal called me. She married a fraternity brother of ours, but she was also the daughter of a preacher in the Christian Church, a minister, years and years and years and years ago. We've all kept up kind of a [correspondence], you know, maybe a Christmas card, but not every Christmas. If you just happen to think about it, you write, or if he just happens to think about it. Well, this gal called me on the phone from back in Illinois Monday and said, "Dad just passed away." Now, Garland [Waggoner], her dad, was a senior when I was a freshman. We played on the same football team together in high school. He went down to the little school where we went, but he was gone before I ever got there. And Ronald knew him. I called Ronald and just said, "I thought I ought to tell you that Reverend Waggoner passed away. His daughter just called this morning, and I thought you ought to know it." No, that's all I said to him, because I had no idea where he lived. I had no idea where the daughter lived, other than the town, and yesterday I get copies of the two letters from the White House, one to "Dear Riva," which was the preacher's wife, with a letter like you've never read before, trying to soften the blow, and a letter to the daughter--he never did know her--"Dear Mrs. [Enos] Cole." Beautiful letters, beautiful letters. Of course, me, I always have to have my joke, no matter how serious the thing is; so I handed them to Bess and says, "Oh, he's got a pretty good writer when it comes to writing condolence letters after somebody dies, hasn't he?" At which point, my wife says, "Oh, shut your mouth."

But, he's not pictured like the press would want him to be pictured. He's a very good boy, he's a thoughtful boy. He has a lot of emotion and a very good false front, which is protective more than anything else; but it's a protectiveness, like I say, that he was schooled in when he was in pictures. I've made trips with them when they were in pictures and went out for a personal appearance, and the press boys that went out from the studio, they were the boys that said, "Get away, boys, you're bothering us. No autographs, no autographs, no." The public doesn't stop to think that these guys are doing what they are supposed to do, they're not doing what you told them to do; "Keep these kooks away from me." If that were true, I wouldn't have the mess in this house like I have, or I wouldn't be spending all of my Social Security money for stamps, because I answer every letter, and I get them by the hundreds.

Even the little kids want my autograph. A little girl rang the doorbell, and I was just getting ready to get in the shower yesterday. I heard the doorbell ring, and my wife came in and says, "Now, put a robe on, you can't put this off any longer. This little girl has been here three times. She's about eight years old, and she just wants your autograph. She wants the president's brother's autograph, so put a robe on." This is the third day she's come back. I wasn't here the first two days. So, I went out--bare feet, a robe--got an index card (I've got a bunch of index cards), signed my name on it, and said, "What's your name?" She spelled her name for me; so I said, "Best of luck to you, Adrienne"--or something like that--"Neil Reagan."

I handed her the card; now I knew exactly what was going to happen when I handed her the card. It's not "Thank you, good-bye, thanks a lot," and leaves. "What's it like being the brother of the president? Huh? Oh. Does he like it in Washington?" You can't say, "Get lost, kid." These are the kinds of things that if you were in that business and had the publicity man or the Secret Service men, or whatever they might be, they would take care of that because it's a matter of time for them. Me, I can take a shower any time. So I stood out here in my bare feet and had a little conversation with her, and she was very appreciative.

I got a letter from a little girl down in North Carolina, written in a big scrawl, that says, "Dear Mr. Reagan, I want you to know that everybody in my third-grade class voted for your brother. I sure would like to have your autograph." So, I wrote a little note back. I can't remember whether she was from Charlotte or her name was that; anyway, we'll say Charlotte was her name. "Dear Charlotte, Thank you very much for your kind note telling me about all of your third-grade class voting for my brother. I think it's very nice of you, and,please, tell the class that I thank them a lot. And I hope that my name at the end of this little note to you will serve as the autograph you asked me for. Neil Reagan" About two weeks later, I get a double­fold card, obviously bought at a Hallmark shop, or something. It's just a nice design that looks like a church window on the front of it in color. You open it up, and on the right-hand side in gold lettering is a prayer that you would send to somebody to let them know that it's a prayer for you. On the other side of the inside, on the left-hand side, is a clipping out of the local newspaper; it's about two inches long, and obviously it's out of somebody's column, like Neil Morgan's column here in the Tribune or something like that. Below the prayer, the mother has very carefully printed--you knew it wasn't the little girl because it wasn't her scrawling--but as if it was the little daughter: "Thank you very much, and I have done as you asked me to. I've told the teacher, and the teacher let me turn around and tell the class that the president's brother thanked them very much for their voting for him. Sincerely, Charlotte."

This clipping, pasted on the other side from the newspaper column, was: "Charlotte So-and-so, age eight," or whatever the age was, "visited us in the editorial offices yesterday and very proudly displayed a letter that she got from President Reagan's brother, and the little note that he wrote thanking her and her class for voting for them," and so on and forth. It got about three inches in the column. She sent that with great pride.

Every once in a while, I say, "Look, I'm in over my head answering the mail." I don't have help; I do it all in longhand. I write so fast that I discover that in a sentence I can leave out two words that I, mentally, thought I was writing and didn't; so I have to do it over again. Anyway, I just feel that if people take the time to [write], even though it's silly--I don't mean the kids, but the older people.

I get some of the kookiest letters you've ever [read]--drawings of machines, "Please, see that your brother gets this. If he just gives me an OK, this machine will take care of the whole energy problem in the world." This particular one, I wrote him back a nice little note and said, "This is really not a matter for the president. What you should do is send this drawing to the Patent Office in Washington, and they'll tell you, number one, whether or not somebody already has a patent on it, or, number two, it isn't patentable. And that takes care of your whole question. It's not a matter for the president." Boom, you know, a phone call from Phoenix, Arizona "I got your letter, and I want to thank you, but I don't go along with you," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

About ten days later, the doorbell rings, and I go to the door and here's this little man, overcoat drags on the ground, a funny little cap, and a folder under his arm. He says, "I'm the man that wrote you about this machine that I want to build to take care of the energy situation, and I came over from Phoenix to see you." I said, "Sir, there's nothing I can do." I wouldn't let him in the house. "There's nothing I can do; I told you that there's nothing the president can do about this. This is a matter for the Patent Office, and you can get to the Patent Office just as quick as the president can." He says, "I didn't come over to talk to you about that. I came over to talk to you about a gang in Phoenix that's trying to steal eighty acres of my land in Arizona." And I says, "Well, how can I help you? You need a lawyer for that." "You and your brother can do something about it." I get them.

But, you know the funny part of it is, he was the same way when he first started in pictures. Every bit of fan mail he got, he tried to answer it. Finally, one day, he came down to my mother and father's house when Bess and I were there, and he said something about, "I'm in over my head answering this fan mail. I just don't know what to do about it." And my dad says, "Well, look, I'll go out and pick the fan mail up out at the studio every day, and I'll answer the fan mail." He did for quite a while; but when dad began to get in over his head, why, Bess and I answered a lot of the fan mail, too.

I can forge his signature pretty good. In fact, during the campaign, you know, the media have a strict rule, "money on the barrelhead," before they'll run your spot or before they'll print your ad. Well, being in the business, number one, the candidate has to sign the order, and then you have to send a check with it. An agency doesn't do business that way. If you're the client selling soap, after we've run your spots, why, we send you the bills we get from the TV stations. We send you the half of the bill that's got the gross amount, so that we don't keep reminding them that they're paying the 15 percent of the net. But I can't remember a time when we made ad placements or TV placements or radio placements where it says "candidate's signature."

I had deals with all of them. Two or three times, right at first in the campaign, I had to call my good friend, who is still vice president in charge of sales at the Los Angeles Times, and a real good friend of mine. I didn't pay any attention, [because] the media buyers placed the time orders or the space orders. All of a sudden, during the early weeks of the first cam­ paign, somebody came in from the media department and said, "Hey, we've got a problem. The Times got the order for the ad, and So-and-so just called from down there and said, 'There's no check with it.'" I said, "Well, OK, don't worry about it. Forget about it." I just called Vance Stickell, who was the vice-president in charge of sales, and said, "So-and-so down there just called and gave us the information that our space order for the next Reagan ad arrived down there with no check. And it's due to run tomorrow morning, what do we do?" And he says, "It'll run tomorrow morning, hang up." That's all, period.

But, no, this has been a long way around to just saying once again that he's not the kind of individual that you would believe he was if you read the magazine articles and the newspaper articles. Well, the best proof I know, and I still go back to it: he's as good a communicator as comes along the pike. About a week or so before the election, my wife began to say, "Oh, did you see the latest polls? Carter has come up twelve points or nine points or forty points," or whatever it was, and I says, "Look, don't you worry about it, don't you worry about it." Being in the business I was in, I'm a pretty good nose counter myself.

Right along toward the finish line, I then said to myself, "Watch how surprised everybody is when the press has to say it's a landslide." We go up [to Los Angeles] election day, and the night of the election, we all were supposed to go out before we went down to the hotel in Century Plaza. We all had to go out to--I can't even remember who; it's one of the Kitchen Cabinet--for a quick drink and dinner. So we were supposed to be there at four o'clock. So we got there at four o'clock. I'd be a millionaire if I had $1,000 for everyone in the crowd (there was about forty or fifty people there) that came up to me and says, "What do you think? How does it look?" So. I just very blatantly from then on said, "It's a landslide, don't worry about it, don't worry about it. It's a landslide, forget it."

They had three television sets in the living room, each one on a different network. And about the time that all three networks started shouting that they'd just gotten word that [Jimmy] Carter had been on the phone with Reagan, saying, "I submit"--it was still on the screen, they were all three of them going on that-- Reagan and his wife walked in the front door. So it had been some time before the networks got the word, because Reagan was just coming out of the shower when the phone rang, and it was Carter saying, "Congratulations."

So I was a big thing there for about ten minutes. Everybody wanted to buy me a drink because I was the only one that thought it was going to be a landslide. Some of them didn't think he was going to make it. It's a phenomenon. I wish I'd have had that same row to hoe with all the clients during the thirty years I was in the advertising business. I mean, the same success for them; but, of course, in some of those instances it wasn't personality you were depending on, it was a bad bottle of beer. {laughter]

Well, thank you very much I don't want to take any more of your time.