Reagan's 'Rosebud' (Ronald Reagan stopped the Communist Party in Hollywood)

Ricochet ^ | February 13, 2012 | Molly Hemingway

[Cincinatus' Wife]

All self-respecting Ricochet readers will want to go read this amazing story published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (!) about how President Ronald Reagan came to understand the threat of Communism in Hollywood and develop effective strategies for fighting it.

After cultivating a relationship with former movie-industry union chief Roy Brewer, reporter John Meroney obtained access to his voluminous archives filled with private correspondence, speeches, congressional documents, Communist Party newspapers, transcripts of testimony from executive sessions and minutes from closed union meetings. Meroney discovers Reagan's "Rosebud," as he puts it, since the information explains so much about why President Reagan entered politics, what animated him, what strategies he learned and how he deployed them.

Meroney uses these to tell a fascinating story about Reagan. Here's a snippet:

.........................."Reagan and Brewer convinced them to build a coalition across the partisan divide in their locals and guilds. That strategy essentially stopped the Communist Party in Hollywood."..................

The best part about this story is the note at the end of the piece that says Meroney is completing the book Ronald Reagan in the Hollywood Wars. My only complaint with the piece was that I wanted each anecdote fleshed out more and more. I will definitely be reading the book

There's also this mini-documentary that accompanies the piece, which I'll try to embed as well as link here. OK, I'm having trouble embedding it so you'll have to go check it out. In tapes that have been under wraps for 60 years, you can hear Reagan and Brewer discuss their battles with the Communist Party in Hollywood. It's utterly fascinating.

[cake_crumb]

Unfortunately, the communists and socialists only paused for a while. Dear lord, I miss President Reagan.

[miss marmelstein]

I recommend to anyone who is interested in this, to pick up Eric Bentley's superb book “30 Years of Treason.” It is simply the recorded congressional testimony of everyone from Adolph Menjou to Budd Schulberg to John Howard (the most notorious of the Hollywood Ten) as to communist influence in Hollywood, SAG and the Writers’ Guild. Bentley himself went from believing that everyone involved in this conspiracy was innocent to cynical dislike of the lies of people like Lillian Hellman, et al.

Please forgive my misspellings of some of the names.

[Reaganite Republican]

Actor Sterling Haywood called Reagan “a one man battalion”, and in Congressional testimony said the Hollywood strike had failed solely because “they ran into Reagan”

http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2011/02/ronald-reagan-100-portrait-in-courage.html

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This article also is excellent on Reagan, unions and his leadership roots.

The GE Years: What Made Reagan Reagan

[miss marmelstein]

Sterling Hayden sang like a canary before the committees (naming names) and then, in later years, dared to bash Reagan for his fight against communist influence in Hollywood.

An eccentric actor and a really cowardly guy. (Although he’s great in “Dr. Strangelove.”)