Free Landslide by Jonathan Darman

produce
Johnny North
as the first full-length feature made specifically for TV.
    Wasserman hired a respected film director, Don Siegel, to pull together a strong story and cast. Siegel threw out most of the 1946 picture’s story line. His movie would instead focus on a pair of contract killers who are hired to murder a former race car driver named Johnny North. The title character would be played by John Cassavetes, a young actor who’d played dark, sexy leading roles on TV and film. The lead villain and the elder of the two killers, Charlie Strom, would be played by Lee Marvin, a talented, if difficult, old pro. Strom’s coconspirator would be played by Clu Gulager, a young television actor. Angie Dickinson, the blazing sex symbol rumored to be a special friend of President Kennedy’s, would play the leading lady, a femme fatale named Sheila Farr.
    Only one supporting role remained unfilled: Jack Browning, an older gangster who plans the heist at the center of the film’s plot. Wasserman told his director he had an actor in mind for the part: Why not Ronald Reagan?
    Ronald Reagan?
Siegel was skeptical. He had known and liked the old B-movie star for years. But Reagan was a squeaky-clean actor who’d had a squeaky-clean career in Hollywood playing squeaky-clean parts. Would he be willing to play a villain, a dirty gangster in a dark suit? So far he’d resisted all entreaties, Wasserman said, but the part would be good for him. Maybe Siegel could be the one to finally talk him into it.
    Here the studio boss was probably stroking his director’s ego. Wasserman, who’d built his career in Hollywood as a talent agent, had represented Reagan for decades and taken a special interest in his career. He knew as well as anyone that since Reagan had lost his regular gig as the host of
General Electric Theater
a year earlier, there hadn’t been many parts on offer to him, villain or otherwise. Still, he gave Siegel the impression that Reagan would be a hard fish to catch. “I want you to talk him into playing that role,” he instructed his director.
    Siegel invited Reagan for lunch at the Universal commissary. It had been a while since the director had last seen the actor. The facewas still familiar, of course—not just to Siegel, but to everyone in Hollywood. Since arriving in the film colony in the late 1930s, Reagan had been a kind of student body president for the movie business—never the most famous or the most successful, but always well liked. Arriving at the commissary, Reagan smiled and lit up the room, greeting old friends. He still looked like a movie star, he was still handsome, still broad and muscular, still somehow larger than his six feet one inch.
    But he hadn’t been in many movies since he’d taken the
GE Theater
job in 1954. To Siegel, this Reagan looked different, more mature. And he looked tan: in recent years, he’d been spending more and more of his time working at his ranch, where he raised thoroughbred jumpers and hunters. “Horses are like people,” Reagan told Siegel that day at lunch. “Treat them with respect and love, and they’ll do their best to give you what you want.”
    Over Cobb salad, Siegel made his pitch for
Johnny North
. Think of all the big-shot actors you know who’ve played villains onscreen, he told Reagan—Peter Lorre, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart! It didn’t exactly hurt their careers. This character, Browning, was “the boss … well educated, charming, yet rugged when necessary.”
    “What kind of money are they talking about?” Reagan asked Siegel. The director demurred. “That’s up to you, your agent, and Lew Wasserman. But I know they want you badly. I’m certain the deal can be worked out to your satisfaction.” By the time the check came, it seemed that Reagan was coming around to the idea. “Surely you have no objection to Universal paying for our lunch, do you?” Reagan smiled and said no. Siegel knew the part of Browning was filled.
    The film