Free Reagan: The Life by H. W. Brands

1930s, when abundant evidence indicated that crime
did
pay.Prohibition had prompted criminals to organize, the better to assuage the thirst of urban tipplers who had never supported the alcohol ban and saw nothing wrong with taking a drink. Prohibition ended during Franklin Roosevelt’s first year in office, but the crime cartels carried on. Roosevelt’s attorney general,Homer Cummings, declared a war on crime and mobilized the newly named Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed byJ. Edgar Hoover, against it. The actions of the G-men weren’t universally applauded; in the depths of the depression popular sentiment sometimes gravitated toward flamboyant criminals like the dapperJohn Dillinger and the photogenicBonnie Parker andClyde Barrow.
    Yet the appeal of the outlaws simply intensified the pressure imposed on Hollywood by government and respectable opinion not to glamorize the gangsters. Government’s leverage was the threat of antitrust action against the studios, which oligopolized their market and stifled competition. Respectable opinion could orchestrate boycotts of theaters and films, as when the Catholic cardinal of Philadelphia, offended by a provocative Warner Brothers billboard, forbade his flock to attend movies. The prelate’s action got Hollywood’s attention. An industry executive recalled a meeting of top executives: “There wasHarry Warner, standing up at the head of the table, shedding tears the size of horse turds, and pleading forsomeone to get him off the hook. And well he should, for you could fire a cannon down the center aisle of any theater in Philadelphia, without danger of hitting anyone!”
    The campaign against crime segued into a fight against other challenges to the status quo. In a decade when capitalism appeared to have run aground, more than a few Americans sought alternatives.Communism appealed to many who noted that theSoviet Union, the homeland of communism, wasn’t suffering from the depression that had paralyzed the capitalist world. The fact that international communists were among the few standing up to fascism added to the allure of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Hollywood actors and writers might or might not have been drawn to communism in greater proportion than Americans at large, but they were more visible, and as a result their actions were more closely monitored. WhenErrol Flynn, Warner Brothers’ most valuable property, traveled to Spain to see how the communists there were doing against the fascists in Spain’s civil war, theHearst newspaper syndicate condemned him as a communist fellow traveler.Jack Warner fretted that Flynn’s career was over. “If any more stuff comes out in the American papers like this, the public certainly won’t want him,” Warner said. He informed Flynn how dire his situation was, and Flynn stepped back.
    The lesson wasn’t lost on other actors. Reagan’s Illinois upbringing and education hadn’t exposed him to much in the way of radicalism; his knowledge of communism wouldn’t have filled a short scene in a skimpy screenplay. Yet his early experience in Hollywood made him realize that whatever it promised for the rest of the proletariat, communism would be nothing but trouble for a studio contract player. He would stick with the forces of law and order, on screen and off.
    N O CODES GOVERNED Hollywood’s treatment of foreign affairs, but the studios nonetheless touched the subject at their peril. Theisolationism that had gripped the country in the wake ofWorld War I remained strong, causing American elected officials to keep their distance from the troubles of Europe and Asia. Franklin Roosevelt had been an ardent advocate of theLeague of Nations and other forms of American foreign engagement until the electionof 1920, in which he took the second spot on the Democratic ticket. But after he andJames Cox, the presidential nominee, went down to a disastrous defeat, in no small part on accountof the League’s unpopularity, Roosevelt