Reagan: The Life by H. W. Brands

beginning, and the Warner Brothers studio—Sam and Jack were joined by Harry and Albert—rode the rising tide of consumer spending and technological improvement in the years that followed.
    The studio’s first star was a dog, a German shepherd namedRin Tin Tin who drew huge audiences into the theaters to watch his canine heroics.Jack Warner dubbed Rin Tin Tin the “mortgage lifter” for his ability toerase debts the studio and its affiliates incurred. Warner liked the canine better than he liked most human actors. “He didn’t ask for a raise or a new press agent or an air-conditioned dressing room or more close-ups,” he said. In fact Rin Tin Tin got a raise, to $1,000 per week; he also acquired doubles to relieve him of the most onerous and dangerous stunts.
    But he didn’t survive the shift from silent films to movies with sound tracks, not at Warner at any rate.Sam Warner persuaded his brothers to purchase a technology that allowed the attachment of sound recordings to film. The initial appeal was that sound would permit theaters to dispense with the orchestras that played accompaniment to otherwise silent films. When Sam suggested that the technology could also record actors’ voices, Harry snorted, “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? The music—that’s the big plus about this.” The studio produced
The Jazz Singer
in 1927; the film contained orchestral music, singing, and only a few lines of spoken dialogue. But it was the talking that captivated audiences and shortly rendered silent films obsolete. Rin Tin Tin received his walking papers. “The making of any animal pictures, such as we have in the past with Rin Tin Tin,” the studio informed its erstwhile star, through his master and agent, “is not in keeping with the policy that has been adopted by us for talking pictures, very obviously of course because dogs don’t talk.”
    Rin Tin Tin caught on with a different studio, which was more than could be said for some other silent-film stars, who lacked voices for the talkies and couldn’t even bark. Jack Warner and the rest of the industry learned that voices counted a great deal in the new films, a fact that worked in Ronald Reagan’s favor when his radio-trained voice recorded well in his screen test. Meanwhile, the Warner brothers elbowed their way forward, until their firm became one of the five major Hollywood studios.
    And the one that took the grittiest view of life. The leading brand in Hollywood belonged to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the movie conglomerate headed byLouis B. Mayer, who consorted with the Southern California establishment and upheld the conservative business virtues personified byHerbert Hoover, California’s gift to America, as it seemed in those pre-depression days. Mayer dined at the Hoover White House and benefited from the tax cuts implemented by the Republican administrations of the 1920s.
    Jack Warner was, in many ways, the self-conscious opposite of Mayer. Warner applauded Franklin Roosevelt and theNew Deal, and his studio shot movies that showed the seamier side of American life. Gangsterfilms became a Warner Brothers staple;James Cagney was Jack Warner’s personal discovery. Keepers of the American conscience chided Warner Brothers for touring the gutter;Harry Warner defended their films by saying, “The motion picture presents right and wrong, as the Bible does. By showing both right and wrong, we teach the right.”
    R EAGAN HELPED . He headed for Hollywood in May 1937 in a used Nash convertible packed with nearly all his earthly possessions. His journey recapitulated the trek Americans had been making since the days of the Californiagold rush; the West had long been the land of opportunity, the glittering destination of the American dream. Hollywood was simply its latest incarnation. Reagan stopped at the Biltmore to thankJoy Hodges for her part in opening opportunity’s door, and he presented himself, a week early, at the Warner Brothers studio.
    His