Screen Actors Guild Presidents
Ronald Reagan
1947-1952, 1959-1960
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c.
1948: with Anna
Roosevelt, SAG
officer Gene Kelly |
1942:
King's Row |
1960:
at strike meeting with
Executive Secretary Jack Dales |
August 11, 1941, 7046 Hollywood Blvd -
Warner Bros. contract player, Ronald Reagan, attended his first
Board meeting as an alternate for Heather Angel. His then-wife,
actress Jane Wyman, was
elected to the Board over a year later. World War II put Reagan's
Guild involvement in a holding pattern, but he resumed as a Board
alternate in February 1946, first for Rex Ingram, then Boris Karloff.
In September, 1946, he was elected 3rd Vice-President, and would
so impress the Board of Directors during the often-violent Conference
of Studio Unions (CSU) strikes, that he'd move up to the Guild
Presidency in six months.
At the March 10, 1947 Board meeting, resignations
were accepted from President Robert Montgomery and six officers/Board
members: James Cagney, Franchot Tone, Dick Powell, Harpo Marx,
John Garfield, and Dennis O'Keefe, due to the Guild's new "conflict
of interest" addition to the bylaws, recently voted in
by the Guild membership. Gene Kelly nominated the absent Ronald
Reagan for President. Kelly & George Murphy were nominated
too, but Reagan won. Half-way through the meeting, Reagan - who
had been at an American Veterans Committee meeting - arrived and
was informed of the honor! He would serve a total of seven presidential
terms, including six one-year terms elected by the membership
in November 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1959.
Issues - Guild, national, and international - during
Reagan's presidencies and board terms, 1946 - 1960, were among
the most vast and complicated in the Guild's history, including,
in addition to the CSU strikes: the Guild's first entirely new
contract since 1937; passage of the labor-weakening Taft-Hartley
act; the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings and
the blacklist era; a severe decline in Hollywood film production,
largely caused by both the exploding popularity of television
and the 1948 "Paramount decree" which would bring an
end to the "studio system"; the fall of mainland China
to communism; the explosion of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union;
the Korean War; jurisdictional struggles over television; the
MCA waiver; the Guild's first three strikes (1952-53, 1955, and
1960); the first residuals for filmed television programs; first
residuals for films sold to television; and the creation of the
pension and health plan.
In 1950, his future wife, actress Nancy
Davis (whom he would marry on March 4, 1952), joined the Board,
first as a replacement, and would serve with him for nearly 10
years. In June 1960, Reagan resigned his Guild Presidency, and
Nancy's Board resignation followed in July.
After leaving acting, Ronald Reagan embarked on
the most successful political career of any actor in history:
two four-year terms as Governor of California, from 1966-1974,
and election in 1980 for the first of two terms as President of
the United States.
Ronald Reagan died on June 5, 2004 and is interred
on the grounds of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi
Valley, California. There are several official websites, including:
Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
www.reagan.utexas.edu
Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
www.reaganlibrary.net/lobby.html
Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum and Archives
www.reaganlibrary.com/pma/
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