Biography
An affable Midwesterner, Ronald Reagan parlayed his athletic good looks and undeniable charisma into a movie career, but it was on the political stage that he achieved his greatest fame, serving two terms as governor of California and ultimately as the 40th President of the United States. "Dutch" Reagan, born on Feb. 6, 1911, in Tampico, Illinois, began his career as a sportscaster in Iowa, broadcasting the games of the Chicago Cubs, before a screen test earned him a contract at Warner Bros. Debuting as a radio announcer in "Love Is on the Air" (1937), he went on to appear in more than 50 films over the next two decades, proving a popular romantic lead in B pictures and a reliable support and/or a hero's stolid pal in the studio's A-list features. Notable roles included George Gipp, Notre Dame's dying football star, in "Knute Rockne--All American" (1940), and a comic turn in "Bedtime for Bonzo" (1951) as a psychology professor who suddenly finds himself in charge of a mischievous chimp. He was also terrific as a compassionate but forceful American soldier in "The Hasty Heart" (1947). After serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild for multiple terms in the 1940s and 1950s, Reagan began to turn his sights to a political career. He served as governor of California from 1967 to 1975 as a member of the Republican party. Following this, he made his first bid for the presidency in 1976, although he ultimately lost the party's nomination to Gerald Ford. Reagan ran again in 1980, this time winning the nomination and then the presidency. He served two terms and was an influential president who was a figure in many of the most notable events of the 1980s, from an assassination attempt on his own life and the rise of "Reaganomics" to the Iran-Contra affair and the War on Drugs, as well as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. He returned home to California for his retirement, living with wife Nancy in Bel Air and Santa Barbara. Reagan died on June 4, 2004, of pneumonia and complications from Alzheimer's Disease, and was interred at the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
