Jean Harlow And Ronald Reagan?!!!!!!!!!!....

I just finished Samuel Marx's and Joyce Vanderveen's 1990 "Deadly Illusions: Jean Harlow and the Murder of Paul Bern" (Random House) and just started Rick Perlstein's recently published "The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan" (Simon & Shuster) and I can't help conflating the coincidence of "time," i. e., that both Harlow and Reagan reached their mutual profession in the 1930s, Harlow as MGM's biggest female star for a short time, until her untimely death, and Reagan beginning as a Warner Bros "feature player."

The Harlow book deals with the brief but controversial marriage of Harlow with producer-director Paul Bern, close to Irving Thalberg, MGM's boy wunderkind overseer of production, which ended in Bern's apparent "suicide" as declared by MGM's Master Of All Louie B. Mayer ("a very fierce lion indeed" as said) on the basis that he couldn't "get it up" with "Baby Jean."

Marx, a story editor at Metro close to Bern, didn't believe the "impotence" part but accepted the suicide in lieu of information he was told at the time but much later, in the 1980s, he and the younger Vanderveen explored "the case" in much more detail and obviously "discovered the truth" as they say which by the way I'll tell you does NOT have Miss Harlow pulling the trigger hm.

Jimmy Stewart once did a picture with her (the still entertaining 1936 "Wife Vs Secretary," with perennial co star MGM's "number one hot (male) stuff" Clark Gable and Myrna Loy) and asked about Harlow's "practice" of never wearing undergarments Stewart admitted that in a kissing scene (he played the "boyfriend") -- cut from the film by the way -- he "had" to do the scene six times because he kept forgetting his lines! ("The 'son' also rises"?)

Difficult to imagine Reagan doing such scenes with Harlow however as I'm into the second chapter in "Bridge" which details RR's problematic childhood with a religious altruistic mother and a "deadbeat" alcoholic dad but from said childhood Reagan had "rescued" himself (as many of us do) through reading and fantasy -- in his case identifying with boys' adventure heroes like Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Tarzan" and Horatio Alger's as well as "Frank Merriwell" the Yalie football hero and making an image for himself from their examples.

Interestingly both RR and Jean H (born "Harlean Carpenter") were "mama's" -- Reagan featured prominently his mother (NOT his father) in his two autobiographies ("Where's the Rest of Me?"and "An American Life") and "Harlean" became "Jean Harlow" because it was her mother's maiden name. Still Harlow was known for her uh "lack of inhibition" and movies which featured such while RR was playing "G-men" heroes as per his childhood.

(I wonder if they ever met -- if I find out I'll tell you!)

Perlstein sees RR re his book title as "the bridge" from the separate "falls" of Goldwater and Nixon to the success of the mid 20th "right" in Reagan's near miss candidacy in 1976 against the hapless but similar in certain respects Jerry Ford while the Democrats claimed numerous new younger "stars" like senators Henry Jackson, Frank Church, even the post Chappaquiddick Ted Kennedy and of course the little known "liberal" governor of Georgia James Earl Carter Jr.

And here are three intriguing quotes from both books pertaining, two from "Deadly" first:

"The entire {in tragedy} must have a beginning, middle and end." -- the Greek philosopher Aristotle

"A story must have a beginning, middle and end -- but not necessarily in that order!" -- the French film critic-director Jean-Luc Godard

Now from "Bridge":

"If the people believe there's an imaginary river out there you don't tell them there's no river -- you build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river!" -- Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev(!) to Richard Nixon(!)

Well as usual I'll keep you "up" on my reading re Reagan and such so "stay tuned"! (I know you can hardly wait!...)

Interesting. Thanks.

I'm glad someONE found it interesting!

I recommend Perlstein's books -- they explore the times as well and he has a certain "irreverence" that's appealing. I read his previous studies of the 1960s -- "Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus" and "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America" -- and his "theme" in the first re Goldwater is that the '60s (as per the '50s, as a "conformist" period) are stereotyped as hippie-dippie-leftland when in fact there was a persistent right wing movement just as "militant" as any on the left albeit not taken as seriously by the media etc., because of the magnitude of Goldwater's 1964 election defeat.

Of course only two years later Republicans gained over forty seats in the house AND such as Ronald Reagan were elected governor of California by "exalted" (over a million votes) margins. LBJ was spiraling into a "credibility gap," the Great Society was being put "on ice" and the Vietnam war was becoming a "national" issue especially re the new "college generation" (fueled ironically by Johnson's federal aid).

Nixon like well You Know Who rises from his somewhat self dug political grave -- having driven into his "heart" the "stake" himself with the "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore!" angry middle aged man press conference upon losing said governorship in '62 -- to out perform a surprisingly inept George Romney and uncertain Nelson Rockefeller and get the '68 Repub nomination as the "new (improved! better mileage!) Nixon."

He purports to "bring 'US' together" while courting a "southern strategy" (southern whites abandoning the old "confederate" Democratic party for the more conservative Republicans!) and a "silent majority" which wants out of Vietnam (who doesn't?!) but "with honor," i. e., without it looking like um well uh "defeat." So Nixon bombs away while withdrawing and leaving the south Vietnamese to "handle things" ground wise (remind you of anybody now?) and at last there is "peace" after a hiatus of fierce "Christmas bombing" following Nixie's winning the biggest elective majority in American history against the hapless anti war George McGovern.

"Bridge" continues into the multiple machinations of Watergate juxtaposed with the return of the POWs and the controversies over them -- now largely forgotten I think but Perlstein presents them in a very entertaining way, not like Hunter Thompson but more like Tom Wolfe eh, as well as he chronicles the rise of Reagan amid the Nixonian chaos and sense that the Republican party or at least its leader was committing political suicide.

Reagan is simply "unbreachable" you might say -- his firmament is based on his "stories" of the heroic past (often featuring himself but in a slightly self deprecating way so as to avoid "boast") when say college sports made "MEN" (who are stout hearted men!) and in every pile of crap there was the promise of a "pony"!

Interestingly as Nixon's high ratings plummeted through 1973 Reagan's rose and more and more he'd hint (wink and a nod -- you know "our guy") he was going to run for prez in that BICENTENNIAL year appropriately huh.

Reagan by the way enhanced his gubernatorial popularity by hammering at "spoiled" kids in colleges who WEREN'T cheerleading their team but protesting against prohibitions of "dirty words" or that pesky Vietnam war. Here's an excerpt of "RR versus Eldridge":

"Of the sixty seven times Reagan was featured on the three {television} network newscasts between 1967 and 1970 more than half concerned his stance on campus militancy.

"For instance in the fall of 1968 a Berkeley faculty member recruited Black Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver as guest lecturer for {his class} 'Social Analysis 139X -- Dehumanization and Regeneration in the American Social Order.'

"Reagan said if it happened he would investigate the school from 'top to bottom' -- for 'if Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children they may come home one night and slit our throats!'

"Cleaver taught anyway, proclaiming in one lecture 'Ronald Reagan is a punk, a sissy, a coward and I challenge him to a duel to the death or until he says "Uncle Eldridge"! I give him a choice of weapons -- a gun, a knife, a baseball bat or marshmallows!'" (pp 88-89...)

I realize this "topic" seems to interest only Rick but hey! I'm a philanthropist at heart! (Maybe a "masochist" too?)

What strikes me re Reagan and Harlow is the contrast between the pre Hays Code crackdown Jean and the post crackdown Ron or "Dutch" as he preferred.

Harlow was as I said a "mama's girl" who nevertheless was well "sexually uninhibited" and she first attracted attention in Howard Hughes' sound "remake" of his WWI air war pic "Hell's Angels" (about which she complained "the PLANES got better notices!") by wearing something diaphanous and SAYING "Do you mind if I slip into something more comfortable?" (Wow! What would THAT be! And that's where the saying came from I believe.)

She had some parts then as "the platinum blonde" but it was Paul Bern who championed her for "Red Headed Woman," a film about an out of work secretary during THE depression who can't find work and so uses the "assets" she has -- a parallel is Barbara Stanwyck in "Baby Face" in which Stanwyck literally "sleeps her way to the top" floor of a NYCity insurance company.

In "Red Dust" of course Harlow is a prostitute; also in "China Seas" where she actually aids in a pirate attack on Clark Gable's ship (he forgives her because he's been mean to her) and while at the end she has to go to court she goes with a laugh and the assurance that Gable loves her anyway and even promises to marry her!

THESE Harlow characters created her image but post crackdown she had to play "more refined" albeit "sexy" as in "Libeled Lady" and "Wife Vs Secretary" (she's the uh you guessed it "secretary").

What is notable is her realism, i. e., she uses sex to get what she wants from men with means -- she isn't about to starve eh in the name of some idea of female "nobility" and in "Red Headed Woman," "Red Dust" and "China Seas," for example she is NOT "punished" really at the end of the movie as would be required later but overcomes travails and disappointments to "win" in one way or another.

Reagan's portrayals however, while not inept in what's being asked of him, present him in a more idealistic light, defeating criminals and having rather "chaste" relationships with the girls as per Saturday matinee for "the kids" (usually boys).

Harlow would parlay her sexual allure into success as "sex sells" and always does but Reagan would absorb his "stories" (and the movies are "stories" too certainly) and project his persona into politics not as "realism" but as idealism and in particular when the public or a goodly portion of it "needed" that -- post Watergate, post fall of south Vietnam hm.

Harlow was a fantasy figure sure but she "operated" in her best work by depicting "life" as it was for many young women especially, while Reagan was the fantastical figure of idealized sports ("the Gipper" for his other famous nickname) and "clean living" that got one to "the top" in a "dream America."

I rewatched "Sunset Blvd." last evening by the way wherein William Holden plays the "Harlow" part but things turn out not so well for him and Gloria Swanson's "Norma Desmond" is swallowed up by her fantasies. Oh -- and Reagan's "best man" at his wedding to Nancy Davis? Bill Holden!...

As a "solitary" for most of my life I'm used to talking to myself so I'll just continue to do so!

Again I really do recommend Perlstein's studies of the "rise of the Right" which essentially the three books (thus far) chronicle. And he's a very entertaining writer as I've said; no dryness but a "Wolfean" wryness instead.

The most interesting chapters yet are the ones on Reagan's arrival in Hollywood (1937 -- the year Harlow "the muse" died) and his peculiar "image" as a proto or sometime "star" -- the earnest young man, the "friend" (of Bette Davis in "Dark Victory" or of Errol Flynn in "The Santa Fe Trail") with the sideways smile, steely dark pompadour and empathetic demeanor. The "victim" at times too but twinged with a nobility (as George Gipp in "Knute Rockne All American") or inflicted with an injustice ("King's Row") but never quite arriving at a "pinnacle" as per a Davis or a Flynn or even Pat O'Brien as Coach Rockne.

Flynn, a man of reputation in a Hollywood loaded with such "reputes," liked Reagan and permitted him in his trailer with his drinking pals (like frequent co star Alan Hale say) though Reagan was really only a "social drinker" but ever congenial and nonjudgmental -- at least re Flynn.

Reagan also married an actress, Jane Wyman, when she was a minor player, a bubbly blonde buddy type, but Wyman became a "serious actress" winning an Oscar for her affecting portrayal as a deaf mute who is raped and has a baby for it in "Johnny Belinda" and later played "the older but attractive woman" to Rock Hudson's version of the earnest but very "hot" (Flynnish but in a quieter way) young man.

Wyman apparently divorced Reagan for "cruel and unusual punishment" in that he never stopped talking and talked incessantly of politics (liberal at the time) about which she had it seems no interest at all. (She however was somewhat "cozy" with "Belinda" co star Lew Ayres who had "the guts" to declare himself a conscientious objector in WWII -- Ayres had starred in the important anti war film of the early '30s "All Quiet on the Western Front" and had imbibed its philosophy -- and Reagan once remarked that in the divorce the "co respondent" ought to be "Johnny Belinda.")

Reagan then went through um "a period of adjustment" that might be termed a period of dissipation, alcoholic as well as a penchant for frequent female company, some of whose names he'd forgotten by morning. But he at last married Nancy Davis, a daughter of a former stage actress who acquired wealth via marriage, who also had what was known as a "reputation" as a quick time "girl friend" for the unattached like say Clark Gable, a widower recently returned from "the wars."

This is not to find Reagan say having anything on his old pal Flynn for instance who had been taken to court on a charge of statutory rape of a 13 year old girl (and survived professionally -- "in like Flynn"!) or any number of Hollywood studs like Gary Cooper or "studettes" like Marlene Dietrich. (Asked by Dietrich's daughter Maria Rivas -- at lunch in Paris! -- why he broke up with her mother John Wayne replied "Because I didn't like being part of a stable!")

However in the mid forties RR had also become a figure in the Screen Actors Guild, a "kind of" union, and became embroiled with the great strikes between the rival "technical" unions, those behind the cameras, in which he took the side of the studio against the "left" union and supported the uh "gangster" union which included in its leadership a notorious but extremely aptly named character called "Willie Bioff," pronounced well you know.

This also got RR into the FBI, i. e., he was approached to be an informant ("Confidential Informant T-10" in the file) and segued into not just the "anti communist" line which was legitimate enough but the Let's dig 'em out and make 'em uh "squeal" -- literally as it turned out.

Reagan I found "turned in" an actor named Alexander Knox, a Canadian who had played in the movies a president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in a Darryl F. (for "Fox" as in 20th Century eh) Zanuck production eponymously titled "Wilson." (It may have been seen as "subversive" in that it advocated for a proto United Nations -- the League of Nations, once also supported by ex Republican presidents William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover.)

Knox had been involved in some anti fascist and anti nazi organizations during WWII which hardly seemed "odd" when you come to it and he was semi blacklisted one might say, getting few jobs (Kirk Douglas cast him as the priest in the 1958 "The Vikings" as Douglas also hired blacklisted Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay for "Spartacus" -- good man that Kirk Douglas) -- eventually he was "Control" in the 1978 BBC production of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" with Alec Guinness and he (ironically?) appeared in Michael Apted's underrated "Gorky Park" as a militia (police not "secret") general with William Hurt and the great Lee Marvin.

But it was Reagan's eventual job as a traveling p.r. for the General Electric company that got him into "GE Theater," a popular tv anthology that Reagan "hosted" every Sunday evening and acted in occasionally, and that moved him finally from New Deal liberal to "free market business" conservative focused on the "subversion" of the US via "socialistic" government programs that undermined both hearth and home leading to collapse from within! An easier, unnuclear commie takeover hm.

Interestingly as RR's movie career planed in the '40s and '50s his tv substitute revived him as a public "friend," as per Flynn's and Davis', and when "GE Theater" was "reformed" as a Jack Webb "Jus' the facts ma'am" show Reagan delved deeper into politics, culminating in his triumphal "A Time to Choose" speech for Barry Goldwater's snake bit presidential bid, a half hour refurbishing of his GE plant tour speeches that caused millions of Goldwater backers (this one included) to wonder why REAGAN wasn't the nominee eh -- he seemed far more articulate than Barry in explaining "Barry."

I guess that leads me to Jack Warner's crack when Reagan actually got recruited to run for gov of California in 1966: "No -- JIMMY STEWART for governor; Ronald Reagan as 'best friend'!"

There's more but I'll leave it at that for now. Maybe Harsch will find this "readable"...

Sorry, Michael, I have turned in here only when I felt rushed. I'll get to it, and as you know I always find your essays interesting.

Yes it's okay Rick; I'll just write another "essay" -- for myself perhaps.

I keep running across interesting aspects of Life In The Seventies and "Reagan Knows Best" in Perlstein and I keep marking pages, coming up with so many that I can't possibly include them all. And Perlstein's book is about 800 pages of text (yet it flies by!) which is still only half of what the Bugliosi book on the JFK assassination was (whew!).

I'll excerpt this I thought fascinating section re "the Reagan kids":

"It was around...1960 after dropping out of college that {oldest daughter by Jane Wyman} Maureen began living with a married police officer twelve years her senior.... In 1961 she married the cop who beat her; in 1962 they divorced.

"The next year at Michael's {Wyman's and Reagan's adopted son} high school graduation the commencement speaker was his father. Afterward Reagan made the rounds of students for introductions. He stopped before one, stuck out his hand: 'My name is Ronald Reagan. What's yours?' His son...took off his mortarboard and responded 'Remember me? I'm your son Mike.'...

"Michael matriculated at Arizona State University where he raised hell with a kid named Joe Bonanno Jr, son of the capo of the Bonanno crime family.... Michael flunked out, began working as a fry cook, was fired, worked on the docks in Los Angeles, became a professional motorboat racer, got married -- then his pregnant wife left him and a district attorney told him he would be sent to jail unless he agreed to grant her a divorce and pay back child support....

"{Daughter Patti by Nancy} met a member of the rock band the Eagles...{and} moved into the rock star's house.... {Consequently she and her father} stopped speaking though she did receive a letter {in} November (1975 from RR}: 'I'm sorry you didn't choose to come to the family meeting the other night when I told everyone I'd decided to run for president.' But she had never been informed of the meeting." pp 544-45

What Patti and indeed ANY future questioners (including of course reporters) of Ronald Reagan always discovered was that Reagan had his own set of "facts" which were virtually inarguable. When he disparaged Patti's "living with" arrangement he said that it was against what God wrote in the Bible whereupon Patti responded that "He" didn't write it, "the disciples wrote the Bible." No God wrote it Reagan insisted and while this seems now rather trivial -- LOTS of people "wrote" the Bible -- it illustrated to Patti that "discussion" with her father wasn't "fruitful"; he had his own world and it was more or less impenetrable -- its "wall" that plethora of "stories" as Perlstein notes.

When RR did announce his running (Nov 20 1975) against incumbent Gerald Ford he was dismissed by most of the weighty pundits like James Reston of the NYTimes and even by conservatives like James J. Kirkpatrick who thought him too "lightweight" for the public but some operatives, e. g., a young Ford aide named David Gergen, who watched him in action with the public and the press were impressed.

Reagan could turn an unhappy line of questioning -- civil rights laws for instance which he largely opposed -- into a "story" about his own father's forbidding his sons to see D. W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" because of the Klan sequences -- Jack Reagan was Catholic although the sons weren't raised so.

And RR would talk about how he befriended black football players at Eureka college and how his father once refused to stay at a hotel that wouldn't allow Jews and had to sleep in his car.

The point of course was to emphasize not just his own "virtue" but the essential GOODNESS of people -- SOMEONE would always "do the right thing" and that would ("gradually" it seemed; sometimes VERY gradually) change society the "right way," i. e., INDIVIDUALLY, NOT via governmental edict.

And considering the deeply disturbing and disillusioning events of just the first half of the 1970s -- from Watergate and the fall of south Vietnam to revelations of CIA assassination plots (under the Kennedys and Ike even!) as well as rising crime, "forced" busing, "dirty" books and movies, gays "out," even in the streets! -- Reagan's nostrums and homey stories were balm in Gilead for many Americans who had not "adjusted" to a more cynical, more paranoid America.

(Perlstein reminds of the popular movies "The Exorcist" and "Jaws" -- "monsters" from both invisible space and from that "vasty" and mysterious "deep" -- as well as less popular but "signature" films of the time such as Coppola's "The Conversation," Warren Beatty investigating political assassinations in "The Parallax View" and Robert Redford discovering a murderous CIA in "Three Days of the Condor.")

Can a society which insists it so values "freedom" endure the undermining of its self image as the "good nation" defeating always "the bad guys" and protecting the weak and preserving its innate virtue no matter?

And of course the United States DID defeat nazi Germany and militarist Japan and help provide in their place a BETTER version of both, as well as it stood up against the Soviet Union and "red" China, two other dictatorial dystopias, and "win out" in the end.

And it certainly can't be said that "ISIS" is "better" as a ruler of Iraq or that the Taliban should again control Afghanistan?

But HOW America does these things is not necessarily so much different than how other nations (and empires) "triumph" huh and that's the rub and what was so difficult to face post Vietnam, post Watergate?

By the way the account of the fall of south Vietnam inspires me to take up (for the third time) one of the most arresting and disturbing books I've ever read -- Frank Snepp's "Decent Interval" and I wonder if any of you (who MAY read this! all two or three?) are familiar with it?

Okay Rick -- when not so pressed for time I leave these "essays" for you!...

I'll write yet ANOTHER "essay," i. e., another mixture of quotes and sundry observations, based on Perlstein; here goes:

"During the post war {WWII} boom, business...honored {the New Deal's} core intellectual proposition, Keynesianism, which held that a key to building and sustaining prosperity was to harness the power of government to put money in ordinary consumer's pockets.

"{Business also} acceded to (or were powerless to stop) the escalating pace of marketplace regulation -- which reached its pinnacle under a president from the party of business, Richard Nixon.

"The New Republic {magazine} called a tax bill he signed in 1969 'far and away the most "anti rich" tax reform proposal ever proposed by a Republican president in the 56 years of the existence of the income tax.'

"Much of the new government revenue was spent on new regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Mine Safety and Health Administration....

"In Washington it felt like liberal lobbies were in the saddle: environmental groups like Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Action; groups associated with the consumer advocate Ralph Nader...with 'brilliant young staff members who mistrust or totally disbelieve the attributes of the enterprise system' Barry Goldwater complained in 1974...." p 478

I marked this re a contemporary article of the '70s by Garry Wills which called Nixon "the last liberal" -- subsequent historians (such as Joan Hoff Wilson) have noted that his DOMESTIC program despite his right wing rhetoric was largely "moderate" to "liberal" as compared to say Kennedy's and even Johnson's. Reagan in a sense was a "reaction" to REPUBLICAN liberalism as was Goldwater eh, not just to that of the Democratic party.

Considering then the Democrats of the '70s they had every reason to believe that the apparently hapless Jerry Ford, beset by Reagan on the right and bereft of Nixon's former status and power, was deeply vulnerable; consequently a veritable plethora of Demo candidates emerged from retreads like Humphrey and Scoop Jackson to relative newbies like Sen Frank Church of Idaho and the young governor of California Jerry Brown AND the recent now ex gov of Georgia with a record of racial liberalism one James Earl but always called "Jimmy" Carter:

"Seven weeks {after his victory in the Iowa presidential straw poll in October 1975} Carter was profiled in the New York Times magazine -- 'Peanut Farmer for President'...(he wasn't really a peanut farmer; he owned a peanut warehousing business). The {Times} writer was a novelist named Patrick Anderson who had ghostwritten {Nixon op} Jeb Magruder's new memoir....

"He had asked to profile Carter after the editors had proposed to him {then UN ambassador, later a NY senator} Daniel Patrick Moynihan or {then vice president} Nelson Rockefeller. {Anderson} described the Georgian as 'a soft spoken, thoughtful, likable man, an intropspective man who enjoys the songs of Bob Dylan, the poems of Dylan Thomas and the writing of James Agee, William Faulkner, John McPhee and Reinhold Niebuhr' and who 'stubbornly defied segregation in his hometown of Plains.'"
p 590

The "anti Carter" profile appeared in January '76 in the Washington Post --

"...{T}he Post...dwelled on that preternatural confidence. It reported {Carter} working for zoning laws in Plains to control commercial development and souvenir sales for 'when I am president,' his conversations with reporters about 'my inaugural address' and programs planned for 'the first year of my administration.'

"{The Post} noted too a certain contempt for the very calling he had chosen for his lifework. It quoted one of his former supporters in the state legislature: 'Jimmy never learned the three guiding rules of politics -- reward your friends, punish your enemies and then make up with your enemies.' Another critic who insisted on anonymity called him abrasive, unfeeling, ruthless -- 'and totally egocentric.' And another: 'Politicians don't like him because he doesn't like them.'

"Ah but that was the point: all the usual resume lines that boosted candidates in every previous campaign in history -- experienced, connections, institutionally savvy -- could only hurt you in the first presidential election since Watergate." p 592

The parallel with Reagan appears eh -- two governors, not "Washingtonians" as senators are, who "speak plainly" (even "simplistically"?) and advertise their "distance" from "the system" which they contend is corrupt and moreover does not "work" except for that corruption.

Also both are considered somewhat "self absorbed," extremely confident in themselves if not so highly regarded by their "peers" and both inordinately able to inspire and organize fellow "believers," in themselves of course but also suggesting a religious angle -- Reagan referencing "God" and the Bible and Carter emphasizing his Southern Baptist religiosity:

"His presidential autobiography 'Why Not the Best,' was published by a Christian press.... He liked to quote a line from a favorite sermon: 'If you were arrested for being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?'

"He also liked to dwell on a word that almost never appeared in political speeches: LOVE. How we needed 'to bind our people together to work in harmony and love one another.' How federal employees should begin each work week with 'their hearts full of love.' How we needed a government 'as filled with love as are the American people.'

"His Iowa state chair, Tom Whitney, related how he chose this dark horse: 'we spent two hours talking about Christ. For a moment we shared a concept and a thought process...{w}hich was the concept of love -- love thy neighbor. We explored the "I am Third" process in which God is first, family and friends second and I am third. The nation needs a totally loving president.'" p 588

I must say that at the time I paid relatively little attention to Carter; I was initially intrigued with Frank Church the Idaho senator who had presided over the investigations of the CIA, assassination plots etc., but when Church faded I thought Morris K. "Mo" Udall, an Arizona member of the US house of representatives from Tucson, was the "best" candidate. When the race finally became Carter vs Ford I opted for former Minnesota senator and anti war candidate for prez in 1968 Eugene McCarthy who was running as a third party candidate; I even felt some attraction to Ford.

I suppose I didn't "trust" Carter's overt religiosity as opposed to most presidents' more or less "public" or "social" religions -- expressed as occasionally being publicized attending church services and in repeating religious (usually "Christian" but eliminating "Jesus") nostrums on occasions such as Thanksgiving say: a "proselytizer in chief" I found a bit off putting.

After his election (but before his inauguration I believe) he announced the appointment of Theodore Sorenson, JFK's closest and best speechwriter, author of his most famous "quotes," as director of the CIA. "Official Washington" kind of went "ballistic," especially because it seemed Sorensen had been a conscientious objector during World War II but maybe because it was feared that as an "outsider" he would be likely to expose even more nefarious "secrets"?

Well when Carter "caved" to the criticism I became one of those who were "waiting for Ted," i. e., the "other" Ted, the REAL Ted -- KENNEDY...

Great essays, Michael, but before I read #8 I have a meeting to attend.

Thanks Rick -- I just revised the latest one anyway so I'm glad you haven't read it yet...

I also acquired a "100th anniversary" collection of Jean Harlow films -- it came out in 2011; she was born in 1911, the same year as my aunt Esther and a year before my mother, Esther's sister.

I watched "Bombshell" (1933) which is a rather "cacophonous" satire on the great publicity machines of the "studio era" as well as of the long hours even "stars" had to work and of their often extended "families" of leeching relatives as "business managers" and such but who were basically parasites. (Interestingly Harlow's REAL life mirrored this film.)

It's still relatively "early" in the sound era but the dialogue is rapid fire and continuous, as if the audience CAN'T even be REMINDED there was once "silence." And Harlow is as good at this fast fire as say Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in "His Girl Friday" by the way.

But of course what's she's "best" at is portraying the especially attractive young woman who has only her "assets" to succeed during THE Depression -- although 1930s depression poverty is rarely shown directly, only indicated, as if the audience can't bear to see what is outside the theater ON the screen.

In the 1934 "The Girl From Missouri" Harlow escapes her pimping stepfather who owns a cafe-bar-dance hall (in the 1932 "Baby Face" Barbara Stanwyck IS pimped by her actual father in a squalid shack of a prohibition "speakeasy") and heads for New York to become a "chorus girl" (Stanwyck by the way WAS a chorus girl under her real name "Ruby Stevens" as was Joan Crawford as "Lucille LeSueur") trying to "marry a millionaire" (Lewis Stone, later Mickey Rooney-Andy Hardy's somber but wise father, the venerable "Judge Hardy") and yet retain her "virtue" and is involved, innocently, in Stone's suicide -- his business failing under depress conditions eh.

She meets however the son, Franchot Tone, of another wealthy millionaire, Lionel Barrymore, and falls for him and he for her yet he doesn't want to marry her, just you know. In fact there's a rather harrowing scene in which Tone locks a door and seemingly is about to in effect rape Harlow who begs him not to take advantage of the situation, that SHE, the "golddigger," could never "prove" SHE didn't entice HIM. Harlow is truly affecting in the scene -- how many young women in the audience then could identify similar "circumstances"?

I also must mention the actress Patsy Kelly, the less alluring "gal pal" seemingly "hot" for every, ANY!, MAN! but whose "true love" is really her girl friend -- Kelly was indeed a lesbian and there's another affecting scene in which she attempts to stop a drunk and I-don't-care-anymore Harlow from sleeping with another lecherous but "older" rich guy and gets belted by Harlow for it but won't give up. (There IS a "rescue," by the erstwhile almost rapist Tone who now of course has come to really "love" her.)

Harlow bounces around (literally) braless as was her wont in various stages of dress and undress but there's more to the movie that uh "meets the eye" -- Anita Loos, the sympathetic golddiggers' chronicler extraordinaire after all was one of the script writers...

"Wellll" as Ronald Reagan would say here I am again with more to report from Perlstein's book -- but hey I've almost finished but then I picked up a new bio of Stalin and no doubt I'll have something from that in the future! (You can hardly wait!!!!?)

A fella sent me a "message" saying he didn't wish to mess up my "topic" -- I guess because it's pretty "pristine" (just me 'n' Rick here) but hey I WELCOME any and all comments, questions etc. (The hollowy sound of single footsteps on a cold floor?)

The final chapters of course deal with the election of 1976 and parallel the rises of Carter and Reagan, both as "saviors" of their parties and and of belief in the political process post Watergate but then both were revealed, as all are in politics especially, to be less than advertised under stricter scrutiny.

Re Carter:

"Carter had hired a brilliant young speechwriter named Bob Shrum. Nine days into his employment...Shrum resigned.... He said he'd joined the campaign because he thought Carter had 'found the idiom to reach the deep divisions of our time.'... {H}e quit because Carter was 'manipulative and deceitful.' He gave examples:

"Of a plan to help coal miners suffering from black lung disease Carter had allegedly said 'It would offend the operators and why should I do this for Arnold Miller' -- the head of the union -- 'if he won't come and endorse me?... I don't think the benefits should be automatic; they chose to be miners.'

"And of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis 'I don't want any more statements on the middle east or Lebanon; {Sen Henry} Jackson has all the Jews anyway.' And though Carter pledged on the campaign trail a 5 to 7 percent cut in pentagon spending Shrum claimed he privately said he might favor 'a substantial increase in the defense budget.'" p 679

"{Presidential candidate US rep "Mo" Udall} pointed out that in 1971 as governor in a conservative state {Carter} called for withdrawal from Vietnam -- but only because we weren't doing enough there to win (Ronald Reagan's position). The next year he urged Democratic governors not to make a political issue of Vietnam after he'd made it one himself as a hawk; and in 1975 Carter had supported Ford's call for last minute assistance to the Saigon government." p 681

And as Carter seemed almost assured of a final victory in the '76 primaries Sen Frank Church of Idaho and Gov Jerry Brown of California "invaded" the march, winning some latter primaries and marring Carter's apparent "inevitability."

I find the descriptions of Brown especially amusing and appealing -- one forgets what a phenomenon he was at the time, even NOT counting say his relationship with pop star Linda Ronstadt huh:

"{Brown} won the governor's mansion at the youthful age of thirty six {in 1974 when RR "retired" to run for prez} -- well actually he bypassed the new governor's mansion...built for Reagan by his friends for $8.4 million in 2013 dollars, in favor of a modest bachelor apartment where he slept on a mattress on the floor and kept a copy of Aristotle on the coffee table. {Brown had been a Jesuit seminarian for several years, one year spent in "silence."}

"He ate in health food restaurants; he refused the...chauffeured limousine -- he drove himself in a 1967 Plymouth sedan; he quoted 'Small Is Beautiful' {by E. F. Schumacher} and the radical social philosopher and designer Buckminster Fuller: 'We are on a very small Spaceship Earth and we've got to respect the limits.'... {The great Chicago Sun Times columnist} Mike Royko called him 'Governor Moonbeam.'...

"As he toured a waste management facility {on campaign in Maryland} he turned to reporters: 'What is the inner meaning of this? Why are we here? What are we doing?'

"He toured a Westinghouse plant...{and} told a worker: 'I hope you'll vote for me.' The reply: 'I will.' A double take: 'You will? But you don't know anything about me!'...

"In Oregon {commentator and essayist} Elizabeth Drew sat down for a conversation.... She asked him about his attraction to Zen Buddhism; he replied 'I pick things up from a variety of sources; Zen stresses living in the moment. So do the Jesuits, so does monastic living -- ...don't worry about tomorrow; divine providence will take care of it.... "Age quod agis" -- that's a Jesuit motto: do whatever you're doing.'...

"{He described} his philosophy as 'creative nonaction': 'Many possibilities can be in your mind.... You can't control events and you can't predict them.'... {Drew} came away convinced Brown was running for president because he was bored with being governor. {Reagan?} (He was easily bored; he once called being governor 'a pain in the ass.')...

"{Campaigning in Bend Oregon he said:} 'We have fiscal limits, we have ecological limits... too much overpromising, to much overselling...the human species is not going to make it unless we can figure out another way.... How long is it going to take before we blow the whole planet up?'

"And Oregon loved it....

"The week before Oregon voted the story dominating coverage of Carter's campaign was his response back in 1971 when William 'Rusty' Calley had been convicted for mass murder at the Vietnam village of My Lai. Carter had declared 'American Fighting Man's Day' and recommended all Georgians drive with their headlights on to 'honor the flag as Rusty had done.' Now he denied ever having said it: just another politician." pp 685-87

Brown of course is today governor of CA yet again, now in his seventies. Re my own skepticism about Carter in 1976 I was quite intrigued with "Jerry" -- especially re his relationship with Ronstadt on whom I had a great crush -- and the idea that as per above he was "something different" even if I wasn't so taken with say Zen and "small" etc. I suppose he seemed to me what Carter had seemed (to even Hunter Thompson who was hugely impressed with Carter's May "Law Day" speech and wrote of it in Rolling Stone) to so many -- "genuine" IF, in Brown's case, a bit quirky, kooky?

Subsequently I liked Jerry for 1980 when he ran again -- recall his campaign "show" in Madison "Mad City" Wisconsin "produced" by none other than Francis Ford Coppola and as per its explosive gyrations and techno glitches was tagged re Coppola's latest film "Apocalypse Brown"? And then in 1992 (when I was still a Republican voter) I was hoping against hope that Jer would defeat Bill Clinton who struck me as another sort of "phony" in the Carter mode.

Always the "soft spot" for Jerry! Sigh!...