Word: actorisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...departure from the political stage, G.O.P. candidates have been trying to summon his image and perform the magic of uniting their party's disparate factions, from libertarians to religious conservatives to Big Business, under one tent. Don't forget that Reagan also left that imprint on another charismatic actor who now sits in the Governor's chair in California. As he tries to find his way out of a nasty fiscal crisis, Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking lessons from the Reagan playbook all the time. "They both have extraordinary personal charm," observes Ken Khachigian, Reagan's former chief speechwriter. "That goes...
...hortatory oratory of movie dialogue--speeches crafted to sell an ideal or an emotion and still sound like plain-spoken common sense--a technique he used so persuasively in politics. And acting created the image of a pleasing persona: "Ronald Reagan," a collaboration of the man, the actor he became and the roles he was given to play. Where's the rest of President Reagan? A lot of it is in movies...
...more roles for his budding star--a migrant worker who becomes a kind of Anglo Cesar Chavez in the vigorous melodrama Juke Girl, and an R.A.F. pilot in Desperate Journey, again supporting Flynn--before Uncle Sam cast him as a stateside warrior. A natural leader, if not a natural actor, Reagan was often cast as a government enforcer and even more often as a soldier. As Stephen Vaughn observes in Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics, "No 20th century President, with the exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been seen in uniform by more people...
...cheap thrill to watch Reagan play a crime heavy and do his professional best in a scene where he has to slap Angie Dickinson. The Killers, violent and cynical, was a curious coda to Reagan's career. But, in a way, he had only been moonlighting as a movie actor ever since his Army days. He was moving into politics, graduating from Hollywood in the '40s to Sacramento in the '60s to Washington...
Truth is, he was a TV actor before there was TV drama. A movie star typically projects danger and a TV star comfort and familiarity. Reagan had this domesticated appeal--bred in him, perhaps, but also hammered into him by all those roles in which he essentially played the sensible master of ceremonies to a cast of more gifted or committed actors. This steadiness, combined with a voice suggesting unforced manliness and homespun wisdom, made him a welcome, authoritative TV figure and a superb politician...