Status Updates From Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan...

Posner asked about Ronald Reagan. “Ronald Reagan,” the source said, “is a complete slave of MCA who would do their bidding on anything.” He added that he ‘“‘would not be surprised to find that some type of consideration had passed between the top people in SAG and MCA to [cement] the deal.”

Yet another MCA admirer told the FBI Jules Stein, Lew Wasserman, and Taft Schreiber are three of the smartest, most intelligent businessmen in the world today and so superior to the guys running agencies that they make them look sick. In principle that is the reason why they are a big success.[They are just smarter, shrewder have more talent, and they were tough and did things within the law they were entitled to do.

Although it may never be proven that Reagan or any other SAG official pushed through the SAG special arrangement with MCA and then received a suitcase filled with cash, it is clear that, within months of the deal, Reagan benefited personally, financially, professionally, and politically from his relationship with MCA.

Reagan was first contacted for information by the FBI on November 18, 1943, according to a Justice Department document. At the time, he was in the military, stationed at ““Fort Roach.” During this first known FBI interview with Reagan, the actor told a special agent that he had nearly been in a fistfight with a German sympathizer who had made some anti-Semitic remarks during a party in Los Angeles.

Reagan has always maintained that he volunteered his services to SAG for totally unselfish motives. However, some of his critics, including some SAG board members, have charged that, under the surface, he viewed the Guild as a source of power and status. “Undoubtedly, Reagan’s film career shows,” one observer said, “that he went into politics only when he was washed up as an actor.”

During the presidential campaign Reagan met privately with known associates of organized crime and appointed others to his personal campaign staff Several of these people were later given high positions the Reagan administration after his election President Reagan talked tough about the organized crime problem in the United State while surrounding himself with many who were closely linked to those who have created it

Among the guiding forces in the shaping of Reagan’s political philosophy were MCA’s Jules Stein and Taft Schreiber. According to law-enforcement authorities, several of Reagan’s campaign financiers were close friends and associates of Sidney Korshak.