9 to 5 centers on the lives of three career women: a widow played by the comedian Lily Tomlin, a recent divorcée played by Jane Fonda, and a southern secretary played by Parton. Jane Fonda’s role in the film, and others that we viewed in the 1980s, was problematic, especially for the military members who traveled with the president to Camp David. Memories were still fresh over her role as “Hanoi Jane” during the Vietnam War, where she was seen, at least by conservatives, as a traitor to the nation. As a result, some members of our small Camp David staff expressed reluctance to watch anything in which she appeared—but did so as a courtesy to the Reagans. Ms. Fonda was then married to the liberal activist and fierce Reagan critic Tom Hayden, but if that bothered the president, he did not mention it. That was politics. I think he just wanted to see a funny film.
In the movie, all three women cope with lecherous sexual advances and other forms of discrimination from their male boss, played by the talented character actor Dabney Coleman. When Coleman’s character, Franklin Hart Jr., discovers that Tomlin and the other women had accidentally poisoned his coffee and then attempted to cover it up, he sees an opportunity for blackmail. An outlandish series of events then leads the women to hold Mr. Hart hostage at his home until they can prove his own criminal misdeeds.
It is a silly but fun plot. Looking back, it is amazing how dated it is. The film shows what was then a state-of-the-art Xerox machine that takes up a whole room. The women are still being called secretaries and use giant electric typewriters that they cover every night. There are rotary telephones and what would now seem like over-the-top creepy bosses, such as the one played by Coleman, who wear three-piece suits and mustaches, and refer to their female employees as “girls.”
Still, there was plenty of laughter throughout, including from the Reagans. However, one scene left the president angry. Early in the movie, the three women strengthen their friendship by sharing revenge fantasies against their boss while smoking marijuana. This scene would have been “truly funny,” Reagan said, “if the three gals had played getting drunk, but no, they had to get stoned on pot.” The president found that to be a distasteful endorsement of pot smoking.IV
The scene caught Mrs. Reagan’s attention, too, so much so that she cited it during the launch of her most visible and important initiative during her husband’s presidency: her antidrug campaign, which was dubbed in the press as “Just Say No.” “Just Say No” was never envisioned as a slogan, but rather it was the answer to a question Mrs. Reagan gave to a child who wanted to know what to do when urged to use drugs. Mrs. Reagan’s answer was, “Just Say No!,” which became part of pop culture. “When I am out talking to kids, more and more often they ask me why the media glamorizes drugs, and I’m afraid I don’t have an answer,” she said in a speech on her initiative. “However, the fact must be faced that, all too often, the media—and here I’m talking about those in entertainment, advertising, and news—present the idea, perhaps unconsciously, that drugs are acceptable. Well, drugs are not acceptable. Drugs injure individuals and shatter families.” Referring to the film, without naming it, she went on to describe “a scene in a popular movie” in which three female coworkers “get hilariously high on pot.” This kind of drug use in entertainment, she said, would only support “the notion of drug acceptability” to American youth.V
The film presented other themes that resonated with the Reagans. Tomlin and Fonda were prominent feminists and supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). First introduced in 1923, and re-introduced several times thereafter, the ERA is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution designed to ensure equal rights for all citizens, regardless of gender. It failed to be ratified by the required number of states within the time frame allowed. Over time 9 to 5 itself became something of a cause célèbre for women during the Reagan era. It was especially played that way by feminists against a Republican administration that some prominent women’s rights groups tended to oppose. In 1983, for instance, the National Organization for Women (NOW) declared that Reagan’s reelection the following year would constitute “a crisis for American women.”
When it came to women, Ronald Reagan had an interesting (some might say contradictory) pattern of behavior. He never viewed women as anything less than men. To him, there was no job a woman could not do. From what I saw, those who influenced him the most—and those for whom he had the greatest respect and relied upon most heavily—were women.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain was every bit as influential on the fortieth president as any man was. Maybe even more so, because she did not have designs on his job or an agenda to enhance her status in American politics. Nor, of course, did his wife, who was indisputably the most influential and relied-upon person in his life.
Ronald Reagan knew Nancy had the best instincts of anyone in his inner circle and that her only agenda was his success. He valued her counsel. Sometimes he sought it, and sometimes it was “volunteered.” In different ways, his two daughters were also significant influences on him. Maureen, his oldest child, from his marriage to Jane Wyman, shared her father’s interest in politics. She served as cochairman of the Republican National Committee, sought elective office, albeit unsuccessfully, and became a trusted advisor to the president. And while he and his first child with Nancy, daughter Patti, often did not agree on political issues, he listened to her with an open mind—even when she was staunchly opposed to something he might have said or done—and was proud that she was passionate about things.
Because Ronald Reagan never judged people on the basis of gender, he was bothered that historically in America women had been denied certain opportunities simply because of that. In that sense, some of the themes of 9 to 5 undoubtedly struck a chord with him.
During his 1980 campaign, he’d said that if elected president, he would seek out the most qualified woman and nominate her to the Supreme Court. He did not pretend otherwise. That’s not to say he was willing to compromise standards so that a woman could serve on the high court. He just believed that among jurists “qualified” to serve on the nation’s highest court were many women, and it was high time one was appointed. He kept his promise just six months into his first term by nominating Sandra Day O’Connor to replace retiring justice Potter Stewart.
Women occupied many staff positions at the White House in the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan was the first president to have a female military aide. At his insistence, the White House Military Office identified a woman with the background and skills to be one of those who walk a few paces behind the president carrying a briefcase—the “football,” with the codes for launching a nuclear strike. Her name was Vivien Crea.
Many times over the years, Reagan shared an anecdote he’d heard. In one such story, there was an accident. The victim was stretched out, and a man elbowed his way through the crowd that had gathered. Seeing a woman bending down over the victim, the man shoved her aside, saying, “I have had training in first aid. Let me take care of this.” He then started doing all the techniques he’d learned. Finally, the woman tapped him on the shoulder and said, “When you get to that part about calling the doctor, I’m right here.”
While I never knew him to judge people on the basis of gender, Ronald Reagan did not treat women the same way he treated men. While with men he could share and appreciate a salty story or joke, he would never do so in the presence of women.
Once, former President Reagan and I were in the car on the way to a portrait unveiling at a swanky club in New York City, and I thought I would be very clever with him. “Sir,” I said, “have you looked at your remarks in the briefing sheet for this event? You know the club is hanging a very fine portrait of you, and it’s very important to be well hung.” Without missing a beat, he looked in the front of the car to make sure there were no women agents present, then at me, and with that Reagan twinkle in his eyes, said, “Well, Mark, I’ve never had any complaints!” Even the Secret Service agents in the front of the car broke up in laug
hter. He would never have said that had there been a woman in the car.
The one exception to that rule was his mother-in-law, the actress Edith Luckett Davis. “The president and Edith had a special relationship,” Mrs. Reagan’s stepbrother, Dr. Richard (Dick) Davis, told me. “When the Reagans would visit Loyal [Nancy’s stepfather] and Edith in Phoenix, the president and Edith would retreat someplace and exchange Hollywood gossip—Edith knew everyone—and off-color jokes.”VI (Nancy’s mother divorced her biological father and later married Loyal Davis, who adopted Nancy when she was fourteen.) He always insisted that women precede him when doors were held open. That became an issue years later when, as a former president, he was announced onstage for a speech. If any woman accompanied Reagan, he would insist that she walk in front of him. A booming voice would intone, “Ladies and gentlemen, the fortieth president of the United States,” the curtains would part, and out would walk a woman no one had ever seen before, smiling awkwardly. Eventually, when women were doing the advance work in such circumstances, they would slip away just before President Reagan was announced onstage.
Getting back to the movie, 9 to 5 ends with a sort of feminist wish fulfillment: each of the women proves her value; they move on to new adventures through their merit; and the evil Mr. Hart is transferred to South America, where he’s never heard from again. The American Film Institute named the film one of the top movies of all time, and it is continually referred to as a Reagan-era symbol “for women seeking equal treatment in the workforce.” Whether it should be or not.
* * *
I. Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990).
II. Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, ed. Douglas Brinkley (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007), 4.
III. Nancy Reagan with William Novak, My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan (New York: Random House, 1989), 255.
IV. Ronald Reagan, Reagan Diaries, 4.
V. Donnie Radcliffe, “First Lady Says Some Media Glamorize Drugs,” Washington Post online, April 24, 1982, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/04/24/first-lady-says-some-media-glamorize-drugs/16f2c36f-3e70-44da-a0ac-c967b43f1a97.
VI. Author conversation with Dr. Richard Davis via phone, summer 2016.
2
OH, GOD! BOOK II
Starring:
George Burns, Suzanne Pleshette, David Birney
Directed by:
Gilbert Cates
Viewed by the Reagans:
March 7, 1981
The Film That Starred One of the Reagans’ Dearest Hollywood Friends, Who Modeled How to Joke About Old Age
The first full weekend of March 1981 came on the heels of one of the biggest media events in years. On Friday, March 6, the iconic CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, who for three decades had covered eight US presidents and delivered the news to Americans during times of war, crisis, and assassination, signed off the air for the last time. President Ronald Reagan was one of his final guests.
The Cronkite interview was a high point for any White House press aide. But for a midlevel press aide like me, I was finding that the White House wasn’t always glamorous.
Shortly after settling into my cabin one of the early weekends at Camp David, I received a call from the camp commander.
“Mark, I wanted you to be aware of a problem we had with one of your press photographers.”
I knew from his referring to the press photographer as mine, it would not be a great conversation.
I asked him what was up. One of the photographers had relieved himself on a rock, the commander reported.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“He pissed on a rock near the duck blind,” he replied, indicating the area on the grounds of Camp David where wire service photographers could witness the arrival and departure of Marine One in case we crashed. The commander said this behavior could not be tolerated. I promised to admonish the offending photographer. I picked up the phone in my cabin and requested to be connected with the White House in Washington. I asked the operator there to track down the photographer.
The White House operators were the best in the world. They could find anyone anywhere anytime. But like many of the people who worked at the White House, they had a unique way of doing things, with a language all their own. Whenever I asked the White House operator to find a reporter, photographer, or anyone else, she would ask, “Sir, would you like to take the ring?” I had no idea what that meant. It turned out that “take the ring” means that when the White House operator places a call for a staff member, she dials the number and then allows the staff member to announce himself or herself, as opposed to having the White House operator announce the call. As time went on, I took advantage of the willingness of White House operators to announce calls to people I wanted to impress, mostly old friends from college.
Once the offending photographer was on the line, I told him that I had heard from the commander of Camp David that he had peed on a rock.
With no hesitation or tone of remorse, the man said, “Yes, that’s true, I did, and here’s why: I told the marine escort that I really had to go to the restroom, but he refused to take me to one. I had no choice. I’m sorry, but they sure weren’t very nice about it.”
It was not exactly the type of “media relations” I expected to handle when I joined the White House staff.
The Cronkite interview, of course, presented no such awkwardness and went off without a hitch. Cronkite himself was the consummate gentleman, and his sit-down with the president during his final week on the air showed that he was going to remain a model of journalistic professionalism until his last moment on America’s screens. Sitting in the Oval Office, the president and the veteran CBS anchor talked about Cold War issues such as the administration’s support for the nation of El Salvador against Marxist guerrillas, and what some viewed as its controversial policies and statements toward the Soviet Union.I President Reagan had caused a stir when he was asked about the USSR in a late-January press conference and said that “the only morality they recognize is what will further their cause, meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that, and that is moral, not immoral, and we operate on a different set of standards.”
Asked about that remark by Cronkite, the president pointed out that the Communist ideology did not profess belief in God. “Their statement about morality is that nothing is immoral if it furthers their cause, which means they can resort to lying or stealing or cheating or even murder if it furthers their cause, and that is not immoral.” It was an honest statement by Reagan but did little to appease the hand-wringing diplomatic corps.
No doubt it was a coincidence, but the themes of morality and faith fit nicely with Mrs. Reagan’s movie selection for that weekend: George Burns’s Oh, God! Book II, which had the beloved cigar-chomping eighty-five-year-old comedian taking on the title role.
The film was a sequel to the surprise hit Oh, God! This was a Warner Bros. production, and the minute its iconic blue-and-gold shield hit the screen, I suspect the president smiled and made a mental note of it. I soon came to notice that whenever he talked about Warner Bros. there was a twinkle in the president’s eye. After all, it was the film company that first signed Reagan to a picture deal when he was just a radio announcer from Des Moines with a crew cut and thick glasses. It was obvious that being at Warner Bros. had been a happy time for him. He would often talk about it being like a family and having a comforting feeling of belonging.
The president occasionally talked about that first film job, which he almost sabotaged before it began. In 1936, while on a trip to Hollywood to cover the Chicago Cubs, who at that time held their spring training in California, Reagan did a screen test for Warner Bros. Told that it might be several days before studio head Jack Warner could view his filmed audition, Reagan decided not to wait around. He headed back on the train to Iowa. Reagan later recounted, “I had done through ignorance the smartest thing it was po
ssible to do. Hollywood just loves people who don’t need Hollywood.”II
The Warner Bros. logo on the George Burns film propelled the president to give it greater gravity. The first Oh, God! movie, which premiered in 1977, also starred the popular singer John Denver and was one of the year’s most successful films. (Denver did not take part in the sequel.) The poster for Book II showed the bespectacled Burns, as God, riding a motorcycle, and the tagline demonstrated the film’s gentle humor: “That’s right. I made another movie. You know me, I can’t stop creating.”
In the movie, the Almighty appears before a twelve-year-old girl named Tracy Richards. Burns puts forth his usual funny remarks and inside Hollywood jokes that had made him a popular stand-up comic. At one point, Tracy tells him that “somehow I thought you’d look holier and more fancy . . . I mean, like, with a crown and a long beard and a flowing white robe.” Burns responds, “You’re thinking of Charlton Heston.” (Heston had previously played Moses in The Ten Commandments [1956] and John the Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told [1965].) God then asks the little girl to think of a slogan that would encourage more people to believe in him again. “Sometimes,” Burns tells her, “you just have to believe in things you can’t see.”
The cutesy premise did have some dark moments. After Tracy does what God asks, her parents think she is delusional. A psychiatrist who administers a series of tests and a brain scan declares Tracy a psychotic who should be institutionalized. God comes to her defense, one-liners at the ready.
As you might guess, this was not an eighties movie that proved popular over the years. Roger Ebert, the film critic, called it a “third-rate situation comedy” and noted that “the movie’s screenplay was written by no fewer than five collaborators, but they were so bankrupt of ideas that some scenes have a quiet desperation to them.”III
Movie Nights with the Reagans Page 3