The strange movie coincidence that saved the life of Ronald Reagan
Long before he became the President of the United States, when he was just another actor striving to hit the big time, Ronald Reagan fused his craft with the politics for which he would become notorious. In a strange foreshadowing of what was to come over the rest of his career, he was twice the President of the Screen Actors Guild, where he worked tirelessly to root out alleged Communist influence within Hollywood, informing on fellow performers and directors for their supposed ties to the red menace.
Outside of his tenures at the helm of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan achieved a degree of success with his acting, and it saw him cross paths with some of the most prominent names of the day. 1939’s Dark Victory featured Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, while 1942’s Desperate Journey starred Reagan alongside one of Hollywood’s most notorious lotharios, Errol Flynn.
Reagan was even considered a star for a time, but his rise was interrupted by America entering the Second World War. Although he would achieve moderate fame after the conflict ended with films such as Louisa and Bedtime for Bonzo, he would so find his career taking a different path. This would see him root out Communists, and eventually become the Governor of California in 1967 and then the President in 1981.
During his most successful on-screen period in the late 1930s, Reagan starred in a series of films where he played the US Secret Service Agent Brass Bancroft. These were 1939’s Secret Service of the Air, Smashing the Money Ring and Code of the Secret Service, with the final title coming in 1940 as Murder in the Air.
Indicative of how the US Government influenced pictures during Hollywood’s Golden Age, the series was part of an effort by Warner Bros. to produce titles that depicted law enforcement positively. This was due to pressure from the Attorney General, Homer Stille Cummings and Will H. Hays, following years of studios glamorising gangsters in films in the early 1930s, and the Government wanting to crack down on organised crime.
Despite the successful Brass Bancroft series, Reagan was disdainful of Code of the Secret Service, and once went as far as to label it “the worst picture I ever made”. Ironically though, the film would have more effect on his life than any other, to the extent that it would save his life.
In 1981, when President Reagan was the target of a notorious assassination attempt, his life was saved by Secret Service Agent Jerry Parr, who thought quickly and pushed Reagan out of the way of one of the assailant’s bullets. Remarkably, Parr was inspired to join the Secret Service after watching Code of the Secret Service as a child.
Unsurprisingly, Parr received Congressional commendations for his actions and would later write about the incident in his autobiography. He believed that God had directed his life so he could one day save the President. Duly, after he retired from the Service in 1985, he became a pastor.
