The picture in the upper left hand corner of this web site (Ronald Reagan wearing a Pabst Blue Ribbon apron, clowning outside the Last Frontier Casino in Las Vegas) has made a couple of appearances on this web site. With Reagan's death last week, it serves as an appropriate memorial to the light hearted, populist traits of the man which the country came to love.
True story, when it first went up (last year? a couple years ago?), I thought it was a vacation photo of the Elder and a group of his friends on some wild bender from years past. I'm not sure why I thought that, since the young Reagan looks nothing like the Elder (the resemblences don't kick in until Reagan reached the end of his second term). I guess in my peripheral vision scan of the picture, something about the decades out of style clothing, and the enthusiastic endorsement of cheap beer said "the Elder."
But, upon further review, it turns out to be an authentic picture of Ronald Reagan. And a curious one at that. Why was his name on the marquee at an obscure casino? Why was he wearing a PBR apron with German writing on it? Who were those Slavic looking stooges next to him? What was everybody so happy about?
To answer these questions, I turned to the definitive source of information--the Elder. Since he found the picture and posted it on Fraters Libertas numerous times, I was sure he'd be able to clue us in on its origins. I was sure he'd enlighten us on its many components and explain why their cultural symbolism still resonates with us today and makes us appreciate Ronald Reagan even more.
The Elder's email response, direct from the People's Republic of China:
Actually I don't know the story behind the Reagan pic. I think I have a magnet with it that I picked up somewhere along the way. I suppose I could research it a bit and find out. Nah.
Now I know how Hugh Hewitt felt when asking him about Bartolo Colon.
Or maybe the Elder is being held prisoner by the Communist government for spreading counter revolutionary propaganda and his uncharacteristic non responsiveness is a subtle cry for help? Or maybe the Elder just had too many Tsingtaos tonight to give the question the proper attention?
Whatever the case, I did some of my own research and uncovered the following information on Reagan's two week stint as a Vegas Strip headliner in 1954. This from the Las Vegas Sun:
In 1954, then-out-of-work actor Reagan came to Las Vegas to try his hand as a song-and-dance man and comedian at the Last Frontier Hotel on the Strip. During a two-week engagement before mostly packed houses in the Ramona Room, Reagan clowned with The Continentals quartette and danced with the resort's showgirl chorus line The Adorabelles.
"Advance information would indicate that Ronald Reagan has no intentions of walking onstage unprepared," the Sun wrote in its Feb. 13, 1954, editions. "His shrewd showmanship ... has held him in good standing for many years."
Harvey Diederich, then public relations director at the Frontier, said, "While he (Reagan) enjoyed doing the act, he knew he was no song-and-dance man. However, he was a very optimistic man."
From MSNBC, a first hand report from someone who was in the audience opening night, February 15, 1954:
"He was offered this gig, I guess you would call it, and they paid him $30,000 for the two weeks, and that was as much as he made on his last film. He came on and he did a couple comedy scenes with some girls. He came on like a clown, like a clown costume, chasing everybody around the stage and hitting them with a rolled up newspaper. It was good."
Shrewd showmanship, packed houses, Reagan left optimistic afterwards, the audience enjoying themselves. Even with such a limited run, sounds like a success. Or was it? This from the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Ronald Reagan's acting career was near rock bottom when he came to Las Vegas with a chimpanzee act in 1954. Then 43, he arrived at the Last Frontier Hotel as a story-telling emcee who also performed with a quartet called The Continentals while hamming it up with a group of chimpanzees.
(Note, from the picture, the PBR apron appears to come from a German beer hall sketch with Reagan as the waiter. Although the picture credit names his cohorts at The Honey Brothers and not The Continentals.)
Reagan's act was a spinoff of his chimp-themed B-movie "Bedtime for Bonzo." Reagan, who died Saturday at age 93, lasted two weeks on the Strip, then in its low-wattage infancy. Longtime Las Vegas publicist Harvey Diederich, then employed at the Last Frontier, recalls seeing Reagan's short-lived show. It was more conversational than humorous, said Diederich.
His two-week vaudevillian routine was panned by critics. "The show was not much in either quality or quantity," said Bill Willard, the Las Vegas reviewer for Variety at the time. "It was an old song-and-dance routine and that was about it -- not memorable."
This is from a story from the San Jose Mercury News, on Reagan's motivation for taking the Last Frontier gig:
His acting career, though, was grinding to a halt. "I think I became too identified with the serious side of Hollywood's off-screen life," he wrote. But he also made dreadful choices: "The Voice of the Turtle" instead of "The Treasure of Sierra Madre," for example, and making eyes at Shirley Temple in "That Hagen Girl," her first grown-up role.
The Vegas gig came in 1954, when his agents suggested a nightclub act as a way of making money. What would I do? he asked. "What do you do at those benefits?" they replied. Introduce the other acts, he said.
And that's what he did. He worked up an act with a quartet called the Continentals, who sang and did comedy, that included a sketch for him. He opened with a self-deprecating monologue. It was, he recalled, "a wonderfully successful two weeks," but he did not care to repeat it.
And this darker interpretation of his motivations, from self-styled investigative reporter Dan Moldea:
At the end of Reagan's fifth term [as SAG president], he began to have serious financial problems, particularly with the IRS. In response, MCA negotiated a deal with the Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas--which was then operated by Chicago mobsters--for Reagan to host a song-and-dance show for two weeks and to receive enough money to cover his back tax debt.
Reagan's clown and chimpanzee act in Vegas--sponsored by the Mafia? Hard to put much credibility in that report. Although I may yet contact Moldea about getting the REAL story on the Elder's trip to China. Something tells me the mob may be involved here too. Or maybe the Elder is also involved with some traveling chimpanzee act? Stay tuned.
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