Movie night with the Reagans: a time to disconnect, recharge and be entertained

The Reagans were film buffs and watched 363 films mostly on weekends. The ritual is the subject of a memoir by a former aide.

It was the cold war. Almost every weekend the American president’s inner circle, including a military aide, a senior secret service agent and a Marine One pilot, gathered far from public view at Aspen Lodge. At the official “call time” of 8pm, a screen automatically lowered from the ceiling, the lights dimmed and a hush descended.

It was movie night with the Reagans.

Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, former Hollywood actors, watched 363 films in the eight years of his presidency, almost all on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Camp David retreat in Maryland. The ritual is the subject of an affectionate memoir by former Reagan aide Mark Weinberg, published just ahead of the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday, which offers a glimpse of the first couple’s cultural tastes and an era when the news cycle was less frenetic and presidents were not glued to cable TV or smartphones.

“As it turns out, the Russians had the courtesy to leave president alone during movie nights,” recalled Weinberg, who made more trips to Camp David and watched more movies with the Reagans there than any other White House staffer.

“The Reagans were students of movies. When the movie was shown, they watched the movie. They didn’t take their eyes from the screen, they didn’t look around the room, they didn’t do anything. They studied the movies.”

They enjoyed their share of Hollywood classics including Stagecoach, North by Northwest, Some Like it Hot, Singing in the Rain, Funny Girl, Rear Window, Vertigo, Showboat, To Catch a Thief, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The African Queen, The Magnificent Seven, Roman Holiday, Cabaret and The Searchers. They also revisited some of their own work including Bedtime for Bonzo and Knute Rockne, All American, which bequeathed Reagan’s lasting nickname “the Gipper”, as well as Hellcats of the Navy, the only picture in which they acted together.

But Weinberg’s principal focus is the movies of the period: the 1980s. The president’s diet included Big, Chariots of Fire, Educating Rita, Gandhi, Ghostbusters, On Golden Pond, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Sophie’s Choice, Tootsie, The Untouchables and episodes of the Rocky, Superman, Star Trek and Star Wars sagas. He was moved by Steven Spielberg’s ET, relished Top Gun’s portrayal of military heroism and heeded the cold war warnings of War Games and Red Dawn. The viewing list does not include Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, now seen by many as epitomising Reagan’s “greed is good” decade.

“They watched movies up there to be entertained as much as anything else,” said Weinberg, 60, who supplied smooth-centred chocolates to the viewing parties after doctors banned Reagan from eating nuts and seeds.

“It was familiar and comfortable territory very fondly remembered. Watching movies was just something that they both enjoyed and was natural for them. The Reagans liked movies where there was somebody to root for and the president always said that’s an important part of any film to be successful.”

The first film the divisive Republican president watched after taking office was Tribute; the second was Nine to Five, starring Jane Fonda (still unpopular with conservatives for her stand against the Vietnam war), Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton. Reagan was angered by a scene in which the three women share revenge fantasies against their boss while smoking marijuana, which he found to be “a distasteful endorsement of pot smoking”. Nancy Reagan even cited the scene during the launch of an anti-drug campaign that became known as “Just say no”.

A particular favourite was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, in which the lead character, played by Matthew Broderick, fakes illness and plays truant for a day albeit in innocent fashion, visiting a museum and a parade rather than drinking, gambling or smoking.

Weinberg recalled: “It was just a purely entertaining movie, a good time, the kind of movie that the Reagans thought should be made because they did lament some of the changes in Hollywood over the years with gratuitous sex and violence that had become commonplace. They liked the more wholesome truly entertaining movies that you didn’t have to worry about whether your kids saw.”

Another Camp David hit was Back to the Future starring Michael J Fox as Marty McFly. But in one scene, McFly, who has time travelled to 1955, is asked by Doc Brown who is president in 1985. He replies: “Ronald Reagan.” Doc follows up: “I suppose Jane Wyman is first lady?”

Weinberg writes in Movie Nights with the Reagans that it was only the second time in all his eight years of service that he heard the name of Reagan’s first wife mentioned. “It felt as if the air had gone out of the Aspen Lodge. Something lingered in the room. A discomfort.”

The Reagans were film buffs but both Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter watched more. Nixon’s favourite film was Patton, about the second world war general George Patton; he watched the movie in the same week he ordered the secret war against Cambodia. Carter was the most prolific viewer of all, even though he only served one term. He held 480 screenings at the White House over the four years – an average of one every three nights – starting with All the President’s Men.

Bill Clinton maintained the tradition, once confiding: “The best perk out in the White House is not Air Force One or Camp David or anything else. It’s the wonderful movie theatre I get here, because people send me these movies all the time.”

As for Donald Trump, he has said his favourite films include Citizen Kane, Goodfellas, The Godfather parts I and II, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Gone with the Wind, Sunset Boulevard and Bloodsport, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Weinberg, a former spokesman, adviser and speechwriter for Reagan, added: “I think it is important for political leaders to be in touch with popular culture. But it’s even more important for presidents to take a deep breath on the weekends, relax and just kick back, put their feet up and watch a movie or two. It’s a way of disconnecting from the pressures of the presidency and recharging a little bit.”

Reagan came from Hollywood movies; Trump came from reality television. Weinberg mused: “As a politician he’d be very impressed with what President Trump accomplished in 2016. That’s quite an achievement to have come from where he did and vanquished all those candidates and win the election. I think he’d be very intrigued by the idea of an outsider coming to Washington to shake things up and change the way the government serves the people.”

But he added, tactfully: “They are men in different times with different styles. I think President Reagan would probably be a little bit uncomfortable with some of the language and tone in Washington these days.”

Indeed, it is hard to know what the Reagans would have made of contemporary Hollywood. Dr Michael Cornfield, a political scientist at George Washington University in Washington, said: “I think Ronnie and Nancy would have enjoyed many of this year’s Oscar nominated films.

“However, Call me by Your Name, Get Out, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards might have left them discomfited and mystified. And Black Panther? I can’t even.”