For the future 40th President of the United States, movie acting was just a pipe dream. Ronald 'Dutch' Reagan was spending his summers behind the microphone announcing baseball games for a Des Moines, Iowa, radio station. The young broadcaster was familiar with a few radio personalities who actually broke into Hollywood films. But his aspirations were hampered by a thin acting resume, appearing only in high school and college plays. Little did he know in a few short months Reagan would not only be in a Warner Brothers' movie, but he would play the lead in October 1937's "Love Is On the Air."
His gift for gab and a melodious voice secured him a radio job in Iowa in 1932 after graduating from Eureka College with a major in economics and sociology. His love for football and drama qualified him in securing his first job announcing four Big Ten football games at Davenport, Iowa, before he secured the radio job in Des Moines. Since the Chicago Cubs radio station airwaves didn't reach Des Moines at the time, Reagan's assignment was to recreate each Cubs game from the wired barebones details he received on each inning and embellish the game's progress pitch-by-pitch. He convinced his station to send him to Los Angeles to cover the Cubs' 1937 spring training for a few days for background stories on the team's players. Before he left, he hired an agent to shop him around Hollywood studios, while padding his acting resume. He received one screen test with Warner Brothers, which showed some interest. Reagan was eventually offered $200 a week starting salary for one year by the studio. He quit his radio station job and hopped on a train to sunny southern California, forever changing his life.
The studio made it comfortably easy for Reagan to transition into his movie debut in "Love Is On the Air." In a remake of the 1933 Paul Muni film "Hi, Nellie," Reagan plays a radio commentator whose schtick is to dig into local big city news to find potential dirt. The former Des Moines, Iowa, broadcaster used his microphone skills to adroitly rattle off his scoop where city gangsters are known to control a few city government officials. Andy McCaine (Reagan) soon finds himself in hot water with the radio's management because one of its main advertisers, involved in the city's corruption, threatens to withhold its lucrative ads from the station.
June Travis plays Jo Hopkins, Andy's friendly adversary whom secretly has the hots for him. One line she overhears as Andy's boss yells at him, "Don't bring politics into your program again!" which must have sent a smile on her face years later after seeing the former young actor elected as the President of the United States. Travis, who learned how to fly and parachute jumping from Amelia Earhart while preparing for her role in 1936's "Ceiling Zero," was known as the Queen of B Movies. Her three-year Hollywood career ended in 1938 (with the exception of a 1952 film with Bette Davis and a 1965 sci-fi) when she returned to her Chicago home.
Reagan later claimed he "was the Errol Flynn of B movies," although his 27 years in Hollywood belies some noteworthy film roles, including playing George 'The Gipper' Gip in 1940's "Knute Rockne, All American" and Drake McHugh in 1942's "King's Row." In his first two years in front of the camera, Reagan was in 19 films, mostly low budget B movies. It was still an amazing accomplishment from the person who thought his life would be calling baseball games behind a microphone for the rest of his life.
