15 Things We Learned About Ronald Reagan From a Weighty New Bio

6. His stage name turned out to be his real name

When he first arrived in Hollywood at age 29, the folks at Warner Bros. tried to come up with a better name than Dutch Reagan, as he had long been known. He suggested Ronald Reagan,  and they liked it. He’d be using his given name for the first time in his life.

Left: Reagan the movie star, circa 1939; Right: Lt. Ronald Reagan in 1942, while stationed at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Photo via John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images; Getty Images Bettmann / Contributor)

7. His movie studio kept him out of World War II

The execs at Warner went to great lengths to keep Reagan, their lucrative star, out of WWII, helping him avoid more serious service (the official reason was his poor eyesight); he’d end up spending “only five weeks as a liaison officer at Fort Mason, the San Francisco port facility that shipped troops out to the Pacific theater.” Then he became part of the First Motion Picture Unit in Los Angeles, where “few military formalities were observed,” Boot writes, as the troops helped create war propaganda films.

8. His family was a bit of a mess 

The family values man was not a great family man; Boot quotes Reagan’s economic adviser Arthur Laffer: “The Reagans were the most dysfunctional family I have ever heard of, let alone seen.”

The book details the troubled and broken relationships within the Reagan family — including between Reagan’s first and second wives. The enmity between Jane Wyman (mother of Maureen, who died at age 60 in 2001, and Michael, 79) and Nancy (mom to Patti Davis, 71, and Ron, 66) was such that Davis was 7 before she learned she had half-siblings. (Reagan and Wyman divorced in 1949.)  

President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan, 1984.

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9. Nancy was number one in his heart

The author notes that Reagan’s main focus was Nancy: “There was little doubt that his primary source of happiness was his wife, not his children.” (Boot casts Nancy in a particularly unflattering light; he perceives her as manipulative, and quotes Davis saying that her mother would hit her "on a weekly, sometimes daily" basis when she was a child.)

10. Nancy was worried about weight gain — hers and his

“The petite first lady watched her figure (she was a size 2) and made sure Ronnie did too,” notes Boot, adding that Reagan’s son Ron recalled “his father’s dismay at one pre-Christmas family dinner at the White House where, at Nancy’s direction, he was served skinless chicken breast, braised celery, and soda crackers.” When he was given a broiled grapefruit, he reportedly said, dejectedly, “That’s not dessert. That’s a grapefruit.”

11. He liked quiet evenings with Nancy

As president, Reagan would end his workday at 5:50 p.m., and “enjoyed nothing more at this point than to change into his pajamas and eat dinner with ‘Mommy’ [as he called Nancy] off trays in front of the television,” Boot writes.

12. He didn’t realize he’d been shot at first

When he was shot by John Hinkley Jr. outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981, Reagan didn’t know that a bullet had pierced him, although it had struck him in his left armpit and the injury was life-threatening. In the limo, according to Boot, “Reagan was slumped over, ‘almost paralyzed by pain,’ [Secret Service agent Jerry] Parr recalled.” Parr asked the president, “Were you hit?” and Reagan replied, “No, I don’t think so. I think you hurt my chest when you landed on top of me.” Then, Boot writes, Reagan’s “face turned gray and his lips blue, and blood began to appear on his lips,” and he was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where he’d stay for 12 days.

President Reagan in 1981, showing off his cowboy boots while speaking to reporters at his California ranch.

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13. His best friends were farmhands

His favorite place was his rustic California ranch, Rancho del Cielo, where he’d spend his days riding horses or doing manual labor, like chopping wood. That’s also where his best pals were: two former state police bodyguards, Dennis LeBlanc and Willard “Barney” Barnett, who helped him out on the ranch. Reagan, says Boot, “arguably had a more intimate relationship and a truer friendship with his blue-collar buddies … than he did with all the grandees, such as Walter Annenberg or Alfred Bloomingdale, with whom he hobnobbed at glittering galas. That was Nancy’s circle. Barney and Dennis — those were Ron’s guys.”

14. He was a loner at heart

“[He] was one of the most famous people in the world from the 1930s onward, but he remained an enigma even to those who knew him,” Boot writes. Reagan’s four children said they did not know him well. After aides left his employ he might forget their names, and this was long before Alzheimer’s. (Reagan’s Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed in 1994, but he showed signs of cognitive decline in the early ’90s, when, according to Boot, “he appeared confused in public and sometimes could not recognize longtime aides and associates.”)

15. We may never really know Ronald Reagan

The ghostwriter for his memoir, Lindsey, worked doggedly to elicit some introspection from Reagan, but, according to Boot, found “that it was nearly impossible to draw him out about his own life.”  

Even his famed speechwriter Peggy Noonan had trouble getting Reagan to open up while she was crafting his farewell address to the nation in 1989. Boot quotes Noonan, who asked him about his most difficult day in office: “He replied, ‘Oh well, I don’t know.’ Noonan noted, ‘So many politicians resist introspection. But Reagan takes it farther than most.’ She concluded astutely, ‘I would never know him, but now I thought I knew why. He did not need to be known.’”