"I didn't really find him that interesting until that moment," Morris said. The author spent the next 14 years talking to Reagan and his family, friends, associates, and critics. The result was Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.
Morris appeared at the Smithsonian American Art Museum today as part of the American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series, a series which encourages a contemporary writer or artist to unravel the meaning they find behind a single image of an eminent figure of American culture. The series is co-sponsored by Washington College and the National Portrait Gallery.
In his insightful and witty remarks, Morris described his 14-year Reagan project. "The power of that image, it went through me like a knife," Morris said. "All art grows out of a seed of some sort and I like to think of biography as an art."
Admitting to being "speculative," Morris said he believes the Holocaust picture affected Reagan on several levels. First, was the power of the image itself. Then, Reagan often talked about an incident where he found his alcoholic father passed out spread-eagle on the ground in a pose similar to that of the Holocaust victim. Finally, during World War II as an intelligence officer, Reagan had been required to examine stills and footage taken of concentration camps all over Europe. "He looked at all that ghastly footage and it transformed him for life," Morris said. When he left the service, Reagan took some of the film home. He would then show his children when they reached age 14 "to make then understand the atrocities of which human beings were capable."
As a former actor, Reagan was extremely aware of the power of images. "Images can express things mere words cannot say and he was a creature of the visible culture of the land," Morris said
Morris also showed and discussed several other shots that he believes are important to understanding Reagan both as a person and as a president. For example, he showed a picture of a smiling, engaging President Reagan meeting Princeton University historian Arthur Link. Link, a life-long Democrat, viewed the Republican conservative Reagan as the antichrist. However, with his actor's insights and charisma, Reagan immediately moved to charm the professor. "In about 20 minutes he had Link," said Morris who was present at the meeting. "It was a perfect example of how Reagan deployed his charm."
One picture showed Reagan alone in a car, his reflection in the window also distinctly captured. Morris said that the picture conveyed the 2 sides of Reagan: the warm genial actor/president and the pensive, private person. "I often wondered which of those 2 guys I was writing about," Morris said.
The final picture showed an Illinois lake where, as a teenager and young man, Reagan had spent 7 summers as a lifeguard. During his time there, he was credited with saving 77 lives. After his presidency, as dementia began robbing Reagan of his vitality and his mind, he would point with pride to that picture and describe what it meant to him. "I saved 77 people at that lake," Morris said Reagan would tell visitors. "It was the last coherent sentence he was capable of."
Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
Of course, Morris' biography of Reagan was about a then-living subject. Morris is most known for his definitive 3-part biography of President Teddy Roosevelt and a biography of Beethoven, both of whom were long-deceased subjects. During the question and answer period, Morris was asked if it was easier to write about a living or a dead subject. Morris said that when an interviewer first asked him that question years ago, he didn't really have an answer. However, he wife Sylvia, who had been listening in another room, immediately shouted out, "dead is easier." "She was absolutely right," Morris said, acknowledging the laughter of his wife who was in the audience. "It's really better if they're not here."
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