41: From College Engagement to Radio Stardom: Ronald Reagan's Ascent to the Hollywood B-List. Max Boot discusses how Ronald Reagan's father, Jack, secured a job as an administrator of welfare for the New Deal in late 1933. Meanwhile, Ronald developed into

The John Batchelor Show

From College Engagement to Radio Stardom: Ronald Reagan's Ascent to the Hollywood B-List. Max Boot discusses how Ronald Reagan's father, Jack, secured a job as an administrator of welfare for the New Deal in late 1933. Meanwhile, Ronald developed into a successful young football star at Eureka College, where his steady girlfriend was Margaret Cleaver, known as Mugs. They were deeply in love and engaged to be married, but after graduation they separated, and Margaret, following a trip to Europe, fell in love with an American diplomat and returned the engagement ring to a crushed Reagan. Margaret's father, the Reverend Cleaver, was highly influential, acting almost as a surrogate father to Dutch Reagan. Dutch Reagan possessed a magnificent, compelling voice for storytelling and, graduating from college in 1932, recognized that while movie studios were absent from the Midwest, radio stations were plentiful. He landed his first radio job in Davenport, Iowa, and quickly succeeded, transferring to a larger station in Des Moines, where he became a very successful sportscaster known throughout the Midwest as Dutch Reagan, the voice of the Chicago Cubs and the White Sox. In Hollywood, Reagan was recognized as a heroic figure with a consistently sunny disposition and initially started in B-pictures at Warner Brothers. Reagan's movie career generated good income, and he demonstrated responsibility by moving his parents out to Hollywood. He met actress Jane Wyman at the Warner Brothers commissary, and they were married in January 1940.