Reporter's notebook: No bones broken at the Reagan home

I once had a walk-on part in a production starring Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy, who died on Sunday at the age of 94.

In 1980, I was one of several correspondents in Washington covering the presidential election. Reagan, the Hollywood B-movie actor who had been governor of California, was running as the Republican candidate for the White House.

Reuters wanted a photograph of me with him for use in its annual report. I asked Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady. Brady was reluctant. He said Reuters was a foreign agency and couldn’t deliver any votes. But I pestered him and eventually he relented. He allowed me a photo opportunity with the warning: “If you ask any questions, I’ll break your legs.”

Reagan was word perfect delivering a scripted message but less sure when speaking spontaneously. His campaign team was nervous about any risk of an off-the-cuff verbal slip-up.

The photo opp was all arranged, and I was instructed to go to the Reagan home in Bel Air, Los Angeles.

The result was this picture on the doorstep with Reagan, soon to be president, and Nancy, soon to be first lady.

Only months later, after Reagan's inauguration, Brady was shot in the head in an assassination attempt on the president in Washington. Reagan recovered, living to the age of 93 in 2004. Brady was permanently disabled and died in 2014.

Reagan’s campaign flights around the country always seemed to include a weekly stop in Los Angeles. Nothing much happened there, except for a regular appointment with his barber, Drucker’s in Beverly Hills.

His campaign appearances were tightly controlled and he had only one, well-rehearsed hustings speech. It was delivered at every stop. We'd all heard it so often that we knew it by heart. So finding something new to report was a challenge.

The stop at the barber shop offered a slim chance to call out a question to the candidate and possibly unearth some fresh nugget of news. It didn’t happen much. But we did notice that when Reagan emerged from Drucker’s he appeared not merely more spruce but rejuvenated.

Who needs a haircut every week? The suspicion was that Reagan, who at nearly 70 would become the oldest man ever to win election to the presidency of the United States for the first time, had not only had a trim, but his greying hair tinted.

It was impossible to prove. Drucker wasn’t saying, and we weren’t allowed inside his barber shop. ■