His aides called it "The Speech." It was the good-natured but fact-filled crowd pleaser that Ronald Reagan could reel off on any occasion. And he did, throughout his life. "It was a speech, I suppose, that with variations, I'd given hundreds of times before," Reagan wrote in his autobiography. Its themes were as simple as they were unchanging: The growth of government should be restrained; an unelected elite were able to set policies and thwart the desires of ordinary people; and America was on the road toward socialism. "A government may be the most benevolent, well-meaning in the world, but when it attempts to operate the economy, control production of a country, it must eventually use coercion and force to achieve its purposes," he told the Long Beach (Calif.) Rotary Club in 1962. He spoke with utter conviction because he'd spent a decade crisscrossing the country gathering material.

Historians, when they pay any attention to his GE years, tend to dismiss that period in Reagan's life between the end of his movie career in the early 1950s and his successful run for governor of California in 1966. But the GE Years, when Reagan served as the affable host of TV's General Electric Theater, was a formative period. It made him rich; it made him famous; and it helped him perfect a message that resonated with wealthy benefactors and with ordinary Americans. For eight years after its debut on a September Sunday in 1954, the show was the most popular program in its 9 p.m. time slot, regularly beating I Love Lucy. (Ironically, the industry-supported Museum of Television and Radio contains almost all the Lucy shows but just four featuring Reagan, the only president to have worked in the medium.) GE Theater featured Hollywood's brightest stars, like Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Natalie Wood, and Ethel Merman, in live dramas or musicals. Though Reagan acted in a few of the shows, his job was to introduce the pieces, sum them up, and narrate a GE commercial touting its new appliances. He'd sometimes make those introductions in a sport coat, nonchalantly leaning on a studio lamp.

But behind the scenes, it wasn't such easy going. Reagan carried enough clout that he'd argue with producers and directors about how certain scenes were shot. Stanley Rubin, the show's executive producer, recalled that Reagan most loved to debate politics on the set. "We'd start out talking about the host material or the story, but it would rapidly turn into a long political discussion on Ronnie's part." Those arguments always included reams of statistics. "I was buried under them."

Reagan was well compensated. The first year, he was paid $125,000 (about $800,000 in today's dollars) and GE outfitted his home in the ritzy Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles with all its appliances. But Reagan, the former union boss, was wise enough to take part ownership of the show, something few other stars thought to do, and it made him even wealthier. He bought a 350-acre ranch in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains. He rubbed shoulders with rich and influential men like Diners Club card CEO Alfred Bloomingdale and L.A. auto dealer Holmes Tuttle. Ownership also gave Reagan an incentive to promote the show. He visited 139 GE factories in 39 states. At first, he talked to small groups and answered their questions about Hollywood. But soon he was stopping in on Rotary clubs or Moose lodges, presenting his views on American democracy and economic progress. GE records show that in a single week in September 1960, he addressed five Good Neighbor Fund meetings and five other groups, made four TV and four radio appearances, attended 12 receptions, luncheons, and dinners, toured five factories, and signed over 1,000 autographs. Not to mention cocktail hour with the GE executives, where Reagan slyly drank fake martinis of diluted Rhine wine with an olive. "Reagan looked like a heavy drinker, exquisitely holding his liquor. GE executives got sloshed attempting to keep up," recalled Edward Langley, a former public-relations manager at GE. "It wasn't a bad apprenticeship for someone who'd someday enter public life," Reagan said.

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