Article: Were There Actually Two Ronald Reagan's?

For the past couple of days I have received several rather odd and unsolicited E-mails from an individual who identifies him or herself as Missile Toe. Missile Toe has praised my writing and my honesty and then explained that he or she had a story to tell me. My first reaction to this, was the realization that every sucker gambit first begins with faint praise, you're so smart or you're so handsome that it must be you I share the riches of the Nigerian treasury with.
Anyway, the story was told to me like this; Missile Toe is an individual who is now dying of cancer somewhere in Southern California. He or she will not tell me their gender out of fear of what might befall their families if his or her actual identity were ever to become known to the public. In the early 1950's, Missile Toe had worked on the Warner Brother's movie studio lot in an undisclosed position. He or she then went on to work in a similar position for General Electric's True Theater starring none other than the future President, Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Missile Toe's boss was the liaison between the studio executives and G.E's corporate headquarters. The boss told Missile Toe that his job in Hollywood was to protect Reagan from any sort of scandal because in his words, "The boys upstairs have big plans for that man." Missile Toe explained that he didn't put much credence into what his boss had told him about Reagan until some strange events began to occur.
During the 1940's when Reagan was making his war films there had been an actor in Hollywood who worked as Reagan's stunt double. This actor was named David Michael Breedlove and that Breedlove's physical similarity to Reagan was uncanny, so much so, that Breedlove would also double for Reagan off screen at charity events.
One day Missile Toe was reporting to his or her boss about production difficulties when a man appearing to be Ronald Reagan entered the room. He looked at Missile Toe and asked, "You remember me, don't you?"
Missile Toe responded, "Sure, you're Ronald Reagan," when he said this the two men in the room burst into laughter. Missile Toe then asked, "David?"
To which Reagan answered, "No, you got it right the first time, I'm Ronald Reagan." At this point both men broke into laughter once again and Reagan asked, "Whose David?"
Missile Toe answered, "You know perfectly well who David is, he was your stunt double for years."
Reagan answered, "Never heard of him."
Missile Toe just assumed that Reagan or Breedlove was putting him on, but several weeks later Missile Toe knew from the shooting schedule that Reagan was due to be out of town in Pennsylvania making a speech for GE when he bumped into Reagan outside of his bosses office.
Missile Toe then asked his boss, "What's Reagan doing here? I thought he was out of town making a speech?"
His boss merely put his fingers to his lips and said, "Shhh!"
Missile Toe explained that, he or she took it as an inside joke, because there were lots of secrets in Hollywood, at the time, which weren't spoken about in the light of day. These coincidences were soon forgotten and faded from memory.
As the production ended for the season, Missile Toe was required to collate and corroborate all of the invoices from the production and as Missile Toe worked late one night he or she came across an invoice which could not be explained. It was a health insurance claim in the amount of $ 9,000. That was the price of five new cars in the 1950's but Missile Toe explained, that what stunned him or her was not so much the dollar amount of the invoice, but the name which was listed on the invoice as, you guessed it, David M. Breedlove. The invoice further stated that it was an insurance claim for the cost to perform facial reconstructive surgery and Missile Toe already knew, all too well, that Breedlove had never been cast in any of the studios recent productions.
Missile Toe presented the invoice to the liaison from GE. The liaison took a look at the insurance claim then folded it in half and placed it in his desk drawer. Missile Toe asked, "What's this all about, Breedlove has never worked here?"
The boss explained, "That's the companies business, not yours, if you value your job and your future here you'll forget you ever saw it."
Missile Toe also maintains that Reagan had a substance and alcohol problem that one day during shooting he overheard the director say, "He's drunk and fucked up on pills again, call you know who." Missile Toe felt certain that the call was about to be made to Reagan's bosses at GE, but less than thirty minutes later, there was Reagan in costume and sober as a judge.
Prior to these revelations Missile Toe had always held Reagan in high regard because he or she had thought of him as a man with infinite patience. "With my own eyes I had witnessed the stormy relationship between Reagan and his wife Nancy. Mrs. Reagan would charge onto the lot screaming obscenities at Reagan and some of their fights in the studio trailers were legendary. One day after such an argument Regan emerged from the trailer, and told the staff, "Don't bother trying to clean it up, just haul it off and burn it.
Regan's shirt was torn and his face was obviously swollen and there were red scratches on his neck. Mrs. Reagan left the back lot that day by private ambulance for a trip; it was later explained, to a sanitarium in Palm Springs. I thought that apparently, the worst had happened, he had snapped, because I saw Reagan resting his hand in a bucket of ice, not ten minutes after this, his face swollen with scratches on his neck. Yet when the Dailies were run, there was Reagan uninjured. It became obvious to me that there were two Ronald Reagan's prowling the back lot.
I knew that Reagan had two trailers on the lot and I had assumed that the second one was his sanctuary, a place for him to just disappear or perhaps entertain young starlets or whatever. This certainty that there were two Reagan's compelled me to create a ruse, with my arm filled with envelopes I knocked on the door of trailer nine, the one which I had suspected was Reagan's hideaway at a time when I knew Reagan was supposed to be on the set. A voice similar to Reagan's asked, "Yes what is it?"
"I've got your mail, I answered,
"I can't come out right now, I'm not decent."
"Just unlock the door and I'll slip inside," but the voice answered, "I can't do that, go away!"
This was the way things were in Hollywood back in the old days, stars had public and private lives and they were kept well separated. When Reagan ran for Governor of California I laughed after the media had reported on Reagan's grueling campaign schedule. Even after Reagan was elected Governor it had all just been funny to me, so what, if the Governor has a body double, how nice that would be if we all could have one. I moved on with my career and raised my family and I knew better than to make any waves about these things which I had witnessed and knew to be true.
It was during the summer of 1977, when there was this party in Hollywood. It was one of those types of Hollywood parties which the press doesn't report about, but at this particular party there was a shooting. Eye witnesses relayed the story to me a week or so afterwards, but I had already heard something about it in the wind from a blood relative. This blood relative of mine (now deceased) had worked in the Los Angeles county coroners office and told me, "You know, it was the damnedest thing, we had a body come in the other day that looked just like Ronald Reagan and what made it really weird was this guy had died of a gun shot wound and there was no police report.
Within two hours a funeral home came and picked up the body, no autopsy, no investigation, no nothing."
I asked, already suspecting the answer, "Was his name Breedlove?"
"Yeah, I think it was, how did you know?"
I played it off as a Hollywood inside secret, but the real secret I kept hidden away.
The rumors circulated all around town with differing variables, Nancy was drunk and had taken a shot at him but had missed. Or she had taken a shot at him and had just nicked him or even that he was seriously wounded but had made a full recovery in a distant sanitarium under an assumed name. I was content to keep my mouth shut, because to open it would have been to invite disaster and had that man Ronald Reagan or David Breedlove never been elected President, I would have never said another word about it, even now.
My time on this Earth is now measured in weeks, if not days, I must tell what I know to be true before I leave here. I must, I have been a fan of your writing for quite some time and you have always seemed to tell the truth even when it has been unflattering towards yourself. So this is my departing gift to you, and maybe, it will help you or maybe it will become a millstone around your neck. I have faith that you will tell this story either way and either way, I have no one else to whom I can tell it too." -- Missile Toe
The E-mails I received were mirrored; when I tried to reply to them they simply bounced back. I have no evidence to the veracity of them. I must fall back instead on to the motivation for these messages, perhaps they are all untrue fabrications and perhaps, I am being made a fool of. I have been made a fool of before, I've been married before, you know. If these things are untrue then I am being made the butt of a joke, but if they are true, then we are all being made fools of. Then not only did a bad actor become the President of these United States, but a bad actor dead three years became the President, replaced by his stunt double. It now appears quite possible that the age of Presidential puppetry began twenty years sooner than we had imagined. It creates a Pandora's Box which asks and answers a myriad of questions.