this is bbc world news. the headlines... hurricane irma has slammed into the us state of florida, bringing widespread coastal flooding and winds of 200 kph. in the west, the cities of st petersburg and tampa have announced emergency curfews. to the east, much of miami is deserted as residents take shelter. roads in the city are already flooded, and two million homes and businesses have lost power. the storm is now advancing towards naples, in south—western florida. cuba is also counting the cost, after irma moved along its northern coastline, causing flooding in havana. streets in the city now resemble canals. a million people were also forced to seek safety from waves several metres high. the government says it caused significant damage.> and the government of myanmar appears to have rejected a ceasefire declaration made by muslim rohingya militants. the spokesperson for myanmar‘s de facto leader, aung san suu kyi, said on twitter the government would not negotiate with terrorists. at 10pm, we will be here with a full round—up of the day's news.

now on bbc news, time for a special programme — historian adam smith tells the extraordinary story of former us president ronald reagan's final film. an actor for many years before he entered politics, in the killers, reagan played a criminal for the very first time. he portrayed california businessmen as corrupt and violent, just months before real california businessmen launched him into national politics. but why did he do it? and what might have happened if the killers had been shown on tv as planned? here's reagan's last movie. as a matter of fact, i have been permitted to choose my own words, and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks. in 1964, a middle—aged hollywood has been called ronald reagan went on tv to speak in support of the republican candidate

for president, barry goldwater. we are spending m5 billion on welfare. do some arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the m5 billion up equally among those 9 million poorfamilies, we would be up to give each family $4600 a year. and this, added to their present income, should eliminate poverty. reagan's mix of wit, warmth and rapid—fire statistics made it one of the most effective political addresses in us history. direct aid to the poor, however, is only running at about $600 per family. it seems someplace there must be some overhead. and it launched him into a stratospheric career in politics. how does the glamour of politics compare with the glamour of the screen? in 1966, he became governor of california. by 1968, he was running for president. and in 1980, this charming, genial old movie actor became the leader of the free world.

and yet, at the very start of his rise, he put that carefully nurtured public image at risk. just a few months before that breakthrough speech, ronald reagan was on american screens in a very different role. you get back to the hotel and stay there. i like it here. go on, get moving. i said i like it here. well, i can change that in a hurry. the killers caught one of the most important men of the second half of the 20th century at a turning point between his political future and his hollywood past. but why did reagan make this movie? and what does this screeching change of gear telling us about the role of the movies in the making of a presidential public image?

the killers was a gangster movie made for tv in 1963 by the veteran action director don siegel. reagan plays jack browning, the treacherous, violent leader of a gang of thieves. get it over with, jack! i'm adam smith, a historian of america. and in this programme, i want to unpick this strange tangle of movies and politics. to do that, we need to go back to the 1940s. don siegel and ronald reagan both got their careers up and running at warner brothers. there were two men, i suppose

approximately the same age, who came along through warner at the same time. don siegel, as a young man, was very important in the montage apartment. reagan was an actor who was never really ever going to make it big time, but he was a very reliable supporting part actor. come on, jim, let's turn in. there's no relation to get a cadet having his own idea. reagan was a very obedient guy. he was also a very political young man. not as a right—wing republican, but as a democrat. in 1916, he'd gone on the radio to lambast the ku klux klan, and in 1951, he played a district attorney that confronts them. it'll take more than these sheets you're wearing to hide that you're mean, frightened little people, or you wouldn't be here, desecrating the cross. meanwhile, don siegel, reagan's future director in the killers, was also attacking fascism.

they hope it disillusioned america to set up a messiah. i stayed at warners for one more picture. in 1919, siegel directed reagan for the first time, and his impression of him was surprising. it was night onto night, and the all—american boy, who at that time was extremely left—wing — i thought he was a communist — was ronald reagan. in fact, reagan's politics were on the move. in 1947, he became the president of the screen actors guild, known as sag, and appeared before the house un—american activities committee, denouncing communism from a liberal point of view. because we've spent 170 in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight for itself against the inroads of every ideology, no matter how much we disagree with it. by the early 1950s, reagan's once—promising movie career was stalling.

when his limited range landed him leads... i thought i only made a downpayment on one house... ..it was only in pedestrian movies like this. but then, a whole new phenomenon began to sweep through hollywood. yet commercial television nwill probably produce more television in one week than all the studios in hollywood turnout in a year. television transformed hollywood, and american politics, and with them, the career of ronald reagan. to understand what happened, we need to look behind the cameras, at the role of a man called lew wasserman, the head of a huge actin agency, mca. in the early 1950s, most hollywood moguls were scared or scornful of tv. not wasserman. so wasserman gambled on taking mca into tv production. and it paid off handsomely. but to do that, he needed the help of one of his clients, who, handily, was also the head of the screen actors guild. they asked reagan to

give them a waiver. because back then, you couldn't be an agent who was selling talent, and be a producer, who supposedly was buying talent. so ronald reagan gave lew wasserman and mca a waiver of sag rules, so that they could both buy and sell talent. and that was enormously helpful for lew wasserman and mca, because suddenly, their tv revenues boomed to be six times higher than their talent agency business. and that was because of the favour that ronald reagan had given them. and what did reagan get out of that? well, reagan got, in 1951, a nice little ranch in malibu. and he later said that that ranch, when he sold it, enabled him to run for governor in the mid—1960s. so it was a huge gift. and then in 1954, mca agent taft schreiber also got reagan a rather promising new gig

as the front man for a new tv drama show called general electric theater. in 1959, he was given quarter ownership of the show. there is no question that mca and taft schreiber particularly had a huge stake in ronald reagan. mca and reagan were kind of interlocking members of the same corporation. reagan had a stake in their success, and they had a stake in his. here, then, is lou costello, in blaze of glory. in the beginning, ronald reagan would come on and tell america just what they were going to see, now. and so he became theirfriend. their uncle. the guy next door. and that was usually important for his political career. reagan's mind was turning more and more in that direction. by 1963, he had become a republican, and was writing what was to become his political launch memoir, where's the rest of me? yet now, he found mca

pressing him into another new lew wasserman wheeze. mca had bought an entire movie studio, can get universal, next to which they were building themselves a massive new h0, the black tower. and they were busy reworking an old universalfilm noir called the killers as the first ever film for tv. reagan's old warner brothers colleague, don siegel, was brought into direct. having two magnificent actors like lee marvin and clu gulager as the two killers. but it would be very dull if i showed them going over to everybody and beating everybody up. but who should play the crime boss? why, ronald reagan. but reagan had generally been a good guy. are you sure that you're just thinking of the success of the job? so why did he agree to play a role so completely at odds

with his public persona? reagan was working on his memoir, the — where is the rest of me? and he was busy. and i think he was focused much more at that point on the political. ronald reagan never wanted to play a bad guy. he didn't see himself as a bad guy. he didn't want to do that movie at all. but his friend, lew wasserman, who owned the studio, had made him a lot of money. so he owed him big—time. big—time. i asked him, why did he do this movie, and he immediately said lew wanted me to do it. there was no — i mean, don't blame mean. i like what you're doing with the car. just stick with that. and so, like an ageing movie gangster do one last bankjob, the ageing movie actor decided to do one last film. go back to the hotel and stay there. i like it here. reagan later said his fans kept waiting for him to be revealed as a good guy. i like it here. in one shocking scene, he lashes out at his screen wife, angie dickinson. well, i can change that in a hurry.

i asked him how he felt about it, and he said he didn't like it. i mean, he did his part, he was a professional. he said he memorised the part, and think he did 0k, but he didn't like hitting angie dickinson. there was a meanness to the action that he has in the film that really shocked people. this was a shock at the time. the shock of what he was going to do later would only dawn gradually. that makes the price too high. let's tell them that we believe that we can propose a plan... the other part of reagan's life was beginning to clamour for his attention. barry goldwater wants to give the government back to the people. right—wing republican senator barry goldwater began a campaign for president. goldwater's run was the beginning of the modern conservative movement. that is a great trouble with big, inflationary government: it takes more and more of your earnings. at the time, some saw goldwater's campaign as the great hope for the moral redemption of the nation.

0thers saw it as dangerously extreme. and the united states should announce in no uncertain terms that we are against this element. —— disarmament. absolutely. barry goldwater's team asked reagan to make speeches for him. he doesn't really commit to that. he commits later on. at the same time, he's filming the killers, and trying to write his own book. this is a bizarre turning point. in this highly—charged atmosphere, the two halves of reagan's life — hollywood and politics — look as if they are about to collide. i showed extreme violence as quickly as possible, and then from then on, you weren't really seeing as much violence as you thought. it was so violent, this movie, that even the network for whom it was made decided not to run it. and at that time, reagan begged wasserman to put it in the can and put it away. well, wasserman was not going to do that, and instead released it in theatres, where did not do well at all.

reagan went off to present an act in a tv series called death valley days. but he also became california co—chair of the right—wing republican barry goldwater's campaign. so the decision to pull the killers from the television was a lucky escape. the enduring image of him on tv in 1964 was not this... ..but this — his barnstorming rallying cry for american freedom and american business. every businessman has his own tale of harassment, some where a perversion has taken place. reagan had been developing the speech for years, often in his touring visits to general electric‘s staff, when he was the company's spokesman. what he was talking about was how governments shouldn't be so big or so powerful that it can restrain the individual, and he had that as a theme before he became a partisan.

it was a theme there all along. reagan had given the speech of his, which became "the speech", as you say, to a group of californian republicans and it knocked them off their socks. reagan's leading finance man at the time said, this would really help goldwater. you and i have a rendezvous with destiny... and so, a few days before the 1964 presidential election, reagan's pre—recorded speech before a hand—picked audience was broadcast on the very same network, nbc, that was to have broadcast reagan's last movie, but dropped it. you and i have the ability, the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. thank you very much. instead, a bear few months later, they broadcast reagan's first great national political speech. thank you, ronnie, for the very stirring speech.

i'm john kilroy, national chairman of tv for goldwater—miller. the speech was a big hit. it raised $1 million, which would be like raising $10 million today. no televised speech had ever raised that kind of money. but here's the striking thing. john kilroy was a real estate developer, and was certainly a perfectly respectable businessman. reagan was becoming a champion of the virtues of california's business community, and yet that was exactly the sort of person he'd just been portraying as a corrupt thug in the killers. because reagan's character uses his ill—gotten gains to go legit as a property developer in los angeles. yes? a mr strom and another gentleman to see you, sir. until the killers track him down

and expose him as a criminal. clu gulager played the younger killer and remembers the sharp contrast between reagan's approach to the scene and that of the older killer, lee marvin. he came in, and he did it completely differently. there was not one smidgin of similarity between the first take and the second take of his performance. you know who that leaves? ronald reagan, same performance. really thought out. he gave the same reactions to the lines, and it was really good. browning development corporation. you've come a long way, from being an ex—mail robber. reagan was actually a mobster pretending to be a legitimate businessman, and this could have come back to bite him. but the story gets stranger. in hollywood, businessmen

and gangsters have often been closer than you might think. the founders of mca had had to deal with gangsters ever since the company began, booking bands in al capone's chicago. so that makes this scene in the killers, where reagan plays a crook—turned—businessman, even more extraordinary. first of all, look at what lee marvin's wearing. that was the mca agents's uniform, which don siegel deliberately copied for the movie to make his fictional killers look like his real—life bosses. but look closer still. see that model of a new building development clu gulager is messing about with in reagan's office? it's a model of mca's big new development, universal city, centred on the black tower. so, what on earth were don siegel and his designer playing at,

putting a model of their producer's shiny new development bang in the middle of a criminal—turned—businessman‘s office? even if the businessman wasn't played by ronald reagan, it seems a bit cheeky! perhaps the universal executives were in on the gag, perhaps they didn't notice, or perhaps they knew siegel had a point about their old gangster links and decided to let him have hisjoke. whatever the reason, that scene hinted that business and crime might not always have been polar opposites, which wasn't the obvious message to launch a career as a conservative politician. but, with the killers and its awkward links between business and crime safely confined to a few movie theatres, ronald reagan was able to move towards his new role as a politician. in the wake of his dazzling tv

speech for barry goldwater, californian republicans clamoured to get him to run for governor. and early in 1966, he finally launched himself as a politician in his own right. cue an avalanche of ridicule. i always knew that i was playing a part, and when the director yelled "cut" and i took off my make—up and my costume, i wasjust plain, damn me again. but one of my colleagues is having a bit of trouble separating fantasy from reality. he's confusing the ability to play a fictional character with the ability to be that person in real life. but in the mid—1960s, america was changing at terrifying speed, and reagan discovered a weapon that would blow the mockery of his acting career to pieces. while he was running, the campuses in california became aflame. there were protests on free speech, filthy speech, vietnam, civil rights, so there was kind of a backlash against this. reagan's opponents underestimated

the old actor's chances. he ran a canny, highly moralistic campaign that played up the issues of crime and social unrest. i don't think that taking to the streets and rioting and disorder has ever solved anything, or ever will. and it worked. against the odds, he won. even as radical unrest and the backlash against it grew ever more aggressive, he launched his first run for president. we must recover the will necessary to make our streets safe and our cities free of violence, and oui’ campuses centres of learning, rather than for outrage and insurrection. we must reject the idea that every time the law is broken, society is guilty, rather than the lawbrea ker. it is time to restore to america the precept that each individual is accountable for his actions. and then in 1971, the rising

tensions in governor reagan's state were dramatised by reagan's old director on the killer, don siegel, in a film called dirty harry. the backlash had found its superhero. harry behaves like a right—wing cop, but he talks and he moves and he sort of reacts like a natural, amiable loner, and that is very much a sort of pattern that reagan had. reagan would do harsh things, but he would talk about them in a chatty way. you're thinking, does he fire six shots or only five? but if clint eastwood's harry callahan was the embodiment of the age of reagan, the tough cop on the tail of a murderous hippy, there was still the awkward memory from reagan's own acting

career, the killers. get it over with, jack. and so, even as reagan rose towards the presidency, his role in that old movie refused to die. a reminder that his new, simple moral certainties were built on shifting sands. much to his annoyance, it was still being rerun on tv in 1972. do i have any doubts about my ability to play the role of a leading man in america? and even during his 1980 run for president, his opponents screened it in new yorkjust so they could laugh at him. and yet maybe that tensed up, narrow—eyed thug reagan played in the killers was actually the missing piece of his public image. the sunny boy—made—good shtick was all very well, but it was his capacity to play the hard man that completed reagan's political persona. maybe he regretted that

old made—for—tv movie as a bad end to his hollywood career, but perhaps it was more useful to his transformation into a politician than he thought. all he had to do was flip the aggression round and turn it, like clint eastwood in dirty harry, against the criminals. hello there. considering the dangerous weather hurricane irma is bringing across the south—eastern usa right now, and our weather here at home look decidedly tame.

but, that doesn't mean it's going to be completely quiet through the week ahead. far from it. some cool weather, some very windy weather at times, with some pretty heavy downpours over the next few days. low pressure firmly in charge as we start the next working week. this weather front the focus for some very heavy showers, and some very strong winds as well. in fact, particularly across wales and the south—west of england, there is the potential for some travel disruption, particularly during monday morning. but wherever you are across the country, it's going to be quite blustery. some gusty conditions, some heavy showers, which may contain some hail and thunder. but sandwiched in between downpours, there will be some spells of sunshine. but when you consider the strength of the winds, it will feel decidedly cool. in fact, quite chilly in places. 14—19d at best. now, it will stay quite windy for a time across north—eastern scotland. but, generally speaking, further south and west the winds will ease during monday night into the early hours of tuesday. and many of the showers

will fade as well. we start tuesday on a slightly quieter note, because we're pushing this area of low pressure away to the north—east, and we're bringing in this little bump in the isobars. a weak ridge of high pressure, which is going to bring more in the way of dry weather during tuesday. there will still be a few showers. some of them could still be fairly heavy. but there will be a lot more dry weather at this stage, with some spells of sunshine. still on the cool side. 13-19d. and then out west, well, here's our next troublemaker. rain pushing into northern ireland late in the day. increasingly strong winds, as this area of low pressure drifts inland tuesday evening. there's still a bit of uncertainty about the track, but noticed just how tightly squeezed the white lines, the isobars are here on the chart. that shows there is the potential for some very strong winds indeed. severe gales, gusts of 60 or maybe 70 mph. most likely for north wales and northern ireland. but do stay tuned for the forecast.

this could move a little further north or a little further south. once that clears away, wednesday, you've guessed it, another day of sunny spells and heavy, thundery showers. that goes for thursday as well. the wind is not strong at this stage, but coming from a chilly north—westerly direction, spells of sunshine, fairly heavy downpours, temperatures just 12 degrees in aberdeen, 14 in belfast, maybe sneaking up to 18 degrees in london. as we look towards the end of the week, a settled change, a change trying to take place as this area of high pressure attempts to build in from the west. but frontal systems will never be too far away from north—western areas. we could still see some rain into northern ireland and western scotland. the odd shower elsewhere, but, on balance, friday looks like a quieter, brighter day would light winds. that is the theme next weekend. remember i area of high pressure? it looks like it. its way a bit further south and east. with the jet stream is the theme next weekend. remember i area of high pressure? it looks like it. it's way a bit further south and east. with the jet stream still racing across the atlantic, there is with the potential it will bring areas of low pressure and frontal

systems close to the north—west of british isles. it means that as we look through next weekend and into the following week, there should longer drier spells, settled but with the potential for rain in the north—west and chilly nights. we will keep you up—to—date. storm surges along the florida coast, as hurricane irma descends. the governor of the state warns that up to 15 feet of water could come inland, with the west coast told it is now in the storm's path. with the west coast told 2 with the west coast told million homes and busines florida 2 million homes and businesses in florida are without power at night with central miami deserted. there's barely a soul on the streets, due to the risk of flying debris. on the streets, due in the british virgin islands, the huge task of picking up the pieces after irma, with another storm on the way. a with another storm on the way. relief effort is undt president a relief effort is under way. president trump has called hurricane

irma a monster and says he's worried about lives. also tonight... about lives. the government is set to breach the public sector pay cap for the first time in seven years, with increases for the police and prison officers. with increases for the police