Most of the brochures and advertisements he designed and wrote were for the Zulu market, and he later claimed that this early training in "making words move merchandise" was invaluable to the formation of his literary style.
[2] Moving to Britain in 1964, he abandoned dreams of becoming a concert pianist and was employed as a copywriter in the London office of Foote, Cone & Belding, an American advertising agency.
Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon and Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin urged Reagan aides to appoint Morris as the president's official biographer.
[5] However, in 1985 Morris recognized that Reagan had become a figure of high historical importance, and signed a $3 million contract with Random House to write his authorized biography.
He reached a private agreement with the president and first lady that granted him regular interviews with them and their children, as well as unlimited access to the White House, by means of a pass that made him a non-governmental observer of the administration.
[13] Morris explained in many interviews that his book's unique narrative form, a memoir written by a close observer of whom Reagan is never really aware, was a literary device reflecting the essentially thespian nature of his subject.
Widely beloved, the man had no close friends; seemingly passive and gentle, he yet exerted unstoppable force; although his id was formidable, he had no personal vanity.
His biographer therefore had to be, in effect, his audience, right from the time when "Arthur Edmund Morris" first became aware of "Dutch" Reagan in the early 1920s, through to the actual acquaintance of author and subject half a century later.
Morris believed that any reader willing to join him in watching The Ronald Reagan Story [his original title for the book] would yield to it as a drama true in every biographical detail.
[17] Three years later Morris published Beethoven: The Universal Composer, a short biography that sought to convey in plain prose the essence of great music.