Editing Friendly Persuasion (1956 film) (section)

==Ronald Reagan==
''Friendly Persuasion'' also became a footnote to world history in the 1980s when [[President of the United States|United States President]] [[Ronald Reagan]] made a gift of the film to [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics|Soviet]] [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|general secretary]] [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] at one of their five [[List of Soviet Union–United States summits#Cold War (1985–1991)|summit meetings]], suggesting that he view the film as symbolic of the need to find an alternative to war as a means of resolving differences between peoples.  One Quaker commentator stated: "''Friendly Persuasion'' seems to me to come about as close to truth and fairness as I expect to see Hollywood get in a treatment of Quakerism; I recommend it to every Quaker parent, as projecting images their children ought to see and imitate...I believe (critics have) woefully misjudged the film, on several counts: its place in American cinema, the characters and their roles, its historicity, and, not least, its value as an expression of the Peace Testimony. Here, for perhaps the only time, I think Ronald Reagan was closer to the truth when he commended the film to Gorbachev because it 'shows not the tragedy of war, but the problems of pacifism, the nobility of patriotism as well as the love of peace.'"<ref>{{cite web|last=Fager|first=Chuck|title=Filming the Reputation of Truth: Quakers in the Movies|url=http://www.afriendlyletter.com/afl122.html|work=A Friendly Letter|access-date=February 10, 2013|year=1991|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130520133914/http://www.afriendlyletter.com/afl122.html|archive-date=May 20, 2013}}</ref>