Ronald Reagan

The Radio Announcer Who Landed at Warner

Ronald Reagan arrived in Los Angeles in 1937 to cover the spring training of the Chicago Cubs. He had a carefully polished baritone voice from radio stations in Iowa and a physique that fit the standards of the era. A contact at Warner Bros. got him a screen test that led to a contract paying 200 dollars a week.

During his first years in the industry he appeared in nearly thirty films. They were B-movie productions where he usually played the likable guy, the lead's best friend, or the supporting leading man who doesn't get the girl. He worked at a frantic pace because the studio needed to fill movie theaters across the country.

And the gamble paid off.

In 1940 he played the American football player George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American. It was the role that earned him the nickname Gipper and began to change how studio executives saw him. But his real breakthrough came with Kings Row in 1942, a dark drama in which Reagan showed a dramatic range that few had expected from him until then.

The line "Where's the rest of me?" spoken by his character when he wakes up with his legs amputated became etched in viewers' memories. That performance was the peak of his purely artistic career, before military service in the army's film unit interrupted his progress at the major studios.

The Union and the Small Screen

After World War II, Reagan returned to a Hollywood that was changing under the pressure of television and political tensions. In 1947 he took over the presidency of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and led the organization through seven terms. It was a period of strikes and tough negotiations to get actors paid residuals for broadcasts of their work.

And the offices became more important than the scripts.

Because Reagan understood the business from the inside and knew that film was no longer the only engine of entertainment. In 1952 he signed a deal with MCA that allowed the agency to produce television, a move that years later drew criticism for conflict of interest. But his own career benefited from that shift when he began hosting General Electric Theater in 1954.

That anthology series gave him financial stability that movies had begun to deny him. For eight years he came into millions of American living rooms every week (in an impeccable suit) to present stories and act in some episodes. It was his real school of mass communication.

The Final Villain

By the early 1960s his good-guy image was worn out for the big screen. Reagan was looking for roles with more edge and darkness to break away from his past in Warner's light comedies. So he agreed to appear in The Killers, a film directed by Don Siegel that was released in 1964.

It was his only role as an antagonist.

In this film he played Jack Browning, a cold-mannered organized crime boss who slapped a woman in a scene that shocked his fans. Reagan hated the final result and regretted taking part in the project because he felt it damaged his public image. That experience closed his professional chapter at Universal Studios.

In 1964 he shot his last film scene and devoted himself completely to public service and institutional politics. His official filmography ended with a total of 53 feature films produced between 1937 and the end of his contract with the studio system. He died in 2004, far from the spotlight that brought him his early fame.