Ronald Reagan's Top 10 Movie Roles
Ronald Reagan in Hollywood
Reagan's film career is ultimately just one colorful chapter in the biography of the 40th President of the United States. But he did devote two prime decades to the minor, if alchemic, art of acting. And film work offered some returns on his investment. It lent Reagan the status of a marketable commodity. It landed him two actress wives: the first, Oscar winner Jane Wyman; the second, Nancy Davis, who would be his and America's First Lady. Reagan learned the hortatory oratory of movie dialogue — speeches crafted to sell an ideal or emotion and still sound like plainspoken common sense — a technique he used so dynamically in politics. And film work created the image of a part-real, part-fictional personage: an amalgam of the man, the actor he became and the roles he was given to play. What were Reagan's best roles? Read on.