Ronald Reagan's Top 10 Movie Roles
Kings Row, 1942
The Warner version of Henry Bellamann's best seller — one of those naughty novels that Hollywood did handsprings to sanitize — touches daintily on all manner of small-town foibles: sexually possessive fathers, insane children, vindictive doctors, the hatred of the rich for the poor and a hint of homosexuality in the ardent relationship of small-town rakehell Drake McHugh (Reagan) and his best friend, Parris (Robert Cummings). When Drake waywardly courts a doctor's daughter, the physician exacts horrible revenge on the lad by needlessly amputating his legs after an accident. Taken to the home of his one true female friend, Randy (Ann Sheridan), Drake regains consciousness and realizes what's been done to him. "Randy!" he cries, his strangulated shriek ringing throughout the house. "Where's the rest of me?" (Reagan would use those words as the title of his 1965 autobiography.) Under Sam Wood's direction, Reagan flawlessly navigates Drake's descent from rube bonhomie to maturing resolve to blackest despair, then to a final splash of sunlight.