Ronald Reagan's Top 10 Movie Roles
Desperate Journey, 1942
Warner had one more role for its budding star — an RAF pilot in Desperate Journey, again supporting Errol Flynn — before Reagan entered World War II as a Stateside soldier. Kept out of action because of poor vision, he was assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit to make propaganda films for the armed forces. A natural leader, if not a natural actor, Reagan (above with Flynn and Arthur Kennedy in Desperate Journey) was cast as a government enforcer throughout his film career (not just in the Brass Bancroft series, but as assistant district attorneys in Girls on Probation and Angels Wash Their Faces) as well as a soldier (an Army private in Sergeant Murphy, a cadet in Brother Rat, Custer in Santa Fe Trail, a cavalry officer in The Last Outpost, an undercover Army agent in Cattle Queen of Montana, a submarine commander in Hellcats of the Navy). As Stephen Vaughn observes in his book Ronald Reagan in Hollywood: Movies and Politics, "No 20th-century president, with the exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been seen in uniform by more people."