Ronald Reagan's Top 10 Movie Roles
Storm Warning, 1951
Many stars, Clark Gable and James Stewart among them, returned from World War II to reclaim their eminence. Reagan was not of those stars' wattage, and he was eclipsed by his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jane Wyman, who in 1949 won an Oscar for her role as a deaf-mute in Johnny Belinda. But Reagan was frequently paired with actresses who outshone him. The honey-voiced Patricia Neal got all the attention when she played his romantic interest in both John Loves Mary and The Hasty Heart. Reagan plays a small-town DA in Storm Warning, an anti-Klan movie that mixes lynch-mob scenes with a Streetcar Named Desire plot. Ginger Rogers, the heroine, gets to testify against the Klan; Doris Day, a new Warner contract player, is the woman who discovers that her husband is a political menace. Reagan is fine representing the quiet voice of authority, but it's the other principals who do the heavy emoting.