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Reagan's early films, as many as nine a year, were forgettable. But there was one part that he yearned to play. He wanted somebody to film the life of Notre Dame's great football coach Knute Rockne so that he could play Rockne's star halfback, George Gipp. Reagan proselytized so fervently that someone filched the idea. Warner announced it would make the Rockne story, but the announcement made no mention of Reagan. He went to see the producer, asked for the part of Gipp and was told he was too small.
"But I played football for eight years," Reagan protested. "Gipp weighed five pounds less than I weigh right now." The producer was still dubious. The problem, Reagan saw, was that he was wearing a business suit, and the producer envisioned a behemoth in helmet and shoulder pads. Reagan raced home, gathered up some pictures of himself in uniform, raced back to the studio and won the part. It made him famous, and years after he performed Gipp's death scene, he would still get "a lump in my throat ... just thinking about it."
The same year he played Gipp, he married actress Jane Wyman. Warner assigned him to Kings Row. Playing a small-town lothario named Drake McHugh, he seduces the daughter of the town surgeon, who takes revenge by amputating both of the youth's legs. The horrible moment of self-discovery made a deep impression on Reagan. The day the scene was shot he clambered onto the sickbed, which had a hole cut in the mattress to hide his legs. "I spent almost that whole hour in stiff confinement," Reagan said. "Gradually the affair began to terrify me. In some weird way, I felt something horrible had happened to my body." When shooting began, Reagan recalled, "I opened my eyes dazedly, looked around, slowly let my gaze travel downward ... I can't describe even now my feeling as I tried to reach for where my legs should be. 'Randy!' I screamed. Ann Sheridan--bless her--playing Randy, burst through the door." Then Reagan cried out the question that he was later to make the title of his first autobiography: "Where's the rest of me?"
Kings Row made Reagan a star. But it was 1942, and Pearl Harbor had brought the U.S. to its inevitable involvement in World War II. Reagan could see very little without eyeglasses, but he had bluffed his way into the cavalry reserve back in Des Moines because it gave him a chance to go riding. Called up by the Army, he was examined by a doctor who concluded, "If we sent you overseas you'd shoot a general." Another added, "Yes, and you'd miss him." Barred from combat, Reagan spent the war years making training films at "Fort Roach," the old Hal Roach Studios, just six miles from Hollywood.